恩格斯与科学

ENGELS AND SCIENCE

如果恩格斯不是在19世纪的革命斗争中与马克思一直并肩战斗的伙伴,毫无疑问,他将主要作为19世纪最重要的科学哲学家之一而被铭记。恩格斯对科学方面的兴趣很早,科学知识深厚,并以超常的敏锐继续保持着对他那个时代的科学发现的理解,比职业科学家更加开放地接受新思想。作为一个科学史学家,恩格斯是特别杰出的。他和马克思首先理解到科学理论发展与生产方式发展之间的紧密关系。在未完成的《自然辩证法》手稿中,恩格斯首次系统表述了存在于自然界与社会中的辩证法三大规律:质量互变规律、对立面的相互渗透规律和否定之否定规律。从自然界作为整体的辩证过程,恩格斯强调了19世纪具有决定性意义的三个发现:能量转化与守恒定律(包括电磁感应定律所涉及的光与辐射热,电与磁在内的能量形式即自然界运动的统一)、细胞学说和生物进化论及其内在机理。对于宇宙起源、生命起源、人类社会起源和家庭起源这些科学前沿问题,恩格斯梳理了这些问题中的每一个,并且对每个问题他都做出了有价值的贡献~①。

If Engels had not been the constant companion in arms of Marx in the revolutionary struggles of the 19 th century, there is no doubt that he would be remembered chiefly as one of the foremost scientist-philosophers of the century. Engels’ interest in and knowledge of science was deep and early. Engels kept up with understanding his interest in the scientific discoveries of his times and was more open to accepting new ideas than were the professional scientists. As a historian of science Engels is particularly distinguished. He was the first to understand with Marx the close relation between the development of scientific theory and of productive methods. In the unfinished manuscript of Dialectics of Nature, Engels systematically stated for the first time the three laws of dialectics that exist in nature and society:the transformation of quantity into quality, the interpenetration of opposites and the negation of negation. Taking the Dialectical Process from Nature as a Whole,he lays stress on three discoveries of decisive importance in the 19 th century:Law of Energy Conversion and Conservation(including the light and radiant heat involved in the law of electromagnetic induction, and energy forms including electricity and magnetism, i.e. the unity of natural movement), cell theory and biological evolution and its internal mechanisms. As for the scientific frontiers of the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of human society, and the origin of the family, each one of these questions was treated by Engels, and to each one he had valuable contributions to make.