We have already discussed how the fundamental question of philosophy did arise. But development of philosophy presupposes a situation in which a section of population is freed from necessary labour and has enough time to devote on art, science and philosophy etc. In the later part of primitive communism, with the invention of new means of production (copper etc.) and simultaneous division of labour, extension of exchange etc., production greatly developed and now the human labour power could produce more than was necessary for its maintenance. The means of maintaining additional units of labour power were present, likewise the means of employing them. Prisoners of war, who earlier were simply killed or adopted to the victor tribe, were allowed now to live as slaves and their labour was made use of. Thus the slavery was invented and it soon became the dominant mode of production in all such societies. Consequently a special class freed from actual labour come into being. “Without slavery no Greek state, no Greek art and science. We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development presupposes a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognised.” (Engels: Anti-Duhring)
Thus philosophy in various forms took shape only in the era of slavery in Greece, Iran, India, China etc. Here we will discuss Greek philosophy only because as Engels said : “The manifold forms of Greek philosophy contain in embryo, in the nascent state, almost all later modes of outlook on the world.” Greek philosophy is the first historical form of dialectical philosophy in which dialectics appears in its primitive, naive form. Since at that time (700 B.C. to 300 B.C), Greeks were not yet advanced enough to dissect, analyse nature; nature is still viewed as a whole, in general. For example, when we reflect on nature or history of mankind or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless maze of connections and interactions, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. The primitive, naive but correct conception of world was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: “Everything is and also not, for everything is in flux, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.” Aristotle, another great Greek philosopher, had already investigated the most essential forms of dialectical thought. He is considered to be the father of logic and he made important contributions to all branches of knowledge.
Among Greek philosophers, there were both materialists and idealists; but here we are not going to discuss all the streams in Greek philosophy. We will confine our study to deal with the positive aspect of dialectical thought in Greek philosophy, and also with its drawbacks which enabled metaphysics to replace it.
Greek philosophy correctly presented the general description of Nature as a whole but it was not capable of analysing its individual component parts. To know these parts, it is necessary to detach them from their natural or historical connections and study every characteristic, action-reaction separately. This task should be accomplished by natural science and history. But Greeks lacked the necessary resources to accomplish these task. Herein lies the inadequacy of Greek philosophy, on account of which it had to yield later to other models of outlook on the world.
The beginning of the exact natural sciences were worked out first by the Greeks of Alexanderian Era (3rd century BC to 7th century AD) This era witnessed the rapid advance of mathematics (Euclid), mechanics (Archimedes), astronomy, anatomy, physiology, geography and other sciences. Later on, in the Middle Ages, it was further developed by the Arabs. Genuine natural science dates from the second half of the fifteenth country, and from then on during the last five hundred years it has advanced with ever-increasing rapidity.
But what was the basis of this development? The analysis of nature into its component individual parts, the division of the different natural processes and objects into definite classes, the study of the anatomy of organic bodies in their manifold forms—these were the fundamental conditions for the gigantic studies in our knowledge of nature. But this bequeathed the habit of observing natural objects and process in isolation, detached from general context; of observing them not in their motion but in their state of rest; not in their life, but in their death. And it begot the metaphysical way of thinking.
In the 16th century, English philosopher Bacon and in 17th century another English philosopher Locke transfered this metaphysical outlook from natural science to philosophy which occupied a prominent place uptill the end of 19th century (i.e. upto the period of Marx).
During 1000 years of Middle Ages in Europe religion had forced philosophy to lie in deep slumber. This period began with the murder of Hibatia (a famous woman mathematician of Alexanderia, Egypt, 415 AD), burning of libraries and banning the study of philosophy under statutory orders by Roman Empire. And this period ended with the advent of Renaissance (later half of fifteenth century) in Europe. Royalty, with the help of burghers of the towns broke the power of the feudal nobility and established the great monarchies, based essentially on nationality, within which the modern European states and modern bourgeois society came to development. And while the burghers and nobility were still fighting with one another, the German Peasent War pointed prophetically to the future class struggles, by bringing onto the stage not only the peasants in revolt, but behind them the beginnings of the modern proletariat with the red flag in their hands and the demand for common ownership of goods on their lips.
Italy rose to an undreamt flowing of art. In Italy, France and Germany a new literature arose. Shortly afterwards came the classical epoch of English and Spanish literature. Basis was led for world trade and transition from handicraft to manufacture which in its turn formed the starting point for modern industry. The dictatorship of Church over men’s mind was shattered. Among the Latins a cheerful spirit of free thought, taken over from the Arabs and nourished by the newly discovered Greek philosophy—in the manuscripts saved from the fall of Byzantium—took root more and more which prepared the way for the materialism of the eighteenth century. It was the greatest progressive revolution that the mankind had so far experienced. It gave birth to great personages who can be regarded as founders of the modern rule of the bourgeoisie, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Luther etc.
Natural science had to win in struggle its right of existence and it provided its martyrs in the revolution. Servetes and Giordano Bruno were burnt alive by the Inquisition (the Church court, which suppressed free investigation of nature as infidelity). But in spite of these persecutions, natural sciences continued to forge ahead. With the publication of the immortal work Copernicus (regarding solar system), natural science declared its independence from theology.
Antiquity had bequeathed Euclid and Ptolemic solar system, the Arabs had left behind the decimal notion, the beginnings of Algebra, the modern numerals and alchemy; the Chrstian Middle Ages nothing at all. In most fields a start had to be made from the very beginning. Of necessity, in this situation the most fundamental natural science, the mechanics of terrestrial and heavenly bodies, occupies first place. In this era Newton played a specific role in developing these branches of science and Descartes, Napier and Leibnietz made important contributions in mathematics. Kepler discovered the laws of planetary movement. Linnaeus made valuable discoveries in spheres of botany any zoology.
But this period is charaterized by a peculiar general outlook, the central point of which is the view of the absolute immutability of nature. In whatever way nature itself might have come into being, once present, it remained as it was as long as it continued to exist. That the planets and their sattelites were once set in motion by the mysterious “first impulse” and then they circled on and on. So “the five continents” of the present day had always existed, the species of plants and animals had been established once and for all and so and so. All changes, all developments in nature, were denied. Natural science, so revolutionary at the outset, suddenly found itself confronted by an out-and-out conservative nature. This was mechanical materialism which explained every change as change of place and accepted only quantitative changes.
In 1755, Kant, a German philosopher, launched first attack on this pertified outlook on nature. His “Nabular Hypothesis” shattered to pieces the theory of first impulse “The earth and the whole solar system appeared as something that had come into being in the course of time. Side by side, geology arose and pointed out not only the terrestrial strata formed one after another and deposited one after another, but also the shells and skeletons of extinct animals and the trunks, leaves and fruits of no longer existing plants contained in these strata. The decision had to be taken that not only the earth as a whole but also its present surface and the plants and animals living on it possessed a history in time.
Metaphysics, whose appearance was inevitable because of the particular stage of development of natural science, did play a positive role at a certain period. Considering the things in static and isolated fashion did facilitate their study to an extent. However, with the development of natural science, mentioned above, metaphysical outlook got serious blows. But due to the power of tradition, metaphysics continued to rule for some time. This can only be explained by the division of labour that had in the meantime become dominant in natural science, which more on less restricted each person to his specific sphere, there being only a few whom it did not role of a comprehensive view.
Three great discoveries of nineteenth century finally rang the death knoll of metaphysics and enabled our knowledge of the interconnection of natural processes to advance by leaps and bounds.
First, the discovery of cell as the unit of plant and animal. Through the multiplication and differentiation of cell the whole plant and animal body developes. The development and growth of all higher organisms is thus recognised to proceed according to a single general law. And as cell has the capacity of change, it is clear how organisms can change their species.
Second, the transformation of energy. All energies—mechanical, heat, light, electricity, magnetic and chemical—are only different forms of motion and can be transformed to one another.
Third, Darwin’s theory of evolution. All living beings, including human beings, are the result of a long process of evolution from a few originally unicellular germs and that these germs have arisen through a chemical process from protein.
With these three great discoveries, now it was again possible to present nature in its totality, with all its interconnections and always changing component parts. Dialectics dethroned metaphysics from its supreme position.
Thus we again returned to the mode of outlook of the great founders of Greek philosophy. Only with the essential difference that what in the case of Greeks was a brilliant intuition is in our case the result of strictly scientific research in accordance with experience and hence also it emerges in much more definite and clear form. Subsequent modern discoveries of science—discovery of fundamental particles of atom, transformation of matter into energy (an another form of matter), recent theories on formation of universe, genetics, engineering, etc.—further confirm dialectics.
To quote Engels, “The science of thought is therefore like every other, a historical science, the science of the historical development of human thought. And this is of importance for the practical application of thought in empirical fields … …Formal logic itself has been the area of violent controversy from the time of Aristotle to the present day. And dialectics has so far been fairly closely investigated by only two thinkers —Aristotle and Hegel. But It is precisely dialectics that constitutes the most important form of thinking for present day natural sciences, for it alone offers the analogue for, and thereby the method of explaining, the evolutionary processes occurring in nature, interconnections, in general, and transitions from one field of investigation to another.”
(Old preface to Anti-Duhring)
