Landmarks of Scientific Socialism: "Anti-Duehring"Engels, Friedrich
Philosophy
Landmarks of Scientific Socialism: "Anti-Duehring"
Engels, Friedrich
Dialectical materialism; Dühring, E. (Eugen), 1833-1921; Economics; Philosophy; Socialism
As soon as conditions are at an end under which the molecules can
exercise this relative freedom with regard to each other as soon
namely as the temperature falls below one hundred degrees to zero,
this elasticity becomes released and the molecules come together with
the same force with which they formerly flew apart, but only to
appear again as heat, as exactly the same quantity of heat as was
latent before. This explanation is of course a hypothesis, as is the
whole mechanical theory of heat, in so far as no one has yet seen a
molecule, much less a molecule in motion. Like all recent theories,
this hypothesis is full of flaws but it can at least offer an
explanation which does not conflict with the uncreatability and
indestructibility of motion and it is able to give an account of the
whereabouts of the heat in the transformation. Latent heat is
therefore by no means an obstacle in the way of the mechanical theory
of heat. On the contrary this theory for the first time provides a
rational explanation of the subject and an obstacle arises from the
fact in particular that the physicists make use of the old and
ineffective expression "latent heat" to signify the heat transformed
into some other shape by molecular energy.
The static conditions of the solid, liquid and gaseous states
therefore represent mechanical work in so far as mechanical work is a
measure of heat. Thus the solid crust of the earth, like the water of
the ocean, represents in its present form a certain quantity of heat
set free which implies the same quantity of mechanical force. By the
passing of the vaporous state which was the original form of the earth
into the fluid state and later into a condition, for the most part
solid, a certain quantity of molecular energy was set free in space,
the difficulty of which Herr Duehring whispers does not therefore
exist. We are frequently brought to a stop in our cosmic observations
by lack of knowledge, but nowhere by insuperable theoretical
difficulties. The bridge from statics to dynamics is therefore the
push from the outside caused by the cooling or heating occasioned by
other bodies which influence certain objects in equipoise. The
further we explore Herr Duehring's philosophy, the more impossible
appear all his attempts to explain rotation from absence of rotation,
or to discover the bridge by which that which is purely static,
self-contained, can without disturbance come to be the dynamic, in
motion.
We should here be glad to get rid of the whole self-contained
condition business. Herr Duehring, however, goes to chemistry and
gives us three permanent natural laws established by the philosophy of
realism as follows, 1. The constant amount of matter in the universe.
2. The simple chemical elements, and 3. The mechanical forces are
unchangeable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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