SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
p If we look at contemporary science as a sphere of the social division of labour, a system bearing the function of producing theoretical knowledge, then the conclusion is inevitable that 146 such a system is peculiar to a historically limited stage in the development of mankind.
p Science itself prepares its own liquidation as a historically limited form of the production of theoretical knowledge. It functions as a necessary factor in the formation of man, his liberation from all aspects of uncreative activity. The development of civilization begins with the emergence (as a result of the social division of labour) of conditions under which the inactivity of a few is "the condition for the development of the universal strength of the human mind’.” (Marx). The inactivity of the few is made possible through the hard labour of the many, who are transformed into "talking tools”. Such an initial and crude division demonstrates the actual historical limitations of man—the potentially universal, creatively active and thinking being. Human activity itself turns out to be largely inhuman, and, for ensuring free creativity of the few (in the given instance embodying the spiritual progress of the whole) it becomes necessary to transfer to the shoulders of the many the unfree and uncreative activities. To add to this, such a division “projects” direction to the further development of mankind.
p This direction consists in the development of the material body of civilisation as the inorganic social body of man (it is built by man as an inorganic system with specialized functions). Man unremittingly transforms nature into his inorganic body. It is precisely in this way that he can gradually free himself from uncreative aspects of activity. In other words the separation (and consequently the formation of ties) of the intelligent being—man (who himself is nature in its universal potentiality)—from the unintelligent nature, the splintering of nature into subject and object, continues even today. The subject must become in actuality what he is in potentiality— intelligent, purposeful universal being. In the future the material body of civilization, the developing inorganic societal body of man, will take upon itself all mechanical, repetitive, uncreative aspects of labour, having freed each and every individual for spiritual, i.e., human and not material activity.
p The entire history of the social division of labour may be regarded in this sense as the history of the separation and splintering from human activity of uncreative aspects of work, or in other words, as the formation of human activity as such, the formation of the human being himself.
p The world of material relations and mechanical, formal activity developed by capitalism on the basis of machine 147 production and the division of labour, is the necessary condition for the separation of the uncreative types of activity from human activity proper. The evolution of society as an organic system here also follows the general law of the development of organic systems: at first function is separated—material activity, but the corresponding material structure is still lacking, and the function must be carried out by the human. Then man himself creates the corresponding structure in the form of an inorganic body, a structure capable of carrying out the given function.
p This structure operates in the form of machine civilization. The ever more complex and independent system of machines takes over a larger share of the work functions of the partial man. The development of cybernetics and automated production demonstrates that in principle any repetitive operations, be they physical or mental, may be formalized and transferred to a machine. Such operations are not creative, and so they are not human forms of activity.
p Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in their criticism of Max Stirner, observed that "what Sancho [Stirner—the author] here calls human labour is, disregarding his bureaucratic fantasies, the same thing as is usually meant by machine labour, labour which, as industry develops, devolves more and more on machines". [147•1 One hundred years later our contemporary, the founder of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, wrote: "...most of the human labour which the automatic factory displaces is an inhuman sort of human labour....” [147•2 In this context it is revealed that the inhuman nature of machine civilization (which is often portrayed in contemporary literature and in scientific essays as an assault by the world of machines on man, as the divesting of human functions from man by the machine, and finally as the enslavement of man by the machine), exists only so long as machine functions must be carried out by man transformed into a specialized tool in a specialized machine. Such an enslavement of man is eliminated when he transposes to his inorganic body (in the form of machine civilization, i.e., the developed automated system of machine production) all uncreative operations. Labour then becomes free, creative activity.
p It becomes clear that the evolution of the world of material relations is the formation of a structure which must take upon 148 itself the functions of formal material activity (both in the material and ideal expressions, both in physical and mental work). It is also clear that this world itself is a necessary but a subsumed moment in the human world. In this manner that which so often emerges in contemporary literature as an assault by machines upon man is in reality a complex and dual process. On the one hand, the actual social being of man acquires an increasingly “inhuman” character; the system of automated machines strips him of a variety of work and social functions, extending even to that of management. If we are to believe certain cybernetics experts when they assert that man is a machine and promise that the creation of an artificial intellect is imminent—this really is a catastrophe. But if it is true that what bears a machine character in the activity of man is forced upon him by the actual historically transient form of his social being, then this very same process may be seen in a different light. By divesting the human of a number of functions, the on-going scientific and technological revolution “explains” to him that these are not properly human functions, and prepares him for a comprehension and implementation of that activity the goal of which cannot be a thing, but only per se. This prepares the liberation of man from all machine elements of his activity and at the same time from its reified, alienated nature, that is to say, it sets the ground for the “humanizing” of man.
p From this point of view contemporary science is a necessary historical stage in the mastering of the material side of reality, which is independent of man. But in the final result this mastering bears on human reality and can be nothing else but the theoretical expression of the object-activity of the human (see, for example, Marx’s first thesis on Feuerbach). As a result of the socio-historical conditions discussed above (the commodity capitalist system of production), the objectively material side of reality operates in thought as the entirety of activity and, consequently, formal knowledge—as all rational knowledge. Moreover, the expansion of the formalized methods of science seems to be of deep socio-historical significance. Formalization in these conditions turns out to be a powerful tool and a theoretical criterion for inquiry and for the division of the contemporary historical form of object-activity into the human activity proper and machine activity (which man is engaged in for the time being considering it a truly human occupation). The latter also, of course, remains a human activity, but not an unmediated one. It is mediated by the material body of civilization and represents that fragment of reality which man 149 in principle can, and in the future must transfer to the shoulders of his inorganic body.
p All knowledge and all forms of labour which are amenable to formalization must therefore be so constructed. Any information and any process can be formalized if they have taken on a certain structure (or, in philosophical terms, if they are expressed in a certain “measure”, and represent this measure). But since there is no unstructured knowledge or processes, everything may in principle be formalized. The formal theoretical model itself of any phenomenon also represents a measure, considered from the aspect of its spatial-logical relationships—that of the elimination of quality by quantity. Not amenaole to formalization is only the moment or substantial creative movement to new knowledge, connected with the transcendence to the sphere of the immeasurable through the development of a concrete-universal contradiction.
p When this new knowledge arises as a new measure it is of necessity formalized and, as such, is utilized in practice. As a consequence formalization becomes a tool and a criterion for the division of activity into creative (which is both properly human and properly spiritual) and uncreative, algorithmic (material, the laws of which are those of the functioning of the inorganic system, and which therefore may be transferred in toto to the inorganic body of man).
p All social production is marked by a tendency to bifurcate into the sphere of the object-spiritual, creative and the sphere of the material, properly speaking, the latter being gradually transferred to the system of machines, demanding less and less direct participation by man in uncreative repetitive operations. We note from the start that the devolution of production into spiritual and material by no means corresponds with a division into mental and manual labour. The types of labour, as social categories, pertain in equal measure to the sphere of material production as such (multiplying that which has already been created), and so the elimination of the existing contradiction between them is possible only as the liberation of man from the power of material production through the transfer of this production to the automatic system of machines. Thus, for example, from this point of view, a solution of a mathematical equation, according to the known algorithms is a material activity while the sculptor, molding the clay for his work, is occupied with spiritual labour. Spiritual labour is also the creation and the search for new algorithms.
p But indeed even the search itself may in the ultimate result be formalized. It is possible to find and use some algorithms 150 for the search for new algorithms. We have arrived at a notion of that activity and production in which there is no fixed boundary between the creation and the production of formal material activities (mass production), viz., in which in principle it is impossible to draw up a list of operations which are amenable or non-amenable to formalization. Any result achieved through spiritual production efforts is formalized and ceases to be a direct end of human activity. It enters into the sphere of the strictly material, mass, automated production. That which yesterday was the goal of creativity, today becomes the standard of mass production and a cause in the relationships of things, a tool of utility. The mechanically structured—unfolded in space—division of labour among social groups (the social division of labour) is in this manner replaced by the dynamic—unfolded in time—system of the division of labour between man per se and his inorganic body in the form of the machine system. Thereby we observe the elimination of the conditions for the existence of social groups (including classes), the conditions for the alienation of labour and of man; activity sheds its reified form, its direct goal becomes the production of forms of human intercourse, i.e., the development of man himself as a creative universal being. Man stands "beyond the sphere of actual material production". [150•1
p These changes in activity and the elimination of social division of labour must be accompanied by the disappearance of the historical mode of the production of theoretical knowledge connected with these factors. It will be converted into a higher form just as medieval knowledge gave way to modern science. Marx retains the name of science for this 151 future form of knowledge: "History itself is a real part of natural history—of nature’s coming to be man. Natural science will in time subsume under itself the science of man, just as the science of man will subsume under itself natural science: there will be one science.” [151•1 For Marx the science of man is not anthropology in the contemporary meaning of the word, but the science of the development of the social subject and individual, of the development of humanity, the latter of necessity being understood as a natural historical process. Consequently, according to Marx the future united and universal science of man will absorb all—natural science, social science and philosophy. It will correspond to the universal nature of labour wnich will be directly aimed not at the production of material objects but at the development of man himself.
p Thus, it must be kept in view that the science of the future, of which Marx speaks, represents a different form of knowledge in comparison witn that which is commonly called contemporary science. At this point it is still difficult to describe it in some detail. It is clear, however, that it will differ substantially from contemporary science both in subject (its direct subject will be the world of man as the objectivized man, not as the alienated world of things) and in its internal logical structure, in its social organization, relations to production and in its role in the education of man.
p The formally logical and abstract side, which in contemporary science forms the basis for the practical application of knowledge and is turned into a fetish, is often taken to be the sole scientific and even only rational aspect of science. But it will cease to be the end in itself of theoretical work; rather it will become more machine than directly human activity. On the contrary, the dialectical movement of knowledge which is the foundation of creativity and which contemporary science regards as something irrational, transgressing its boundaries, win become the immediate rational activity of the social subject, and consequently of every individual since the latter will reflect in a universal form, being the subject of the social process as a whole.
p Since there will be no grounds for the emergence of formal-symbolic fetishism, there will be no need for “insane” ideas, for that which transgresses the boundaries of the existing formalism. Apparently the “dynamic” division of labour between man and the machine system cannot be 152 ultimately completed. It is simply a new form of the uninterrupted life activity of the social man, a new form of ongoing human history. It tends to transform all nature into an inorganic body, which, naturally, cannot be completed in finite time. From the philosophical point of view this is the continuing process of the dichotomizing of nature into subject and object, the formation of man as a subject, i.e., progressing anthropogenesis.
p We shall refrain here from entering into a detailed discussion of this question. We must note only that the modern form of scientific education must yield to a different mode of upbringing including an equal measure of logic and aesthetics. For this new form of knowledge the connection between theory and practice is not a problem, since this form is not a sphere of the division of labour or a professional occupation isolated from other aspects of social production. The means of research here are simultaneously the means of production and objects of consumption, since man stands in need of them for his human development just as he stands in need of food, clothing, etc.
p At the same time the basic aspects and features of this future form of knowledge are contained within contemporary science. To wit, science, and physics in particular, is already prodding many scholars to a recognition of the fact that scientific theories reproduce the thing not only as pure object but also as man’s manipulation with this thing. Werner Heisenberg wrote, apropos of this subject: "If we take another look today at the various closed systems of concepts which were created in the past or will be possibly created in the future for the purpose of scientific research, we will readily see that these systems are disposed, to all appearances, in the direction of increments in tne contribution of subjective elements to the system of concepts" [or, more precisely, in the direction of an increased awareness of these contributions by scientists themselves—the Author]. [152•1
p We could give other examples demonstrating the contradictions in the development of contemporary science, in which the tendencies of the new form of knowledge are given expression and which could be named the science of the future. Generally speaking it is a purely terminological question whether or not to designate as science the modes of spiritual-theoretical production of antiquity and the medieval world, as well as the form of direct universal spiritual production of the future. It is 153 only important to distinguish between the historically determined, transient form of production of theoretical knowledge, called contemporary science (or the science of the new age) and the qualitatively different forms, peculiar to other epochs and comprising different cultural systems. Many scholars in our opinion mistakenly consider the features of modern science to be characteristic of theoretical knowledge as such.
p The same mistake is committed by scholars who endeavour to clarify what percentage of people possess creative abilities and even declare the derived figure to be a “natural” or " biological ceiling”. The generally accepted figure is rather low, usually fluctuating around 6-8 per cent. But it must be taken into account that man and his abilities are shaped through object-activity. Under capitalist production this activity ( including education) is such that the formation of mass creative abilities is excluded (or at least rendered purely fortuitous). What is more, this activity is quite vigorously utilized, in the appropriate phrase of C. Wright Mills, for the cultivation of "cheerful robots”. The question then must be formulated in the reverse fashion: how great are the creative potentialities of man, if, despite the entire system of upbringing and education he undergoes, a limited number of individuals nevertheless succeed in developing these innate potentialities!
p The extrapolation of contemporary man’s features to man in general and the similar extrapolation of the parameters of contemporary science and the logic of contemporary thought to forms of knowledge and thought in other epochs reflect an uncritical attitude to existing empirical reality and are a manifestation of the antihistorical tendencies in scientific thought (as material thought it is capable of depicting structure, but not process in the logico-rational way). From the point of view of these tendencies those elements of the knowledge of antiquity and the Middle Ages which are at variance with knowledge in the form of contemporary science seem to be exclusively “mistaken” and “insufficient”, stemming from the lack of adequate experimental data, imperfect techniques, the imposition of religious ideology, the oppression of the church, etc.
p The notion that science evolves gradually through the accumulation of scientific knowledge is ordinarily underscored by references to the "science of antiquity" or, more cautiously, to the "scientific knowledge of antiquity”. In this context we meet with particular frequency tne Euclidean system and Archimedes’ law of floating bodies. In our opinion tne epithet “scientific” applied to this knowledge is a 154 projection upon the past of the customary conceptions of the present. In the era in which it evolved the Euclidean system did not play the role both in theory and in practice, which it does in the system of contemporary scientific knowledge. Indeed it was created without the intent of clarifying the spatial relations of the material world, but was rather research into the ability of man to build analogous systems. Therefore in the eyes of its contemporaries it had not an objective but primarily a subjective and even individual, personal meaning: it was an astonishing example of the subtlety of its creator’s wisdom, both amazing and worthy of homage.
p Archimedes’ law is another case in point. It is said that Archimedes found a practical application for his discovery by determining the admixture of silver in a gold crown. However, the legend describing this incident does not regard it as a universal, impersonal technological method, and we search in vain for signs of interest in the Taw itself or in the technological opportunities for applying it. This comes as no surprise since the goal of the legend was to praise the wisdom of Archimedes as an aspect of his astonishing personality. The same goal is served by the legend surrounding his death, when Archimedes would not permit a soldier to step on his draughts in the sand. Both these stories were of equal value to his contemporaries since they related to the same subject and depicted one and the same personality.
p The "spiritual production" of every epoch, including the production of theoretical knowledge possesses fullness as a qualitatively unique concrete-historical system. Only after examining this system as a whole may we grasp it as a dependent element in a system of a higher order—- objectactivity as a whole, incorporating spiritual production and thought.
p Thus, contemporary science and contemporary scientific thought with its logic, its specific understanding of man’s attitude vis-a-vis the world of things, with the extension of exact methods to all spheres of spiritual activity, with the corresponding form of organization of scientific institutions and scientific work—all this is a historical form of production of theoretical knowledge. It arose with the emergence of commodity production, a necessary element of which it became. Its terminal point is located in the abolition of the social division of labour and the development of communist production. Its historical mission lies in the liberation of man from uncreative material activity, his transformation into the master of material relations, the assimilation of the entire 155 world as a human world and the preparation for the emancipation of man as universal being.
p It goes without saying that the development of science is not the sole factor in the emancipation of man. It fulfills its mission only given the transformation of the entire system of social relations. But the development of science itself is a necessary condition of this transformation, a powerful instrument for remaking the world (in this article we shall not discuss the other factors).
p The historical process marking the branching off of positive scientific knowledge from philosophy may be regarded as the separation of knowledge of things from knowledge of the suoject (and consequently, of thought, of man as the subject of knowledge). The possibility of this separation is inherent in the contradictory nature of object-activity itself. The subject can only transform the object by de-objectifying it, that is to say, by transforming the thing-form of the object into the form of its strictly subjective movement, into the form of thought. This movement of necessity incorporates a moment of passivity, contemplation in the form of knowledge of the object in itself, independent of the action of the subject, knowledge of the causal determinacy of the object as an externally independent thing. The subject, in this fashion, must subordinate its activity to external material necessity.
p At the same time activity remains on the whole active; the moment of passivity turns out to be but the expression of its universality, its ability to reproduce any form. Thought, as the universal reflection of activity, turns out to be movement capable of reproducing any conceivable form, this form being each time simultaneously the mental reproduction of thought itself in a specific form. This is expressed in the knowledge by the subject of itself as an active subject, transforming the material world into its object-world, into its inorganic body, implementing its aim. It is consequently expressed in the knowledge of the goal-determinacy of the world as human world.
p These two sides of activity and knowledge are transformed by the social division of labour into independently existing functions attached to different social groups and representing professions as such. Positive science and philosophy operate in such a capacity. [155•1
156p The first participates in actual material production, in the production of the world of things.
p The second should take place in the formation and development of man. But because contemporary production is directly and predominantly concerned with the production of things and does not aim to “produce” man, and because of the social division of labour, philosophy turns out to be outside the sphere of the social organisation of this production. From the point of view of positive science, philosophy is a “parasite”.
p Whereas the professionalism or science (under commodity capitalist production) is the inherent characterisation of science, the condition of its actual practical strength, professionalism of philosophy is an indicator of its actual practical impotence in the given conditions, and of its only potential possibilities. [156•1
p Since knowledge necessarily reflects, each of the separated sides relates to its object-sphere and to itself as to an all-embracing and confined whole (a whole in itself). Therefore, putting at a distance its own reflection, science gives birth to various forms of “scientific” philosophy. For example English empiricism of the seventeenth century, French materialism of the eighteenth century, positivism, neopositivism, contemporary "science of science are all theoretical constructions which endeavour to depict the development of science, scientific cognition and thought in logical forms practised by science itself, that is, within the framework of material relations. Within this framework rational reflection cannot grasp determination in terms of the whole; for it the sole scientific mode of determination is that proceeding from the part to the whole, from the past to the present—cause. Hence the numerous attempts to treat cognition simply as the generalization from the sense date derived from empeiria. Consequently, here the general cannot serve as the basis for reasoning, and these forms of the reflection of science as they emerge are opposed to philosophy as metaphysics, as science of man, as the reflection of knowledge considered in its direct universal form, treating it from on high and ridiculing it as reactionary, outmoded, unscientific and useless, and boasting of their own “scientific” origin. But in point of fact this so disdained “metaphysics” is the historically universal reflection 157 of knowledge, and is the real foundation for scientific self-consciousness in the broadest sense of the word.
p Thus knowledge turns out to be split into the knowledge of things (ordinary consciousness, practical keenness of wit, common sense, science) and the knowledge of man (morality, religion, art and philosophy).
p Let us specify our understanding of this split relative to science. The fact of the matter is that both in the Russian and in the German the term “science” (nauka, Wissenschaft) has a rather vague meaning. Hither it is customary to refer any knowledge which is considered objective and authentic. Therefore we find listed as science the widest range of knowledge—in terms of content, mode of derivation and mode of definition which results in confusion and misunderstanding. To wit, having looked over the essential differences between the natural-scientific and humanitarian knowledge, the neo-Kantians had to divide Wissenschaft into the science of nature and the science of culture. Such a division leaves unclear the position of psychology, philosophy and political economy. The partition of nauka into the natural and social sciences practised in several countries suffers from the same insufficiency. For instance, the social sciences come to include aesthetics and economics which differ sharply in terms of tasks, methods of research, definitions and the application of results.
p In this context the methodology and logic of the so-called exact sciences remain the model and criterion of scientificity for all spheres of knowledge. We tried to demonstrate that these exact sciences represent the consistent development of adequate knowledge of the world, seen as the world of things separated from and opposed to knowledge of man. In this sense to regard the exact sciences as the model and the criterion of aesthetics or history means in the final analysis to reduce personal relationships to material relations between things, man to a machine, etc. On the other hand, political economy—a traditional social science—in that part in which it regards man as labour power, bears the character of knowledge of things. When, however, it is concerned with an inquiry into the conditions tor forming the individual and relations between individuals it must borrow all the initial parameters for these relations from without, in particular from philosophy. The same may be said of sociology in so far as it endeavours to objectively investigate man as a thing, as an object.
p Therefore, calling science the concrete-historical form of knowledge of things, we have in view not only its genesis but 158 also a contemporary understanding of the methods and logic of science, the model for which remain the so-called exact sciences. In this context we feel that a more accurate rendition of the substance of the matter is given by the English “science” than by the Russian “nauka” or the German “Wissenschaft”.
p In the context of material relations scientific inquiry (medicine, anthropology, psychology, etc.) treats man as only an object in its material, causal form. But indeed he is also a subject, and it is this which is most important about him.
Man is a material being and in this sense operates of course as a thing. Such a conception of man allows one to see, abstractly speaking, what he has in common with other things (including cybernetic devices) but not what distinguishes him from these things and makes him specifically human (e.g., will, freedom, creativity, morality, etc.). Thus positive science is incapable of analyzing man- from the point of view of his “humanity”. [158•1 And once again we find above all a recognition of this not in the special sciences but rather in philosophy and art. In support of this we might cite the following statement by Samuil Marshak: "Scientists use a yardstick which does not reach the full height of man; they measure man physically, physiologically, etc., i.e., they measure the higher with the lower. Here there is always the danger of reducing the higher to the level of the lower. I consider myself an enemy of idealist philosophy. But I do think that sometime they will arrive at another, the most perfect yardstick, that of spirituality, poetics and the poetic imagination. The lower will be measured by the degree of the higner existing within it. And much will be discovered along this path.” [158•2
Notes
[147•1] K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, Moscow, 1964, pp. 429-30.
[147•2] Norbert Wiener, I Am a Mathematician, Garden City, N.Y., 1956, p. 311.
[150•1] “In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production.... Beyond it [the realm of necessary and actual material production—A. A.] begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis.” (K. Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, p. 820.)
“Within communist society, the only society in which the original and free development of individuals ceases to be a mere phrase, this development is determined precisely by the connection of individuals, a connection which consists partly in the economic prerequisites and partly in the necessary solidarity of the free development of all, and, finally, in the universal character of the activity of individuals....” (K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 483.) See also K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, pp. 87, 91; K. Marx, Theories of Surplus-Value, Part III, p. 122; K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, pp. 106-07, 159.
[151•1] K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 111.
[152•1] Werner Heisenberg, Physik und Philosophic, Stuttgart, 1959, S. 95.
[155•1] "The natural sciences have developed an enormous activity and have accumulated a constantly growing mass of material. Philosophy, however, has remained just as alien to them as they remain to philosophy.” (K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 110.)
[156•1] "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I, Moscow, 1969, p. 15.)
[158•1] The limits of the possible for science in this sense are recognized by scientists themselves. Here is what, for example, Max Born wrote on the subject: "It seemed to me then [in 1921—A. A.] that the scientific method was more preferable than other, subjective methods of forming the picture of the world—philosophy, poetry or religion.... Now I regard my former belief in the superiority of science to other forms of human thought and action as self-deception....” (Max Born, Physik in Wandel runner Zeit, Braunschweig, 1957, S. V.)
[158•2] Quoted from the notes of V. Berestov, Yunost, No. 6, 1966, p. 83 (in Russian).