Dialectics of Nature
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Dialectics of Nature, by Friedrich Engels (1883), is an unfinished work which applies Marxist ideas to science.
Dialectics and its study was derived from Hegel who had studied the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Heraclitus taught that everything was constantly changing and that all things consisted of two opposite elements which changed into each other as night changes into day, light into darkness, life into death etc.
Engels's work follows on from what Engels had said about science in Anti-Dühring. It includes the famous The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, which has also been published separately as a pamphlet. Engels argues that the hand and brain grew together - an idea supported by later fossil discoveries, though it seems the foot came first. (See Australopithecus afarensis: Bipedalism.)
Most of the work is fragmentary, but it has points of interest. In biology, he says:
Vertebrates. Their essential character: the grouping of the whole body about the nervous system. Thereby the development of self-consciousness, etc. becomes possible. In all other animals the nervous system is a secondari affair, here it is the basis of the whole organisation.
– p 309, Progress Publishers edition of 1972)
[edit] External links
- Full text on-line . Also available as pdf
- Michael Kosok, Essay on Dialectics of Nature
- Dialectics and Chaos
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