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
Lately the conception of natural selection has been broadened, by
Haeckel, in particular, and the variation of species has been shown to
be the result of actual change owing to adaptation and inheritance,
whereby adaptation is considered as the source of variations and
heredity as the conserving element in the process. Even this is not
correct in Herr Duehring's eyes. "Peculiar adaptation to the
circumstances of life as they are offered or withheld by nature
supposes impulses and facts which answer to the conception. Hence
adaptation is only apparent and actual causality does not elevate
itself above the lowest steps of physical, chemical and plant
physiology." It is again the name which provokes Herr Duehring. But
how does he deal with the matter? The question is if such changes do
take place in the species of organic beings or not. And again Herr
Duehring has no reply.
"If a plant in the course of its growth takes a direction by which it
gets the most light the result is nothing but a combination of
physical forces and chemical agents, and if we are to call it an
adaptation, not metaphorically but strictly, confusion is certain to
arise in the motion." This man is so exacting with other people
because he is quite well acquainted with the intentions of nature and
speaks of the subtlety of nature, even of its will. There is
confusion, indeed, but with whom, with Haeckel or with Herr Duehring?
And the confusion is not only spiritual but logical. We have seen that
Herr Duehring put forth all his efforts to make the purpose idea in
nature real. "The relation of means and end does not by any means show
a conscious intention." But what is adaptation without conscious
intention, without any intrusion of design of which he complains so
loudly, but an unconscious teleology?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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