[The international journal ‘Marxism and Sciences’ organized the 2nd International Symposium on “Philosophy and Sciences: Towards an International Critical Knowledge Network”, from 1 to 6 September 2025. The venue was in a small village called Hypha in the mountainous Transylvania region of Romania. The participants came from Germany, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Turkey, and the USA. Some were political activists in their respective countries, while some were Marxist philosophers involved in academia. The meeting had threadbare discussions on various aspects of dialectical materialism, historiography of science, and Marxist analysis of various problems in modern society. Comrade S Banerjee, a member of the West Bengal State Committee of SUCI(C), being the only participant from India, delivered the following speech.]
Dialectical Materialism as the Basis of the Scientific Method
With the dismantling of the socialist camp and the establishment of capitalist hegemony over the world, there is a campaign that Marxism has failed. The philosophical foundation of Marxism, dialectical materialism, has come under attack. It is being painted as ‘out of fashion’, ‘outdated’, and a matter of academic-historical interest only. However, science continues to function with this philosophical foundation. Science discovers the truth about the material world and tries to develop theories to understand and explain how nature functions. In science, any idea is accepted only if it is objectively tested observation and through experiment. However, scientists’ mindsets and philosophical views are also significant factors in interpreting the observations and experiments. In the history of science, many eminent scientists and their respective schools of thought have inadvertently obstructed important discoveries due to their beliefs and philosophical tenets. Therefore, it is difficult for science to advance without a sound philosophical outlook.
Dialectical materialism, which developed based on science, provides that philosophical outlook, even though most scientists may not be aware of that fact. Many believe dialectical materialism is just a collection of ‘three principles’. However, before the advent of dialectical materialism, mechanical materialism and the metaphysical way of thinking were predominant, and in developing dialectical materialism, Marx and Engels analysed the weaknesses of these approaches critically and created an alternative worldview to guide scientific pursuit. Lenin further consolidated the position of dialectical materialism by clearing the cloud of confusion created by positivism.
Dialectical approach vis-à-vis metaphysics and mechanical materialism Of the two major schools of philosophy—materialism and idealism—science firmly takes the side of materialism against idealism. Science starts with the premise that the world exists independently of our consciousness. Scientists simply cannot work with the assumption that their subjects of investigation do not have any objective existence or that these are formed in the image of some primordial idea. The metaphysical approach would study things assuming their characters as given, fixed, and stable, without any change or development. Metaphysics advocated studying ‘things as they are’. It assumed some inherent quality of every material entity without reference to its conditions of existence. Metaphysics presupposes that each thing has its own fixed nature and properties, and considers each thing by itself as isolated from all other things. Dialectical materialism asserted that the world is not a collection of ready-made things with fixed properties. Everything in the material world is going through change and evolution. Moreover, things are continuously coming into being and going out of being. Therefore, the task of science should be to study matter in its change and development, to understand how things come into being and go out of being. It emphasized that science should direct its attention not only to the study of things, but even more to the study of processes. We should not view the material world as a complex of things; we should view it as a complex of processes in which things continuously change, come into being and go out of being. The dialectical worldview taught that things are connected with, dependent on, and determined by each other. It insisted that science should not study things in isolation; rather, it should study things in their interconnections and interactions. Science should not abstract properties of things divorced from their conditions of existence. Rather, it should study how the properties of things change as the conditions of existence change. In the post Newtonian period, the viewpoint of mechanical materialism was prevalent, which viewed the world as a gigantic machine, each component working according to fixed laws. Any piece of machinery keeps on working in the same way throughout its life, eternally repeating the same cycle of mechanical processes. So, the mechanical materialists looked for something that did not change, something that was permanent, within the observed processes. They took it that the material world is basically unchanging and that mechanistic laws govern all changes we see. Mechanical materialism viewed changes in the material world as mere repetitive cycles of the same process. Engels observed in the introduction to his Dialectics of Nature, “But what especially characterizes this period is the elaboration of a peculiar general outlook, in which the central point is the view of the absolute immutability of nature.” Mechanical materialism saw the world as composed of hard, impenetrable particles and believed that all phenomena in nature can be explained in terms of the external forces acting on these particles and their motions. The main problem was that mechanical materialism treated matter as inert mass, to which motion had to be imparted from outside. The developments in science in the nineteenth century showed that all forms of energy are nothing but matter in motion. When one form of energy is transformed into another, one form of motion is transformed into another. But motion always remains. Nothing can be at rest. Based on these observations, dialectical materialism forwarded the idea that matter cannot exist without motion, and motion is meaningless without reference to matter. “There is nothing in the world but matter in motion”, said Lenin, “and matter in motion cannot move otherwise than in space and time.” Hence, the correct understanding is to say that motion is the mode of existence of matter.
It was also realized that all changes cannot be understood in terms of interactions among separate units entering into external relations with other things. If this were true, it follows that the whole of a body is nothing but the sum of the parts. Various scientific developments (e.g., cell theory) had already shown the futility of such a position. Dialectical materialism showed that, at a particular level of aggregation and interaction of the constituent parts, a particular new characteristic can emerge. The properties and laws of development of the whole cannot be fully understood by simply breaking things apart and studying the properties of their parts. It thus countered the effects of reductionism.
The Three Principles and Their Applications in Science
As the focus of science shifted to studying matter in its change and development, Marx and Engels showed what the guiding principles of such study should be. When investigating the change and development of any physical entity, one faces the following questions.
- Why do changes occur? Dialectical materialism showed that there are opposing forces or tendencies in any entity, and unity and contradictions between these are the basic cause of any change.
- How do changes occur? Dialectical materialism showed that there are two types of changes: quantitative and qualitative. While undergoing a quantitative change, a nodal point may be reached when the entity undergoes a qualitative transformation.
- What results from a qualitative change? Dialectical materialism showed that a qualitative change results in negating its earlier form and the birth of a new one. Doesn’t modern science follow these guiding principles? It does. Even though the three principles of dialectics have been thoroughly confirmed in the light of modern science, scientific literature generally uses a different language, which makes the role of the dialectical tenets not apparent to scientists. For example, scientific literature does not talk in terms of contradictions. But whenever a scientist writes an equation on the balance of forces in a mechanical system, he applies the unity of opposites unknowingly. Our task is to impress upon the scientist that he should do that knowingly.
In the domain of mechanics, Newtonian mechanics in particular, one talks about the mechanical status of a system, quantified by the positions and velocities of all the interacting bodies. When one talks about the rotation of the moon around the Earth, the state of the system is given by the position and momentum of the Earth and the moon, and the equation is written in terms of the gravitational attraction between the two bodies and the centrifugal force, which act in opposing directions. These two forces thus embody the mechanical contradiction present in that system. In any system, the change of state is predicted using equations that actually utilise the balance of opposing tendencies. Therefore, such equations assume the unity of opposites.
Furthermore, dialectics teaches that the struggle between opposites is the prime cause of change and development of any phenomenon. Internal contradictions are the driving force of all change, and external contradictions, though very important and sometimes decisive, can act only through the internal contradictions. The phenomenon of stellar evolution elegantly illustrates this. When scientists study the evolution of a star like the sun, they actually study the internal contradictions. The gravity of the star acts inward and tries to shrink its body. The thermonuclear reaction occurring at the star’s core produces a great amount of heat. The heat causes high pressure, pushing the star’s material outward. The stability of the star is determined by the balance of the two opposing tendencies. Scientists study exactly this, which is nothing but the unity of opposites.
The principle of ‘quantitative change to qualitative change and vice versa’ was inspired by the developments in biology and sociology, and the understanding of physical systems where a change in the state of matter takes place (like ice turning into water). Newtonian mechanics, as such, does not talk about quantitative and qualitative changes. Only over the past fifty years has it been understood that there can also be fundamental and qualitative changes in the state of a system and the state of its motion. A qualitative change in the state of a system is studied in physics under the heading ‘phase transition and critical phenomena’. Examples of such qualitative transformations are the onset of superconductivity, Bose-Einstein magnetisation, superfluidity, condensate, etc. Qualitative changes in the state of motion (like a change from periodic to aperiodic motion) are called ‘bifurcations’. The universal applicability of the dialectical principles has again been vindicated in these areas.
The ‘vice-versa’ part is usually seen as the succession of quantitative and qualitative changes in a time sequence. In this view, the process of quantitative change in a system reaches a tipping point, leading to a qualitative change. A new entity is born, negating its earlier entity. But the process of material evolution does not stop there. The new entity starts a new process of quantitative change, which will result in another qualitative change, and the process will continue. In his Dialectics of Nature, Engels gave examples of vice versa, such as the change of heat energy into mechanical motion and the change of mechanical motion again to heat energy.
Shibdas Ghosh, an eminent Marxist thinker from India, enriched the concept by showing that both the ‘quantitative change to qualitative change’ and its ‘vice versa’ parts operate together in the process of change of any entity. According to him, a process of quantitative change has innumerable qualitative changes within it. Every entity is composed of certain ‘building blocks’. For a glass of water, the building blocks are the water molecules; for a biological species, the building blocks are the individual organisms of that species; for a society, the building blocks are the individual humans. When the entity undergoes small quantitative changes, some of its building blocks undergo qualitative changes. When the temperature of a glass of water increases (a quantitative change), some water molecules vaporise (qualitative change). capitalist quantitative society change, When a undergoes individual human beings undergo qualitative change and become revolutionaries, ultimately leading to a qualitative transformation of the whole society. Thus, quantitative and qualitative change are inseparable and occur concurrently, not one after the other. Two critical concepts in science are probability and determinism. Many believe that these are mutually exclusive concepts: If something is deterministic, there is no role for probability, and if something is probabilistic, it violates determinism. This position led to much confusion regarding some modern scientific developments, including quantum mechanics.
In the quantum world, the motion of particles is governed by probability. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that a micro-particle’s position and momentum (mass times velocity) cannot be simultaneously determined with infinite accuracy. The more precisely the position of a particle is determined, the less precisely can its momentum be determined and vice versa. A mathematical inequality expresses the relation. This is not a limitation of our instruments or observational techniques. It is a law of nature: if a particle’s momentum has a definite value, its position does not have a definite value. It can be in any position (within a range), and the probabilities of its being in different positions can be determined. Some scientists and philosophers have construed this as signifying that causality and determinism do not operate in the quantum world. However, it is not as if the motion is anarchic or wild, not following any law. The motion of microparticles is completely law governed, determined by the law of probability. In a quantum system, probabilities evolve deterministically, through a law-governed process. It would be wrong to say that the operation of the law of probability in the quantum world falsifies determinism. “The prevalent conception of determinism suffered from a mechanical bias”, Shibdas Ghosh said, “Strictly, this conception of determinism was overshadowed by pre-determinism. It induced many people to reckon determinism as meaning fatalism. I hold, therefore, that it is not true that the concept of probability in modern science, as in the instance of the Uncertainty Principle, or for the many other issues concerning the microparticle, has undermined determinism or done away with causality. The correct understanding is that this law of probability has freed determinism from the preconception of pre determinism to set it up on a stronger foundation.” In the chapter on ‘Chance and Necessity’ in Dialectics of Nature, Engels also pointed to the issue of pre determinism in the mechanical materialist approach.
Example: Darwinian Evolution in the Light of Modern Genetics
To illustrate how modern science adopts the dialectical method, let us consider the process of biological evolution as propounded by Darwin subsequently and through enriched the development of genetics. The issue has two aspects: the individual organism and the whole species to which it belongs. Each individual organism is in constant contradiction with the environment. The makeup of the organism is largely given by what is known as the ‘genetic code’, subject to the limits imposed by its food intake and other environmental factors. Without going into the details, it can be said that in order for an embryo to develop into a horse or a fish, the information about the physiological structure of the animal must be available in the first cell. It has been found that this information is contained in a certain molecule, called DNA, that is found in the nucleus of every cell. The various parts of the DNA — the information-containing units — are called genes. The information comes from parts of the DNA molecules in the mother’s and the father’s sex cells.
In a population of a certain species, the DNA molecule of every individual is not the same. Though grossly similar (so that two crows or two donkeys have many common features that enable us to categorise them as crows or donkeys), there are some finer differences in the molecules that can be discerned with modern gadgets. This is what gives them the variation that Darwin talked about. New variations come about when, in the process of copying the DNA in reproductive cells, some errors occur. Such events, called ‘mutations’, are quite common in the biological world.
All the organisms of a given species are in contradiction with the environment, and the variation caused by minute differences in their genetic code gives them unequal survival probabilities. The ones that survive to reach maturity can transmit their genetic code to their offspring. Thus, natural selection favours certain genes while weeding out the genes that are unfavourable for the survival of the organisms. This is what causes gradual and quantitative changes in the population. In modern terms, the relative frequency of competing genes changes with time.
Qualitative changes may occur when a new gene that significantly impacts the physiological organization enters the species. A mutation first occurs in a single individual. If it confers a survival advantage, the individual is more likely to reach maturity and pass the new, mutated gene to its offspring. Should carriers of this gene have a higher survival probability than non carriers, the gene will spread rapidly through the population. Within just a few generations, it may be present in every individual. If one looks at the species as a whole, one sees that the characteristics of the population have changed, and it is now a qualitatively new species. This is how quantitative change in the relative gene frequency leads to a qualitative change in the species.
However, if we examine individual members of the species, we find that some undergo the qualitative change well before the species as a whole can be said to have changed qualitatively. The qualitative change in the individual organism (who has inherited the new gene) leads to a quantitative change as far as the species is concerned. This is how the ‘qualitative change to the quantitative change’ part operates.
The modern understanding of the process of biological evolution has made it clear that probability does not oppose causality. The lack of understanding of this issue made some communists oppose genetics in its early days. Now we understand that even though new variations appear through mutations that are random in nature, whether or not that variation will survive, whether or not it will have any impact on the subsequent evolution of the species—are all completely causally governed—because natural selection gives specific survival probability to specific variations.
The development of modern genetics has explained the issues that were unresolved for a long time. It has re-established the proposition that the basic cause of any change is internal. It has redefined the role played by external contradiction. In the early days of the development of genetics, the Darwinian theory’s causal nature was unclear. That has also been clarified now.
Conclusion
The main point is that science continues to operate following the path shown by dialectical materialism, though scientists may not be aware of it. Therefore, our task is to highlight this aspect to bring dialectical materialism back to the centre stage of scientific discourses.
We should take note of the enrichment of the concepts of dialectical materialism done by later Marxist philosophers to create a coherent body of knowledge and methodological outlook. If we are convinced that this philosophical outlook helps in understanding and assimilating the various developments in science in the modern age, we should resist the tendencies to ‘revise’ dialectical materialism in the name of post modernism, empirio-monism, new materialism, post-humanism, etc.
At the same time, Marxists worldwide should take critical note of the conceptual developments in various branches of modern science. Historically, the philosophy of dialectical materialism developed based on the developments in science, and so efforts to enrich it further should continue as science develops further.
