''Dialectics of Nature'' () is an unfinished 1883 work by

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.Marxist ideas – particularly those of

dialectical materialism Dialectical materialism is a materialist theory based upon the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that has found widespread applications in a variety of philosophical disciplines ranging from philosophy of history to philosophy of scien ...

– to nature.

History and contents

Engels wrote most of the manuscript between 1872 and 1882, which was a melange of German, French and English notations on the contemporary development of science and technology; however, it was not published within his lifetime. In later times,

Eduard Bernstein Eduard Bernstein (; 6 January 1850 – 18 December 1932) was a German Marxist theorist and politician. A prominent member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), he has been both condemned and praised as a "Revisionism (Marxism), revisi ...

passed the manuscripts to

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

, who thought the science confused (particularly the

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

and

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

) but the overall work worthy of a broader readership. After that in 1925, the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

published the manuscripts (a bilingual German/Russian edition). The biologist J. B. S. Haldane wrote a preface for the work in 1939, "Hence it is often hard to follow if one does not know the history of the scientific practice of that time. The idea of what is now called the

conservation of energy The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be Conservation law, ''conserved'' over time. In the case of a Closed system#In thermodynamics, closed system, the principle s ...

was beginning to permeate

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

geoscience Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth's four spheres ...

, and

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

, but it was still very incompletely realised, and still more incompletely applied. Words such as 'force', 'motion', and 'vis viva' were used where we should now speak of energy". Some then controversial topics of Engels' day, pertaining to incomplete or faulty theories, are now settled, making some of Engels' essays dated. "Their interest lies not so much in their detailed criticism of theories, but in showing how Engels grappled with intellectual problems". One "law" proposed in the ''Dialectics of Nature'' is the "law of the transformation of quantity into quality and ''vice versa''". Probably the most commonly cited example of this is the change of water from a liquid to a gas, by increasing its temperature (although Engels also describes other examples from chemistry). In contemporary science, this process is known as a

phase transition In physics, chemistry, and other related fields like biology, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic Sta ...

. There has also been an effort to apply this mechanism to social phenomena, whereby increases in population result in changes in social structure.Carneiro, R.L. (2000).
The transition from quantity to quality: A neglected causal mechanism in accounting for social evolution
''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'', Vol. 97, No. 23, pp. 12926–12931. Dialectics and its study was derived from the philosopher and author of '' Science of Logic'',

G. W. F. Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...

, who, in turn, had studied the Greek philosopher

Heraclitus Heraclitus (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Achaemenid Empire, Persian Empire. He exerts a wide influence on Western philosophy, ...

. 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 develops from the comments he had made about science in '' Anti-Dühring''. It includes the famous "

The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man "The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man" (German: "Anteil der Arbeit an der Menschwerdung des Affen") is an unfinished essay written by Friedrich Engels in the spring of 1876 and first published in 1896. The essay forms the nin ...

", 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 (see

Australopithecus afarensis ''Australopithecus afarensis'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived from about 3.9–2.9 million years ago (mya) in the Pliocene of East Africa. The first fossils were discovered in the 1930s, but major fossil finds would not ta ...

). Most of the work is fragmentary and in the form of rough notes, as shown in this quotation from the section entitled "Biology":

Notes and references

External links

Full text on-line

''Dialectics of Nature''

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of edition published by

Progress Publishers Progress Publishers was a Moscow-based Soviet Union, Soviet publisher founded in 1931. Publishing program Progress Publishers published books in a variety of languages: Russian, English, and many other European and Asian languages. They issued ma ...

. {{Authority control Marxist books Books by Friedrich Engels Dialectical materialism 1880s non-fiction books Unfinished books

History and contents

See also

Notes and references

External links