9

p Since natural philosophy became the scientific, systematic study of nature, it has striven to construct connections between the established facts and the separate relations and patterns discovered by it. This special feature of science is expressed most fully in physics, which by virtue of its fundamental spirit, content, and methods of cognition has been and most probably will remain a kind of a control centre of the sciences about nature.

p Physics deals with more general, fundamental laws of the material world than any other branch of the natural sciences; hence the breadth of its content and its corresponding very deep influence on the other natural sciences, and its particularly close relation to philosophy. Since it deals with inanimate nature and comprehends its laws, physics studies problems of matter and motion, space and time, regularity and causality, and the picture of the world as a whole by its own techniques; in short, it strives to understand the nature of things in its own way. Its philosophical significance can hardly be overestimated, and its connection with philosophy is intimate. It was not by chance that scientific problems were closely interwoven with those of philosophy in the work of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Lomonosov, Faraday and Maxwell, Helmholtz, Mendeleev, and other great scientists of the classical period of science. And in modern, non-classical physics the connection of its content with philosophical problematics has become even stronger. According to Max 10 Born, for instance, the physicist’s whole work is devoted to creating the basis for a philosophy of nature. ’I have always tried,’ he says, ’to think of my own work as a modest contribution to this task.’^^1^^ Einstein’s comment is also typical: ’Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled.’^^2^^ In this connection the book Nature of Matter. Purposes of High Energy Physics^^3^^ published in the USA in 1965 which included some 30 papers by famous contemporary physicists, has special significance. Its contents speak clearly in favour of the comprehension of the deepest laws of nature being closely associated with the philosophical problems of reality, space and time, symmetry, causality, and necessity.

p Although the relation between physics and philosophy has always been intimate, its meaning and forms have altered in the course of the historical development of science and philosophy.

p The special feature of the association between classical physics (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and philosophy was that the former spontaneously accepted the materialist theory of knowledge. Philosophy’s conscious influence on classical physics did not affect its content in any serious way while the development of the latter, as far as the fundamentals of physical science were concerned, did not then face philosophy with any major problems of vital significance for physics itself.

p The development of classical physics was, so to speak, an extensive development, an ever greater coverage of natural phenomena in breadth based on the principles of classical Newtonian mechanics. This situation only began to change in the second half of the nineteenth century, in connection with the rise of thermodynamics, the Faraday-Maxwell theory of electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics; at that time, too, however, Newton’s scheme of isolated space and time with bodies moving in them appeared unassailable. In the classical period of its development physics could satisfy its philosophical needs through a mechanistic world outlook and through a methodology whose principles did not, on the whole, go beyond the framework of formal logic. All that, of course, does not mean that there was no dialectics in classical physics. On the contrary, the basic concepts and principles not only in relatively complex classical 11 physical theories (the theory of heat and classical electrodynamics) but also in classical mechanics (the law of inertia or the principle of action and reaction) cannot be comprehended without the idea of dialectical contradiction. But the paradoxical situations—and they are the touchstone of dialectical thinking—that arose in classical theories remained within classical physics and did not call its foundations in question, i.e. the Newtonian schema of space—time—motion mentioned above. Classical physics grew and became consolidated as a direct generalisation of everyday experience; that is the explanation of why the fundamentals of classical physics remained unaltered throughout its development and were even converted in the works of Kant and other philosophers into the a priori foundation of human knowledge.

p The relationship between physics and philosophy is being altered radically in the present period of scientific development. Modern physics, materialist in its fundamental spirit, is becoming more and more intimately linked with dialectics. Lenin formulated and demonstrated this idea back when non-classical physics was only beginning its development. ’Modern physics is in travail; it is giving birth to dialectical materialism.’^^4^^ In these words Lenin summed up, in Materialism and Empirio-criticism, his philosophical analysis of the epoch-making achievements of physics at the turn of the century, which included, above all, the discovery of electrons and radioactivity and without which there would have been no non-classical physics.

p The natural sciences, and physics in particular, have undergone enormous change since then and have moved far (by no means in any trivial sense) from classical science. Modern physics differs radically in its theoretical content, structure, and style of thinking from the physics of Newton and Maxwell. The most important discoveries and underlying ideas of twentieth century physics that are particularly essential are the following:

p 1. the motion of electrons in the atom (and other phenomena on an atomic scale) follows the laws of quantum mechanics, which are qualitatively different from those of Newtonian mechanics that govern the motion, of macroscopic bodies (motion characterised by velocities small in comparison with the speed of light);

p 2. the particles of matter and immaterial light have a dual corpuscular-wave nature;

12

p 3. space and time are linked in a single four-dimensional manifold (in which time preserves its qualitative difference from space);

p 4. the mass and energy of any material real object (body or field) are inseparably linked by a definite law;

p 5. the bodies now known are based on a host of types of elementary particles of matter] that have a unique structure and correspond to a certain field;

p 6. elementary particles are transformed into each other, observing certain conservation laws and principles of invariance.

p All these statements are concrete proof of the limited nature of classical physics and the relative character of its conceptions, principles, and theories. Nature is much richer than it appears from the standpoint of classical physics. The new physics emerged and developed as a result and expression of the human knowledge’s penetration into the sphere of the most refined electro-magnetic phenomena, into the atomic and subatomic world, and into the field of immense cosmic phenomena while covering the objects comprehended by classical physics from an already new angle. It emerged and developed having created the ‘bizarre’ (as Lenin said) ideas and theories just because everything cognised by it differs profoundly from the commonplace macroscopic world though related to it through diverse transitions. The discoveries and theories of non-classical physics, being the product of its contradiction-ridden development, have brought about the need and task to reflect nature’s comprehensive, universal patterns in concepts that would, in Lenin’s expression, be ’flexible, mobile, relative, mutually connected, united in opposites, in order to embrace the world’.^^5^^

p The idea of the variability and mutual transformation of all material realities, including elementary particles, is characteristic of the physics of our day. Recognition of the unity of the opposing corpuscular and wave conceptions of matter is a necessary element of quantum physics. Without acceptance of the idea of an internally necessary connection between time and space concepts the theory of relativity would not have existed. Probability, according to quantum theory, is a direct ingredient of the basic laws of nature. The concept of structure, in contradistinction to the mechanistic atomistic view, has become very widely used in natural science, including the physics of elementary particles. 13 Non-classical physics itself is developing in such a way that different and opposite concepts, principles, and theories are being synthesised. These and similar dialectical ideas are arising and becoming established within physics itself in the present period of its intensive and extensive development, stimulating its progressive development. By the essence of their philosophical interpretation they mean that physics is moving forward and arriving at dialectical materialism regardless of the personal philosophical views of the scientist, and that conscious application of dialectics in physics is becoming a vital necessity in our day.

p Furthermore, in present-day conditions of the rapid development of pure and applied science paradoxical situations have become an ordinary phenomenon in physics, a circumstance that again and again emphasises the spirit of thinking characteristic of it. The special theory of relativity was born through resolution of the paradoxes that had arisen at the junction of classical mechanics and classical electrodynamics. Quantum mechanics also began with a paradox when the experimental data led to a need of sorts to unite the corpuscular and wave pictures of the motion of atomic objects. The development of quantum field theory and relativistic cosmology also consists of a chain of paradoxes, solution of which may radically alter existing fundamental theories.

p These paradoxes in physics, their rise and the need to resolve them, clearly indicate that there are limits to the applicability of established theoretical notions and even theories, that theoretical ideas and theories should not be converted into dogmas, that new theoretical conceptions and new methods of describing cognised phenomena should be sought for; and that means that the old physics’ spontaneous materialism is quite inadequate for a solution of the epistemological and methodological problems advanced by physics’ contemporary development that ignores philosophy. The physics of our time requires conscious application of the laws of theoretical thinking, and knowledge of them, of course, comes from that philosophy which does not counterpose itself in one way or another to concrete sciences but is consonant with them.

p Dialectics is an adequate form of thinking for modern physics and science as a whole that completely corresponds to the character and constantly varying content of modern science. The idea of the need for internal unity of the dialectic philosophy of Marxism and science used to seem a 14 remarkable scientific prediction of Marx, Engels, and Lenin; now it is a portentous fact of twentieth century culture to which the development of the Soviet Union and the victory of socialism in other countries has made a significant contribution.

p In his book Patterns of Discovery, the British author N. R. Hanson stressed, in his terminology, ’philosophical aspects of microphysical thinking’ and called for the ’ perennial’ philosophical problems to be viewed through the lens of the modern physical theories. One should not, in his view, construct the physical explanations from ‘standard’ philosophical elements; in his view microphysics has philosophical independence and its conceptual structure is accepted as logic in itself.^^6^^

p Hanson is not original. The same motif can be heard from such Western scientists as, say, Born or Heisenberg for whom the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is the philosophy of modern science. The striving of some Western scientists to turn certain interpretations of the modern physical theories into a kind of philosophy is evidence not only of total or partial ignorance (or ignoring) of dialectical materialism but also expresses their lack of satisfaction with traditional philosophical doctrines and modern positivism. Heisenberg, for instance, disagreed with positivists’ statements about the logic of science and said directly that the most precise science cannot avoid using imprecise concepts (such as the concept of infinity in mathematics which leads to contradictions but without which ’it would be practically impossible to construct the main parts of mathematics’).⁷ We would add, for our part, that there are plenty of such dialectical contradictions in modern physics, and that’it is impossible to understand them without dialectical logic.

p The development of contemporary physics is its ever deeper penetration into phenomena that lie at qualitatively different levels of developing matter, yet which are, at the same time, related to each other. In the most sophisticated experiment that is generalised by modern physics relying on extremely delicate instruments, and dealing with the finest phenomena of the microworld or immense phenomena of a galactic scale, nature is not perceived directly, but rather in a very complicated way through concepts of the most varied levels of abstraction. Theory interacts with experiment in modern physics and is not expected just to explain 15 the phenomena of reality. It is acquiring enormous heuristic significance; its main task is becoming the search for possible new forms of phenomena and new possibilities potentially existing in nature.

p Modern physics thus demonstrates with all certainty that cognition is not the contemplative, passive perception of nature (as it was understood by metaphysical materialism), but is an active process in which the subject of cognition (the observer or researcher) plays a decisive role. At the same time one must remember that nature, in answering the questions put to it within the limits of existing knowledge, frequently poses problems on her own to the researcher that are completely unexpected and which call for new ideas and notions or a new method of description. Such a dialectic of the interaction between the cognising subject and the cognised object has found a characteristic expression and development in modern physics,, which will be discussed below. Here we would simply like to note that Niels Bohr’s wellknown words to the effect that to have a chance of being true a really new theory should be quite ‘crazy’, speak of the essentially new style of thinking of contemporary physics. Unconventionality and oddity from the’commonsense* point of view is an indispensable feature of modern physical theory.

Objectively applied dialectics, and its very important requirement of all-round, universal flexibility of concepts^^8^^ is thus the logic of modern science. Now, with the scientific and technical revolution it is particularly important that the transition from principles and categories of dialectical materialism to the methodological paths and propositions that lead to scientific results should be brought out in study of the philosophical problems of science, and that these results in turn should promote the enrichment and further development of dialectical materialism.

p Dialectics and its principles are discussed, without using the term (there are exceptions, however), by the very scientists who created non-classical physics (although they cannot be regarded as conscious adherents of dialectical materialism). Max Planck’s remark about the corpuscular and the wave hypotheses of light, which, in his words, ’oppose each other as two fighters of equal strength’, is typical. ’Each of 16 them is well-armed,’ he continues, ’but each of them also has a vulnerable spot. What will be the outcome of the struggle? It is most likely, today, that neither of these two hypotheses will win outright. More likely the verdict will be that the advantages and also the one-sidedness of each of them will be brought out from a higher standpoint.’^^9^^ Let us note that the ’higher standpoint’ mentioned by Planck with such dialectical penetration has been realised in modern quantum electrodynamics.

p In his discussion with Albert Einstein on epistemological problems in atomic physics, Niels Bohr wrote about the existence of the so-called ’deep truths’ which are ’statements in which the opposite also contains deep truth’. ’The development in a new field,’ he remarked, ’will usually pass through stages in which chaos becomes gradually replaced by order; but it is not least in the intermediate stage where deep truth prevails that the work is really exciting and inspires the imagination to search for a firmer hold.’^^10^^ We hardly need to stress that in this case Bohr essentially characterises the process of cognition that occurs through the struggle of the opposites, in complete agreement with dialectics. In this connection it is worth mentioning Heisenberg’s opinions on the dialectical approach to understanding phenomena of nature in his book Der Teil und das Ganze.¹¹ In it, in particular, hejdiscussed the problem of the elementary particle and continuity, having in mind only the dialectics of Plato and, especially, of Hegel. Of interest are his observations on the Hegelian thesis, antithesis, and synthesis and his statements concerning formal logic in the chapter on ’elementary particles and Plato’s philosophy’; they are far removed, however, from the physical concreteness, and a Marxist cannot on the whole agree with them.^^12^^

p If we turn, say, to Max Born, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, we find that the interpretation of quantum mechanics that was correct for him, was that which tried, in his words, to ’reconcile both aspects of the phenomena, waves, and particles’. According to him broader use of the concept of particle ’must satisfy two conditions: First it must share some (not in the least all) properties of the primitive idea of particle (to be part of matter in bulk, of which it can be regarded as composed), and secondly, this primitive idea must be a special, or better, limiting case’.^^13^^

17

p There are many remarks of this kind in the works of other outstanding physicists, which witness, in essence, that dialectics is not in the least an exotic element in modern physics. In this respect Einstein’s statement about the relation between epistemology and physics referred to is significant. Let us discuss it further here.

p When a philosopher manages to develop a consistent system, in Einstein’s view he begins immediately to interpret the content of science in the light of his system and to reject everything which does not fit into it; the scientist, on the other hand, Einstein said, ’cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematics that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself to be much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system’.^^14^^

p He went on to draw an important conclusion: the scientist therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as the free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable, from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research’.^^15^^

p In this extract Einstein essentially (if one overlooks the inaccuracy of individual terms) speaks in favour of the many-sidedness of cognition (as personified by the scientist) and against the one-sidedness and rigidity of the systems of traditional philosophy and philosophical relativism. One cannot help agreeing with Einstein; Marxist philosophy, however, expresses this thought incomparably more precisely and profoundly. In Lenin’s fragment ’On the Question of Dialectics’ dialectics is characterised as ’living, manysided knowledge (with the number of sides eternally increasing), with an infinite number of shades of every approach and approximation to reality (with a philosophical system growing into a whole out of each shade)’. Lenin emphasised 18 that the major misfortune of ’metaphysical’ materialism is ’its inability to apply dialectics... to the process and development of knowledge’.^^16^^ The same fragment presents a remarkable analysis of epistemological roots of idealism which, according to Lenin, ’from the standpoint of dialectical materialism, ... is a one-sided, exaggerated ... development (inflation, distention) of one of the features, aspects, facets of knowledge into an absolute, divorced from matter, from nature, apotheosised’.^^17^^

p Einstein’s statement above demonstrates yet again that the dialectics of scientists who are not conscious adherents of dialectical materialism, like, in general, the dialectics of representatives of spontaneous scientific materialism, is inadequate to solve the philosophical problems of science. The vulnerable spots in their ideology are used by spokesmen of reactionary philosophy for their own purposes: one can find as many corresponding facts pertaining to the philosophical statements of Einstein, Bohr, and others of the founders of modern physics as one wants.

p Only conscious application of materialist dialectics really frees the scientist of one-sided approaches and preconceived ideas of one sort or another in studying philosophical problems of science by opening up a correct perspective in the quest for their solution that corresponds to the experimental data. In the forming and consolidation of a materialist and dialectical understanding of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics as new landmarks (compared with classical physics) in the cognition of nature by the progressively developing science, dialectical materialism’s ideas and conceptions about the philosophical category of matter, space, and time as objectively real forms of being, about causality and necessity in nature, the absolute and the relative, dialectics of the cognitive process, and so on, have played a definite role.

p The dialectical idea of the inexhaustibility of the electron, which was first expressed by Lenin, is more and more becoming part of the theory of modern physics; this is recognised by the outstanding scientists, including the American physicist F. J. Dyson, the British physicist C. F. Powell and others. The dialectical idea of the unity of possibility and actuality underlies V. A. Fock’s standpoint on quantum mechanics.^^18^^ In Peter Kapitsa’s view the physicist should be guided in his methods of studying nature by an 19 understanding of a phenomenon arising from itself; by the determining role of the experiment; by the requirement of unity of theory and experiment for the harmonious development of science; by a negative attitude to dogmas in science and the need for new ideas; and by recognition of the inexhaustibility of matter.

p These propositions clearly express the materialist and dialectical nature of methodology in modern physics.¹⁹ A rich Marxist literature on the philosophical aspects of science, including publications of scientists themselves, has developed, especially in recent years. The works of the scientists bring out sharply that conscious application of dialectical materialism encourages faster development of science; and they analyse their own discoveries in that light.^^20^^

p We must stress that since the triumph of the October Socialist Revolution Soviet scientists have approached dialectical materialism as the only true philosophy and methodology of modern science. During the first years after the Revolution the young Soviet country’s science developed at an accelerated pace, and the philosophy of Marxism became ever more significant in its progress. This is clearly to be seen, if we consider physics, from the work of that time by S. I. Vavilov, D. S. Rozhdestvensky, A. F. loffe, I. E. Tamm, and others. In those years quantum mechanics was only beginning, and the strangeness of the new ideas connected with discovery of the corpuscular properties of light and wave properties of matter gave rise to conclusions about the collapse of causality in the microworld, about its being necessary to reject objective reality in atomic physics, and so on. From the very beginning Soviet physicists resolutely opposed the idealistic and positivist interpretations of quantum and relativist theories that were fashionable in the West. Thus, I. E. Tamm drew attention in his papers of that period to the fact that there was no need whatsoever to reject the principle of causality in the name of quantum theory. The laws of the microworld are paradoxical from the standpoint of conventional macroscopic conceptions, but ’are there any grounds for believing’, he asked, ’that the laws of microscopic phenomena should be identical to the laws of the macroworld that we are accustomed to? ’^^21^^ V. A. Fock also opposed an idealistic approach to quantum mechanics.^^22^^

p When one considers how dialectical materialism, created in the nineteenth century, in the steam era, can correspond to 20 modern science which is developing in the epoch of mastering the atomic world and interplanetary space, the answer must be sought in the essence of dialectical materialism.

p An advanced philosophy has always given science leading generalising ideas application of which made empirical study of nature truly scientific cognition and in general performed a methodological function in science, encouraging the rise of scientific concepts, principles, and disciplines hitherto unknown. Suffice it to mention Descartes’ philosophical system and the analytical geometry created by him, the teaching of Francis Bacon, whom Marx called ’the real progenitor of English materialism and all modern experimental science’,^^23^^ the rules of philosophising of Isaac Newton, the great founder of classical physics, directly related to it, Leibniz’s dialectical ideas and his development of differential and integral calculus simultaneously with Newton; not to mention that this philosopher-encyclopaedist anticipated many subsequent scientific discoveries.

p There are more than enough such examples in the history of philosophy and science: one need only recall the idea of the atom, which had been known for thousands of years before the discovery of chemical atoms and elementary particles, or the principle of the conservation of motion, which had been formulated by Descartes, Leibniz, and Lomonosov long before discovery of the law of the conservation of energy, and other conservation laws.

p The facts collected by science call for systematisation and generalisation, and that cannot be done without scientific thinking that objectively reflects the real world, and without application of its laws, which are studied by philosophy. The development of philosophy which has been going on for thousands of years, is the history of quests for its own subjectmatter and at the same time the history of the freeing of its content from the mythology and metaphysics that were associated in one ratio or another with the elements of scientific thought in every philosophical system existing before Marxism. Only Marxism, as we know, turned philosophy into a science; Marx and Engels, for the first time in the history of human culture, combined conscious dialectics with a materialist understanding of nature.

p Dialectical materialism does not function as a philosophy that stands above other sciences, and rejects philosophy as an absolutely complete system. By its very essence it is not 21 a numbing philosophical doctrine isolated from the development of other sciences. With each epochal discovery in both the natural and the social sciences dialectical materialism perfects its form and enriches its content. Its creative character, which excludes a one-sided, dogmatic approach to cognition of man’s environment, determines its correspondence to contemporary science.

p At the same time the deep revolutionary transformations and constant progress in modern science, its features and peculiarities mentioned above, its ever-growing significance in the life of the modern society, and above all the contemporary scientific and technical revolution, of necessity link science with materialism and dialectics.

p Dialectical materialism, which was created by Marx and Engels as a science of the general laws of development of the material world, and of its cognition, and raised by Lenin to the level of the great achievements of twentieth century science, is the philosophical source and foundation of the progress of modern physics and of science as a whole, the logic and the theory of knowledge of the sciences of nature of our time.

We are also convinced of this by a circumstance of no little significance, that analysis and solution of epistemological and methodological problems in modern physics given by scientists do not diverge in their basic materialist and dialectical character from the philosophical ideas formulated in their time by the founders of Marxism-Leninism. The fact mentioned above, that the great physicists of the twentieth century have not been conscious adherents of dialectical materialism, is revealed, of course, in their philosophical reasoning and conclusions.

p It is not fortuitous that the relation between philosophy and science occupies a leading place in the international philosophical discussions of our time. The development of the modern science is continually raising philosophical problems not only of world outlook but also of methodology and logic. The theoretical methods developed by modern physics (mathematical hypothesis, the principle of observability), for instance, or the structural and stochastic approaches in modern science, cannot be explained by traditional philosophical systems. On the other hand, philosophy 22 has had to open to cognition previously unknown ways of comprehending a new sphere of reality lying outside the competence of already established knowledge.

p The philosophy of dialectical materialism makes it possible to solve the problems arising in this connection from the standpoint of science. Evidence of this is the work of scientists and philosophers who take a Marxist stand.

p Interest in the philosophical problematics of science, as we know, has grown sharply in the West in recent years. Special seminars on the methodology of knowledge have been held by scientific societies and universities in the United States on a big scale. The Solvay meetings, which enjoy very great authority in the field of physics, are now frequently devoted to the methodological and philosophical problems of physics, as happened before, when quantum theory was being established. The most outstanding contemporary physicists (not to mention Einstein, Bohr, and Born) like Heisenberg, de Broglie, Dirac, Weisskopf, Dyson, and Wigner, have frequently published works devoted to philosophical analysis of the situation in the present-day science.^^24^^

p The reason for this heightened interest of distinguished Western scientists in philosophical problems of science is that the leading branches of modern natural science—the physico-mathematical and biological sciences—began a radical transformation of their principles and main concepts in connection with deep penetration into the atomic and subatomic world and the need to take in theoretically the phenomena of outer space discovered in the twentieth century and the achievements of molecular biology and genetics. The existing theories and conceptions were proving less and less adequate to interpret the epochal discoveries of recent times from a single, monistic point of view.

p As to the opinions of Western scientists on the relationship of science and philosophy, they now represent quite a mixed bag (these views do not necessarily form a system of any sort, but are rather of the nature of trends).

p Many scientists in the West are now experiencing certain philosophical doubts and are going through a kind of reevaluation of philosophical values; positivism is no longer as attractive as it was earlier, while other anti-materialist trends, though being galvanised by individual researchers, are also, on the whole, suffering fiasco. We have not the space to dwell in greater detail on the issues arising, but 23 we must say, however, that many scientists in the West now do not ignore the work of Marxists. Some of them, while not accepting dialectical materialism as the philosophy of modern science, treat it with due respect and recognise its cognitive value (a striking example of such a natural scientist is the distinguished German physicist Max Born); others, however, actively oppose dialectical materialism.

p These scientists suggest that the general conceptions of non-classical physics determine the essence of the philosophy of modern science which, as they see it, is not idealism, or positivism, or materialism, although it includes elements of these philosophical systems. In views of this kind one can trace dissatisfaction with the one-sidedness and rigidity of idealist and metaphysical philosophy, and also a distorted notion of dialectical materialism, which they actually identify with pre-Marxian materialism. One can also include scientists in this circle who assume that the philosophy’s role in science now belongs to cybernetics or general systems theory.

p The scientists described above are close to those researchers in the West whose stand on the relationship of philosophy and science can be called a certain ‘neutrality’ towards philosophy. Some idea of this ‘neutrality’ can be got from Prof. J. M. Ziman’s Public Knowledge.^^25^^ According to him, ’the objective of Science is not just to acquire information nor to utter all non-contradictory notions; its goal is a consensus of rational opinion over the widest possible field’.^^26^^

p Prof. Ziman actually believes that scientific truth is revealed through agreement among scientists. It is understandable that in defending such a standpoint, which implies rejection of study of the relationship between a scientific theory and objective reality, he considers philosophy something alien to physics. Similar views have been expressed by Prof. Laurie Brown in his review of the book by Soviet authors Philosophical Problems of Elementary-Particle Physics." In his opinion physics manages to cope with its difficulties without philosophy, including Marxist philosophy.

p Without making a critical analysis of these standpoints, we would like to note that Faraday’s discovery of electromagnetic induction, von Mayer’s discovery of the law of the conservation of energy, Einstein’s formulation of the theory of relativity, or the construction of quantum 24 mechanics as a physical theory were ‘brought’ to their authors by philosophical considerations in which materialism and dialectics were far from the least.

p In spite of the inconsistency, contradictoriness, and sometimes seriously mistaken character of the philosophical views shared by contemporary scientists in the West, there is no little evidence indicating that a tendency of major scientists to come over to the position of dialectical materialism is becoming more and more definite and marked. It is particularly significant that very distinguished modern scientists—the physicists Paul Langevin, Frederic Joliot-Curie, J. D. Bernal, C. F. Powell, and S. Sakata—did not simply say, but demonstrated concretely in their work, that materialist dialectics, and only materialist dialectics, could and does offer philosophical help in solving the most important scientific problems of our time.

p One can cite other facts showing the growing, serious interest of scientists in the West in Marxist-Leninist philosophy and its application to science. The speeches and papers of Marxists at the international and national philosophical congresses and symposia arouse great interest and are very favourably received by most participants. Translations of Soviet work in the USA, West Germany, Italy, Mexico, and other capitalist countries, and papers by Soviet philosophers are appearing in Western publications ever more frequently. Work of this kind is only beginning, but it is a successful beginning, and it has a great future.

p Strengthening of the position of materialism and dialectics in modern science is giving rise to a tendency among the ideological opponents of Marxism-Leninism to distort the true facts of the historical development of Marxist- Leninist philosophy and its application in science. This is aided by specially founded institutes, chairs, and journals; and numerous publications are devoted to this purpose in capitalist countries. Bourgeois ideologists ascribe rejection of the theory of relativity and other leading theories of modern science to Marxists as allegedly idealistic constructions, ascribe an ignoring of modern formal logic to them, and so on and so forth. They try to show that materialist dialectics has not led to a single scientific discovery, that modern science is allegedly alien \o materialism and dialectics, and so on. The reality of the progress of science, however, disproves all these and similar statements.

25

p To sum up briefly, whereas in the nineteenth century, during the creation and consolidation of Marxism and its philosophy, conscious adherents of dialectical materialism among scientists could be counted on the fingers of one hand, now, in the age of the great victories of socialism and communism, there are many of them. The dialectical materialism developed by Lenin is taking ever stronger hold in modern science, because it is the most adequate method and the most adequate philosophy of science. Its consolidation is based mainly on cooperation between Marxist philosophers and scientists directed at philosophical interpretation of everything advanced in science, at fighting MarxismLeninism’s opponents’ attempts to force obsolete philosophical- systems onto science. Only through dialectical materialism and its creative development is it possible successfully to deal with the philosophical problems posed by the contemporary scientific and technical revolution.

p In the chapters that follow it will be demonstrated more concretely that the path being followed by modern physics in trying to solve its epistemological, methodological, and logical problems is the philosophy of dialectical materialism.

p REFERENCES

p  ^^1^^ Max Born. Some Philosophical Aspects of Modern Physics. In: Physics in my Generation by Max Born (Pergamon Press, London &N.Y., 1956), p 37.

p  ^^2^^ Albert Einstein. Reply to Criticisms. In: P. A. Schilpp (Ed.). Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (Univ. of Chicago Press, Evanston, 111., 1949), pp 683-684.

p  ^^3^^ Luke C. L. Yuan (Ed.). Nature of Matter. Purposes of High Energy Physics (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Associated Universities, Washington, 1965).

p  ^^4^^ V. I. Lenin. Materialism and Enipirio-criticism. Collected Works, Vol. 14 (Progress Publishers, Moscow), p 313.

p  ^^5^^ V. I. Lenin. Philosophical Notebooks. Collected Works, Vol. 38 (Progress Publishers, Moscow), p 146.

p  ^^6^^ N. R. Hanson. Patterns of Discovery (CUP, Cambridge, 1958), pp 1-5.

p  ^^7^^ Werner Heisenberg. Physics and Philosophy (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1959), p 172.

p  ^^8^^ See V. I. Lenin. Philosophical Notebooks. Op. cit., p 110.

p  ^^9^^ Max Planck. Vortrdge und Erinnerungen (Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart, 1949), p 277.

26

p  ^^10^^ Niels Bohr. Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (John Wiley & Sons, New York, Chapman & Hall, London, 1958), p 66.

p  ^^11^^ Werner Heisenberg. Der Teil und das Game (Munich, 1969), pp 321- 334.

p  ^^12^^ On the materialist and dialectical approaches to the discontinuous, continuous, elementary and complex, see Chapters V and VII.

p  ^^13^^ Max Born. Op. cit., p 146.

p  ^^14^^ See P. A. Schilpp (Ed.). Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (Tudor Publishing Co., New York, 1951), p 684.

p  ^^15^^ Ibid., p 684.

p  ^^16^^ V. I. Lenin. On the Question of Dialectics. Collected Works, Vol. 38, p 362.

p  ^^17^^ Ibid., p 363.

p  ^^18^^ V. A. Fock. Quantum Physics and the Structure of Matter. In: M. E. Omelyanovsky (Ed.). Struktura i formy materii (Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1967).

p  ^^19^^ P. L. Kapitsa. Zhizn dlya nauki. Lomonosov, Franklin, Rezerford, Lanzheven (Life for Science: Lomonosov, Franklin, Rutherford, and Langevin) (Znaniye Publishers, Moscow, 1965).

p  ^^20^^ In this connection let us note the following: N. N. Semenov’s article Marxist-Leninist Philosophy and Issues of Science (Kommunist, 1968, 10); and V. A. Ambartsumian’s paper Contemporary Science and Philosophy at the XlVth World Congress of Philosophy (see Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 1968, 96,1), and Lenin and Modern Natural Science edited by M. E. Omelyanovsky (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978).

p  ^^21^^ Fizika (Physics), Vol. II (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), p. 7.

p  ^^22^^ V. A. Fock. Nachala kvantovoi mekhaniki (Fundamentals of Quantum Mechanics) (Kubuch Publishers, Leningrad, 1932), p 10.

p  ^^23^^ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. The Holy Family. Collected Works, Vol. 4 (Progress Publishers, Moscow, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1975), p 128.

p  ^^24^^ See, for instance, Heisenberg’s Physics and Philosophy (Harper & Brothers Publishers, N.Y., 1958); this work, in particular, contains a survey of the views of Soviet authors. The textbook The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1963-1965) (Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Mass., Palo Alto, London, Vol. I, 1963), written by R. P. Feynman, R. B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands, includes an interesting argument—of a, in general, spontaneous-materialist and dialectical character—concerning the epistemological foundations of physics and a sharp criticism of positivism.

p  ^^26^^ J. M. Ziman, F. R. S. Public Knowledge (CUP, Cambridge, 1968).

p  ^^26^^ Ibid., p 9.

 ^^27^^ Laurie M. Brown. Dialectically Materializing Elementary Particles. Physics Today, 1966, 19, 4: 88,