Materialism and the Contemporary Natural Sciences (page 9)

Robert Steigerwald

Moreover, even in the earliest stages of human life we find forms of mental anticipation of results of self‑activity, some kind of simulation of the action before it is carried out, in order to establish what kind of results are to be expected. This is complemented by the observation of the behavior of other organisms, for instance, parents. All this leads to a collection of knowledge for success, which again limits the principal multiplicity of the environment for the organism in question. This results in a direction to the gathering of knowledge, successful knowledge, which means an approach to “representation,” to reflection of the environment within the organism. In the case of human beings a principally new situation arises. Their self‑activity is action in, and shaping of, the environment. With this, the mere gathering of experiences turns into the recognition of causality, of essential correlations (a post hoc [after this] turns into propter hoc [because of this]). This is the basis of law-governed cognition. It all takes place in a social connection. It is bound up with speech, which creates an entirely new form of transmission, social transmission, based on language passed on through education. All this makes possible not merely a reflection theory that was already an enormous philosophical achievement at the time of Democritus, but a reflection theory that is appropriate to today’s level of knowledge.

Construction of terms and philosophical constructivism

I have already mentioned the extensive interest in the conception of philosophical constructivism, and also have touched on some of its versions. One aspect that I neglected is the effect of the “Copernican revolution” initiated by Kant. Until then, epistemology assumed that our perception is directly of the object; Kant replied that we only “constitute” the object by means of certain mental instruments that we possess a priori—ideas of space and time, causality, categories, and so on—which implies that we do not perceive the object in its objective being. This view implies that all our perceptional efforts in principle cannot be detached from mental constructions like terms, models, hypotheses, and theories.

If we correctly combine this with the thesis that perception, as well as any other kind of human activity, is practical activity and arises only in connection with practice, we come to the conclusion that our cognition is actually a form of construing reality, and not merely its illustration or reflection.

This cannot be the objective reality that exists outside of consciousness and independently of it, because the way to it on the basis of this conception remains a secret.

As a consequence of this ambiguous basic concept, self-deception cannot always be excluded if, while using the word life or reality one thinks of something material, and while using the word “practice,” one thinks of material, productive practice. In any case, social reality in historical materialism means something else. It means material and social production by humans in their exchange with the world of nature outside themselves.

Followers of constructivism reply to Marxists, in part justly, that they would equate with objective reality those instruments of thought, such as terms, models, and theories, that we create for research to “constitute” the “objects” of research.

I think that we have to hold a serious theoretical debate on this. For if it were not true that we are dealing with the dialectics of subject and object when we place instruments between us and objective reality, we would end up with either a totally subjective idealism or a mechanical materialism.

A starting point for such discussion is the insights that are shared with Marxist philosophy: all our material or mental activities are bound with means of a material or mental character that we place between ourselves and the objects of our actions. In our mental activity, we deal with terms, models, hypotheses, and theories. We create them in order to make the things we want to act upon easier or even possible to deal with, to make them comprehensible, to make them free from disturbing additions,

that is, under idealized conditions to make them ready for being investigated by us, for example, by experiment. Thus everything we do involves the construction of material or mental tools. This construing and this dependence of our knowledge on such construing is acknowledged by these other schools. The only problem is that they remain in this sector. The reason often given for this is the so-called epistemological paradox. According to this paradox, when a comparison is made between a nonmental material thing and its mental representation, we are never able to leave the mental sector, so that we are never able to prove that the thing and the illustration correspond to each other. In the best case, the entirety of such mental constructions is recognized as determined by our culture, by our “lifeworld,” by the “lifeworld conditions.” But this leads to many questions: What are, in this case, life, culture, lifeworld, and lifeworld reality? Where do they come from? How did they become the way they are? What is the basis of their origin and their development? Varying a famous question from Kant, we could ask: What do the conditions for the possibility of such construing consist of? This is the point at which the principal philosophical analysis, the basic clarification, would have to begin.

Some philosophical problems arising from developments in physics

In the dispute between materialism and idealism (in its theoretical and anthropomorphic religious appearance), if I see it correctly, three major questions occur. At least two of these questions have found important new answers, which undermine the basic positions of idealism. I am referring to (1) the question of the finiteness or infiniteness of the universe in time and space, (2) the origin of life, and (3) the origin of the mind.

Notes

1. Reference to a German poem by Christian Morgensternm “Die unmögliche Tatsache” (The Impossible Fact) in which a man named Palmström is run over and killed while improperly crossing an intersection. Upon contemplating the circumstances of his death, he reasons that the car that ran him over should not have legally been there. He then concludes that he is not dead because “what must not be, cannot be.”—Ed.

2. Translation of quotations from non-English sources in the Reference List were made by the translator.

3. In the discussion that follows, I do not deal with differences in the kinds of models or the difference between material and theoretical models.

4. The author is referring here to the historically dominant variety of critical realism in Europe, which is akin to a form of neo-Thomism. See Hörz, Röseberg, et al. 1980, 165-77).

Reference List

Acham, Karl. 1974. Analytische Geschichtsphilosophie. Munich: Alber. 1977. Über Parteilichkeit und Subjektivität in der Gesellschaftswissenschaft. In vol. 1 of Theorie und Geschichte. Munich: Kossel/Mommsen.

Albrecht, Erhard, Werner Ebeling, et al., eds. 1974. Streitbarer Materialismus und gegenwärtige Naturwissenschaft. Vol. 33 of the series Zur Kritik der bürgerlichen Ideologie. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Aristotle. 1912. Aristotle’s metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2000. Nicomachean ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Becker. Oskar. 1954. Grundlagen der Mathematik in geschichtlicher Entwicklung. Freiburg: K. Alber.

Bernal, John D. 1969. Science in history. London: C. A. Watts.

Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. 1953. Biophysik des Fließgleichgewichts. Brunswick: Vieweg.

Beurton, Peter. 1978. In 100 Jahre “Anti-Dühring,” edited by R. Kirchhoff and Todor I. Oiserman, 325 ff. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Biller, E. 1992. Chaos-Forschung: Revolution des naturwissenschaftlichen Weltbildes. In Freidenker, Organ des Deutschen Freidenker-Verbandes. No. 4. Dortmund.

Bitsakis, Eftichios. 1988. Quantum statistical determinism. Foundations of Physics 18, no. 3. 1988. Potential and real states in quantum mechanics. Manuscript. 1989. Quantum probalities, Manuscript. Athens. 1993. Scientific realism. Science and Society 57, no. 2:160-93

Blokhintsev, Dmitrii I. 1968. The philosophy of quantum mechanics. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Bolhagen, P. 1967. Gesetzmäßigeit und Gesellschaft. Zur Theorie gesellschaftlicher Gesetze. Berlin.

Born, Max. 1969. Quantenmechanik der Stoßvorgänge. In Wellenmechanik. Einführung und Originaltexte, by G. Ludwig. Berlin.

Brugger, Walter. 1980. Der dialektische Materialismus und die Frage nach Gott. Munich.

Brugger, Walter, ed. 1988. Philosophisches Wörterbuch. Freiburg: Herder.

Buhr, Manfred. ed. Enzyklopädie der bürgerlichen Philosophie im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Leipzig 1988.

Buhr, Manfred, and Todor I. Oiserman, eds. 1981. Vom Mute des Erkennens. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Bunge, Mario. 1963. Causality: The place of the causal principle in modern physics. Cleveland: Meridian Books. 1973. Quantum mechanics in search of its referent. In Philosophy of Physics, by Mario Bunge. Boston: Reidel. 1980. The mind-body problem: a psychobiological approach. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Darwin, Charles. 1998. The variation of animals and plants under domestication. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.

Descartes, René. 2001. Discourse on method, optics, geometry, and meteorology. Indianapolis: Hackett.

de Vries, Joseph. 1958. Die Erkenntnistheorie des dialektischen Materialismus. Munich: Pustet.

Dingler, Hugo, 1952. Über die Geschichte und das Wesen des Experimentes.Munich: Eidos Verlag

Ebeling, Werner. 1989. Chaos Ordnung Information: Selbstorganisation in Natur und Technik. Frankfurt-on-Main: H. Deutsch. 1990. Erneuerung als Grundmerkmal der Evolution. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, no. 7.

Ebeling, Werner, and Rainer Feistel. 1994. Chaos und Kosmos: Prinzipen Evolution. Heidelberg: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag.

Edlinger, Karl, Wolfgang F. Gutmann, and Michael Weingarten. 1991. Evolution ohne Anpassung, Frankfurt-on-Main: Waldemar Kramer.

Eigen, Manfred. 1992. Steps towards life: A perspective on evolution. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Eigen, Manfred, and Ruthild Winkler. 1981. Laws of the game: How the principles of nature govern chance. New York: Knopf.

Einstein, Albert. 1929. Über den gegenwärtigen Stand der Feldtheorie. In Festschrift für Prof. D. Aurel Stodola, edited by E. Honegger. Zürich. 1979. Albert Einstein: Autobiographical notes. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court. 1995. Physics and reality. In Ideas and Opinion, by Albert Einstein, edited by Carl Seelig. New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks.

Einstein, Albert, Hedwig Born, and Max Born. 1969. Briefwechsel 1916-1955, Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandl.

Einstein, Albert, and Leopold Infeld. 1950. The evolution of physics, London: Scientific Book Club. 1969. Über spezielle und allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, Brunswick.

Eisenhardt, Peter, et al. 1988, Du steigst nie zweimal in denselben Fluss. Die Grenzen der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis. Reinbek: Rowohlt.

Engels, Frederick. 1942. Letter to Conrad Schmidt, 12 March 1868. In Selected corrrespondence 1846-1895: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 527-531. New York: International Publishers. 1987. Anti-Dühring [Herr Eugen Dühring’s revolution in science]. In vol. 25 of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected works, 1-309. New York: International 1990. Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy. In vol. 26 of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected works, 353-98. New York: International Publishers.

Erpenbeck, John. 1980. Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie:Zu philosophischen Problemen psychischer Erkenntnisprozesse. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. 1989. Das Ganze denken: Zur Dialektik menschlicher Bewußtseinsstrukturen und Prozesse. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Feynman, Richard P. 1965. The character of physical law. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Foerster, Heinz von. 1985. Sicht und Einsicht: Versuche zu einer operativen Erkenntnistheorie. Brunswick: F. Vieweg and Sohn.

Frank, Philipp. 1947. Einstein: His life and times. New York: Knopf.

Friedmann, Aleksandr A. 1922. Über der Krümmung des Raumes. Zeitschrift für Physik 10:377-86.

Gamow, George. 1952. The creation of the universe. New York: Viking.

Geissler, H.-G. 1987. The temporal architecture of central information processing. Evidence for a tentative time-quantum-model. Psychological Research 49, no. 8:99 ff.

Gell-Mann, Murray. 1994. The quark and the jaguar: Adventures in the simple and the complex. New York: W. H. Freeman.

Gutmann, Wolfgang F., and Klaus Bonik. 1981. Kritische Evolutionstheorie. Ein Beitrag zur Überwindung altdarwinistischer Dogmen. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg.

Gutmann, Wolfgang, and Michael Weingarten. 1991. Maschinentheoretische Grundlagen der organismischen Konstruktionslehre. Philosophia Naturalis 28, no. 2. 1990. Die biotheoretischen Mängel der Evolutionären Erkenntnislehre. Journal for General Philosophy of Science 21:309ff. 1995. Die Konstruktion der Organismen: Struktur und Funktion. Frankfurt-on-Main: W. Kramer.

Haken, Hermann. 1984. The science of structure: Synergetics. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Hawking, Stephen W. 1993. Is everything determined? In Black holes, universes and other essays, by Stephen W. Hawking, 127-39. New York: Bantam Books.[[Chk title]] 1996. A brief history of time. New York: Bantam Books.

Heisenberg, Werner. 1971. Physics and beyond; Encounters and conversations. New York: Harper and Row.

Hejl, Peter M. 1989. Self-regulation in social systems: Explaining the process of research. Siegen, Germany: LUMIS, Siegen Univ. 1992. Konstruktion der sozialen Konstruktion: Grundlagen einer konstruktivistischen Sozialtheorie. In Zur Chaos-Theorie : ideologiekritische Betrachtungen: Neue Perspektiven für Natur- Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften, by Rainer Hess und Gerhard Hofner. Frankfurt-on-Main: Verein Wissenschaft and Sozialismus.

Hörz, Herbert, and Karl-Friedrich Wessel. 1983. Philosophische Entwicklungstheorie. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften.

Hörz, Herbert, and Karl-Friedrich Wessel, eds. 1986. Philosophie und Naturwissenschaften. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften.

Hörz, Herbert, and Ulrich Röseberg, eds. 1981. Materialistische Dialektik in der physikalischen und biologischen Erkenntnis. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Hörz, Herbert, Ulrich Röseberg, et al. 1980. Philsophical problems in physical science. Minneapolis: Marxist Educational Press (MEP Publications).

Holbach, Paul Henri. 1889. The system of nature: Or, laws of the moral and physical world. Boston: J. P. Mendum.

Holz, Hans Heinz. 1983. Dialektik und Widerspiegelung. Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein. 1986. Widerspiegelung und Konstruktion. Topos (Bonn), no. 7. 1990. s.v. Widerspiegelung. In vol. 4 of Enzyklopädie der europäischen Wissenschaften, edited by Hans J. Sandkühler, 825 ff. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.

Hoyle, Fred. 1960. The nature of the universe. New York: Harper.

Kamke, Erich. 1950. Theory of sets, New York: Dover Publications.

Kanitscheider, Bernulf. 1981. Wissenschaftstheorie der Naturwissenschaft. Berlin: de Gruyter. 1984. Kosmologie Geschichte und Systematik in philosophischer Perspektive. Stuttgart: Reclam.

Kedrow, Bonifati M. 1979. Friedrich Engels über die Dialektik der Naturwissenschaft. Berlin: Dietz.

Klix, Friedhart. 1980. Erwachendes Denken: Eine Entwicklungsgeschichte der menschlichen Intelligenz. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften.

Kuhn, Hans. 1973. Entstehung des Lebens: Bildung von Moleküleigenschaften. Forschung 14, no. 3: 78-104.

Kuhn, Hans, and J. Waser. 1981. Molecular self-oranization and the origin of life. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl 20:500-20.

Kuznetsov, Boris G. 1979. Einstein. Leben, Tod, Unsterblichkeit. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Landau, Lev D., and Yurii B. Rumer. 1974. What is the theory of relativity? Moscow: Mir.

Lanius, Karl. 1988. Mikrokosmos Makrokosmos. Das Weltbild der Physik. Leipzig.

Lenin, Vladimir I. 1961. Philosophical notebooks. Vol. 38 of V. I. Lenin: Collected works. Reprint 1972. Moscow: Progress Publishers. 1962. Materialism and empirio-criticism. Vol. 14 of V. I. Lenin: Collected works. Reprint 1972. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Lucretius Carus, Titus. 1998. On the nature of the univeerse, Oxford: Clarenden Press.

Marquit, Erwin. 1980. Stability and development in physical science. In Marxism, Science and the Movement of History, edited by Alan R. Burger, Hyman R. Cohen, and David H. DeGrood, 77-104. Amsterdam: B. R. Gruener.

Maturana, Humberto R. 1982. Erkennen: Die Organisation und Verkörperung von Wirklichkeit: Ausgewählte Arbeiten zur biologischen Epistemologie. Brunswick: Friedr. Vieweg and Sohn.

Maturana, Humberto R., and Francisco Varela. 1987. The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding. Boston: Shambhala. 1980. Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. Boston: D. Reidel.

Mayr, E. 1984. Die Entwicklung der biologischen Gedankenwelt, Berlin. 1994. Ethik and Sozialwissenschaften, edited by F. Benseler et al. Opladen.

Nelson, Leonard. 1911. Die Unmöglichkeit der Erkenntnistheorie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.

Newton, Isaac. 1934. Sir Isaac Newton’s mathematical principles of natural philosophy and his system of the world. 2 vols. Translate1d by Florian Cajori. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

Oparin, Alexandr I. 1957. The origin of life on earth. New York: Academic Press. 1961. Life, its nature, origin and development. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.

Planck. Max. 1910. Zur machschen Theorie der physikalischen Erkenntnis. Vierteljahreszeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Soziologie, no. 4:498.

Plato. 1973. The Timeaus of Plato. New York: Arno Press.

Prigogine, Ilya. 1986. Natur, Wissenschaft und neue Rationalität. In Dialektik: Beiträge zu Philosophie und Wissenschaften (Cologne), no. 12.

Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers. 1984. Order out of chaos: Man’s new dialogue with nature. Boulder, Colo: New Science Library. 1993. Das Paradox der Zeit. Munich.

Prigogine, Ilya, and P. Glansdorff. 1971. Thermodynamic theory of structure, Stability and Fluctuations, New York: Wiley-Interscience.

Röseberg, Ulrich. 1978. Quantenmechanik und Philosophie: Standpunkte des dialektischen Materialismus. Brunswick: Vieweg. Philosophie und Physiks. Leipzig. 1983. Dialektische Widersprüche der physikalischen Bewegungsform der Materie. 1984. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, no 12. Szenarium einer Revolution. Nichtrelativistische Quantenmechanik und philosophische Widerspruchsproblematik. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Roth, G. 1986. Selbstorganisation und Selbstreferentialität als Prinzipien der Organisation von Lebewesen. Dialektik: Beiträge zu Philosophie und Wissenschaften (Cologne), no. 12. 1988, Annalen für dialektische Philosophie, Cologne.

Ruelle, David. 1993. Zufall und Chaos. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Paris/Tokyo/Hong Kong/Barcelona/Budapest 1992.

Satshkov, Juri V. 1988. Konstruktivnaya rol slutshaya. Voprossi filosofii. German tranlation: Die konstruktive Rolle des Zufalls. Sowjetwissenschaft, no. 5 [1989]).

Schilpp, Paul A., ed. 1970. Albert Einstein: philosopher-scientist. La Salle, Ill: Open Books.

Shmal’gauzen, Ivan I. 1986. Factors of evolution: The theory of stabilizing selection. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Schramm, E./Weingarten, M. 1987. Biologische Moralund Ethikkonzeptionen zwischen Weltanschauung und reaktionärer Ideologie. Dialektik, Heft 14, Köln.

Schrödinger, Erwin. 1967. What is life? The physical aspect of the living cell and mind and matter. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Smart, John J. C. 1963. Philosophy and scientific realism. New York: Humanities Press. 1972. Further thoughts on the identity theory. The Monist 56.

Spickermann, Wolfgang. 1978. Kosmologie und die Legende vom Schöpfungsakt. Berlin: Frankfurt-on-Main: Verlag Marxistische Blätter.

Steigerwald, Robert. 1999. Abschied vom Materialismus? Zur Antikritik heutiger Materialismus-Kritik. 2d ed. Schkeuditz, Germany: Bonn: GNN-Verlag

Treder, Hans-Jürgen. 1974. Philosophische Probleme des physikalischen Raums: Gravitation, Geometrie, Kosmologie und Relativität. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Varela, Francisco J.. 1990. Kognitionswissenschaft Kognitionstechnik: Eine Skizze aktueller Perspektiven. Frankfurt-on-Main: Suhrkamp. Principles of biological autonomy. New York: North Holland.

Wahsner, Renate, and Horst-Heino von Borzeszkowski. 1989. Physikalischer Dualismus und dialektischer Widerspruch, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

Watson, James D. 1997. The double helix: A personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Weinberg, Steven. 1977. The first three minutes. New York: Basic Books.

Weingarten, Michael. 1991. Darwin, der frühe Darwinismus und das Problem des Fortschritts in der Evolution. In Natur und Museum, Bericht der Senckenbergischen Naturforschen den Gesellschaft, no. 121, May 1. (Frankfurt-on-Main). 1993. Organismen—Objekte oder Subjekte der Evolution? Philosophische Studien zum Paradigmenwechsel in der Evolutionsbiologie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. 1992. Organismuslehre und Evolutionstheorie. Hamburg: Kovac.

Weizsäcker, Carl F. F. von. 1972. Die philosophische Interpretation der modernen Physik: zwei Vorlesungen. Leipzig: J. A. Barth. 1958. Zum Weltbild der Physik. Stuttgart.

Wetter, Gustav A. 1958. Dialectical Materialism. New York: Praeger. 1958. Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft in der Sowjetunion. Hamburg: Reinbek. 1966. Soviet ideology today. New York: Praeger.

Wolff, Michael. 1981. Der Begriff des Widerspruchs. Eine Studie zur Dialektik Kants und Hegels, Königstein/Ts.: Hain.

Vol’kenstain, Mikhail V. 1964. Sushchhnost’ biologitcheskoi evolyutsii. Uspechi fisitscheskich nauk 143:441ff.

Zahrnt, Heinz. Die Sache mit Gott: Die protestantische Theologie im 20. Jahrhundertt. Stuttgart: Evangelische Buchgemeindex

The views and opinions expressed here are strictly those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, or position of the publishers.