p Philosophy as a science deals with general laws governing nature, society and human thought. These laws are dialectical-materialist and universal, affecting all phenomena, processes and relationships in the environment. A major contribution of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to philosophy was that while developing philosophical materialism they applied it to the study of human society. The discovery of the materialist conception of history implied not simply an enlargement of the sphere governed by philosophical laws, but the inclusion of human activity, particularly in historical perspective, in the philosophical system. From then on the concepts “dialectical” and “historical” essentially became identical.

p By incorporating human social activity into philosophical science, Marx and Engels created a single integral philosophical system. The distinction between the two disciplines—dialectical materialism (system of general laws governing everything) and sociology (system of social laws, i.e.,-laws governing society only)—within its framework is therefore a formal tribute to past traditions. Recently attempts made in some philosophical works to regard general laws as philosophical laws have often been extended to other sciences like biology. This has damaged both philosophy and specific sciences. The concrete phenomena and 8 processes were studied in general, often dilettantishly, and, instead of the general dialectical-materialist laws, some philosophers “analysed” the general laws of concrete spheres of knowledge. Not being specialists in these sciences, these philosophers have erroneously evaluated a number of great achievements in physics, chemistry and biology and disregarded the existence of such sciences as cybernetics and semiotics.

p Philosophy does not replace the specific sciences; it rests on a generalisation of the achievements of the natural and social sciences, on human practice and on new universal laws and categories. Similarly, Marxist philosophy has expanded to include such categories as system, structure and function.

Like mathematics, philosophy is neither a natural nor a social science. Today mathematics acts as the language of all sciences. It makes it possible to express things and events in precise quantitative values. Philosophy is similarly a general mode of thought which reflects the historical development of natural and social sciences. Like mathematics, philosophy uses neither microscope nor chemical agents; instead, it employs the power of abstraction.