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p A new age-the age of Renaissance -came to replace the Middle Ages, which were overwhelmingly dominated by sterile scholasticism confined to narrow religious dogmas. The emergence and development of capitalist relations of production stimulated the development of industry and commerce. This required concrete knowledge of the laws governing the development and functioning of the phenomena of the surrounding world. A need arose for studying and understanding the laws of nature. The human mind began taking an interest in nature, in man’s material 45 activities. This tendency naturally affected the development of philosophy which was declared a science called upon to establish truths that would help in practical activities and direct the efforts to create material values.

p The general propositions used by medieval philosophy and its method were judged false and misleading. New ways of investigation and new methods of cognising the truth were advanced. Francis Bacon (1561-1625) was the founder of this trend.

p First and foremost, Bacon severely criticised idealist philosophy-from ancient times to the Middle Ages. He attacked it on two fronts. First, he blamed the idealists for confusing the holy and the human, and for going as far as to base their philosophical doctrines on the Holy Writ. Bacon held that sciences and philosophy should use a specific method in the experiments and base themselves on experience, whereas theology was based exclusively on belief. Hence the conclusion: theology and philosophy should not be confused, they should not interfere with each other.

p Second, he criticised the idealists, especially the scholastics, for their speculative arguments, for the emptiness and sterility of their propositions and for the fruitlessness of their teaching.

p Bacon considered experiment to be the foundation of knowledge. He set himself the task of relieving men and their consciousness of the prejudice that misled and confused men and obstructed the road to the knowledge of the truth.

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p All things, according to Bacon, were based on simple “natures” deduced from forms. The forms were limited in number, but their numerous combinations engendered the diverse phenomena occurring in the world. The material world, Bacon said, had neither a beginning nor an end, it had existed and would exist for ever. “Nothing is produced from nothing,” he wrote. “Nothing is reduced to nothing....” All the quantity of matter or its sum remains constant and neither increases, nor decreases.  [46•1 

p Bacon considered motion to be one of the basic properties of eternally existing matter, although he confined motion to 19 forms. This was undoubtedly a defect in his teaching.

p Bacon’s method of cognition is also tinged with metaphysics. He thought that, in the process of acquiring knowledge, it was necessary to split an object into separate aspects, qualities (natures) and to further break each quality down into still simpler qualities (natures), proceeding in this manner until the simplest natures are singled out. Then we should discover the laws or forms that determine the essence of these simplest natures, and see how these natures combine into a specific thing. As a result, Bacon believed, we can cognise any thing in the surrounding world.

p Bacon did not understand that objects are not just mechanical combinations of certain 47 permanent qualities, but are integral wholes, in which qualities or aspects are interconnected and change into one another. Therefore an object cannot be cognised through a mechanical combination of knowledge about its separate aspects.

p Notwithstanding the shortcomings inherent in Bacon’s philosophy, it was an appreciable step forward in the development of philosophical thought and marked the emergence of a new form of philosophical materialism.

p Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), the English bourgeois philosopher, developed Bacon’s materialist teaching. As Marx put it, Hobbes was the systematiser of Bacon’s philosophy. He lent Bacon’s views an explicit mechanistic shading. He stripped nature (matter) of the variety of qualities (ascribed to it by Bacon). Hobbes believed it to be a totality of bodies possessing only two main properties- extension and figure. He held the same view of motion, reducing its multiformity to one form- mechanical. By motion he understood only the travel of bodies in space.

p In Hobbes’ view, knowledge was an addition and subtraction of separate thoughts. He believed that a mathematical method based on addition and subtraction could be the sole scientific method of acquiring knowledge.

p Hobbes developed his materialist world outlook fighting against religion and drawing atheistic conclusions from his philosophy. He held that religion was the outcome of people’s ignorance and their fear of the unknown future. It had nothing to do with science, though he maintained 48 that it was needed because it helped to keep people in order.

p Just like Bacon and Hobbes, representatives of the 17th-century bourgeoisie in England, so Rene Descartes (1596-1650) in France came out with a substantiation of new methods of cognising reality. He drew a materialist picture of the world. Nature, he said, consisted of small material particles of different sizes, forms and directions of motion. The entire necessary variety of objects emerged without God’s interference in a natural manner from the three different types of primary elements that initially made up the boundless Universe-the fire-like, the air-like, and the soillike. All these elements were in motion and formed whirlwinds. The whirlwind motion of the first type of element caused the emergence of the Sun and the stars; of the second type-the sky; and of the third type-the Earth and the other planets.

p This naive, but basically materialist view of the origin of the solar system was directed against the religious dogma about the creation of the world by God in six days, and was thus progressive for its time.

p In developing his view of the world, Descartes, in contrast to medieval scholasticism, attempted to rely on science. But at that time only mechanics and mathematics had been developed appreciably. This inevitably left an imprint on Descartes’ teaching, making it rather mechanistic. Like Hobbes, Descartes deprived matter of its qualitative variety and, in fact, reduced it to bare numbers. Specifically, he did not see the qualitative difference 49 between living organisms and inanimate objects. Animals, in his view, were simple machines, and man was a similar machine, though more complex. Like Hobbes, Descartes reduced all the variety of the forms of matter’s motion to one-the travel of bodies in space.

p Descartes was not a consistent materialist. He only held materialist views on matters relating to certain natural phenomena. But as soon as he passed on to the basic principles of being and knowledge, he turned away from materialism and approached philosophical problems from the premise that God was the only basis of being. He said, for instance, that “God ... has in principle created matter together with motion and rest"  [49•1  and that there were two independent substances in the world-spiritual and material. All this made the philosophy of Descartes dualist, as distinct from those of Bacon and Hobbes which were monistic.

p Contrary to the 17th-century English materialists, who developed the theory and method of cognition on the basis of experience and sense perceptions, Descartes always proceeded from pure reason. He did not believe that experience had an important part to play in the process of cognition, and thought that, in cognising the world, one 50 should rely exclusively on one’s mind and be guided by its principles and ideas, which were innate.

p The Dutch materialist philosopher Spinoza (1632-1677) overcame some of the drawbacks inherent in the Cartesian teachings, such as dualism. Spinoza believed that the world was one by nature and that this nature was substance. As regards thinking, it was only an attribute ( intrinsic quality) of matter, alongside its other attributes, such as extension. Nature was eternal, it had never been created by anybody. The reason for its eternal and infinite existence was concealed in Nature itself. Being eternal, Nature (substance) manifested itself through its modi (qualities or states) which were innumerable. One of those modi was motion which, as distinct from the other modi, was infinite, rather than finite, i.e. characteristic of all the states of substance (Nature).

p By declaring the world the cause of itself (causa sui), Spinoza removed God as its creator and dissolved him in Nature.

p Spinoza held that people’s ignorance and fear of the future had given rise to religion which, he wrote, was nothing “but the fantasy and ravings of a timid soul".  [50•1 

p Like the materialist views advanced by his predecessors, Spinoza’s theory has some weak points typical of metaphysical materialism. Spinoza reduced all forms of motion to one-the travel of bodies in space-and even thought motion to be a 51 property of matter’s finite states, rather than an intrinsic attribute of it. Moreover, he was unable to give a satisfactory answer to the question of the correlation between sense and rational knowledge, being unaware of the significance of experience or practice. Lastly, he was a hylozoist-he believed consciousness to be a universal property of Nature, i.e. he thought that animals and even inanimate objects also possessed consciousness, just as men did.

p The materialist theories outlined above expressed the interests of the historically progressive 17th-century bourgeoisie. 17th-century materialism was the world outlook of the bourgeoisie, which fought feudalism for political power. But as soon as the bourgeoisie came to power and established ifs dictatorship, it began to abandon materialism and lean towards idealism-the theoretical basis of Teligion. The bourgeoisie began to resort to religion as a means of ideologically suppressing the working people and justifying its own rule.

p The bourgeoisie took power in England at the end of the 17th century. It was not by mere chance, therefore, that idealist systems spearheaded against materialism and defending religion began to emerge in England at the beginning of the 18th century. One of the first and most important was the philosophy of subjective idealism developed by Bishop George Berkeley (1684-1753).

p Berkeley believed that man dealt only with particular things and phenomena perceived by him as different totalities of various sensations-of a certain form, colour, taste, smell, etc. If we discard 52 these sensations, Berkeley reasoned, the object would disappear together with them. It followed therefore, he concluded, that only sensations existed in reality. There was not nor could there be anything apart from or above them. He wrote: “I see this cherry, I feel it, I taste it: and I am sure nothing cannot be seen, or felt, or tasted: it is therefore real. Take away the sensations of softness, moisture, redness, tartness, and you take away the cherry. Since it is not a being distinct from sensations; a cherry, I say, is nothing but a congeries of sensible impressions, or ideas perceived by various senses: which ideas are united into one thing (or have one name given them) by the mind; because they are observed to attend each other.”  [52•1  If this is so, if only particular things exist, the things which are the totalities of man’s sensations, then, Berkeley continues, matter is nothing but a pure invention of the materialists. It does not exist in reality. It was invented, Berkeley argues, by materialists to enable them to construct various atheistic systems and to oppose religion. But if matter does not exist, if it is an empty word, a pure invention, then materialism is refuted since matter is the basic principle of the materialist teaching and plays a major role in it.

p This was how Berkeley tried to refute materialism and substantiate the idealist system of the world proceeding exclusively from the reality of sensations.

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p If, however, only man’s sensations exist, and all that surrounds him is nothing but various complexes of his sensations, then other people are also mere complexes of sensations rather then real beings, and the whole world is bound to disappear when the subject dies. Yet no sensible person will question the real existence of the people around him or believe that the whole world disappears after one man’s death. Berkeley’s reasoning contradicts the common sense on which he tried to rely. If Berkeley had been consistent in his arguments, he would inevitably have arrived at the above conclusion and contradiction. But he himself betrayed his own principle by saying that when there was no one to perceive a particular thing, the latter did not disappear because it was perceived by God. Generally, he said, all sensations experienced by men were caused by God, by His action on man’s soul. Thus, Berkeley shifts from subjective to objective idealism and comes out in an open defence of religion and the existence of God whom he regards-as did the earlier medieval idealists-as the creator of the world.

p The attempts made by Berkeley and other idealists to check the development and propagation of materialist views were not really successful. Materialism was advancing further, while its struggle against idealism and religion was becoming ever more acute. It was especially intense in France, where materialism was still a spiritual weapon in the hands of the ideologists of the revolutionary bourgeoisie fighting against feudal relations and the church.

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p The French materialists criticised religion and the clergy more harshly, vehemently and consistently than their predecessors did. Their brilliant atheistic works are still relevant today.

p Materialism in France was represented by Paul Holbach, Denis Diderot, Claude Helvetius, Julien La Mettrie, and others.

p The French materialist philosophers advanced the 17th-century mechanistic materialism of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, etc.

p The French materialists gave a more consistent and profound answer to the fundamental question of philosophy and overcame the theological deviations typical in varying degrees of their predecessors. Specifically, there was no room in their philosophical systems for God either as creator (even if He gave only the first impetus) or as observer. They declared openly and clearly that nature existed objectively and eternally and did not need God at all. Nature, said the French materialists, is the sum-total of various combinations of tiny particles of matter-atoms and molecules-which possess extension, weight, figure, motion and other properties.

p The interconnection between matter and motion was studied by the French materialists more thoroughly than by the 17th-century materialists. Although by motion they understood, primarily, the travel of bodies in space, they considered it ( motion) an attribute (fundamental property) of matter stemming from its inner nature. Holbach, for instance, wrote: “...matter moves by its own forces and does not need any external impulse to 55 set it in motion....”  [55•1  He continued: “...without motion we cannot conceive of nature. . .".  [55•2 

p Though they were quite correct in assuming that motion was related to the inherent nature of matter, the French materialists were still unable to establish the source and cause of motion. Neither did they see the multiplicity of the forms of motion nor the development of nature as a transition from lower to higher stages, and did not believe in the existence of leaps.

p As regards the theory of knowledge, the French materialists came out resolutely against the theory of innate ideas and principles, advanced by Descartes. They believed that all men’s ideas and notions formed in the process of cognition, on the basis of experience. In contrast to Spinoza, they attached priority to sense knowledge, sensations, which they regarded as the only source of knowledge. The French materialists were right in that respect, but they assigned an inadequate role to thought, though they held it necessary for cognising truth. In a word, the French materialists had not yet overcome the one-sided approach to the correlation between sense knowledge and thinking that had been characteristic of their predecessors’ views.

p A sizable contribution to the development of 18th-century materialist philosophy was made by the Russian thinkers, notably Mikhail Lomonosov 56 (1711-1765) and Alexander Radishchev (1749- 1802).

p Lomonosov approached the fundamental question of philosophy from a materialist point of view and thought all bodies and phenomena to be material in their essence. Matter is composed of atoms which combine into molecules (“ corpuscles”), the latter making up all “sensuous things”. Lomonosov was the first to prove in a naturalscientific way the eternity and indestructibility of matter and motion, when he discovered the law of the conservation of matter and motion. He formulated it as follows: “...all changes in nature occur in such a way that whatever is added to something is at the same time subtracted from something else. . .. This law of nature is universal to such an extent that it covers the rules of motion as well.”  [56•1 

p Lomonosov stressed that matter and motion were inseparable and that matter was in a constant state of motion. Like all the other representatives of mechanistic materialism, he reduced motion to the travel of bodies in space and divided motion into types-external, when a body changes its position in relation to another body, and internal, when the particles making up a particular body change their position.

p Lomonosov believed that matter possessed an infinite multitude of properties.

p According to Lomonosov, the world is knowable 57 through the direct perception of objects and phenomena by the sense organs and the subsequent treatment of the sense data in the course of theoretical thinking. Lomonosov attached equal importance both to experiment and to theoretical thinking, insisting that truth could be cognised only if the two were closely interconnected. He wrote: “To establish a theory from observations and to correct the observations through the theory is the best way of all to establish the truth.”  [57•1 

p Lomonosov’s materialist views have another major merit-his philosophical propositions were always closely linked with the evidence of natural science and research into specific fields of nature.

p Radishchev followed Lomonosov’s materialist line in Russian philosophy at the end of the 18th century. He also proved that the world was material and considered matter to be a totality of all substances. Radishchev singled out motion among other properties of eternally existing matter (such as extension, for example) as one of its basic attributes. True, in this respect Radishchev did not go farther than his contemporaries-the French materialist philosophers.

p Like Lomonosov, he believed that the world was knowable and thought sensuous experience to be the source of knowledge. At the same time, he considered thought activity very important in cognising the surrounding world and maintained that genuine knowledge was possible only when sense perception and thinking were combined.

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p Radishchev was a revolutionary nobleman who actively opposed serfdom and autocracy and supported the revolutionary emancipation of the serfs.

Summing up the materialist views of the 17 th18th-century philosophers, it is easy to see that they were all to some extent metaphysical, i.e. they rejected development, qualitative distinctions, and contradiction in nature, and supported mechanism by reducing the variety of the forms of motion to a mechanical form (the travel of bodies in space) and by explaining the multitude of qualitative distinctions by the laws of mechanics. Naturally, this was largely the result of the level of development of the natural sciences. At that time only astronomy and physics (mainly mechanics) were fairly well developed.