Eternal Motion in Nature

p Nature and society do not know absolute rest, immobility, immutability. The world presents a picture of constant motion and change.

p Motion, change, development is an eternal and inalienable property of matter. "Motion is the mode of existence of matter,” Engels said. "Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor 32 ran there be.”^^5^^ Every material body, every material particle—the molecule,: atom or its components—are by their very nature in a constant’state of motion and change.

p The philosophical understanding of motion implies more than iho movement of a body in space. As a mode of existence of matter, motion embraces all the processes and changes taking place in the universe. Among these changes a specially important part is played by the processes of development of matter, the passage of matter from one state to another, higher state, marked by new features and properties.

There are no permanently fixed, ossified things in the world, only things undergoing change, processes. This means that nowhere is there absolute rest, a state that would preclude motion. There is only relative rest. A body may be in a state of rest only in relation to a definite point on the earth’s surface. But that body moves with the movement of the earth, with the movement of the entire solar system. Besides, its component parts, molecules and jttoms, are in motion too, and complex processes are at work within these components. In short, the state of rest is only relative. Only motion is absolute, without exceptions.

Forms of Motion of Matter

p Corresponding to the diversity of matter is the diversity of its forms of motion. The simplest form of the motion of matter is mechanical movement of a body in space. A more complex form is thermal processes, the random motion of molecules that make up a physical body. Science has established that light, electro-magnetic radiation and intra-nuclear processes are also specific forms of matter in motion. Another form of motion is seen in chemical processes of the transformation of matter by combination and recombination of atoms and molecules. The life of organic nature, the physiological processes in plants and animals, the evolution of species—these too are specific manifestations of the universal property of matter, viz., motion.

p A much more complex form of motion is seen in human social life: the development of material production, economic life, etc.

p Since the end of the nineteenth century, scientists have discovered and successfully studied a number of new, previously unknown forms of matter in motion: motion of atomic particles around the nucleus, intricate transformation processes within the atomic nucleus, etc. It can be safely assumed that science will discover still more forms of matter in motion.

p The various forms of motion are not isolated from one another, but are interconnected and become transformed one into another. Thus thermal processes can give rise to chemical transformations 33 and light phenomena. At a definite stage of development, chemical processes led to the formation of proteins and the enzyme systems associated with them. This was the basis of the origin of life, that is, of the biological form of the motion of matter.

p One form of motion can pass into another and this has found expression notably in the fundamental law of natural science, viz., the law of transformation and conservation of energy.

p Different forms of motion correspond to different stages in the development and complication of matter. The lower, simpler forms become constituent parts of the higher, more complex forms. Nevertheless, there is a qualitative difference between the different forms of motion, and the higher forms cannot be reduced to the lower forms. For instance, physiological processes include mechanical motion—the movement in space of elements taking part in these processes—but they cannot be reduced to, and are not exhausted by, the mechanical movement of these elements.

The old, pro-Marxian mechanistic materialists believed that all life, in nature and human society, could be reduced to the mechanical movement of bodies and particles in space. Marxist philosophical materialism, with its broad view of motion as change in general, overcomes the narrow and oversimplified mechanistic conception of the motion of matter.

Space and Time

p Matter can move only in space and time. AH bodies, including man himself, and all material processes taking place in the objectively existing world, occupy a definite place in space. They are located near or far from one another; separated by distance; a moving body proceeds along a definite path. All this expresses the property of material things and processes known as extension.

p Space is a universal mode of the existence of matter. There is riot and cannot be matter without space, just as there cannot be space without matter. The difference between the extension of an individual body and that of the whole material world is that the former is limited, finite, that is, has a beginning and end, whereas the material world is limitless, infinite.

p Distances in the universe are incomparably greater than the distances we are accustomed to on the earth. Modern telescopes enable us to detect stellar systems the light from which takes hundreds of millions of years to reach the earth, though light travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometres a second. But even these magnitudes, being finite, do not give us a real picture of the vastness of the universe, which is infinite. Its infinitude lies beyond the bounds of imagination and can only be expressed as a scientific concept.

p The existence of physical bodies and of man himself has a duration in time—minutes, hours, days, etc. Everything in the world 34 undergoes change. Every body, every phenomenon of nature, has its past, present and future. These are expressions of time. Time, like space, is a universal mode of the existence of matter. Every individual thing, every process, and the material world as a whole, exist in time.

p But again there is a difference between the duration of existence of an individual thing and of nature as a whole: the existence of individual things is restricted in time, while nature as a whole exists eternally. Every thing arises, undergoes change and subsequently ceases to exist. Nature, on the other hand, has no beginning and no end. Individual things are transient, but the connected finite things constitute an eternal nature that knows neither beginning nor end.

p The figures relating to the age of the earth and the development of life on earth strike the imagination. Man, as we know him today, appeared about 50,000 or 70,000 years ago. The transition forms from ape to man arose about a million years ago. The first primitive forms of plant and animal life appeared more than a thousand million years ago, and the earth itself several thousand million years ago. Such is the time scale of the earth’s history. But neither these figures, nor even bigger magnitudes, can give us a real conception of the eternity of nature, for that eternity impliestits infinite existence in time; it implies that nature has always existed and always will exist.

p Space and time are interconnected as modes of the existence of the objective world and are inseparable from matter in motion.

p That was convincingly demonstrated by one of the greatest scientific theories of our time, Einstein’s theory of relativity. It refuted the view previously prevailing in physics that space is independent of matter, an unchanging void into which material bodies had been inserted by some external force, and that time flows at a uniform rate and does not depend on the motion of matter.

Space and time, being universal modes of the existence of matter, are absolute; nothing can exist outside of time and space. But their properties are changeable: space and time relations depend on the speed of motion of matter; the properties of space and time change in various parts of the universe in accordance with the distribution and motion of material masses. In that sense, space and time are relative.

Attempts to Deny the Objective Existence
of Space and Time

p Man’s day-to-day experience over the centuries and scientific data prove that space and time exist objectively, though this is denied by many idealist philosophers.

p The German idealist philosopher, Immanuel Kant, claimed there was no such thing as objective space and time existing independent 35 of our consciousness. In his view, space and time are merely modes of apprehending phenomena. He supposed that it is in the nature of human cognition to perceive all phenomena located in space and taking place in time: if there were no human consciousness, there would be no space or time.

p The view of space and time as subjective methods of perceiving phenomena is current also in modern idealist philosophy, though it is contradictory to, and refuted by, science, experience and practice.

p Let us take this example. If you have to travel from Paris to Moscow you know beforehand that the distance is 2,500 kilometres—a real, not imaginary distance. To traverse it you will need time, and the length of time will depend not on your imagination, but on the objectively existing distance between these two cities, and also on the means of transport. By rail, the journey will take not less than two days; by jet plane it can be covered in a matter of three or four hours.

p Science tells us that the world existed prior to man and his consciousness. But if that is so, we must conclude that space and time are independent of human consciousness, because the material world cannot exist otherwise than in space and time.

p In our day, when people scientifically and technically equipped are able to penetrate cosmic space, a new blow is being dealt to idealist views of the subjective character of space and time.

p The teaching of philosophical materialism that the external world exists in space and time refutes the religious doctrine of a God existing outside of space and time. Theology asserts that God existed before there was a world, that he created nature but remains outside nature, in an incomprehensible, supernatural “somewhere”. The theologians assert that God alone is infinite and eternal, while nature has a beginning and an end, both in space and time.

p Science has conclusively shown the untenability of such fantasies. There is no place for God. in the true, scientific conception of the world. The eighteenth-century French astronomer Joseph Lalande remarked that he had searched the skies but did not find any God there.

p Nature is its own cause. That thought was expressed in the seventeenth century by the materialist philosopher Spinoza. That materialist formula signifies that nature is in no need of a creator standing above it, that nature itself possesses the attributes of ’infinity and eternity which the theologians falsely ascribe to God.

By proving the uncreatedness, eternity and infinity of nature, the Marxist materialist philosophy provides a firm basis for atheism.