[Forms of Motion of Matter, Classification of the Sciences]¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter Digest: Forms of Motion of Matter, Classification of the Sciences¶
This chapter advances a dialectical materialist theory of motion, rejecting the reduction of all natural processes to mechanical change of place. Engels begins by critiquing the one-sided view that gravity and attraction constitute the sole essence of matter. Drawing on Hegel, he insists that attraction and repulsion are inseparable opposites; a true theory of matter must grant repulsion equal status, as evidenced by phenomena such as the ether and comet tails. The transformation of repulsion into attraction—and vice versa—is not mystical but a real, historical process, exemplified by the formation of a solar system from a primordial nebula where attraction gradually prevailed over an originally dominant repulsion.
Engels then attacks the conflation of "materialism" with "mechanism," tracing this error to Hegel’s contemptuous use of "mechanical" against eighteenth-century French materialism. He criticises Haeckel for adopting Hegel’s translation of causae efficientes as "mechanically acting causes" and causae finales as "purposively acting causes," without recognising that Hegel himself considered this antithesis superseded. This leads Haeckel to the absurdity of treating natural selection as a mechanical cause and artificial selection as a final cause, thereby making the breeder a final cause. For the modern standpoint, Engels argues, this antithesis is obsolete: matter and motion are uncreatable and their own final cause; isolating individual "effective causes" adds nothing but confusion.
The chapter further contends that "matter as such" is a pure abstraction, not sensuously existing. Seeking uniform matter by reducing qualitative differences to quantitative ones is akin to demanding to see "fruit as such" rather than specific fruits—a retreat to Pythagorean mathematics. Motion, Engels insists, is change in general, not merely mechanical displacement. Reducing higher forms of motion—such as thought—to molecular and chemical processes in the brain obliterates their specific character.
Finally, Engels outlines a classification of sciences based on the inherent sequence of forms of motion: mechanical motion of masses converts into molecular motion (physics), which converts into atomic motion (chemistry). Chemistry confronts the organic world, where chemical processes occur under the same laws. The dialectical transition to the organic is proved when chemistry produces protein—a self-acting, permanent chemical process. Until then, it remains hypothesis. Physiology is the physics and chemistry of the living body, raised to a higher power.