6. Cosmogony, Physics, Chemistry¶
Core Argument¶
In this chapter, Engels subjects Dühring’s cosmological and physical speculations to a withering critique. The central argument is that Dühring, in attempting to refute the Kantian theory of celestial evolution, regresses to a metaphysical and ultimately theological conception of matter. Kant’s hypothesis, that celestial bodies formed from rotating nebular masses, is hailed as the greatest advance in astronomy since Copernicus, for it first challenged the view that nature had no history. Dühring accepts a nebular stage but insists upon a mechanical system for it which science cannot yet provide. He distinguishes his view from Kant’s by denying that the nebular mass coincides with a “self-equal state of matter”. Instead, Dühring posits a primordial “world medium” as the unity of matter and mechanical force, a “logical-real formula” for a static state preceding evolution. Engels dismisses this as a weak attempt to apply Hegel’s categories of “in itself” and “for itself”.
The core of Engels’s polemic is the dialectical materialist principle that motion is the mode of existence of matter; matter without motion is inconceivable. All rest is relative. A motionless state of matter is a nonsensical “delirious fantasy”. Dühring’s conception of a “loaded” static state implies an external trigger, leading back to God. The mechanical theory of heat explains “tied-up” (latent) heat as heat transformed into molecular tension, not a stumbling-block. The bridge from static to dynamic in mechanics is simply an external impulse. Engels argues that the self-equal states and conditions of rest in solid, liquid, and gaseous aggregation represent mechanical work, as mechanical work is the measure of heat. The Earth’s solid crust and ocean, in their present aggregate states, embody a definite quantity of heat set free. During the Earth’s development from a gaseous ball, a definite quantity of molecular energy was radiated as heat into space. Dühring’s difficulty therefore does not exist; cosmic application of the theory encounters only gaps due to imperfect knowledge, not theoretically insuperable obstacles.
Engels then turns to Dühring’s three “laws of nature’s inertness”: the constancy of the quantity of all matter, of simple chemical elements, and of mechanical force. These are merely old facts—the uncreatability and indestructibility of matter and motion—expressed inadequately and relabelled as “schematic properties of the system of things”. With characteristic sarcasm, Engels notes that Dühring asserts the amount of gold in the universe has always been the same, but does not state what can be bought with it.