[introduction.]
The first thing to do in investigating the various phenomena of reality is to distinguish the particular phenomenon under study from all others.
Qualitative and Quantitative Dcfinitoness of Things
p The totality of the essential features that make a particular thing or phenomenon what it is and distinguish it from others, is called its quality. The philosophical concept of quality differs from the notion of it in everyday life, where it is associated with value. In that sense people speak of the good or bad quality of, for instance, food, manufactured articles or artistic productions. 71 The philosophical concept of quality does not contain any element of value. It is only a concept that denotes the inseparable distinguishing features, the inner structure, constituting the definiteness of a phenomenon and without which it ceases to be what it is.
p It should be borne in mind, of course, that no quality exists by itself. There are only things or phenomena which are characterised by qualitative definiteness.
p But inside things, or totalities of them possessing a distinct qualitative definiteness, there may also bo more or less significant qualitative differences. In the animal world, for example, vertebrates differ qualitatively from arthropoda. But within the general subtype of vertebrates there are qualitative differences between mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibia. Furthermore, there are, in turn, qualitative differences among mammals.
p The demarcation and identification of the features and distinctions that constitute the quality of a phenomenon are only the beginning of cognition. Besides quality, each thing has also a quantitative aspect, marked by the special quantitalive characteristics in which its quality exists.
p The quantitative definiteness of a thing may refer to its external features. For example, a thing may be big or small. But it may also characterise the internal nature of a thing. Thus, every metal has its own heat conductivity, its own coefficient of expansion, and every liquid has its own heat capacity, its own boiling-point and freezing-point, while every gas has its own temperature of liquefaction, etc.
p The quantitative characteristics of qualitatively different materials and processes are particularly important in technology. Modern industry relies on them at every step.
p It was only when quantitative measurements relating to the phenomena were combined with qualitative descriptions that natural science achieved appreciable progress. Observations of the stars and of the visible movements of the planets were begun very long ago. But astronomy did not develop as a science until the first measurements were made of the visible positions of the stars in the sky and of the angular distances between them, etc. In other fields of science as well, the progress of scientific knowledge was bound up with the development of measuring and computing devices, the development of methods of measurement, etc.
p It is not surprising, therefore, that the founders of the science of modern times, such as Galileo, regarded analysis of the quantitative relations and properties of phenomena as the main task of natural science.
p However, the scientists of that time went to extremes. They endeavoured to reduce all “qualities” to “quantities” that corresponded to them, and failed to see the basic qualitative differences behind the quantitative differences of phenomena.
72p The purely quantitative approach to natural phenomena led to the mechanism typical of seventeenth- and eighteenth- century science, i. e., to the conviction that mathematics and mechanics provided an adequate basis for cognition of the whole world, and that any phenomenon could he understood if explained hy the laws of mechanics. According to the theory of Rene Descartes, for example, animals were simply complex machines whose activities were wholly explicable by means of mechanical causes. And La Mettrie, the French eighteenth-century materialist, went so far as to argue in his essay, Man-Machine, that not only animals, but men as well, were nothing more than machines.
p The mechanistic view of nature was progressive for its time, because it required a strictly scientific approach to all natural phenomena and rejected all idealist and theological “explanations”. But it was soon discovered that the quantitative approach alone was insufficient and that cognition of objects and phenomena required the discovery of their peculiarities, their specific disti7 iguishing features. The external world is full of diverse qualities and can only be understood and explained if the qualitative as well as the quantitative aspects of all phenomena and processes are taken into account. The problem, therefore, is not one of simply reducing tho quality of a phenomenon to its quantity, but of understanding what relation there is between the quantitative definiteness of a phenomenon and its qualitative definiteness.
p The development of science demonstrated that there are quantitative relations common to many qualitatively different objects and processes. For example, the mathematical formulae of the wave theory are applicable to phenomena of various physical typesmechanical vibration, electro-magnetic oscillation, thermal fluctuation, and others. This is possible because all these phenomena objectively possess certain common features, common regularities, which may be quantitatively expressed.
p At the contemporary stage of the development of science, mathematics, which deals with quantitative relations, is being increasingly applied to scientific investigation in a number of qualitatively different fields of reality and in technology. This is unquestionably a sign of progress.
However, the very possibility of applying a particular quantitative relation to qualitatively different processes presupposes a concrete study of all the qualitative peculiarities of each of them.
Quantitative Changes Turn into Qualitative Ones
p One-sided emphasis of either the quantitative or the qualitative aspect indicates a metaphysical approach. Metaphysics is blind to the inherently necessary connection between quantity and quality. Dialectical thought, on the other hand, achieved 73 an important advance by establishing that the quantitative definiteness and the qualitative definiteness of things are not entirely external and indifferent opposites, but that there is a profound dialectical connection between them. In its most general form, this connection consists in the fact that quantitative changes of a thing inevitably bring about a change in its quality.
p We are surrounded on all sides by examples of such conversions of quantitative changes into qualitative ones.
p Thus, a change in the length of electromagnetic waves is attended by the marked qualitative differences shown by radio waves, infrared radiation, the spectrum of visible radiation, ultra-violet waves, X-rays and, last but not least, so-called gamma rays.
p Innumerable qualitative changes brought about by quantitative changes can be observed in chemistry. Take the synthetic substances (rubber, plastics, synthetic fibres), which are so prominent in industry and everyday use. Their molecules, marked by their great size, are formed by the combination of many small molecules each of identical composition. This combination of small molecules (monomers) into large ones (polymers) results in qualitative changes, for polymers have many remarkable properties that monomers lack.
p Quantitative modifications proceed more or less gradually and are often scarcely noticeable. In the beginning they do not modify the qualitative definiteness of a thing to any substantial extent. Subsequently, however, they accumulate and finally lead to a radical qualitative modification. "Quantity,” it is said, "passes into quality.”
p Thus, steel retains its solidity when healed. But when its temperature reaches the critical point the metal ceases to be a solid and becomes a liquid.
p The dialectical transition of quantity into quality is of particularly great importance for understanding the process of development, because it explains the emergence of new quality, without which there is no development.
p For example, in the early stages of social development there was a natural economy, with each community producing all it needed for its own existence. Subsequently, as production increased, exchange of commodities began. It became more frequent, grew quantitatively, and this led finally to very substantive qualitative changes in the economic life of society. Natural economy was replaced by commodity economy, in which people produced things for exchange rather than their own consumption, and obtained the things they needed by means of exchange.
p If a new quality arises from quantitative changes, it will have a new quantitative definiteness. This is the "passage of quality into quantity”. Thus, a qualitatively new model of a machine results in a higher productivity of labour. Socialist economy, 74 qualitatively different from capitalist economy, develops at a higher rate.
The passage of quantitative changes into radical qualitative changes, and vice versa, constitutes the universal dialectical law oj development. It operates in all the processes of nature, society and thought—in all spheres where the old is replaced by the new.
What Is a Leap?
p The transition of a thing, through the accumulation of quantitative modifications, from one qualitative state to a different, new state, is a leap in development. The leap is a break in the gradualness of the quantitative change of a thing. It is the transition to a new quality and signalises a sharp turn, a radical change in development.
p For example, the emergence of man was a leap—a radical turning-point in the development of the organic world.
p Leaps, transitions from one quality to another, are relatively rapid. However, the slowness of the quantitative modifications and the rapidity of the qualitative change are relative. The leaps are rapid in comparison with the preceding periods of gradual accumulation of quantitative modifications. This rapidity varies, depending upon the nature of the object and the conditions in which the leap occurs.
p The term evolution is used to denote quantitative changes both in nature and in society. Sometimes it is used not only to denote gradual quantitative changes, but, in a broader sense, to denote development in general, which embraces both quantitative and qualitative changes. We often describe modern Darwinism as a theory of the evolution of the organic world, implying that this evolution covers both qualitative and quantitative changes. Leaplike qualitative changes in social life are designated by the concept of revolution. By a revolution in the development of society is meant above all qualitative changes in the social system. But revolutions also occur in other fields of social life—in technology, production, science and culture.
p There is an internal necessary connection between evolution and revolution. The evolutionary development of society is inevitably consummated by leap-like qualitative transformations, by revolutions. Revolutionary changes of quality are the starting-point of a new period of evolutionary changes.
The doctrine of materialist dialectics on the passage of quantitative into qualitative changes is an important weapon in the struggle against Right-wing and “Left-wing” opportunists. It helps to reveal the fallacy of reformism, which denies the necessity of socialist revolution and asserts that the transition "to socialism can be effected through reforms—the gradual “growing” of capitalism into socialism. 75 On the other hand, dialectics demonstrates the complete theoretical untenability of all ultra-Leftist trends, which ignore the natural development of events and under-estimate the importance of everyday work among the masses, of preparing them for revolution, of building up the revolutionary forces.
Against the Metaphysical Notion of Development
p Marx and Engels created materialist dialectics in the course of combating the metaphysical view of nature, which denied development. Since then the situation has changed. In the second half of the nineteenth century the idea of development spread far and wide (mainly owing to Darwin’s theory). However, the metaphysical point of view did not disappear. It took the shape of a distorted, one-sided conception of development itself. At present, the struggle of dialectics against metaphysics centres chiefly round the question of how to understand development, and not of whether there is development.
p One of the varieties of the metaphysical conception of development consists in the contention that nature develops exclusively by small, gradual, continuous quantitative changes, by way of evolution, and that it does not admit of leaps, of sharp qualitative changes. "Nature does not make leaps,” sa’y the adherents of that view. Since they see nothing in development besides evolution, they are called "trite evolutionists”. It was Herbert Spencer, the nineteenthcentury English philosopher and sociologist, who founded the school of "trite evolutionism”.
p According to Spencer, development takes place smoothly, without the slightest interruption of its gradualness, solely through the quantitative addition of elements, the stages of the evolutionary process not differing qualitatively, but only quantitatively.
p Spencer’s theory of "trite evolutionism" exercised a considerable influence on many positivist trends in philosophy and natural science. It was adopted by many bourgeois and revisionist theorists and used in the struggle against Marxist materialist dialectics, against the teaching of Marx and Engels on proletarian revolution.
p The obvious fallacy of "trite evolutionism" and its variance with the facts led to the emergence of another notion of development, which was externally its very opposite, but was just as one-sided and metaphysical. This is the so-called theory of "creative evolution”, which became fashionable in the twentieth century.
p The adherents of "trite evolutionism" saw in development only quantitative changes, while the adherents of "creative evolution" saw in it nothing but qualitative changes. They stressed that development was “creative”, and that it consisted in the appearance of new forms. But they did not see the obligatory connection between these qualitative changes and the precedingquantitative modifications. 76 They asserted that the appearance of the new in the process of development could not be explained by the operation of natural causes and that the only possible explanation was a mysterious "creative force" of a spiritual kind, which directed development and engendered new forms.
p Thus this new theory of "creative evolution" leads to the old idea of God, which clearly exposes its anti-scientific character.
The metaphysical conception of development is opposed by the genuinely scientific dialectical conception which recognises both gradual quantitative changes and leap-like qualitative ones.
Notes