Chapter 3

Dialectical Materialism

Introduction

Although Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels strictly speaking never used the term,
“dialectical materialism” refers to the philosophy of science and nature developed
in (and on the basis of) their writings, emphasising the pivotal role of real-world
socio-economic conditions (e.g. labour, class struggle, technological developments).1
As indicated by their correspondence (Marx & Engels, 1983), their collaboration
represented a unique intellectual partnership which began in Paris in 1844 and con-
tinued after Marx’s death, when Engels took care of Marx’s legacy, notably the
sprawling mass of manuscripts which he managed to transform into Volume II and
III of Capital. While their joint effort (resulting in no less than 44 volumes of col-
lected writings known as the Marx Engels Werke, published by Dietz Verlag Berlin)
began as co-authorship, they eventually decided on a division of labour (with Marx
focussing on Capital), although reading, reviewing, commenting on and contribut-
ing to each other’s writings remained an important part of their research practice. As
a result of this division of labour, while Marx focussed on political economy, Engels
dedicated himself to elaborating a dialectical materialist philosophy of nature and
the natural sciences, resulting in works such as the Anti-Dühring and his unfinished
Dialectics of Nature (published posthumously), although Engels (a voracious intel-
lectual) wrote and published on may other topics as well, so that his output can be
regarded as a dialectical materialist encyclopaedia in fragments. Again, although I
will start with an exposition of dialectical materialism, my aim is not to contribute
to scholarly discussions on dialectical materialism. My focus is on the how and now,

1
The term “dialectical materialism” was coined by Joseph Dietzgen in Das Wesen der menschli-
chen Kopfarbeit [The nature of human brainwork] as a form of dialectics which allegedly super-
seded Hegel’s version, which had become “reactionary” (Dietzgen, 1869/1961), − Georgi
Plekhanov and Karl Kautsky are often mentioned as early adopters of the term.

© The Author(s) 2022 67

H. Zwart, Continental Philosophy of Technoscience, Philosophy of Engineering
and Technology 38, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84570-4_3
68 3 Dialectical Materialism

and my aim is to explore how to practice dialectical materialism of technoscience

today (cf. Žižek, 2014/2015, p. 1; Hamza, 2016, p. 163).
The precise relationship between Hegel’s dialectics and dialectical materialism
(Marxist dialectics) is a controversial issue. Marx and Engels famously presented
their collaborative oeuvre as an Umstülpung (reversal or inversion) of Hegel’s dia-
lectic. They saw history not as the self-realisation of ideas, but as driven by material
and socio-economic factors, so that consciousness (“Bewusstsein”) is determined
by socio-economics existence (“Sein”). In his Epilogue to Capital (Volume I), Marx
indicates that, for Hegel, thinking functioned as the “demiurge” of reality, so that
the real world was seen as a phenomenological realisation of primal ideas
(1867/1979b, p. 27). His own version of dialectics, Marx argues, entails a demysti-
fication of Hegelian dialectics. Yet, dialectics as such remains the point of departure,
if only because, as Marx phrases it, Hegel’s idealistic inclinations by no means
prevented him from presenting dialectics in a remarkably comprehensive and con-
scious manner (p. 27), giving rise to a philosophy which is inherently critical and
revolutionary, even anticipating bourgeois society’s inevitable negation and decline
(p. 28). Still, dialectical idealism has to be transformed (“umstülpen”, p. 27) into a
more scientific version (dialectical materialism), which sees consciousness (ethical
ideals, religious views, legal norms, etc.) as a psychic translation (p. 27) of material,
socio-economic conditions.
This immense undertaking of reversing Hegelian dialectics into (what later came
to be known as) dialectical materialism, while at the same time bringing dialectics
on a par with contemporary developments during the second half of the nineteenth
century, remained unfinished (notwithstanding the 44 volumes of writing which
Marx and Engels managed to produce). This basically means that dialectical mate-
rialism should not be seen as a complete whole, but as a program for research, i.e.
as an unfinished, organic body of textual materials, awaiting further development
and elaboration by new generations of scholars. This also applies to Hegel’s own
oeuvre, of course, for notwithstanding the fact that Hegel presented his thinking as
an encyclopaedic system, his oeuvre is evidently “work in progress”. Hegel’s death
interrupted an (interminable) process of continuous revisions and expansions.
Thus, the collaborative oeuvre of Marx and Engels is both a continuation and a
subversion of Hegel’s paradigmatic effort, both critical of and dependent on Hegel.
Hegel’s philosophy of history was replaced by “historical materialism”, while
Hegel’s rudimentary reflections on labour, political economy and the role of
machines (e.g. in the Philosophy of Right as well as in some early manuscripts writ-
ten in Jena) dramatically expanded into Marx’s impressive political-economical
volumes. While Engels’ Dialectics of Nature sublated (i.e. both leaned on and
updated) Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, the Anti-Dühring (in combination with
multiple other texts on various topics) may be regarded as fragments of a dialectical
materialist version of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia.
Engels was a remarkably prolific writer. Besides journalism, political pamphlets
and an (astonishingly extensive) correspondence, his publications and manuscripts
cover a broad spectrum of fields, in accordance with his encyclopaedic mindset:
from the humanities (German literary studies, linguistics, language studies and
Introduction 69

philology, philosophy and philosophical criticism, palaeoanthropology, ancient his-

tory, medieval history, military history, modern history, theology and early
Christianity) via the social sciences (sociology, economy, geography, cultural
anthropology, legal studies, gender studies, parapsychology) up to the natural sci-
ences (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and ecology). What all dialecti-
cians (Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Marx, Engels, etc.) have in common is that they
see their work not as a specific discipline, but as a Gesamtwissenschaft. Marx and
Engels aspired to achieve what Aristotle managed to bring about in Ancient Greece
and Hegel in Germany. Seen from this perspective, Engels’s kaleidoscopic output
can indeed be considered as building blocks for an unfinished dialectical materialist
encyclopaedia, addressing and assessing all existing research fields.
On the other hand, while Hegel’s Logic was a substantial part of his oeuvre (con-
sisting of two versions, spread over three volumes), it is precisely this part which
seems underdeveloped in the writings of Marx and Engels. Louis Althusser has
argued that, fully absorbed in his political-economical and historical materialist
writings, Marx never managed to produce a dialectic (or Logic) of his own. And this
is a problem notably because Marx and Engels never fully developed their method-
ology, although their way of working is evident in their writings. When it comes to
practicing dialectical materialism today, we may follow and extrapolate their
examples, but without the guidance that would have been provided by a logical or
methodological manual. Marx and Engels develop their methodology along the
way, and we must familiarise ourselves with it by reading their work, preferably
all of it.
Although Marx and Engels continued to read an discuss “old Hegel”, notably his
Logic (as indicated in their correspondence), Marx himself never found or took the
time to write a Marxist version of Hegel’s Logic, Althusser argues, although the
outlines of a Marxist philosophical practice are nonetheless available. According to
Althusser, they can notably be found in the prefaces and epilogues accompanying
Marx’s major scientific publications, such as Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy (published in 1859) and Capital, Volume I (published in 1867). These
textual materials can be said to contain Marx’s “discourse on method”, albeit in a
fragmented manner. Below, these documents (fragments of a dialectical materialist
“logic”) are listed:
• Karl Marx (1859/1961a): Vorwort (Preface) – Zur Kritik der politischen
Ökonomie (A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) – published
1859 [Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels – Werke Band 13, pp. 7–14]
• Karl Marx (1857/1961, 1939/1983): Einleitung (Introduction) – Zur Kritik der
politischen Ökonomie (A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy)/Grundrisse der Kritik er politischen Ökonomie (Foundations of the
Critique of Political Economy) – written in 1857, published posthumously [Karl
Marx – Friedrich Engels – Werke Band 13, pp. 615–644; Karl Marx – Friedrich
Engels – Werke Band 42, pp. 19–45]
70 3 Dialectical Materialism

• Karl Marx (1867/1979a): Vorwort (Preface) – Das Kapital: Kritik der Politischen
Ökonomie, Erster Band (Capital: a Critique of Political Economy, Volume I) –
published in 1867 (Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels – Werke Band 23, pp. 11–17)
• Karl Marx (1867/1979b): Nachwort zur zweiten Auflage (Epilogue) – Das Kapital
(Capital) – published in 1867 (Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels – Werke Band 23,
pp. 18–28).
• Friedrich Engels (1893/1977): Vorwort (Preface) – Das Kapital: Kritik der
Politischen Ökonomie, Zweiter Band (Capital: a Critique of Political Economy,
Volume II) – published in 1893 (Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels – Werke Band 24,
pp. 7–27).
Thus, the Umstülpung of Hegel’s dialectics also means that what had remained
underdeveloped in Hegel (e.g. political economy) was significantly expanded by
Marx and Engels and what was substantially developed by Hegel (e.g. his Logic)
was left unfinished or was pushed into the margins in the writings of Marx and
Engels. For a quick comparative analysis (a comparative anatomy) of their oeuvres,
the following table may serve as outline:

Hegelian dialectics → Dialectical materialism (Umstülpung)

Philosophy of history → Historical materialism
Logic → Prefaces and epilogues
Philosophy of nature → Dialectics of nature (Engels)
Philosophy of right → Political economy (Marx)
Encyclopaedia → Anti-Dühring and multiple additional fragments on various topics
(notably Engels)

Thus, although in the case of Marx and Engels a Logic (outlining the dialectical
method) is only marginally present, their methodology can nonetheless be extracted
from their work, especially from these satellite documents, indicating a rupture
with Hegel while at the same time providing a methodological bridge between
Hegelian dialectics (Hegel’s method) and dialectical materialism (Marxism as a
methodological research practice). This method of Marx and Engels, moreover, is
not frozen into a rigid protocol, but remains a vibrant program and practice of
research, something to be further developed along the way. The fragments listed
above can be considered as a Marxist “discourse on method”, providing a first
indication as to how dialectical materialism can be practiced today. Special atten-
tion will be given to the question how to extrapolate this method into a dialectics
of technoscience.
Fragments on Method 71

Fragments on Method

In his Preface to the first edition of Das Kapital, Marx explicitly compares his
research in political economy with life sciences research. In both cases, Marx
argues, the organic whole (e.g. society at large, or the biological organism as such)
proves a more readily accessible target of inquiry than the basic components (com-
modities and living cells, respectively). Therefore, the physiology of living bodies
precedes the biochemistry and microscopic anatomy of living cells, − in accor-
dance, we could add, with Hegel’s syllogism, which likewise progresses from the
general, i.e. organisms (M1) via the particular (differentiated components: M2) to the
concrete cell (M3). In other words, Marx draws an analogy between social forma-
tions and organisms (the general) as well as between commodities and cells (the
concrete; Marx, 1867/1979a, p. 12). Research starts with life or society in general
(e.g. the social organism), while the biological cell, as a focus of technoscience, is
already a product of technoscientific activity, never a given.
Moreover, Marx argues that, whereas scientists conduct laboratory experiments
under particular (controlled) circumstances, with the help of optical instruments or
chemical agents (studying phenomena in their “normality”, that is: undisturbed by
fluctuating circumstances, p. 12), political economy (the study of the evolution of
socio-economic formations) can better be compared to natural history. Both fields
of research adopt a systemic perspective, studying society outdoors under real life
circumstances (in Manchester or London for instance). In other words, political
economy, as it had developed when Marx began his research, was comparable to
natural history as it had developed in the nineteenth century, before the scientific
revolution transformed it into biology as real, laboratory science (cell physiology,
microbiology, experimental research etc.). The scientific approach adopted by Marx
focusses on basic components (commodities), comparable to cell physiology in
biology. Again, we notice how closely Marx follows Hegel’s dialectical syllogism,
indicating how the focus of research shifts from the general (natural history as an
empirical field) via the particular (laboratory research) towards the concrete (com-
modities, cells).
In the Epilogue to the second edition of Capital (Volume I), Marx returns to the
issue of method, pointing out that his method has been poorly understood
(1867/1979b; p. 25). Dialectics is a rigorous science, he claims, demonstrating how
human consciousness (“Bewusstsein”) is determined by socio-economics existence
(“Sein”), rather than vice versa. Dialectics is the systematic study of the origin,
existence, development and decline of social formations (as “social organisms”). In
other words, the development of a comprehensive view is not the starting point (as
in traditional metaphysics) but the result, while the understanding of the phenomena
of consciousness requires a thorough grasp of (what could be referred to as) the
noumenal dimension, the dynamics of microscopic components (in political eco-
nomics: the dialectics of commodities).
72 3 Dialectical Materialism

Capital (Volume I) is presented as the continuation (p. 11) of Contribution to the

Critique of Political Economy, published in 1859 (the year in which Darwin pub-
lished his On the Origin of Species). In his Preface to this preparatory volume
(sometimes referred to as “Capital, Volume Zero”), Marx (1859/1961) likewise
describes his method as a socio-economic “anatomy” (p. 8) of modern society.
Marx also explains how, after migrating to London in 1850, the British Museum
provided him with the perfect observatory or platform: a perfect vantage-point from
where to observe and analyse bourgeois society in a systematic manner, focussing
on particular disruptive events, such as the discovery of gold in California, Australia
and Alaska (1859/1961, p. 10). Rather than functioning as an observatory in the
empirical sense, however, the British Museum provided him with an enormous
amount of written materials assembled there, which he subjected to his “symptom-
atic” reading practice, as Althusser would later phrase it, focussing on the gaps and
contradictions: on the unsaid. Marx also again explains how Hegelian dialectics is
subjected to a reversal by emphasising that consciousness (“Bewusstsein”) is deter-
mined by our mode of being (“Sein”), by the evolving modes of production. A par-
ticular social formation originates and thrives, until it exhausts the material
conditions of its own existence. Moreover, humanity inevitably sets itself only such
tasks as it is able to solve, and certain problems arise only when the material condi-
tions for their solution are already present.
It is tempting to apply these insights to technoscientific research, i.e. to contem-
porary processes of knowledge production. From a Marxist perspective, scientific
discourse is determined by the modes of knowledge production: the social organisa-
tion or research, the technologies in place, rather than vice versa, while normal
discourse addresses those question that are solvable under existing conditions, in
principle at least, until the existing mode of knowledge production has effectively
exhausted its own resources. In that case, a scientific crisis is inevitable, until the
outdated and inhibiting mode of knowledge production is replaced by a new tech-
noscientific regime. Also, science commences with a critical analysis of existing
discourse (M1), whose latent tensions and contradiction provide an impetus to criti-
cal inquiry, a process of Zerlegung (M2), eventually giving rise to a set of validated
concepts (M3), enabling the development of a scientific approach.
Another core text for understanding the methodology of Marxism is the (initially
retracted and posthumously published) Introduction to Marx’s Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy, which also serves as introduction to the Grundrisse,
dating from the same period. As a result, two versions of this Introduction were
incorporated in the Marx Engels Werke: one in volume 13 (1857/1961) and one in
volume 42 (1939/1983). In this Introduction, Marx (1857/1961, 1939/1983) points
out how bourgeois political economy is grounded in a mythology of origins, consid-
ering individual (entrepreneurial) hunters and gatherers as point of departure. For
Marx, this is the political economy version of the Robinsonade: a bourgeois literary
motif (also recognisable in the history of technoscience, as the myth of the lone
scientific genius, working in splendid isolation, or in the image of the technoscien-
tific entrepreneur, entitled to appropriate the results of what in reality stems from
collective efforts). The gestalt of the modern autonomous individual – the outcome
Fragments on Method 73

or product, genealogically speaking, of a long and extended socio-economic his-

tory – is mistaken for its starting point. In pre-historic societies, individuals were
dependent rather than independent, and rural communists rather than bourgeois
entrepreneurs. Since time immemorial, production and reproduction were collective
endeavours.
Moreover, Marx presents the coming-into-being of human society as a dialecti-
cal process: a dialectic of production and consumption (1939/1983, p. 25 ff.).
Production commences a process that is finalised by consumption as its end, while
both are mediated by distribution and exchange. In other words, Marx argues, pro-
duction and consumption constitute a syllogism, in the Hegelian sense of the term:
interconnecting the general form of production (A) via particular forms of distribu-
tion and exchange (B) with concrete instances of consumption (E). Moreover, it
entails an interpenetration of opposites, in the sense that production is also con-
sumption, and consumption also production. Production is consumption (“produc-
tive consumption”) because it consumes its resources and wears out its means of
production. And consumption is also production in the sense that the consumption
of food, for instance, produces and sustains life. In production, the producers objec-
tify themselves, while in consumption the product becomes personified. Production
reaches its end in consumption so that, without consumption, there would be no
production. Dialectically speaking, consumption produces production. It is only in
consumption that the product really becomes a product, while consumption drives
the development of new products. Consumers produce these products, provoke
them into existence, by subjectively envisioning and practically consuming them.
On the other hand, no consumption without production, so that the mode of con-
sumption is determined by the mode of production. Indeed, the production process
generates its own consumers. This is a telling example of how Marx continues to
employ the basic logic of Hegelian dialectics: production inevitably passing over
into consumption as its opposite, and vice versa, while at the same time materialis-
ing it (connecting it with the material conditions of human existence).
The third part of the Introduction presents an outline of Marx’s method
(1939/1983, p. 34 ff.). Two pathways are open to us, Marx argues, two methods in
the literal, etymological sense. The first pathway (“der erste Weg”, p. 35, 632) is the
one adopted by mainstream political economists. They start from something gen-
eral, a living totality (e.g. the population inhabiting a particular country) and set to
work to analyse it in terms of categories and concepts. The method of science, how-
ever, moves in the opposite direction, backwards as it were, and this is the way of
thinking (“Weg des Denkens”, p. 35, 632), from concepts to the real. Scientific
research for Marx is an appropriation of the real. Thus, a syllogism emerges. Marx’s
method begins as discourse analysis: subjecting established discourse (as source
material) to a procedure known as symptomatic reading, focussing on the “symp-
toms”, i.e. the contradictions, and resulting in a set of critical concepts. With the
help of these concepts, Marx sets out to analyse real processes of production, circu-
lation and consumption. While Hegel conceives the real as a product of ideas, Marx
sees modes of knowledge production as materialisations of ideas, which
74 3 Dialectical Materialism

subsequently appropriate and process the real. This, according to Marx, is the
method (the pathway) of thinking.
Before zooming in on Friedrich Engels’ effort to develop a full-fledged material-
ist dialectics of nature, I will first present an example of what a Marxist view on
technoscience amounts to, namely by discussing the history of astronomy written
by Anton Pannekoek (1951/1961), a prominent practicing astronomer, but also a
prominent Marxist.

 nton Pannekoek: A Marxist View on the History

A
of Astronomy

My first concrete exposition of a dialectical materialist approach to technoscience

starts at the beginning as it were, highlighting the research field to which Hegel
devoted his doctoral dissertation in Jena (entitled De Orbitis Planetarum), namely
astronomy. Marxist scientists were active in life sciences research (Bernal, Haldane,
etc.) but in astronomy as well, and Anton Pannekoek (1873–1960) is a telling exam-
ple, as a prominent practicing astronomer who was also a prominent Marxist. As an
astronomer, he studied the statistical distribution of stars in the Milky Way and
became founding director of the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy (Tai,
2017; Tai et al., 2019). As a Marxist, he was an international representative of coun-
cil communism and author of several books and brochures. Finally, in 1951, he
authored a history of astronomy as a research field (Pannekoek, 1951/1961). From
the 1910s onwards, he kept his socialist activities and his scientific career at a dis-
tance, and even ended up writing two separate autobiographies: one focusing on his
involvement in the communist movement, the other discussing his scientific research
(Pannekoek, 1982; Tai et al., 2019, p. 9). Thus, his astronomical publications on the
one hand and his Marxist publications on the other evolved as two parallel series (as
if written by two different authors, apparently quite independent from each other).
In fact, his oeuvre is a syllogism. Initially, both Marxism and astronomy were part
of his efforts to come to terms with the real in a rational manner, building on the
conviction that both the natural and the social real are rational. Subsequently,
astronomy and Marxism evolved as separate oeuvres, carefully segregated from one
another. Finally, however, both strands of writing converged into his history of
astronomy, written towards the end of his life and published in 1951, wherein the
duality is finally sublated. In Pannekoek’s History, astronomy is presented as the
first science, not only in the chronological sense of the term, but also in the sense
that astronomy grounds and reflects the way we conceive the world as such.
From the outset Pannekoek emphasises how astronomy (“Bewusstsein”) is con-
nected with modes of production and ways of living (“Sein”). His History begins
with the astronomy of Polynesian ocean travellers, for whom astronomy provided a
celestial compass on their remarkable journeys across the Pacific, until their autoch-
thonous (indigenous) knowledge fell victim to what is currently known as
Anton Pannekoek: A Marxist View on the History of Astronomy 75

“epistemicide”: the systematic eradication of non-Western knowledge systems, as a

result of their contact with Western imperialism. This confirms the dialectical view
that knowledge never begins with a blank slate (to be filled with observations:
“induction”), nor as a Robinsonade. Rather, astronomy begins as appropriation and
elimination, with loss of knowledge, as existing knowledge practices are exposed to
the negativity of a new set of principles, a new relentless logic, supported by a
socio-economic power regime.
Subsequently, Pannekoek describes the early history of astronomy as a collision
(a battlefield) between nomad knowledge and agricultural knowledge. He explains
that, whereas nomads were primarily focussed on the moon (employing moon cal-
endars as a first astronomical moment), agricultural societies are oriented towards
the sun, and therefore bent to produce solar calendars. This resulted in the first big
challenge of astronomy: how to overcome the incompatibility of moon and solar
calendars, a real disparity, as Žižek (2016/2019) would later call it. This disparity
cannot be completely solved and continues to leave its symptomatic traces in calen-
dars even today. The result was a calendar dominated by the solar principle, but
incorporating the lunar cycle as a sublated moment. Astronomy (i.e. the production
of reliable calendars) initially developed as a priestly science, and observance of
celestial phenomena was considered a religious vocation. The calendar was the
result of the movements of two celestial deities, a diurnal and a nocturnal one. Thus,
as Pannekoek points out, astronomy developed in close interaction with socio-­
economic conditions, e.g. the dominance of agriculture as a result of the Neolithic
Revolution (1951/1961, p. 31).
Agriculture gave rise to large-scale political entities (kingdoms), moreover, so
that another function became increasingly important, namely the apparent correla-
tion between earthly and celestial phenomena. Palace politics and policies of expan-
sion resulted in a need to foresee the future, an ability to read the omens, in
preparation of large enterprises. Thus, Assyrian astrology emerged, considering
celestial phenomena as signs, conveying decipherable messages. Science, Pannekoek
argues, is fostered by practical human activity (p. 85) and he discards the opposite
idea, namely that science evolves from leisure (as a privilege of the elite stratum).
Although Plato’s astronomic insights, for instance, can indeed be regarded as an
expression of the mode of thinking of the Athenian elite, who ruled over large num-
bers of artisans and slaves, this actually proved an epistemological obstacle, because
these Athenian masters looked down upon manual work with utter disdain, as some-
thing dishonourable (p. 101), which was precisely the main reason why exact exper-
imental natural sciences never developed in antiquity. Platonic astronomy involved
a conscious withdrawal from practical experience, resulting in the idea of the uni-
verse as a perfect globe where only circular motion is admissible. Aristotle, who
emphasised the importance of careful observation, deviated from this trend, and
Hellenistic astronomy, practiced in Alexandria, already relied on the use instru-
ments, allowing Eratosthenes to determine the size of the earth with the help of a
gnomon (a practical instrument, a vertical stick casting a measurable shadow).
Whereas in Assyria and Babylon astrology had been the privilege of monarchs, in
the Roman Empire, horoscopes became democratised and were adopted by virtually
76 3 Dialectical Materialism

everybody as a decision-making tool. Subsequently, during the medieval period,

Arabian astronomy produced astronomical instruments of great artistic skill, again
primarily designed for practical astrological purposes.
In occidental modernity, instruments evolving from concrete practice likewise
played a decisive role, Pannekoek argues. The scientific revolution, which began in
astronomy, resulted from the development of new technical instruments produced in
workshops by artisans, such as the cross-staff and the telescope. The ancient
(Platonic) conviction that the world is spherical (the first moment as it were), was
still very much alive in the work of Copernicus, but was now challenged by
technology-­based observation. Pure (withdrawn, detached) reason refuses to accept
irregularities, but anomalies and contradictions quickly began to accumulate (the
second moment). For astronomical computing, Greek and Roman number systems
proved highly impracticable (and not only for making astronomical calculations,
but also for other arithmetic practices such as book-keeping). This obstacle was
superseded by the introduction of Arabic numbers in combination with other com-
putational tools such as logarithmic scales (John Napier) and decimal fractions
(Simon Stevin). Modern astronomy (M3) resulted from this combination of precise
observation and advanced computation.
Tycho Brahe’s work exemplified the importance of measuring instruments,
resulting in his pupil Kepler’s insight that the orbit of planets is elliptic: the third
moment, dialectically speaking, restoring mathematical harmony and order (after
the logic of circular movement had been negated), and converging advanced arti-
sanal contrivances with advanced mathematics. Thus, dialectically speaking, the
solar system represents a concrete reconciliation of mathematical order and empiri-
cal evidence on a higher level of complexity, through a combination of technical,
observational and computational skills.
The fabrication and systematic use of instruments such as quadrants and sextants
became a condition sine qua non for producing accurate, computationable data. At
the same time, astronomy was highly dependent on the “benevolence” (i.e. financial
support) of monarchs and princes, who provided funding for developing the neces-
sary infra-structure, as exemplified by Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg observatory: a fas-
cinating early modern example of the drive towards scientific upscaling
(Uraniborg = the city of Urania, the Muse of astronomy). The monarch expected
something in return, however: a confirmation of the heavens as a harmonious whole,
a celestial template which the sublunary, political world ought to mimic, revolving
around the monarch (le soleil, c’est moi). But the monarch also expected something
else, namely prognostications. God did not create His heavenly scenery without a
purpose, and the celestial machine was a wonderful device, available for consulta-
tion, providing a political compass. In a famous illustration we see Tycho Brahe as
a homunculus inside his observatory, handling his contrivances. Paradoxically, he
was the last of the naked-eye astronomers and refused to use a telescope. This praise
for the human eye as a “perfect” organ was perhaps a desperate attempt to preserve
his autonomy, a refusal to become a mere accessory of this giant machine (exempli-
fying the machinery of absolutism).
Anton Pannekoek: A Marxist View on the History of Astronomy 77

Gradually, however, scientists increased their independence by fabricating their

own tools and by conducting experiments with self-made contrivances, as in the
case of Christiaan Huygens, who was quite dexterous, not only in building accurate
pendulums, but also in grinding lenses for telescopes (cf. Aldersey-Williams, 2020),
while Newton constructed a metallic mirror. Menial workmanship became a crucial
requirement for constructing and optimising astronomical equipment. Together
with clocks, telescopes and other instruments, the calculus was developed as a com-
putational tool. These developments gave rise to the mechanical view of the uni-
verse: the solar system as a rotating machine (exemplifying the mechanical machine
as the concrete universal of modern thinking).
The industrial revolution unleashed a rapid advance of precision technology,
thereby transforming astronomy from a pursuit practiced by individuals into a collec-
tive, large-scale enterprise. Capitalism produced ingenious precision machines, and
Pannekoek explicitly mentions the Carl-Zeiss Werke in Jena, for instance, as an indus-
trial producer of high-precision equipment. The rise of big industry created the techni-
cal basis for a rapid expansion, not only of capitalism as such, but also of astronomy,
where astronomers became highly skilled brain workers. Every instrument is made
twice, Pannekoek argues, by two different types of brain workers, the first time in an
industrial setting, but subsequently also by practicing astronomers themselves, who
continuously have to optimise and improve their means of knowledge production
(p. 325). The initial, standardised apparatus (M1) is challenges and affected by particu-
lar outdoors circumstances (M2) and optimised / adapted by practitioners (M3).
The ideal of a harmonious cosmos gave way to a new ideal, namely that of
extremely precise measurement, through optimised instruments and rigid working
methods. This ideal inevitably encountered challenges, however. Every time extreme
accuracy seemed to be within reach, new frustrations emerged in the form of devia-
tions, irregularities and fluctuations caused by unknown sources of error. Eventually,
the most important source of error proved to be human observers themselves. Thus,
an important experience emerged. On closer inspection, every human observer is in
error, and with increased training, personal error does not become smaller, it only
becomes more constant. Research inescapably suffers from systematic error, caused
by various sources of variation, including atmospheric diffraction. Although
machines were designed in such a way that the role and influence of individual
observers was marginalised, the crisis was also addressed in a different manner,
namely through the invention of statistics. Rather than trying to eliminate the error
completely, the inevitability of error was incorporated into the methodology of
measurement as such (i.e. sublated), as a containable component, namely by calcu-
lating averages of large numbers of equivalent measurements made by large num-
bers of observers, so that, at a higher level of comprehension, sufficient accuracy
could be attained, and deviations could be superseded. It also implied that science
became a collective enterprise, conducted by professional research teams employed
at big observatories. Big machines gave rise to big science, involving large numbers
of trained researchers producing masses of observational data. Industrial machines
combined great size with detailed precision, and human observers became homun-
culi as it were, positioned inside huge steel mammoth machines, directing the
78 3 Dialectical Materialism

motions of such machines merely by pressing buttons. Indeed, electronic control of

gigantic instruments became the material basis of modern astronomy (p. 338).
In the final chapters of his History, Pannekoek describes another dialectical pro-
cess, namely the convergence of astronomy and astrophysics, i.e. a new form of
science which studies the world of elementary particles both at a very small and at
an immensely large scale, thereby opening up the noumenal dimension of stars and
atoms, of energy and matter. The focus shifts from how heavenly phenomena appear
to the eye towards their composition and structure in terms of subatomic particles
and nuclear radiation (the noumenal dimension). Initially, stars and planets had
been regarded as deities, as animated “luminaries”. In early modern science (the
second moment), celestial bodies were seen from a deterministic perspective, as
lifeless passive “objects”, whose movements were completely determined by exter-
nal forces and factors. An ontological divide was introduced, between inorganic and
organic nature, as stars, planets and comets were considered lifeless and inorganic.
From a dialectical perspective, such an opposition, such a binary mode of thinking
(living versus non-living, organic versus inorganic, phenomenal versus noumenal,
etc.) is unsustainable in the end. Hegel already raised the question when and how
chemical processes become life and for Pannekoek this also applied to the chemis-
try of stars and other celestial entities such as nebulae. In the early twentieth cen-
tury, the convergence of astronomy and astrophysics resulted in an evolutionary
conception of the universe. Stars are alive: they are born, evolve and age. Both stel-
lar objects and living organisms are part of the great universal cycle of transforma-
tion of matter and energy, of growth and decay, or positive and negative entropy, i.e.
the Hegelian concept of a cycle of cycles. Research into the inner, noumenal, sub-­
atomic constitution of stars revealed their life-history (p. 494), which is not endless
repetition, but evolutionary development of stellar individuals and species. Life is
progressive change, from the primary substance of primal matter (protons) up to the
macro-molecules of earthly life.2 In short, for astronomers and astrophysicists, all
the world is energy, in the dialectical sense of ἐνέργεια: continuous motion, activity,
growth and change. Whereas for Kant as a bourgeois thinker mind and spirit are
considered as separate realms (Pannekoek, 1901), dialectics reveals that the meth-
ods of natural science can be applied to human history as well, seeing the world as
a constellation of processes, rather than things. This is exactly the core problematic
of Friedrich Engels’ dialectics of nature.

 riedrich Engels and the Technoscientific

F
Reproducibility of Life

As a result of their division of labour, while Marx focussed on the social sciences
(political economy), Friedrich Engels developed his dialectical assessment of tech-
noscience in treatises such as Anti-Dühring and Dialectics of Nature, resulting from

2
This line of thinking was taken up by another dialectical thinker, Teilhard de Chardin (Chap. 7).
Dialectics of Science and Nature as a Research Program 79

his fascination with the natural sciences, in combination with his resurging interest
in the work of “old Hegel”.
According to Engels, the three most important revolutionary developments in
nineteenth-century science were (a) thermodynamics, (b) the theory of evolution
and (c) the physiology of the cell. Rather than specific research topics, these three
breakthroughs entailed a comprehensive dialectical view on nature. Thermodynamics
addresses the relationship between energy, movement and force, seeing nature as
ἐνέργεια, as being-at-work, with energy transforming from one form into another,
eventually giving rise to the concept of entropy and its negation: “negative entropy”,
i.e. life (the tendency to develop and maintain high levels of complexity and to resist
disorder for extended periods of time). Evolution entails the idea of an inherent
conflict within every living entity (e.g. between nature and nurture, genome and
environment, sensitivity and immunisation, between adaptation to and modification
of the environment, etc.), giving momentum to growth and development (Duran-­
Novoa et al., 2011; Vincent, 2016). Dialectics is the philosophy of how evolution
operates, and evolution theory is itself a dialectical phenomenon: a research pro-
gram which continues to develop (spiralling between gradualism and catastroph-
ism, quantitative and qualitative change), resulting a comprehensive understanding
of the origin and future of life. Last but not least, cell research addressed the basic
metabolism of life as such, because the cell is the basic structural and functional unit
of all organisms, the concrete universal of life, so that cell research culminates in
the question “What is life?”
Against this backdrop, Engels became especially interested in what he saw as the
molecular (noumenal) essence of life, namely proteins or, more specifically, albu-
min (Eiweiß), seeing life as the mode of existence of living substances. I will begin
with a short recap of Hegelian dialectics, focussing on those aspects that are most
crucial for developing a dialectical materialist understanding of contemporary tech-
noscience. Subsequently, the outlines of a dialectical materialist understanding of
technoscience as a research practice will be fleshed out, building on Engels, but also
on later (scientific) authors who were inspired by his writings, e.g. life scientists
such as Haldane, Needham and Bernal. Next, I will consider the criticism raised
against Engels’s dialectics by some twentieth-century Marxists. And finally, I will
flesh out a dialectical diagnostic of contemporary technoscience, shifting the focus
from artificial albumin as “living matter” (as discussed by Engels) to contemporary
research on synthetic cells (as anticipated by Engels). Engels’ view on the techno-
scientific reproducibility of life will therefore serve as case material for practicing
dialectics of technoscience today.

Dialectics of Science and Nature as a Research Program

Friedrich Engels developed his dialectics of science and nature in his correspon-
dence with Karl Marx, but more systematically in his Anti-Dühring (1878/1962)
and in Dialectics of Nature (1925/1962a), a collection of notes and manuscripts
80 3 Dialectical Materialism

which he left unfinished. Dialectics, for Engels, is the science of the laws of motion
and development of nature, society and thought (1878/1962, p. 11, 132). The Marx-­
Engels correspondence (1983) served as a dialectical laboratory where important
scientific developments were quite regularly discussed. These epistolary exchanges
addressed a broad range of scientific topics, from Justus von Liebig’s and James
Johnston’s work on organic and agricultural chemistry via Darwin’s The Origin of
Species up to John Tyndall’s experiments on light scattering.
Engels began his dialectical analyses of science in the late 1850s, building in the
work of Hegel. In a letter to Karl Marx (July 14, 1858), he announces his intention
to reread Hegel to find out to what extent the latter anticipated recent progress made
in the natural sciences, notably in physiology (e.g. cell biology) and chemistry. In
this letter, Engels already outlines how he sees the cell as the Hegelian being-in-­
itself and the living organism as the realisation of the “idea” of life, while compara-
tive physiology demonstrates how quantitative changes give rise to qualitative leaps
(Marx & Engels, 1983 II, p. 326). Unfortunately, Engels’ extensive research efforts
were significantly hampered by competing time-consuming activities, not only his
professional work at the offices of Ermen & Engels in Manchester, but also the
posthumous editing of Volumes II and III of Marx’ Capital (Hunt, 2009). The ques-
tion addressed in this chapter is, to what extent Engels’s dialectical views are still
relevant for addressing recent developments in contemporary technoscience. My
objective is to update dialectical materialism by raising a question comparable to
the one addressed by Engels in the nineteenth century, namely: how to assess con-
temporary technoscience from a dialectical perspective? What would a dialectics of
contemporary life sciences research amount to? How to practice dialectics of sci-
ence and nature today?
Engels’s dialectics of science and nature (as a research program) resulted in four
core texts:
• Dialectics of nature, a collection of manuscripts written between 1876 and 1878
and published posthumously in 1925 (Engels, 1925/1962a)
• The Marxist classic The Anti-Dühring (Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der
Wissenschaft) dating from the same period, written between 1876 and 1878 and
published in 1878, after having been serialised in the German socialist periodical
Vorwärts (Engels, 1878/1962).
• Socialism: utopian and scientific (Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der
Utopie zur Wissenschaft), first published in 1880 and based on excerpts from the
Anti-Dühring (Engels, 1880/1962).
• Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, written 1886
and published the same year (Engels, 1886/1962).
These documents reflect at least two over-arching trends in Engels’s scholarly activ-
ities. First of all, his return to and resurging interest in the work of “old Hegel”,3 the

3
A phrase used by Marx and Engels in their correspondence, cf. Engels’s letter to Marx of
December 3, 1851 and Marx’s letters to Engels of August 19, 1965 and March 25, 1868 (Marx &
Dialectics of Science and Nature as a Research Program 81

philosophical hero of his youth, from the late 1850s onwards, a development which
concurred with a similar “return to Hegel” in Marx.4 Secondly, a growing interest in
the quickly progressing natural sciences,5 an interest which he, again, shared with
Marx during this same period, although whereas the latter predominantly focussed
on fields such as agricultural chemistry (Justus von Liebig, James Johnston, Henry
Carey) and mathematics (as reflected by his extensive notebooks on differential
calculus),6 Engels mainly occupied himself with physics, (organic and inorganic)
chemistry and biology.7
In the writings listed above, Engels aspired to come to terms with what he consid-
ered as the three decisive scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century (Engels,
1886/1962, p. 294), namely: (a) the discovery of the laws of thermodynamics (con-
servation of energy and increase of entropy); (b) the theory of evolution; and (c) the
discovery of the structure and function of the cell. All three discoveries revolve
around the question of life, as we have seen. The cell is the basic structural unit of
living entities: the prototypical realisation of the idea of life as such. As to thermody-
namics, one could argue that, dialectically speaking, whilst the first law represents
conservation as the first dialectical moment (M1), which is negated by entropy (con-
ceived as negativity, i.e. as the second dialectical moment, M2), then life (more con-
cretely: a microbe or a living cell) represents the negation of the negation: the third
dialectical moment (M3). Indeed, life is “negative entropy”, as Erwin Schrödinger
phrased it (Schrödinger, 1944/1967; cf. Zwart, 2013) to capture the astonishing abil-
ity of living systems to maintain and reproduce high levels of complexity, and to
withstand environmental entropic pressures for extended periods of time. Finally, the
theory of evolution represents the historical dimension of life, urging us to see life as
something which is perpetually in flux and continuously changing.
In the context of these research activities, Engels devoted special attention to
what he saw as the molecular or noumenal essence of life, namely proteins or, more

Engels, 1983 I, p. 292; II, p. 289; IV, p. 34). Also in his letter to Albert Lange (29.3.1865) Engels
confesses his “deep feeling of piety and devotion for the titanic old fellow”.
4
See for instance Marx & Engels, 1983 II, p. 275, 326. Marx used Hegel’s dialectical logic as a
scaffold for designing the structure of Das Kapital (Marx & Engels, 1983 III, 393–402;
Arthur, 2004).
5
In his correspondence with Engels, Marx underscored the socio-economic importance of the sci-
entific work of, for instance, Humphry Davy and Justus von Liebig (cf. Bernal, 1936).
6
Hegel was already dissatisfied with the conceptual vagueness of the calculus. Are differentials dy,
dx finite quantities, are they zero, do they represent an intermediate state between being and noth-
ing, so that vanishing is their truth? This vagueness symptomatically reflects the tension between
the continuous and the discrete, between physical movement and mathematical symbols.
Differentials seemed chimeric, minimal magnitudes, caught at the moment of their disappearance.
The impact of Marx’s work was limited due his insufficient awareness of the developments con-
cerning the calculus in the nineteenth century (Kennedy, 1977).
7
Engels intensely acquainted himself with the natural science after stepping down from commerce
and moving from Manchester to London, where he went through process of re-education in math-
ematics and natural science: a thorough scientific “moulting” (“Mauserung”, 1878/1962, p. 11;
Hunt, 2009, p. 288). An important influence was the “red” chemist Carl Schorlemmer (1879), a
close friend of both Marx and Engels (Benfey & Travis, 1992).
82 3 Dialectical Materialism

specifically, albumin (Eiweiß). As will be discussed in more detail below, Engels

basically saw life as the mode of existence of proteins. Whereas abiotic, inorganic
entities are damaged and destroyed by entropic metabolism, in living entities
metabolism is incorporated and transformed into sustainable biochemical processes.
Engels’ thoughts about proteins and cells evidently built on Hegel’s philosophy of
nature, notably the latter’s dialectical analysis of the chemical process (Hegel,
1830/1986, § 326 Z, p. 292; § 335 Z, p. 333) where he argues that the chemical
process is an analogue of life in the sense that, if the chemical process would con-
tinue spontaneously, it would be life.8 Indeed, there is a glimpse of vitality in the
chemical process (Hegel, 1830/1986, § 335 Z; Ferrini, 2011, p. 208), but contrary to
inorganic chemical processes, which do not renew or reproduce themselves on their
own accord, Hegel argues, life is a self-renewing chemical process made perennial.
Last but not least, Engels already predicted that, one day, scientists will be able
to produce proteins artificially (in vitro) in their laboratories. And if they succeed in
doing so, he argued, these artificial proteins will undoubtedly exhibit the phenom-
ena of life (e.g. organic metabolism), however weak and short-lived these may be.9
In other words, Engels anticipated (on various occasions) the creation of artificial
life in the laboratory as the inevitably “end” (dialectically speaking) of modern
biochemical research.
Precisely this latter development is currently evolving from “utopia” to “sci-
ence”, as Engels once phrased it (1880/1962). For indeed, at this very moment,
scientific research consortia are trying to build synthetic cells in man-made labora-
tories. As a (dialectically inspired) philosopher of science, I myself happen to be
actively involved (as a principal investigator) in one of these projects, namely the
BaSyC project, an acronym which stands for Building a Synthetic Cell.10 As indi-
cated above, the question addressed in this chapter is, to what extent Engels’s dia-
lectical views are still relevant today, notably for philosophers who aim to come to
terms with the conceptual implications and socio-cultural consequences of synthetic
cell research, as a high-profile, trans-disciplinary and cutting-edge area of inquiry
(Zwart 2017). I intend to revivify dialectical materialism as a philosophical method-
ology by raising a question comparable to the one addressed by Engels in the nine-
teenth century, namely: how to assess contemporary cell research from a dialectical
perspective? What would a dialectical assessment of contemporary life sciences
research amount to? How to practice dialectics of science and nature today?

8
“Der chemische Prozess ist so ein Analogon des Lebens. Könnte er sich durch sich selbst fortset-
zen, so wäre er das Leben; daher liegt es nahe, des Leben chemisch zu fassen” (Hegel, 1830/1986,
§ 326 Z, p. 292); “Wenn die Produkte des chemischen Prozesses selbst wieder die Tätigkeit anfin-
gen, so wären sie das Leben. Das Leben ist insofern ein perennierend gemachter chemischer
Prozess” (§ 335, p. 333).
9
“Wenn es je gelingt, Eiweißkörper chemisch darzustellen, so werden sie unbedingt
Lebenserscheinungen zeigen, Stoffwechsel vollziehen, wenn auch noch so schwach und kurzle-
big” (Engels, 1925/1962a, p. 560).
10
http://www.basyc.nl
Dialectics of Science and Nature as a Research Program 83

Assessing the relevance of Engels’s writings for contemporary philosophy of

technoscience proves a challenging issue, first of all because his “dialectics of
nature” became a highly controversial endeavour, especially within Marxist dis-
course itself (Sheehan, 1985/2017; Kangal, 2019). A relatively large number of
Marxist scholars explicitly dismissed it, often favouring a Mach-like or neo-Kantian
approach to science instead. Therefore, the multiple controversies raised by Engels’
writings up to this day cannot be ignored.11 Moreover, Engels developed and pub-
lished his ideas during the 1870s and 1880s, and the life sciences evidently experi-
enced a series of dramatic revolutionary transitions since then. Therefore, rather
than “applying” Engels’ views, these sections will amount to an exercise in extrapo-
lation. Although I will start with the question how Engels himself used dialectics to
analyse scientific research concerning the phenomena of life during his own era, the
core question will be the one already brought forward above, namely: how to be a
dialectical philosopher of natural science or technoscience today? What would a
contemporary dialectics of nature, focussing on synthetic cells (as a symptomatic
case study, reflecting broader technoscientific trends) amount to?
The structure of the remainder of this chapter is as follows. I will begin with a
short recapitulation of Hegelian dialectics, focussing on those aspects that are most
crucial for developing a dialectical materialist understanding of contemporary tech-
noscience. Subsequently, the outlines of a dialectical materialist understanding of
technoscience as a research practice will be fleshed out, building on Engels, but also
on later (scientific) authors who were inspired by his writings, e.g. life scientists
such as Haldane and Bernal. Next, I will consider the criticism raised against
Engels’ dialectics by some twentieth century Marxists. And finally, I will flesh out
a dialectical diagnostic of contemporary technoscience, shifting the focus from arti-
ficial albumin as “living matter” (as discussed by Engels) to contemporary research
on synthetic cells (as anticipated by Engels).

11
“Engels was at the root of whatever was wrong with Marxism. With few exceptions, the argu-
ment against Engels had now become a virtual orthodoxy, perhaps best summarised in Norman
Levine’s The Tragic Deception: Marx contra Engels (1957)” (Rees, 1994). Besides the many
Marxist authors who vehemently criticised Engels, there are many others who systematically
ignore him. In Slavoj Žižek’s Less than nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism
(2012/2013), for instance, Engels is not even mentioned, while in Absolute recoil: towards a new
foundation of dialectical materialism, his name appears only once, in a quotation borrowed from
Lenin (Žižek, 2014/2015, p. 1), although some phrases may implicitly refer to Engels, such as the
remark that the idea of a tension or contradiction between Hegel’s dialectical method and Hegel’s
system – discussed below – is “ridiculous” (2012/2013, p. 195). Supporters of Engels (Bernal,
Haldane, Levins and Lewontin, etc.) often have a scientific background. Rather than “applying”
dialectics to physics or biology, they adopted dialectics as their scientific method, acknowledging
that science is inherently dialectical (Royle, 2014).
84 3 Dialectical Materialism

Engels’ Dialectical Materialist Rereading of Hegel

As Hegel explains in the Introduction (Einführung) of his Phenomenology of the

Spirit (Hegel, 1807/1986): whereas the sciences study natural phenomena (natural
processes and entities), thereby developing a (fragmented and partial) phenomenol-
ogy of nature, philosophy is the science of science: a phenomenology of scientific
experiences. Hegel develops a systematic and comprehensive perspective on nature
by discerning a dialectical unfolding in the interactions of scientific subjects
(researchers) with their scientific objects (natural processes and entities). As
explained in Chap. 2, while science is about knowing or understanding natural
objects, philosophy aims to understand the process of knowing as such. It is a criti-
cal assessment of the ways in which particular forms of knowledge, emerging at
particular moments in history, allow nature to reveal itself. Dialectics is the system-
atic exposition of scientific research practices as they appear on the scene, tracing
the journey of consciousness passing through various configurations or stations of
knowledge towards more comprehensive forms of understanding. Thus, dialectics
entails knowing about knowing: a phenomenology of scientific experience.
Dialectically speaking, moreover, science (as a methodological, self-critical
endeavour aspiring to come to terms with nature) is inherently dialectical, even if
practicing scientists themselves are not always aware of this, because it relentlessly
challenges, contradicts and eliminates its own results, in order to reach a more com-
prehensive level of understanding. Science is never satisfied with its own outcomes.
It is a zealous, unhalting process which finds no satisfaction in existing forms of
knowledge but is driven by an inherent unrest, continuously disturbing and spoiling
its own satisfaction: a relentless drive to move farther. Existing science is rational,
certainly, but this does not mean that scientists are already there, for what is rational
about science is first and foremost the scientific method. Dialectically speaking, sci-
ence is not a collection of facts and insights, but a process, a practical endeavour, a
praxis, whose actual results will only remain temporarily valid. Even the most
robust insights will be challenged sooner or later by new findings, − spurred on by
technological innovations, as Engels will later emphasise. Science progresses
through stages and, although all these stages are necessary and inevitable as such,
none of them is final. From a dialectical perspective, scientific knowledge produc-
tion is a process of becoming, continuously unfolding. All existing knowledge
forms will evaporate sooner or later, but the rationality and necessity of this (seem-
ingly haphazard) dynamics can be dialectically grasped.
At the same time, dialectics acknowledges a stabilising tendency in science,
namely the tendency to integrate multiple partial knowledge fragments into a coher-
ent, encyclopaedical system. Therefore, two apparently juxtaposed dimensions can
be discerned: on the one hand the drive towards a theoretical processing and system-
atic assembling of available research results, and on the other hand the impetus (no
less forceful) to challenge, negate, overcome and defreeze these integrative efforts,
seeing current knowledge systems as temporary episodes. This tension is also dis-
cernible in the edifice of Hegel’s own oeuvre (Engels, 1886/1962), which on the one
Engels’ Dialectical Materialist Rereading of Hegel 85

hand strives to develop a comprehensive and encyclopaedic system of knowledge

(the “conservative” dimension) while this system is at the same time challenged and
negated by the dialectic method itself (the “progressive” dimension).
Whereas the scientific revolution continues to unfold, outdated insights become
spectres and sediments of knowledge, as living science continues to progress far-
ther. Sooner or later, all forms of knowledge will be negated, sublated and trans-
formed. As Engels phrases it, dialectics is not only a phenomenology, but also a
“palaeontology” of knowledge (1886/1962, p. 269), seeing the present as the tem-
poral outcome of a long history,12 about to give way to newly emerging and prolif-
erating landscapes of research. The Hegelian claim that “all that is real is rational”
applies to science insofar as existing theories are exemplifications of the scientific
method. Yet, sooner or later, their validity will be undermined, they will be exposed
as misguided, or only partially reasonable, and therefore unreal (bound to become
mere history). Indeed, all that comes to be, deserves to perish wretchedly (Engels,
1886/1962, p. 267), as Mephistopheles already proclaimed, and this also applies to
science. For Engels, even Hegel’s own impressive encyclopaedic system was but a
temporary edifice. Sooner or later, it will become a monument of the past, while
science as a dialectical praxis continues to unfold, by overcoming the next crisis.
Dialectics is a method of thinking which starts from the awareness that thinking
itself is subject to a process of becoming. This evidently also applies to dialectics,
so that the dialectical method is not a static, but a dynamical procedure which must
continuously be refined and transformed. By implication, Engels’s version of dia-
lectics, although building on Hegel, at the same time aims to transform and enhance
it, to assure that dialectics remains up to its task of effectively addressing the chal-
lenges of the dawning era. This requires a thorough understanding of Hegel’s think-
ing, for dialectical materialism is a transformation from within. The force of
dialectics consists precisely in this creative tension or interaction between the
system-­building trend (the systematic effort to preserve existing knowledge frag-
ments by developing them it into a consistent, comprehensive view) and the dialec-
tical method (the awareness that this edifice of knowledge itself is constantly under
pressure and besieged by emerging disruptive developments).
Hegel’s prediction about the end of philosophy was correct, Engels argues, in the
sense that modern science will indeed abolish philosophy. Philosophy must and will
resurge, however, albeit no longer as a separate field (practiced at a safe distance
from the turmoil of active scientific research), but as philosophy in science, sublated
by and preserved as an inherent self-reflective dimension of the scientific enterprise
(1878/1962, p. 129). Philosophers should be self-consciously there where science
happens.13 For Engels, philosophy is a dialectical and critical reflection on the
dynamics of scientific research as such. If we see traditional philosophical

12
Cf. Hegel: “Vor der Wissenschaft liegt der reiche Inhalt, den Jahrhunderte und Jahrtausende der
erkennenden Tätigkeit vor sich gebracht haben” (1830/1986, p. 28)
13
Cf. Hegel: “Das Prinzip der Erfahrung enthält die unendlich wichtige Bestimmung, dass … der
Mensch selbst dabei sein müsse… Er muss selbst dabei sein … mit seinem wesentlichen
Selbstbewusstsein” (1830/1986, § 7, p. 49).
86 3 Dialectical Materialism

c­ ontemplation as the first moment of the knowledge production process (M1), which
was negated, disrupted and marginalised (“dethroned”) by modern scientific
research (M2), the end result will be a negation of the negation: a resurgence of
philosophical reflection, but now as an inherent dimension of scientific praxis (M3).
The science-­ philosophy divide will become sublated, allowing philosophy to
become more relevant and up-to-date, while science becomes more comprehensive
and advanced (cf. Bernal, 1937). Our current world-view materialises in technosci-
entific research, while research feeds and transforms our emerging worldview.
This is also the basic message conveyed by Hegel’s dialectic of Master and
Servant as we have seen. The Master (initially in control) represents philosophy-as-­
contemplation, producing abstract universal knowledge, in contrast with the hands-
on experiences of the Servant. Eventually, however, the practical knowledge
­
concerning particular aspects of nature produced by Servants (in an interactive,
experimental manner, through research-as-praxis) will prove much more powerful
and effective than the lofty contemplations of the Master who, instead of transform-
ing nature, develops a more passive form of contemplation: a worldview. Thus, the
initial supremacy of the Master will by subverted by the practical and transforma-
tive know-how of the Servant, who actively puts an end to his “bondage”
(“Knechtschaft”) via epistemic emancipation (Engels, 1925/1962a, p. 480).
Dialectically speaking, empirical science represents the emancipation of the labour-
ing Servant vis-à-vis abstract contemplation (as a privileged but unworldly form of
otium). Servants explore and interact with nature more directly, through their exper-
imental work, developing powerful tools to effectively manipulate concrete natural
objects, both inside and outside their laboratories. In terms of Hegel’s logic, this
development reflects the dialectical unfolding from abstract universal knowledge
(das Allgemeine, A), via experimental exploration of particular aspects of nature
(das Besondere, B), towards the creation and modification of concrete entities
(Einzelheit, E), as materialisations of the technoscientific approach to life.

Dialectics of Science and Nature

As indicated, Engels’s aim was to update Hegelian dialectics by focussing on the

practical and material aspects of technoscientific research. The dialectics of science
and nature which results from this, still builds on Hegelian dialectics, whose great
merit had been to see the world (natural, historical as well as intellectual) as a pro-
cess.14 Yet, in contrast to Hegel, dialectical materialism stresses the hands-on, inter-
active dimension of human thinking, the technicity of science, up to the point of
acknowledging that science inevitably evolves into technoscience, − even though he
doesn’t literally use this term. In Engels’s writings on scientific inquiry, there is a

14
Engels explicitly praises “Hegels System, worin zum ersten Mal – und das ist sein großes
Verdienst – die ganze natürliche, geschichtliche und geistige Welt als ein Prozess [begriffen wird]”
(1880/1962, p. 206).
Dialectics of Science and Nature 87

consistent emphasis on experimental praxis and on the disclosing and transforma-

tive role of scientific and industrial contrivances and instruments.15
Dialectical materialism endorses Hegel’s claim that the laws of dialectics not
only apply to technoscience, but also to nature as such. The natural sciences are
inherently dialectical because dialectics represents the subjective analogue of the
objective dialectics at work in nature (Engels, 1925/1962a, p. 331; cf. Schweiger,
2011, p. 28). In other words, dialectics applies both to the subject pole (technosci-
ence) and to the object pole (nature) of the knowledge production process. At the
subject pole, the emphasis is on technoscientific research as a form of labour
(Lefèvre, 2005), as a technological praxis as we have seen, highly dependent on
advanced means of knowledge production such as microscopes, telescopes and
spectroscopes. At the object pole, the emphasis is on movement, as life itself evolves
via conflict and contradiction towards higher levels of complexity. Science continu-
ously develops: gradually, but also via dramatic leaps (when quantitative accumula-
tive growth enables qualitative change and disruptive transition). Motion is the
mode of existence of matter in general and of living matter in particular, and this
applies both to chronic motion (metabolism) and to diachronic motion (evolution).
Engels’ most famous work in this area is the Marxist classic Anti-Dühring
(1878/1962). As Engels himself points out, what began as a polemical essay quickly
evolved into an extended “positive” (p. 6, 8) exposition of the dialectical method,
applying it not only to history and economics, but also to science and nature. The
science pole and the nature pole (the subject and the object pole) should not be seen
as compartmentalised from each other, but rather as inevitably interpenetrating
each other, for while science allows the natural world to appear in a certain manner,
the objects of research challenge researchers to develop their contrivances and
approaches in a certain direction.
In 1877, in a letter to Franz Wiede, Engels wrote that, as soon as he had finished
with criticising Dühring, he would concentrate all his energies on a larger work that
he had planned for years, in order to demonstrate that the laws of dialectics apply
both to human society and to nature (Griese & Pawelzig, 1986). This immense proj-
ect combined a rereading of Hegel with an intensive journey of exploration through
the evolving natural sciences, both theoretically and practically (e.g. in chemical
industry), resulting in a thorough intellectual “moulting”. Engels worked on it from
1873 up to 1882, resulting in almost 200 textual fragments and addressing three key
issues from a dialectical perspective: the dialectical history of the natural sciences,
the dialectical logic of scientific inquiry, and a criticism of one-sided (i.e. undialec-
tical) scientific positions. Thus, he aimed to overcome both bourgeois metaphysics

15
This evidently contradicts the views of Lukács who proclaimed that “Engels’ deepest misunder-
standing consists in his belief that the behaviour of industry and scientific experiment constitutes
praxis in the dialectical, philosophical sense. In fact, scientific experiment is contemplation at its
purest” (1923/1971, p. 132). Due to lack of proximity, Lukács misunderstands the basic logic of
experimental laboratory research, a practice which, as Claude Bernard explains, combines theo-
retical contemplation (θεωρία) with hands-on, manual modification (πρᾶξις): in laboratory prac-
tice “il serait impossible de séparer ces deux choses: la tête et la main” (Bernard, 1966, p. 27).
88 3 Dialectical Materialism

(thinking in terms of dichotomies, e.g. humans versus nature, mind versus matter,
etc.) and scientific empiricism (i.e. the neglect of theoretical thinking), and to
replace it with a dialectical approach, emphasising the continuous interaction
between science and society, theory and practice, experiments and reflection, hered-
ity and environment, etc. and the alternation of quantitative (evolutionary) and qual-
itative (revolutionary) change.
As Hegel already argued, dialectical laws can be discerned both in scientific
experiences concerning nature (the subject-pole of the knowledge production pro-
cess) and in nature as such (the object pole, where countless instances of contradic-
tion and sublation can be pointed out). The chemical process as such, for instance,
is an inherently dialectical process (Hegel, 1830/1986, § 326 ff.; 1831/1986).
Basically, Engels aims to demonstrate that scientific research is an inherently dia-
lectical endeavour that will significantly benefit from the conscious and systematic
application of dialectical insights and methods. His aim was to save dialectics by
rescuing it from the constraints of bourgeois idealism, transporting it to the realm of
natural science instead (1878/1962, p. 10). Dialectics will allow science to emanci-
pate itself: from the dogmas of traditional metaphysics (frozen into scientific con-
cepts), but also from the scientific tendency towards fragmentation and empiricism,
at the expense of genuine insight (1878/1962, p. 14).
According to Engels, again explicitly building on Hegel, three basic dialectical
laws can be distinguished (1925/1962a, p. 348): (a) the law of the transformation of
quantity into quality and vice versa; (b) the law of the interpenetration of opposites;
and (c) the law of the negation of the negation. Engels’ exemplifications of the first
law are borrowed directly from Hegel’s work. Increasing or decreasing the tempera-
ture of water, for instance, is an incremental, quantitative change, Engels explains,
until a point is reached at which water suddenly becomes transformed into steam or
ice: a qualitative transition (1878/1962, p. 118). Another example he often uses are
carbon compounds, where the addition of elementary components (C, H, O) to a
particular compound will bring about qualitative change (p. 119). Whilst a certain
amount of carbon dioxide is a necessity for life, too much of it transforms it into a
poison, and so on.
As to the second law, multiple examples have already been given, such as the
interaction between subject and object. Natural science is a relentless productive
interaction between science and nature. Technological research practices allow nat-
ural objects to emerge, while the object of research (say, a living cell) determines
the tools, approaches, mind-set and intentionality of the laboratory subject. Another
example is the opposition between heredity and environment (between nature and
nurture). Dialectically speaking, it would be one-sided to understand living organ-
isms solely in terms of heredity or genetics (claiming that organisms are their DNA,
their genomes), but it would likewise be one-sided to see them solely as products of
their environment (claiming that organisms are the product of environmental
factors).16 Rather, life results from the constant interaction and interpenetration of

16
The latter position would later (quite un-dialectically) be defended by Trofim Lysenko.
Dialectics of Science and Nature 89

both dimensions (heredity and adaptation). Likewise, in chemistry, analysis and

synthesis are often regarded as opposites (as processes moving in juxtaposed direc-
tions) but in actual laboratory practice, the one is highly dependent on the other, as
synthesis (recombination) presupposes analysis (Zerlegung) and vice versa.
Also the third dialectical principle (the negation of the negation) was discussed
earlier. A dialectical process starts from an initial situation or first moment (M1), for
instance: the rural communism practiced by self-sufficient villages in the pre-­
industrial past (Engels, 1880/1962, p. 2015). As Marx explained in Capital, the rise
of capitalism obliterated this rural world, so that farmers were expropriated and
forced to migrate into urban areas as battle zones, where a Darwinian struggle for
existence raged (Engels, 1880/1962, p. 216): a process which represented the sec-
ond moment, of negativity and disruption (M2). It involved, among other things, a
separation (estrangement) of production and consumption, as food products were
no longer produced collectively by consumers themselves (in villages), but in facto-
ries, as commodities, so that consumers from now on had to buy these food products
(e.g. industrially produced bread, beer, canned meat, etc.) on the market (Zwart,
2000). Traditional agricultural and artisanal know-how was replaced by scientific
knowledge (mathematics, chemistry, logistics, human resource management, etc.)
to rationalise and increase the pace and scale of the food production process. Yet,
although industrial production seems rational, it actually results in anarchy and con-
tradictions (e.g. highly competitive food markets, environmental pollution, waste,
social disruption, etc.). Therefore, a third moment (the negation of the negation)
becomes inevitable (M3), which will amount to an expropriation of the expropria-
tors (Engels, 1878/1962, p. 124): the confiscation of the means of production by the
working classes and consumers. Scientific knowledge will no longer be the property
of the owners (the bourgeoisie), but common knowledge, freely accessible and con-
sciously employed to optimise the agricultural system in terms of equity and
sustainability.
A similar dialectics is discernible in nature as such, however. According to
Engels, the whole of geology is a series of negated negations (1878/1962, p. 127),
as mountain ranges emerge in response to strains in the earth crust, resulting in
increased weathering and accumulation of sediments, resulting in new strains etc.
(cf. Bernal, 1936; Royle, 2014). But we may also use the development of natural
organisms as example, say: a plant. The seed containing the program of life (the
“concept” of life; “heredity”, M1) is exposed to a hazardous, entropic environment
(the vegetative version of the trauma of birth) which threatens to negate and elimi-
nate this fragile life form (M2), unless the plant manages to use this threatening
environment as a resource for growth and protection (the negation of the negation),
thus growing into an adult form, as the concrete realisation of the idea, so that two
antagonistic forces (nature and nurture, heredity and environment) are reconciled,
functioning complementary to each other. Living entities need this dramatic interac-
tion between both components (heredity and environment, nature and nurture) to
flourish and thrive. Indeed: they basically are (the product of) this interaction.
90 3 Dialectical Materialism

From Bourgeois Metaphysics to Dialectics of Science

From a dialectical perspective, Engels argues, Hegel must be credited for having
developed the dialectical method, understanding both the natural and the cultural
world as processes of becoming (1878/1926, p. 22), but he also remained an idealist
(p. 23), envisioning history (including the history of science) primarily as a dialecti-
cal unfolding of ideas which realise themselves in the course of time, in the form of
episodes or stages, challenging, negating and sublating each other. In contrast to
Hegel, dialectical materialism emphasises that thinking (Bewusstsein) is determined
by being (Sein; Engels, 1878/1962, p. 25). This means that scientific convictions
and ideas are shaped in interaction with nature, under specific socio-economic con-
ditions, in the context of actual research practices in laboratories and industries.
Scientific ideas emerge in particular historical settings: they reflect and materialise
the technicity of science, i.e. the means of knowledge production developed to
enable researchers to effectively address practical challenges. Science is a praxis,
and scientific research means practicing science. It is hard work, involving both
intellectual and menial components (both brain-work and active manipulation). The
industrial revolution owes much to science, but the reverse is also true: science
(notably chemistry) owes much to the industrial revolution and thrived because of it
(cf. Lefèvre, 2005). Engels points to the connection between thermodynamics and
the use of steam engines, for instance, while telescopes were initially developed for
military purposes, but he also sees mathematics as grounded in concrete human
activities and bodily practices. For him, mathematics is the product of a long history
of active engagement with nature (1878/1962, p. 36). It is only in bourgeois meta-
physics that mathematics is conceived as something pure, axiomatic and abstract, so
that the idea arises that a line is a point moving through empty space (p. 37), ignor-
ing the grounding of mathematical theory in geodesy and other earthly pursuits.
Even mathematical terms like “body” (used for three-dimensional forms, e.g. cube,
sphere, etc.) etymologically imply materiality and physicality (p. 38), while the
calculus allowed scientists to study processes of continuous change experimentally.
It is no coincidence of course that “laboratory” literally means workshop, a locality
designed for fabricating knowledge (Zwart, 2019b).
Modern science means: understanding by doing, reflecting a shift (in the history
of knowledge) from hands-off (aristocratic) contemplation to hands-on (interactive)
experimentation. Bourgeois ideology, however, is hampered by a split consciousness
(Zerrissenheit), because it separates practical innovation (“applied research”) from
“pure” science (the science version of aesthetic disinterestedness, of l’art pour l’art).
This split is connected with a whole series of similar compartmentalisations (between
science and society, basic and applied research, intellectual and menial activities,
etc.). From a dialectical materialist perspective, however, labour (the use and devel-
opment of technologies and machines) is a necessary precondition for producing
scientific knowledge claims, even allegedly “pure” ones. This already applies to
Aristotle, Engels argues, a thoroughly dialectical thinker (1880/1962, p. 202) who
combined philosophical speculation with natural history and anatomy (discovery by
From Bourgeois Metaphysics to Dialectics of Science 91

doing). Although bourgeois consciousness tends to underestimate the importance of

(what is denigratingly referred to as) the Middle-Ages, it was during the (late) medi-
eval period that the first industries were created and the first machines were pro-
duced, while new instruments became available for experimentation (Engels,
1886/1962, p. 279; 1925/1962a, p. 457, 462), resulting in the collaboration of monas-
tic scholarship and craftmanship (notably instrument making, cf. Pannekoek,
1951/1961; Zilsel, 2003). Moreover, whereas the early modern era (when the bour-
geoisie still represented a progressive factor) was a period of revolutionary fervour,17
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many bourgeois thinkers opted for
lofty (“disinterested”) contemplation rather than hands-on experimentation, so that
in the eighteenth century, genuine dialectical works typically emerged outside phi-
losophy proper (in the writings of Diderot and Rousseau for instance, 1880/1962,
p. 202) while it was only in the nineteenth century that the first truly scientific labo-
ratories were created (by Justus von Liebig and others). Bourgeois thinking tends to
see nature as a collection of separate entities (things), rather than as a systemic,
dynamic and evolving process (p. 203). The question whether something is alive, for
instance, is not a matter of Yes or No, Engels argues, for living and dying are com-
plex, protracted processes, so that metaphysical, scientific or legal attempts to dis-
cern a clear caesura between the two are bound to falter (p. 204).
The emphasis on praxis not only applies to the context of discovery, but also to
the context of validation and justification, moreover. For Engels, the ultimate proof
of the validity of knowledge is provided when we are not only able to understand
and predict, but also to actively manage, reproduce and recreate natural processes in
our laboratories and industries (Engels, 1925/1962a, p. 497). The artificial, techno-
logical reproduction of natural processes in vitro is the ultimate test of the validity
of scientific theories. Rather than positing a divide between thinking and being, or
between theory and practice, the starting point of dialectical materialism is the unity
of theory and praxis brought about by experimentation, putting theories to the test
experimentally, and further developing them through experimental trials. Indeed,
conducting an experiment means using nature to put our concepts to the test, reveal-
ing how nature itself likewise unfolds in accordance with dialectical patterns.18
Science is not a body of knowledge, but first and foremost a practical endeavour, a
systematic interaction with the unfolding environment. The subject and the object
pole of the knowledge production system interpenetrate each other via the means of
knowledge production: scientific instruments handled by scientists which allow the

17
Again, Engels discerns a dialectical process here: the medieval period sets in with the fall of
Rome and the elevation of Constantinople (M1), but is itself eliminated/negated during the fall of
Constantinople (the moment of negativity: M2) which, paradoxically perhaps, unleashes a return to
Greek philosophy and science in Western Europe: the Renaissance as negation of the nega-
tion (M3).
18
“Die Natur ist die Probe auf die Dialektik, und wir müssen es der modernen Naturwissenschaft
nachsagen, dass sie für diese Probe äußerst reichliches, sich täglich häufendes Material geliefert
und damit bewiesen hat, dass es in der Natur, in letzter Instanz, dialektisch hergeht … dass sie eine
wirkliche Geschichte durchmacht” (1878/1926, p. 22; 1880/1962, p. 205).
92 3 Dialectical Materialism

world to appear in a certain manner, as modifiable molecules and organisms for

instance, and this allows researchers to produce reproducible knowledge. From a
dialectical materialist perspective, there is no divide but rather continuity between
laboratories and factories, as well as between universities and industries, and the
concept of pure knowledge is a bourgeois fiction. Even logical categories do not
exist as pure axiomatic mental entities but rather as ideas that realise and optimise
themselves in practice.
Whereas bourgeois metaphysics is imprisoned in mental activities (thinking,
consciousness, ego-centric meditations, the mind-body problem), the technicity of
technoscience opens up the noumenal dimension of nature: the basic molecular pro-
cesses of life, energy and matter. And contrary to what bourgeois authors (including
Eugen Dühring) claim, thinking is not something we do as individuals. Rather, for
Engels, thinking relies on what nowadays would be referred to as distributed intel-
ligence: it is a collective activity involving millions of individuals, dispersed through
space and time (Engels, 1878/1962, p. 80). Constricted ideas produced by single,
isolated individuals should be regarded with critical suspicion. At the subject pole,
dialectics studies the dialectical unfolding of research programs, which inevitably
constitutes a tale of tensions, anomalies and contradictions, where existing knowl-
edge systems (displaying the tendency to freeze into certain modes of thinking), are
disrupted and pushed forward by the development of even more powerful and pre-
cise machines, whose ground-breaking discoveries may enforce dramatic revisions
of dominant ideas (Engels, 1878/1962, p. 82). And at the object pole, dialectics
allows us to see nature not as a series of chance events, but as processes in which
dialectical laws are at work and dialectical patterns can be discerned (Engels,
1878/1926, p. 11).
Contrary to the splendid isolation propagated by bourgeois metaphysics, Engels
contends, philosophy should no longer be considered a separate field standing apart
from science (1878/1962, p. 24; 1880/1962, p. 207). Rather, philosophy should be
practiced as an integrated endeavour. “Pure” philosophy has become irrelevant and
futile. The end of (bourgeois) philosophy is at the same time a new beginning, how-
ever. Similar to how social philosophy should be practiced in close connection with
political activity, the philosophy of science and nature should likewise be practiced
in close interaction with actual research endeavours, fostering the further develop-
ment of the dialectical method. Philosophy of science should become philosophy in
science, using the dialectical method to bring the dynamics of scientific progress to
the fore. And again, modern science is not only a dialectical process itself, but also
reveals the dialectical logic inherent in the natural processes it studies.
Dialectically speaking, three moments can be distinguished in the history of
thinking. During the initial situation (M1, exemplified by Plato and others), philoso-
phy was seen as contemplation, far removed from practical interaction with nature.
This is reflected in the Platonic view of nature as perfectly harmonious and bal-
anced, a view which must have been quite at odds with the experiences of artisanal
and agricultural labourers of ancient societies, working hard to mould and domesti-
cate nature in a hands-on manner (Zwart, 2009). During the scientific and industrial
revolutions of the nineteenth century, however, philosophy seemed to be negated
From Bourgeois Metaphysics to Dialectics of Science 93

(dethroned and marginalised) by science and technology (M2). As a third moment,

dialectics represents a reconciliation in the sense that it reveals how science unfolds
in a dialectical manner by disclosing the dialectical processes at work in nature. The
opposition between science and philosophy is sublated as dialectical materialism
becomes dedicated to the task of revealing and critically assessing the metaphysics
that is unconsciously at work in scientific research. And this reconciliation repre-
sents the dialectical “end” of a long history of estrangement (Engels,
1878/1926, p. 14).
In ancient Greece (M1), many Greek thinkers already were materialists and dia-
lecticians (1878/1926, p. 14) and even in modern history many examples of “spon-
taneous” dialecticians can be found.19 Overall, however, bourgeois metaphysics20
(represented for instance by British idealism, e.g. Berkeley, Hume, etc.) tended
towards negating materialism and dialectics (M2). The existence of an external
material world was put into question by idealism and solipsism, while nature was
seen as completely deterministic: a world in which nothing (nothing spontaneous or
unpredictable) could ever happen. Moreover, bourgeois thinking posited a series of
insurmountable divides, between subject (the ego of solipsism) and object (the
thing-in-itself), between society and nature, between is and ought, between fact and
value, between social science and natural science, etc. This position is now itself
negated by dialectical materialism, which represents a return of materialism, not in
the ancient contemplative sense, but informed by two millennia of research
(1878/1962, p. 129), including the most recent and advanced scientific insights.
This dialectical negation of the negation (M3) will transcend the dichotomies of
bourgeois metaphysics, resulting in a reconciliation, of social science and natural
science for instance, so that scientists become conscious of the social dimension of
their research as a decidedly social practice.21 Dialectics is itself a science: it is
philosophy in the form of a science. Its vocation is to consciously develop the dia-
lectical method, but in dialogue and interaction with scientific research practices:
discerning, articulating and addressing the dialectical processes at work in science.
A similar view was developed by British Marxist Christopher Caudwell
(1939/2017), who saw the cleavage between theory and practice (between basic and
applied research) as the signature characteristic of “bourgeois” epistemology: ceas-
ing to be interested in matter, while becoming exclusively concerned with the mind

19
Engels mentions Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for instance (1878/1926, p. 19), who posits an original
natural position (M1) which is negated by the estrangement of modern society (M2), but bound to
resurge on a higher level of social complexity in a future society where the opposition between
nature and culture is sublated (M3).
20
This label refers to a mode of thinking which sees the world in terms of dichotomies and oppo-
sites, e.g. subject versus object, society versus nature, is versus ought, etc., and in terms of fixed,
separate things (or even things-in-themselves) rather than in terms of processes of relentless inter-
active change.
21
Cf. Bernal (1937): in contrast with determinism, dialectical materialism explains the emergence
of radical new things in nature, such as life and human society, while at the same time showing how
science is part of social and historical development, also as a source for generating scientific ques-
tions, fostering scientific innovation and discovery.
94 3 Dialectical Materialism

and with subjective, phenomenal reality (1939/2017, p. 30), while science, on the
other hand, became increasingly impersonal. According to Caudwell, during the
bourgeois period, while technoscientific practice became increasingly specialised
and empirical, theory became increasingly abstract and diffuse, resulting in an
amalgam of reductionism and mysticism. Under the sway of bourgeois thinking,
while physicists concentrated on matter, philosophers were exclusively concerned
with the mind. Thus, the subject-object relationship became the most pressing prob-
lem of bourgeois philosophy, closely related to the question whether the external,
material world exists at all. Both the object and the subject were stripped of their
qualities. The subject vanished (only phenomena and experience existed, p. 63),
while the object became the unknowable thing-in-itself, ceasing to exist. This phi-
losophy of contemplation became increasingly estranged from the working masses
who actively worked with machines (either in laboratories or in industries).
Philosophy lacked the experience of active interaction and struggle with material
objectivity, so that philosophy became a marginalised theoretical reserve.
Subjectivity likewise eroded as the observer (as a concrete subject) became elimi-
nated (p. 46). Dialectical materialism, Caudwell argued, must supersede bourgeois
thinking by rediscovering both the subject (as a brain-worker, operating machines)
and the noumenal object (made accessible via technological advances), so that phil-
osophical consciousness becomes restored to activity.
For Engels, this effort to supersede bourgeois metaphysics was part of a histori-
cal unfolding which affected both the subject and the object pole of the knowledge
production process. As to the object pole: during the initial situation, in ancient
Greece (M1), the focus was on nature in general, on being as a whole, on abstract,
general, universal ideas about nature (Allgemeinheit, A; Hegel, 1830/1986, p. 57).
This holistic view was negated by the negativity of modern empirical science (M2),
which amounted to a breaking down, an analysis (Zerlegung) of natural phenomena
into particular components (Besonderheit, B). The negation of the negation (M3),
entails a return to the whole in the form of a systemic and converging approach, but
now on a higher level of comprehension and understanding, focussing on concrete
entities which exemplify nature or life as such, e.g. the cell (Einzelheit, E). Thus,
initial general insights inevitably give way to divergence and contradiction
(Entzweiung), but these are sublated by a third moment, a return (Zurückführung) to
concrete convergence (Einigkeit) (Hegel, 1830/1986, p. 88).

 ialectical Materialism Versus Bourgeois Epistemology

D
in Twentieth Century Marxism

From the 1920s onwards, Engels’s dialectics of science and nature became a contro-
versial endeavour and Engels’s project has remained the target of substantial polem-
ics ever since, notably in Marxist circles, and notably among authors who aim to
restore “pure” Marxism by cleansing it of what they see as contaminations. The
Dialectical Materialism Versus Bourgeois Epistemology in Twentieth Century Marxism 95

dialectics of nature debate was ignited by prominent authors such as György Lukács
and Jean-Paul Sartre22 (Sheehan, 1985/2017; Sim, 2000, p. 132; Kangal, 2019) and
eventually became a “polemical battlefield” (Kangal, 2019), giving rise to a whole
“mountain of literature” (Sheehan, 1985/2017, p. 54). Notably Lukács aimed to
discredit “the banalities of Engels’s version of dialectical materialism” (Feenberg,
2017, p. 111), limiting the dialectical method “to social issues, while leaving the
natural scientists to carry on as before” (p. 120). Lukács and his followers saw the
very idea of a dialectics of nature as mistaken, stemming from a “retreat to Hegel”,
and allegedly in “opposition” to Marx (Lukács, 1978, p. 110).23 According to
Lukács, “the misunderstandings that arise from Engels’ account of dialectics can in
the main be put down to the fact that Engels – following Hegel’s mistaken lead –
extended the dialectical method to apply also to nature” (1923/1971, p. 24).
Dialectics of nature was allegedly “non-Marxian”, he and others maintained
(Burman, 2018).
These efforts to posit a cesura between Marx and Engels are contradicted by a
juxtaposed strand of publications, less visible and less vocal perhaps, but based on
a more careful reading I would argue, which emphasise continuity between Marx
and Engels, notwithstanding their “division of labour” (i.e. Marx’s decision to focus
on political economy), both with regard to their intense rereading of Hegel and con-
cerning the endorsement of a dialectics of nature. Both in his writings (including
Capital) and in his correspondence with Engels, Marx stated his conviction that
dialectics, including Hegel’s discovery of the law of transformation from quantita-
tive into qualitative change, is attested by history and the natural sciences alike (cf.
Marx’s letter to Engels, 22 June 1867; MECW 42, p. 385; Stanley, 1991; Griese &
Pawelzig, 1995), while in Capital he refers to chemistry, for instance, to explain
dialectics.24 While there is no evidence that Marx disagreed with Engels’s project,
there is plenty of evidence to the contrary (Royle, 2014; Hundt, 2014; Blackledge,
2017). The claim that Marx “did not share” Engels’ interest in the natural sciences
(Thomas, 2008, p. 1) is evidently mistaken, and the suggestion that Marx (unlike
Engels) would adhere to endorsing a humanity vs. nature dualism is misguided,

22
On December 7, 1961, Jean-Paul Sartre participated in a famous debate in Paris before a large
audience (Sartre et al., 1962) to criticize Engels and defend the thesis that the laws of dialectics
only apply to mental and social processes, so that there can be no such thing as a dialectics of
nature. In Critique of Dialectical Reason, however, Sartre had argued that organisms negate their
negations, and develop dialectically, by rejecting and excreting the disruptive forms of negativity
which they themselves engender. Sartre here defines need as the negation of the negation (over-
coming the lack which hampers to organism to function), pointing out that also other animals
besides humans develop tools to overcome that which opposes their project of integration (Sartre,
1960/2004, p. 83, 85).
23
In Volume 3 of The Ontology of Social Being, however (his unpublished Nachlass as it were),
Lukács reconsiders his position, now praising Aristotle’s, Hegel’s and Engels’ dialectical under-
standing of labour (Lukács, 1980).
24
Already in his thesis, Marx practiced what he consistently preached, as his thesis already
amounted to a close dialectical reading of ancient Greek atomism and a dialectical interpretation
of the declination of the atom (Stanley, 1989).
96 3 Dialectical Materialism

since Marx (like Engels) consistently emphasises the interaction and metabolism
between both. And yet, as Kangal phrases it, no other work has been subject to as
much conflict and chaos in Marxist scholarship than Engels’ Dialectics of Nature.
It is not my purpose to present a full overview of this debate, of course, but I cannot
wholly ignore it either. A dialectical materialist perspective on contemporary sci-
ence must position itself against this turbulent backdrop. Therefore, a concise
resume of this debate will be presented, albeit from a dialectical materialist posi-
tion. As a starting point of the debate, I will use the Marxist classic Materialism and
Empiriocriticism published by W.I Lenin, a staunch supporter of Engels, in 1908
(Lenin, 1908/1979).
In Materialism and Empiriocriticism, Lenin aims to update Engels’s dialectics of
nature through a polemical review of the theories of Ernst Mach, Richard Avenarius
and other “empiriocriticists” (Lenin, 1908/1979). In terms of style and structure,
Lenin’s book echoes Engels’ polemical review of Eugen Dühring’s work
(1878/1962). The empiriocriticists where progressive authors who aimed to develop
a new epistemology (a new theory of human understanding) to replace pre-­scientific,
“metaphysical” conceptions with science-compatible ones, but Lenin’s purpose is
to demonstrate that they were much less progressive than they thought, because they
actually articulated a bourgeois epistemology.
Empiriocriticists regard “sense data” (i.e. impressions, observations, sensations,
affections and the like) as the primary starting point of human knowledge and reject
the materialistic (“metaphysical”) idea that these impressions are produced in us by
material things existing in the outside world, independent of human consciousness.
There is nothing beyond experience, they argue, no environment without a subject
who experiences it. By positing the existence of things beyond sensation, material-
ism gives rise to an unnecessary duplication (“Verdopplung”) of the world (p. 13).
The material world posited by materialism is discarded as a mystification. According
to Lenin, however, by regarding objectivity as a mere product of human subjectivity
(by considering the world as a product of human consciousness), these empiriocriti-
cists “plagiarise” (p. 35) the views of eighteenth-century bourgeois idealist George
Berkeley, who already denied the existence of an outside world, considering it an
illusion and claiming that being equals being-perceived (Esse est percipi). Our
experiences and sensations are produced in us: not by external things (via our sense
organs), Berkeley argued, but by God. In short, according to the empiriocriticists,
we only experience experiences (“Wir Empfinden unsere Empfindungen”, p. 35),
while things are merely seen as “complexes of experiences”. The world basically is
what I experience (“Die Welt ist meine Empfindung”, p. 61). The existence of non-­
thinking substance outside human consciousness is systematically eliminated
(p. 17, 51).
According to Lenin, however, dialectical materialism should hold on to the exis-
tence of a material world independent of human consciousness. We experience the
existence of external reality primarily by interacting with it, in an active, practical
manner, via labour, Lenin argues. Human praxis (labour) is our primary source of
experience, and this convinces us that the world out there really exists. At the same
time, Lenin is clearly aware of the crisis raging in contemporary physics, due to
Dialectical Materialism Versus Bourgeois Epistemology in Twentieth Century Marxism 97

revolutionary discoveries such as X-rays and radioactivity. The material world (e.g.
the atom as a basic material entity) seems to evaporate, to dissolve into radiation.
Thus, whilst being aware of the challenge to update dialectical materialism, Lenin
nonetheless argues that materialism should remain the starting point.
A dialectical unfolding can be discerned in this debate, in which the first moment
(M1) is represented by pre-modern metaphysics (say, Aristotle and his medieval fol-
lowers: Scholasticism), where the soul is considered to be the form of the body. For
Aristotle, a concrete living entity is the realisation of an idea. This mode of thinking
was negated during modernity, however. The modern metaphysical position was
inaugurated by Descartes who developed a dualistic view – dividing the world into
the ego (human consciousness) as a “thinking thing” (res cogitans) surrounded by
extended things (res extensa), thus introducing a compartmentalisation between
mind and body, as well as between mind and matter (although Spinoza would sub-
sequently argue that the world is one substance, a thinking and extended whole,
with two attributes known to us, namely thought and extension, mind and body).
This second moment (M2) was pushed towards its extreme by Berkeley’s solipsism,
who dropped the existence of external material reality altogether and solely focussed
on his own mind. As Lenin argues, Empiriocriticism can be considered a fin-the-­
siècle update of this radical bourgeois stance. By claiming that we only have access
to the world of sense data, the existence of a material world independent of and
predating human consciousness is negated and discarded as a metaphysical illusion.
We are not entitled to posit the existence of things outside (independent of) human
experience. M2 entails the negation of the material dimension of the world.
The challenge, dialectically speaking, is to reach a higher level of comprehen-
sion via a negation of the negation (M3), i.e. a position which negates and sublates
both pre-modern metaphysics (M1) and bourgeois idealism (M2), thereby overcom-
ing both antithetical positions. To do this, we must come to terms with the revolu-
tionary and unsettling insights produced by twentieth-century science. Rather than
relapsing into pre-modern metaphysical conceptions, dialectical materialism aims
to develop a science-compatible version of materialism. Dialectically speaking it is
clear that both opposites or antagonists – both traditional (naive) materialism and
idealism – have something in common. They both take the phenomenal world of
human experience as their starting point, and the issue at stake is whether or not it
is admissible to posit the existence of a material world beyond human conscious-
ness. With the help of powerful mathematics and highly advanced technologies,
however, modern science has opened up completely unknown and unimaginable
dimensions of the material world, far beyond the confines of human understanding:
the extremely small world of molecules, atoms and elementary particles (studied by
modern chemistry and quantum physics) and the extremely large world of galaxies
evolving in spacetime (studied by astrophysics). It is only by coming to terms with
science in both directions (the hyper-small and the hyper-large) that dialectical
materialism may develop a “sublated” understanding (a negation of the negation).
To phrase it in contemporary terms: this third position neither opts for traditional
materialism (since the material world as we know it from every-day experience, and
as it is studied by classical physics, is obliterated and eliminated by quantum
98 3 Dialectical Materialism

physics, molecular life sciences research and astrophysics) nor for idealism or
Empiriocriticism (the initial “negation” which is now itself negated by this third
position). Contemporary technoscience discloses an unknown world existing
beyond the reach of unaided human consciousness and sensitivity, a world which is
unimaginable and imperceptible for us, which defies the basic structures of human
experience and is only accessible via advanced mathematics and scientific technic-
ity. Lenin’s book, one could argue, represents a moment of transition, hovering
somewhere between M2 and M3. He emphasises (in a polemical manner) the short-­
comings of Empiriocriticism, is clearly aware of the need for a third dialectical step,
but without really being able to realise this step himself because, unlike later authors
such as Haldane and Bernal, he studied this debate in libraries and was not really
physically there as far as technoscience was concerned.
Dialectically speaking, the second moment represents bourgeois epistemology
(M2). Starting point is the ego, which not only gives rise to an egocentric political
philosophy (e.g. an ideology of individual autonomy and social contracts, of origi-
nal positions and egocentric self-sufficiency, reflected by the Robinson Crusoe
theme, etc.), but also to an egocentric epistemology: the idea that the world is what
I experience. While Empiriocriticism is a radical version of this idea, a basic affinity
can be discerned with Kantianism and neo-Kantianism as well. Kant had posited the
concept of the thing-in-itself (the noumenal dimension of objectivity, beyond the
phenomenal realm of human experience) as something which is inaccessible to
human understanding (Kant, 1781/1975). Idealism (Empiriocriticism) merely took
the final step: if the noumenal thing-in-itself is unreachable, why not get rid of it
altogether?
From a dialectical materialism perspective, however, this debate now takes a
completely different turn as we are confronted with the results of contemporary
technoscience. After the fin-the-siècle scientific revolution (the discovery of the
electron, the emergence of quantum physics, of relativity theory, of genetics, of
molecular life sciences research, etc.), the noumenal dimension of nature has been
effectively revealed with the help of advanced technicity (e.g. contrivances such as
elementary particle colliders, radio telescopes, spectroscopy, etc.). Technoscience
as a praxis has effectively disclosed the noumenal realm of natural processes and
entities (of protons and quarks, of nucleotides and amino acids, etc.). It has opened
up the basic molecular structure of life and matter. Our understanding of materiality
has been radically transformed and sublated, so that our conception of materiality as
such (from Higgs-bosons up to stellar formations) has been uplifted, reaching a
higher plane of complexity and comprehension (M3), and the same applies to our
bio-molecular understanding of living systems. In short, although our understand-
ing of matter has dramatically changed since the days of Friedrich Engels, the exis-
tence of an external world as such (the core issue of bourgeois metaphysics) is no
longer our major concern. It is marginalised into a purely academic quandary,
because the noumenal structure of reality has effectively been made intelligible by
technoscience as an interactive research praxis, continuously interacting with mat-
ter and nature in an experimental manner (high-tech scientific experimentalism as a
particular mode of human praxis). Building on Engels, a dialectical materialism
Dialectical Materialism Versus Bourgeois Epistemology in Twentieth Century Marxism 99

perspective would emphasise the role of scientific experimental labour in this

endeavour, which put an end to futile bourgeois speculations (bourgeois mind games).
Dialectically speaking, although scholars like Lukács claimed to endorse a dia-
lectical view on human society, they reverted to a bourgeois perspective as far as the
realm of science and nature was concerned. These scholars worked in libraries
rather than laboratories, quite remote from the actual world of scientific research
(Sheehan, 1985/2017). Taking Engels as their key source of inspiration, a genuine
dialectical materialist perspective on contemporary science was developed by dia-
lectical scientists such as Haldane, Bernal and Needham in the 1930s, in whose
writings the tensions between the library and the laboratory perspective on science
and nature were sublated and integrated into a comprehensive, genuinely dialecti-
cal view.
In Marxist discourse, however, this endeavour (the development of a dialectics or
dialectical materialist view of nature) remained a contested undertaking. Lukács
(1923/1971) was probably the first but certainly not the last Marxist scholar who
viewed the application of dialectics to nature as problematic (Kangal, 2019, p. 218),
arguing that dialectics should be limited to the realms of history and society, as the
dynamics of contradiction and antagonism should allegedly be seen as a social, not
a natural phenomenon.
Dialectically speaking, however, this is an untenable position, first of all because
dialectics urges to move beyond such “bourgeois” oppositions (nature versus soci-
ety, natural science versus social science, etc.). Moreover, the view of nature opened
up by the natural sciences in the twentieth century reveals a remarkably dialectical
series of processes, abounding in dialectical antagonisms and contradictions.
Novelty emerges in nature because of the internal contradictions and crises of previ-
ous states (Bernal, 1937). Organic life (as “negative entropy”) is something inher-
ently dialectical, consisting of constantly emerging and resolving biotic processes
(Engels, 1878/1962, p. 112). Take for instance the theory of evolution (one of the
three key discoveries of the nineteenth century, according to Engels as we have
seen) where the debate concerning the question whether nature evolves in a gradual
(Darwinian) fashion or in a leap-like fashion (via catastrophes, disruptive transi-
tions, etc.) has been overcome (sublated) by the punctuated equilibrium theory
developed by dialectical biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge (Eldredge
& Gould, 1972; Rose, 1997; Gould, 2002, p. 745 ff.; Clark & York, 2005), reconcili-
ating both moments on a higher level of comprehension, arguing that nature (com-
parable to human society and history) evolves both incrementally and through
radical transitions. Or, to stay closer to the work of Engels, take the development of
a natural organism, say a plant. The seed containing the program of life (“heredity”,
DNA) is exposed to a hazardous, entropic environment which threatens to negate
and obliterate this fragile life form, unless the plant manages to use its environment
as a resource for growth and protection (the negation of the negation), so that two
antagonistic forces (nature and nurture, genome and environment) eventually com-
plement each other. As was already indicated above, living entities basically are this
dialectical interaction. The technicity of modern science takes us far beyond the
type of experiences provided by our natural sense organs (as products of evolution).
100 3 Dialectical Materialism

Rather, it opens up the noumenal, molecular “essence” of living systems. But to

really and convincingly address this issue, we have to shift our focus towards a
concrete dialectical assessment of an actual research practice; which is precisely
what the final section of this chapter purports to do.

From Artificial Proteins to Synthetic Cells

Life, according to Engels, is the mode of existence of proteins (Eiweißkörper),25

characterised by the constant self-renewal of the chemical constituents of these pro-
teins, a conception which echoes Hegel’s view of life as a self-renewing chemical
process made perennial, discussed above. Egg-white (Eiweiß) is a term which
Engels uses here in its modern chemical-industrial sense, as a general denominator
for the larger family of protein substances (1878/1962, p. 76).26 Wherever we find
life, we find proteins and vice versa. Proteins represent noumenal life or life “an
sich”, they are the essence of “naked life” (p. 76). The lowest living beings known
to us are aggregates of proteins and they already exhibit all the essential phenomena
of life: they absorb and appropriate substances from their environment and assimi-
late them, while other substances disintegrate and are excreted: a process known as
metabolism. Non-living bodies also change or become involved in chemical combi-
nations (e.g. metals which oxidise and rust), but they thereby cease to be what they
were. In living entities, this constant interaction with the environment (a cause of
entropic destruction in non-living bodies) is transformed into a fundamental condi-
tion of existence (Engels, 1878/1962, p. 76). As soon as metabolism seizes, they
decompose and die. Paradoxically therefore, life is in a constant state of flux, being
every moment both itself and something else, as a result of processes which are self-­
implemented and inherent to life. Hence it follows that, if chemistry ever succeeds
in producing proteins artificially from chemical components (Engels, 1878/1962,
p. 67, 76), these substances must display phenomena of life (metabolism, growth,

25
“Leben ist die Daseinsweise der Eiweißkörper” (1878/1962, p. 75). The term Eiweiß may be
translated either in a general sense (as protein), or in a more specific sense, as albumin: the type of
proteins egg white contains.
26
“Eiweißkörper im Sinn der modernen Chemie, die unter diesem Namen alle dem gewöhnlichen
Eiweiß analog zusammengesetzten Körper, sonst auch Proteinsubstanzen genannt), zusammen-
fast” (Engels, 1878/1962, p. 76). Proteins are macromolecules consisting of extended chains of
amino acids and performing a vast array of functions within organisms. They were first described
by the Dutch chemist Gerardus Johannes Mulder in 1838 (Harold, 1951), who discovered that
these substances had the same empirical formula (C400H620N100O120P1S1) (Perrett, 2007). Prior to
“protein”, which is derived from ancient Greek and means primary (primary substance), other
names were used such as “albumins” or “albuminous substances” (Eiweißkörper), derived from
“albumin” (egg white).
 From Artificial Proteins to Synthetic Cells 101

etc.),27 however weak these may be, provided scientist find out what the right nutri-
tion for such a substance would be.
Engels perceives life from a dialectical position. Initially, we know life from
every-day experience and contemplate about it (M1), but at a certain point, a more
active and experimental approach is adopted, so that living entities are taken apart,
dismantled and analysed. This analysis (Zerlegung) entails an element of violence,
resulting in the obliteration of living entities, a process which reveals the negativity
of experimental science (M2). In order to understand life, scientists systematically
destroy (negate) it in their laboratories, in order to find out that living substances,
which we know from every-day experience, actually consist of molecular sub-
stances called proteins, which can be analysed further, so that their chemical com-
position is revealed. The inevitable third step, dialectically speaking, is the negation
of the negation (M3). Starting from a general understanding of life (A), but proceed-
ing on the basis of accumulated knowledge concerning particular aspects of life
(B), scientists will eventually try to reconstruct living matter (proteins) in vitro. The
final aim inevitably will be to technologically reproduce proteins: putting the basic
components together again to produce something which is a concrete whole; −
something like an artificial cell, the concrete universal of life (E).
This same line of thinking, developed in Anti-Dühring, can also be encountered
in Dialectics of Nature. In nineteenth-century biology, Engels points out, the dis-
covery of the structure and function of the cell with the help of advanced micro-
scopes revealed that cells indeed constitute the basic realisation of the concept of
life. Meanwhile, in chemistry, through complementary processes of analysis and
synthesis, scientists not only discovered the basic molecular constituents of living
(organic) matter, but were also able to produce organic compounds in vitro that
hitherto had only been produced in living organism (in vivo), starting with urea,
thereby bridging the gap (the ontological divide) between inorganic and organic
nature, which Kant had considered to be insurmountable (Engels, 1925/1962a,
p. 318). And while biochemists are working hard to understand life in their labora-
tories, palaeontologists disclose immense palaeontological “archives” which one
day may help us to understand the origin of life on Earth (p. 322).
As to the subject pole, paleo-anthropologists reveal the crucial role of tool use
and labour in the process of anthropogenesis, the coming into being of human soci-
eties and the self-formation of humankind (p. 322), starting with the discovery of
the transformation of mechanical motion into heat: i.e. the generation of fire by
means of friction (Engels, 1925/1962b, p. 106), and eventually arriving at its coun-
terpart: the transformation of heat into movement via steam engines. Humans are
self-made, Engels argues, and the most important product of human labour is
humanity as such, most notably the human hand (1925/1962b, p. 445), which co-­
evolved with the human brain (p. 232). Technoscientific research itself still exempli-
fies this formative interaction between the human hand (active experimental

27
“Und daraus folgt, dass, wenn es der Chemie jemals gelingen wird, Eiweiß künstliche herzustel-
len, dies Eiweiß Lebenserscheinungen zeigen muss” (1878/1962, p. 76).
102 3 Dialectical Materialism

manipulation), the human brain (the organ of thinking) and the natural environment,
in order to produce viable knowledge concerning the natural world, although mod-
ern science has of course moved far beyond Palaeolithic conditions by developing a
conscious organisation of the knowledge production process. Whereas Greek think-
ers conceived of nature as a whole, modern research involves an active processing
of nature, applying the laws of dialectics, albeit often in an “unconscious” manner.
But conscious dialectics would optimise this process and result in a more compre-
hensive view, provided Hegelian dialectics is turned upside down (“umstülpen”,
p. 335), transforming it from an idealistic approach (focussed on concepts) into a
materialist approach (focussed on how these concepts materialise in concrete
research practices, in concrete interactions with life and matter).
In the nineteenth century, science resulted in three decisive discoveries as we
have seen: the discovery of the cell, the laws of thermodynamics and evolution
(p. 468). One big challenge is still awaiting us, Engels argues: explaining the origin
of life out of inorganic nature, but modern chemistry is bound to reach this goal
(p. 469).28 Since the artificial production of urea by Wöhler in 1828, there are in
principle no obstacles to progress further towards the production of more complex
substances in the laboratory, including proteins (albumen). Once the molecular
composition of proteins is known, moreover, scientists will try their hands at pro-
ducing living protein,29 so that the chemical process will give way to the process of
life and the gap (allegedly insurmountable) between inorganic and organic nature
will be bridged (1925/1962a, p. 318, 319). This will affect the subject pole as well,
for as soon as chemistry is able to produce proteins, it will become a qualitatively
different type of science, namely the science of artificial life (p. 522).
Dialectically speaking, this again represents an unfolding triadic development,
from the initial discovery of living cells (M1), via their chemical analysis (M2)
towards re-synthesis (convergence, Zurückführung: M3). One day, scientists will be
able to create life artificially (p. 559), by producing proteins and mimicking meta-
bolic processes. As a result, the basic processes of life will become modifiable in a
test-tube. This line of thinking builds on what was already brought forward by “old
Hegel” himself, namely that, as soon as the chemical process becomes self-­
sustainable (becomes metabolism), it becomes life.30 So-called artificial cells

28
“Nur eines bleibt noch zu tun: die Entstehung des Lebens aus der unorganischen Natur zu erk-
lären. Das heißt auf der heutigen Stufe der Wissenschaft nichts anderes als: Eiweißkörper aus
unorganischen Stoffe herzustellen. Diese Aufgabe rückt die Chemie immer näher” (p. 468/469).
29
“Sobald die Zusammensetzung der Eiweißkörper einmal bekannt ist, wird [die Chemie] an die
Herstellung von lebendigem Eiweiß gehen können” (p. 469); “Gelingt es der Chemie, dies Eiweiß
in der Bestimmtheit darzustellen … greift der chemische Prozess über sich selbst hinaus, d.h. er
gelangt in ein umfassenderes Gebiet, das des Organismus” (p. 520).
30
See for instance Hegel’s comments about the chemical process in his Enzyklopädie der philoso-
phischen Wissenschaften II: “Der chemische Prozess ist so ein Analogon des Lebens. Könnte er
sich durch sich selbst fortsetzen, so wäre er das Leben; daher liegt es nahe, des Leben chemisch zu
fassen“(§ 326); „Wenn die Produkte des chemischen Prozesses selbst wieder die Tätigkeit anfin-
gen, so wären sie das Leben. Das Leben ist insofern ein perennierend gemachter chemischer
Prozess” (§ 335).
 From Artificial Proteins to Synthetic Cells 103

created by Moritz Traube in 1864 did not yet represent genuine metabolism, Engels
argues, but it did represent a symptomatic step. Once upon a time, environmental
conditions on planet Earth must have been such that the first protein aggregates
could arise spontaneously and evolve into primeval primitive organisms. And one
day, in modern laboratories, such conditions may again be reproduced in vitro.31
Thus, Engels can be credited for having predicted the emergence of efforts to
create artificial life in vitro as an inevitable step, eventually resulting in the creation
of synthetic cells, as an important dialectical endpoint (turning-point) in the history
of science. He thereby prepared the ground for a dialectical assessment of contem-
porary technoscience, exemplified by projects committed to building a synthetic
cell and similar endeavours. A number of dialectical authors, notably scientists,
already contributed to the extrapolation of dialectical materialism to contemporary
science, such as for instance J.B.S. Haldane (1938/2016) who is still famous for his
contribution to the primordial, prebiotic soup hypothesis, which states that life arose
gradually from inorganic molecular building blocks, e.g. amino acids. Building on
Engels, he defined a number of methodological principles for a dialectical under-
standing of scientific research, such as the primacy of practice over theory (seeing
research first and foremost as a praxis, a systematic experimental interaction with
nature, building on the conviction that knowledge claims should be tested and vali-
dated in practice). Another principle is that nature should not be considered as a
collection of things, but rather as a series of processes. Science is about change and
relies on technological contrivances to study these transformative processes with
due exactness and precision. Moreover, science itself progresses in a dialectical
manner as well, via the negation and obliteration of existing viewpoints. Currently
(in the 1930s), Haldane argued, science is bridging the gap between inorganic and
organic nature, between chemistry and biology, for instance via the study of viruses:
entities which consist of pure nucleic acid (the noumenal essence of life as such)
contained in a protein capsule. The metabolic processes of life consist of anabolism
and catabolism, of building up and breaking down, as opposites which actually must
be seen as complementary and as part of the living cell as a concrete, comprehensive
whole. And now that the basic constituents of living systems are being explored, the
question arises: how to put Humpty Dumpty together again (p. 98)? Increasingly,
partial components of living systems will prove replaceable, even in the case of
humans, whose organs may one day be replaced by artificial substitutes (a practice
currently known as tissue engineering). Genes are beautiful exemplifications of the
dialectics (the creative antagonisms) in nature, Haldane argues, containing a pro-
gram which is constantly trying to adapt to the environment and vice versa, so that
the program may optimally function in a thriving living being. Contrary to genetic
determinism, dialectics sees organisms not merely as passive objects, but as active
subjects or agents of evolution, adapting to and at the same time modifying their
environment. Plant roots and rhizomes change the structure and composition of the

31
This idea, the spontaneous origin of life from inorganic matter (generatio aequivoca), is also
discussed by Marx and Engels in their correspondence (1983 III, p. 339, 437). J.B.S Haldane and
Alexander Oparin later developed this idea into the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis.
104 3 Dialectical Materialism

soil, and networks of interacting living things (the biosphere) changed the planet on
a spectacular scale, altering the atmosphere irreversibly by adding oxygen (cf.
Levins & Lewontin, 1985; Royle, 2014). Neither organism nor environment can be
understood without reference to the other (Royle, 2014, p. 103). They alternately
perform the role of agent (A), other (O) and product (P) in dialectical cycles (as
explained in Hegel’s analysis of the chemical process, above).32
This reflects a dialectical dynamic. Initially, living entities are seen as stable, bal-
anced wholes (M1) and the phenomena of life are addressed on a general or univer-
sal level. Aristotle, for instance, is interested in life as such, in the conceptual
understanding of life (das Allgemeine: A), although in his anatomical research he
began to introduce rudimentary differentiations between particular groups of spe-
cies (e.g. animals with lungs versus animals with gills). Modern scientific analysis
focusses on particular processes and dimensions, such as, for instance, heredity or
the environment (das Besondere: B). Here, multiple antagonistic factors and forces
are actually at work: productive tensions between heredity and environment, anabo-
lism and catabolism, growth and equilibrium, etc. (M2). Finally, we will come to
understand how these antagonisms converge into concrete living entities such as
living cells, functioning and maintaining high levels of complexity as concrete uni-
ties (M3). Thus, the living cell is the concrete realisation of the idea of life (Einzelheit:
E). And to really understand the living cell, one final step has to be made, namely
the technical reproduction of a minimal or artificial cell in vitro.
This same idea is further developed by Friedrich Engels in his treatise Ludwig
Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886/1962). Again, he
argues that bourgeois metaphysical convictions, such as the idea of an insurmount-
able gap between subject and object, between phenomenal experiences and things-­
in-­themselves, between living and non-living entities, between organic and inorganic
nature, etc. must be overcome by experimental labour in laboratories and industries:
by science as praxis. Indeed: the ultimate validation of the dialectical materialist
conception of natural processes can be achieved by actively reproducing biotic
organic entities ourselves, in laboratories and factories. That would finally put an
end to the Kantian “thing in itself.”33 Biochemical substances remain “things in

32
For Joseph Needham, a biochemist and historian of science, specialised in science history in
China, dialectics applied both to natural and societal processes. Thus, he emphasised the dialecti-
cal nature of natural phenomena such as muscle contraction (Chen, 2019). He saw nature as a
series of dialectical syntheses. “From ultimate particle to atom, from atom to molecule, from mol-
ecule to colloidal aggregate, from aggregate to living cell, from organ to body, from animal body
to social association... Nothing but energy (as we now call matter and motion) and the levels of
organisation (or the stabilized dialectical syntheses) at different levels have been required for the
building of our world” (Needham, 1943, p. 15). Living organisms and their environment are as
inextricably interlaced as science is with society and its history. Indeed, as Needham phrases it,
Marx and Engels set “Hegelian dialectic within evolving nature” (1983, p. 15; cf. Nappi &
Wark, 2019).
33
“Wenn wir die Richtigkeit unsrer Auffassung eines Naturvorgangs beweisen können, indem wir
ihn selbst machen, ihn aus seinen Bedingungen erzeugen, ihn obendrein unseren Zwecken dienst-
bar werden lassen, so ist es mit dem Kantschen unfassbaren “Ding an sich” zu Ende. Die im pflan-
 From Artificial Proteins to Synthetic Cells 105

themselves” only until biochemistry can artificially produce them, one after the
other, because then these processes and substances become things for us.34
Dialectics also helps us to come to terms with the enigma of the origin of life.
Under current terrestrial circumstances, life can no longer emerge spontaneously
(generatio aequivoca seems no longer possible) because life emerged as a third
moment in a dialectical unfolding. Initially, primeval organisms (aggregates of liv-
ing albumin as Engels phrased it: M1) emerged, able to withstand their entropic,
abiotic, anaerobic environment (M2) which threatened them with destruction. These
budding life forms became increasingly able not only to survive, but also to thrive
and to use their primeval environment (now known as the primordial soup) as a
resource for development and growth (M3). In the present situation, biotic, aerobic
environments effectively block such a trajectory. Indeed, as Levins and Lewontin
phrased it, the primary requirement for the origin of life is now the absence of life
(1985, p. 46). Under current circumstances, fragile neo-life requires a gnotobiotic,
fully controlled environment, which can only be provided by the purified ambiances
of technoscientific laboratories (Zwart, 2019a). Thus, the synthetic cell emerges as
the concrete realisation of the technoscientific concept of life, and as the reconcilia-
tion of self-conscious reason (i.e. technoscience) with the reason (logos) inherent in
existing nature.35
But precisely this may also prove a weakness. Should the experiment succeed,
the initial experience of success will probably be short-lived: a fate which befalls
most if not all the triumphs of scientific inquiry. Before long, discontent will set in,
in the form of the experience that, apparently, we have missed something and that
these artificial (“fake”) cells fail to fully grasp and reproduce the astounding com-
plexities of living systems, so that the synthetic cell will only prove a temporary
station on the long and winding pathway of the dialectical unfolding of scientific
consciousness. This particular triumph will be negated, but rather than clinging to
this particular trial (and the – apparently constricted – understanding of life on
which it built), technoscience will doubtlessly desire to progress farther. As a posi-
tive result, the inevitable experience of Enttäuschung will inform and enable the
development of even more advanced programs and efforts to realise a negation of
this negation in the future.
Ultimately, the dialectical objective (the envisioned end result) remains the will
to supersede the disruptive divergence between technology and nature, thereby
making biotechnology sustainable and bio-compatible again. In the course of the
industrial revolution, bourgeois technoscience developed into a detrimental

zlichen und tierischen Körper erzeugten chemischen Stoffe blieben solche “Dinge an sich”, bis die
organische Chemie sie einen nach dem andern darzustellen anfing; damit wurde das “Ding an sich”
ein Ding für uns” (Engels, 1886/1962, p. 276).
34
Cf. Bernal (1937): scientists of today are learning to manipulate life very much as their predeces-
sors learned to manipulate chemical substances, so that life ceases to be a mystery and is becoming
a utility.
35
Cf. Hegel, “den höchsten Endzweck der Wissenschaft [ist] die Versöhnung der selbstbewussten
Vernunft mit der seienden Vernunft, mit der Wirklichkeit hervorzubringen” (1830/1986, § 6, p. 47).
106 3 Dialectical Materialism

technological power of epochal impact, critically affecting the metabolism between

human society and the natural environment. Already in early publications, Engels
acutely described how in booming cities such as Manchester (1845/1962, p. 237,
250, 254), techno-industrial disruption resulted in miasmic air, hideous smells
(p. 259) and polluted puddles (p. 274), such as the river Irk, which had become a
narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, filled with refuse and excrements (p. 282,
295), creating optimal conditions for the spread of infectious diseases such as chol-
era (Zwart, 2019b). While Engels saw cities themselves as complex processes,
rather than as entities (Royle, 2014, p. 100), ecological disruption was a decidedly
global process, and in Dialectics of Nature Engels describes, for instance, how
Spanish planters in Cuba, by burning down forests in order to plant their profitable
coffee trees, caused tropical rainfall to wash away the now unprotected upper stra-
tum of the soil (1925/1962a, p. 455). While during the artisanal agricultural era (M1)
the metabolism between humanity and nature had remained relatively sustainable,
the industrial revolution gave rise to an “ecological rift” (Foster, 2000; Foster et al.,
2010): to massive processes of disruption (environmental pollution, soil degrada-
tion, urbanisation, alienation) which catastrophically aggravated during the current
era of globalisation (M2). These developments fuelled a revival of Marxist
approaches to the current ecological crisis (Foster, 2000; Moore, 2016; Royle,
2019), underscoring the detrimental environmental and biological impact of ego-
centric bourgeois metaphysics on our global economic and ecological system. Now
that global disruption (climate change, mass extinction, ecological destruction) is
being pushed to its extreme, the challenge is more than ever to supersede the
“Entzweiung” between technology and nature, between urban and rural, etc., on a
higher level of sophistication (M3).

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