Essay
Friedrich Engels’ Importance for Contemporary Materialist Epistemology
Joost Kircz
Pages 37-67| Published online: 27 Jan 2022
Kircz, Joost. 2022. “Friedrich Engels’ Importance for Contemporary Materialist Epistemology.” Marxism & Sciences 1(1):37–67. https://doi.org/10.56063/MS.2201.01104.
ABSTRACT
In this contribution for Friedrich Engels’ bicentennial birthday, we investigate to what extent the epistemological ideas of F. Engels, based in nineteenth-century science, can serve as stepping stones towards a novel materialistic epistemology given de contemporary state of the sciences. I look at Engels as an historical figure in his nineteenth-century context with strong and pertinent emancipatory ideas, who understood the need of a materialistic epistemology for the emancipatory project he and Karl Marx envisioned. In this contribution I will focus especially on his Anti-Dühring and his Dialectics of Nature, in their nineteenth-century context. Secondly, I will use his intensions in writing these inspirational works as a basis for further reflections on the sciences and their possible contribution to human emancipation. In particular, I will touch upon the issue of to what extent scientific theories represent the known world and to what extent theories in the natural sciences and biology can serve as a model for the humanities and sociology. In other words, if we consider the world materialistically, that is to say, it exists independently of what the human race as offspring of this world makes of it, how can the early inroads of Engels and Marx in making this world intelligible, help us today in rescuing humankind from self-inflicted disaster.
Keywords: F. Engels, materialism, science, biology, human nature.
REFERENCES
Aleksandrov, A.D. 1970. “On the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of VI Lenin: Mathematics and Dialectics.” Siberian Mathematical Journal 11(2): 243–63.
———. 1971. “Mathematik und dialektik.” Ideen des exacten wissens 4: 251–257.
———. 1980. “Mathematics Its Essential Nature and Objective Laws of Development.” Science and Nature: A Journal of Marxist Philosophy for Natural Scientists 3: 22–42. http://www.massline.org/Philosophy/Math/MathematicsCensoredMarxistPhilosophy.pdf.
Altvater, Elmar. 2015. Engels neu entdecken: Das hellblaue Bändchen zur einführung in die ‘Dialektik der Natur’ und die kritik von akkumulation und wachstum. Hamburg: VSA: Verlag.
Angus, Ian. 2014. “The Origin of Rosa Luxemburg’s Slogan ‘Socialism or Barbarism’.” Climate & Capitalism October 22. https://climateandcapitalism.com/2014/10/22/origin-rosa-luxemburgs-slogan-socialism-barbarism/
Bell, John L. 2019. The Continuous, the Discrete and the Infinitesimal in Philosophy and Mathematics. Springer International Publishing.
Beller, Mara. 1999. Quantum Dialogue: The Making of a Revolution. University of Chicago Press.
Bernal, John Desmond. 1935. “Engels and Science.” Labour Montly Pamflets 1935.
———. 1969. Science in History. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd.
Born, Max. 1965. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Rev. ed. New York: Dover Publications.
Boyer, Carl B. 1959. The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development. Reprint [d. Ausg.] 1949. Dover Books in Advanced Mathematics. New York: Dover Publ.
Carver, Terrell. 1983. Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship. Brighton: Wheatsheaf.
Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. 2010. Objectivity. Paperback ed. New York, NY: Zone Books.
Daston, Lorraine, and H. Otto Sibum. 2003. “Introduction: Scientific Personae and Their Histories.” Science in Context 16(1–2): 1–8.
Engels, Friedrich. 1976. “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man (1876).” In Dialectics of Nature, Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol.25, 452–464. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
———. 1985. “Dialektik der Natur (1873–1882).” In Die Marx – Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2) Apt. I/26, 313–622. Berlin: Dietz.
———. 1988. “Herrn Eugen Dührings umwälzung der wissenschaft (Anti-Dühring).” In Die Marx – Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2) Apt. I/27. Berlin: Dietz.
———. 2010a. “Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science.” In Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 25. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
———. 2010b. “Dialectics of Nature.” In Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 25, 313–734. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Everett, Caleb. 2017. Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Cultures. Harvard University Press.
Feyerabend, Paul. 1989. “Realism and the Historicity of Knowledge.” The Journal of Philosophy 86(8): 393–406.
Fleck, Ludwik. 1979. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. University of Chicago Press. First German edition 1935.
Forman, Paul, Cathryn Carson, A. B. Kozhevnikov, and Helmuth Trischler, eds. 2011. Weimar Culture and Quantum Mechanics: Selected Papers by Paul Forman and Contemporary Perspectives on the Forman Thesis. London : Hackensack, NJ: Imperial College Press ; World Scientific.
Foster, John Bellamy. 2000. Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. Monthly Review Press.
Foster, John Bellamy, and Paul Burkett. 2016. Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique. Vol. 115. Historical Materialism Series. Brill.
Geras, Norman. 1983. Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend. Verso Editions and NLB.
Gorelik, Gennady, 2005, Review of Stalin’s Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists, By Alexei B Kojevnikov. Physics World, November.
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1988. Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time. Penguin Books.
Griese, Anneliese, and Gerd Pawelzig. 1995. “Friedrich Engels’ ‘Dialektik Der Natur’: Eine Vergleichende Studie Der Editionsgeschichte.” MEGA-Studien 1: 33–60.
Griese, Anneliese, Friederun Fesse, Hella Hahn, Karl Heinig, Martin Koch and Gerd Pawelzig. 1985. Einleitung. In Dialektik der Natur (1873–1882). Edited by Anneliese et al. Gesamtausgabe (MEGA): Abt.I: Werke, Artikel, Entwürfe / Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels ; Vol. I/26. Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe: MEGA2. Berlin: Dietz.
Grundmann, Reiner. 1991. Marxism and Ecology Clarendon Press. Oxford New York.
Harman, Peter M. 1982. Energy, Force and Matter: The Conceptual Development of Nineteenth-Century Physics. Cambridge University Press.
Hessen, Boris. 1931. “The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Principia.” In Science at the Cross Roads. KNIGA Ltd.
Hyman, Ludmila. 2017. “The Soviet Psychologists and the Path to International Psychology.” In The Globalization of Knowledge in History: Based on the 97th Dahlem Workshop, edited by Jürgen Renn, Reprint of the 2012 edition, 643–668. Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge Studies 1. Berlin: Edition Open Access.
Ilyenkov, Evald V. 2014. “Dialectics of the Ideal.” In Dialectivs of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism, edited by Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen, 25–78. Leiden: Brill.
James, William. 1987a. “Lecture VI Pragmatism’s Concept of Truth : Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Popular Lectures on Philosophy (1907).” In William James: Writings 1902–1910, 572–90. Library of America.
———. 1987b. “The Meaning of Truth, a Sequel to ‘Pragmatism’”. In William James, Writings 1902–1910, 821–978. Library of America.
Jammer, Max. 1993. Concepts of Space: The History of Theories of Space in Physics. 3rd enl. ed. New York: Dover Publications.
———. 2006. Concepts of Simultaneity, from Antiquity to Einstein and Beyond. The John Hopkins University Press.
Kaltenbrunner, Gerd-Klaus. 1970. “Eugen Dühring.” Zeitschrift Für Religions-Und Geistesgeschichte 22(1): 58–79.
Kant, Immanuel. 2012. “Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens or Essay on the Constitution and the Mechanical Origin of the Whole Universe According to Newtonian Principles (1755).” In Kant: Natural Science, edited by Eric Watkins, 182–308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kircz, Joost. 1998. “Nouvelle présentation! Nouvelle Science?” L’écrit de la science, Alliage, 37–38: 14–24.(English translation: http://www.kra.nl/Website/Artikelen/Nice98.htm)
———. 2015. “Reality, Knowledge and Forecasting.” International Institute of Research & Education, Working Paper 41: 27. http://fileserver.iire.org/working_papers/WP41.pdf
———. 2016. “Elements of an Essay on Human Change.” In Return of Marxism. Marxist Theory in a Time of Crisis., edited by Sara R. Farris, 163–92. IIRE and Haymarket Books. http://www.kra.nl/Website/ArtkelenSP/wewt-soc12a.pdf
———. 2020. “Socialist Strategies and the Role of Science.” Stichting Socialistisch Onderzoekscollectief. https://soc21.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Intro1-v5a-What-is-this-work-about-kort.pdf.
Kojevnikov, Alexei. 1999. “Freedom, Collectivism, and Quasiparticles: Social Metaphors in Quantum Physics.” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 29(2): 295–331.
———. 2002. “David Bohm and Collective Movement.” Historical Studies in the Physical & Biological Sciences 33(1): 161–92.
Kraak, Menno-Jan, and Ferjan Ormeling. 1998. Cartography: Visualization of Spatial Data. Reprinted. Harlow: Longman.
Krätke, Michael. 2020. “Friedrich Engels, Der Erste Marxist.” In Friedrich Engels Oder: Wie Ein ‘cotton-lord’ den Marxismus erfand., editd by Michael Krätke, 6–68. Verlag Dietz-Berlin.
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, George, and Rafael E. Núñez. 2000. Where Mathematics Comes from—How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. Basic Books.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilʹich. 1968. “Materialism and Empirio-Criticim; Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy.” In V.I. Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 14. 14:17–388. V.I. Lenin Collected Works. Progress Publishers Moscow.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilʹich. 1974. “Kommunismus Journal of the Communist International for the Countries of South-Eastern Europe (in German), Vienna, No. 1–2 (February 1, 1920) to No. 18 (May 8, 1920).” In V.I. Lenin Collected Works, 31:165–167. Progress Publishers Moscow.
Levine, Norman. 1975. The Tragic Deception: Marx Contra Engels. Twentieth Century Series 8. Oxford: Clio Books.
Luxemburg, Rosa. 1915. “The Junius Pamphlet,;The Crisis of German Social Democracy.” April 1915. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/.
Marx, Karl. 1974. Mathematische Manuskripte. Edited by Wolfgang Endemann. Scriptor Taschenbücher : Sozialwissenschaften ; S 10. Kronberg Ts: Scriptor.
———. 1976a. Capital Vol 1. 1867-1886. Translated by Ben Fowles. Penguin Books Ltd.
———. 1976b. “Theses on Feuerbach.” In Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 5. New York: International Publishers.
———. 1982. Die technologisch-historischen exzerpte: historisch-kritische ausgabe. Edited by Hans-Peter Müller. Originalausg. Ullstein-Buch Ullstein-Materialien. Frankfurt/M.: Ullstein.
———. 1983. Mathematical Manuscripts of Karl Marx. Edited by Sofya A. Yanavskaya and Ernst Arnost Kolman. New Park Publications.
———. 1985. Les manuscrits mathématiques de Marx. Edited by Alain Alcouffe. Paris: Économica.
———. 1994. Karl Marx Mathematical Manuscripts: Together with a Special Supplement. Edited by Pradip Baksi. Calcutta: Viswakos Parisad.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1999. Naturwissenschaftliche exzerpte und notizen, Mitte 1877 bis anfang 1883: Apparat. Edited by Anneliese Griese, Friederun Fessen, Gerd Pawelzig, and Peter Jäckel. Gesamtausgabe Exzerpte, Notizen, Marginalien, MEGA ; 31.[2] 4. Berlin: Dietz.
Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Ilʹich Lenin. 1967. K. Marx, F. Engels, VI Lenin: On Scientific Communism. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Mirowski, Philip. 1991. More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature’s Economics. Cambridge University Press.
Muller, Karl. 2004. “Zur Entstehung Und Wirkung von Engels ‘Anti-Dühring’.” Trend Onlinezeitung 09–04. http://www.trend.infopartisan.net/trd0904/t010904.html.
Novack, George Edward. 1975. Pragmatism versus Marxism: An Appraisal of John Dewey’s Philosophy. New York, NY.: Pathfinder.
Pagel, Mark. Wired for Culture, The Natural History of Human Cooperation. Penguin Books Ltd., 2012.
Pais, A. 1979. “Einstein and the Quantum Theory.” Rev. Mod. Phys. 51(4): 863–914.
Potier, Simon, Margaux Lieuvin, Michael Pfaff, and Almut Kelber. 2020. “How Fast Can Raptors See?” The Journal of Experimental Biology 223(1): jeb209031. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.209031.
Prescott, Tony J., Nathan Lepora, and Paul F.M.J Verschure, eds. 2018. Living Machines: A Handbook of Research in Biomimetics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Renn, Jürgen. 2020. The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene. Princeton University Press.
Saito, Kohei. 2017. Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism. Monthly Review Press.
Schemmel, Matthias. 2016. Historical Epistemology of Space: From Primate Cognition to Spacetime Physics. 1st ed. 2016. SpringerBriefs in History of Science and Technology. Cham: Springer International Publishing: Imprint: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25241-4.
Timpanaro, Sebastiano. 1975a. “Engels, Materialism and ‘Free Will’.” In On Materialism, 73–134. London: New Left Books.
———. 1975b. “Praxis and Materialism.” In On Materialism, 55–72. London: New Left Books.
Turkel, William J. 2013. Spark from the Deep: How Shocking Experiments with Strongly Electric Fish Powered Scientific Discovery. (Animals, History, Culture). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Van Heijenoort, Jean. 1985. “Friedrich Engels and Mathematics.” In Selected Essays, 123–151. Napoli: Bibiopolis. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/heijen/1948/xx/math.htm
Wigner, Eugene P. 1960. “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.” Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13(1): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpa.3160130102.