V.I.

Lenin

MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM

Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy ( Chapter Five: The Recent Revolution in Natural Science and Philosophical Idealism )

2. “Matter Has Disappeared”

Such, literally, is the expression that may be encountered in
the descriptions given by modern physicists of recent discoveries. For instance, L. Houllevigue, in his book The Evolution of the Sciences, entitles his chapter on the new
theories of matter: “Does Matter Exist?” He says:
“The atom dematerialises, matter disappears.” [1]

To see how easily fundamental philosophical conclusions are drawn from this by the Machians,
let us take Valentinov. He writes: “The statement that the
scientific explanation of the world can find a firm foundation
only in materialism is nothing but a fiction, and what is more,
an absurd fiction” (p. 67). He quotes as a destroyer of
this absurd fiction Augusto Righi, the well-known Italian
physicist, who says that the electron theory “is not so
much a theory of electricity as of matter; the new system simply
puts electricity in the place of matter.” (Augusto Righi,
Die moderne Theorie der physikalischen Erscheinungen , [ The Modern Theory of Physical Phenomena ], Leipzig, 1905, S. 131.
There is a Russian translation.)
Having quoted these words (p. 64), Mr. Valentinov exclaims:

“ Why does Righi permit himself to commit this offence against sacred matter? Is it perhaps because he is a solipsist,
an idealist, a bourgeois criticist, an empirio-monist, or even
someone worse?”

This remark, which seems to Mr. Valentinov to annihilate the
materialists by its sarcasm, only discloses his virgin innocence
on the subject of philosophical materialism. Mr. Valentinov has
no suspicion of the real connection between philosophical idealism and the “disappearance of
matter.” The “disappearance of matter” of which he speaks, in imitation of the modern physicists, has
no relation to the epistemological distinction between materialism and idealism. To make this clear, let us take one of
the most consistent and clearest of the Machians, Karl
Pearson. For him the physical universe consists of groups of
sense-impressions. He illustrates “our conceptual model of
the physical universe” by the following diagram, explaining, however, that it takes no account of relative sizes
(The Grammar of Science, p. 282):– In order to simplify his diagram, Karl Pearson entirely omits
the question of the relation between ether and electricity, or
positive electrons and negative electrons. But that is not
important. What is important is that from Pearson’s idealist standpoint “bodies” are first regarded as
sense-impressions, and then the constitution of these bodies out
of

particles, particles out of molecules and so forth affects
the changes in the model of the physical world, but in no way
affects the question of whether bodies are symbols of perceptions, or perceptions images of bodies. Materialism and
idealism differ in their respective answers to the question of
the source of our knowledge and of the relation of knowledge (and of the “mental” in general) to the
physical world; while the question of the structure of matter, of atoms and electrons, is a question that concerns only
this “physical world.” When the physicists say that “matter is disappearing,” they mean that hitherto
science reduced its investigations of the physical world to
three ultimate concepts: matter, electricity and ether; whereas
now only the two latter remain. For it has become possible to reduce matter to electricity; the atom can be
explained as resembling an infinitely small solar system, within
which negative electrons [3] move around a positive electron [4] with a
definite (and, as we have seen, enormously large) velocity. It
is consequently possible to reduce the physical world from
scores of elements to two or three elements (inasmuch as
positive and negative electrons constitute “two essentially distinct kinds of matter,” as the physicist
Pellat says—Rey, op . cit ., pp. 294-95). Hence, natural science leads to the
“ unity of matter ” ( ibid .) [2]

—such

is the real meaning of the statement regarding the disappearance
of matter, its replacement by electricity, etc., which is
leading so many people astray. “Matter is disappearing” means that the limit within which we have
hitherto known matter is vanishing and that our knowledge is
penetrating deeper; properties of matter are likewise disappearing which formerly seemed absolute, immutable, and
primary (impenetrability, inertia, mass, [5] etc.) and which are now
revealed to be relative and characteristic only of certain
states of matter. For the sole “property” of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is
bound up is the property of being an objective reality,
of existing outside our mind.

The error of Machism in general, as of the Machian new physics,
is that it ignores this basis of philosophical materialism and
the distinction between metaphysical materialism and dialectical
materialism. The recognition of immutable elements, “of
the immutable substance of things,” and so forth, is not
materialism, but metaphysical, i.e., anti-dialectical, materialism. That is why J. Dietzgen
emphasised that the “subject-matter of science is endless,” that not only the in finite, but the
“smallest atom” is immeasurable, unknowable to the end, inexhaustible, “for nature in all her parts
has no beginning and no end” (Kleinere philosophische Schriften, S. 229-30). That is why Engels gave the example
of the discovery of alizarin in coal tar and criticised
mechanical materialism. In order to present the question in the only correct way, that is, from the dialectical
materialist standpoint, we must ask: Do electrons, ether and so on exist as objective realities outside the human mind
or not? The scientists will also have to answer this question
unhesitatingly; and they do invariably answer it in the
affirmative, just as they unhesitatingly recognise that
nature existed prior to man and prior to organic matter. Thus,
the question is decided in favour of materialism, for the
concept matter, as we already stated, epistemologically implies
nothing but objective reality existing independently of
the human mind and renected by it.

But dialectical materialism insists on the approximate, relative
character of every scientific theory of the structure of matter
and its properties; it insists on the absence of absolute
boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving matter
from one state into another, which is to us apparently irreconcilable with it, and so forth. However bizarre from the
standpoint of “common sense” the transformation of imponderable ether into ponderable matter and vice versa may appear, however “strange” may seem
the absence of any other kind of mass in the electron save
electromagnetic mass, however extraordinary may be the fact that
the mechanical laws of motion are confined only to a single
sphere of natural phenomena and are subordinated to the more
profound laws of electromagnetic phenomena, and so forth—all this is but another corroboration of
dialectical materialism. It is mainly because the physicists did
not know dialectics that the new physics strayed into idealism. They combated metaphysical (in Engels’, and not
the positivist, i.e., Humean, sense of the word)
materialism and its one-sided “mechanism,” and in so doing threw the baby out with the bath-water. Denying the
immutability of the elements and the properties of matter known
hitherto, they ended in denying matter, i.e., the objective reality of the physical world. Denying the absolute
character of some of the most important and basic laws, they
ended in denying all objective law in nature and in declaring
that a law of nature is a mere convention, “a limitation
of expectation,” “a logical necessity,” and so forth. Insisting on the approximate and relative character of
our knowledge, they ended in denying the object independent of
the mind and reflected approximately-correctly and relatively-truthfully by the mind. And so on, and so forth,
without end.

The opinions expressed by Bogdanov in 1899 regarding “the
immutable essence of things,” the opinions of Valentinov
and Yushkevich regarding “substance,” and so forth—are similar fruits of ignorance of dialectics. From
Engels’ point of view, the only immutability is the reflection by the human mind (when there is a human mind) of an
external world existing and developing independently of the
mind. No other “immutability,” no other “essence,” no other “absolute
substance,” in the sense in which these concepts were depicted by the empty professorial philosophy, exist for Marx
and Engels. The “essence” of things, or “substance,” is also relative; it expresses
only the degree of profundity of man’s knowledge of objects; and while yesterday the profundity of this knowledge
did not go beyond the atom, and today does not go beyond the
electron and ether, dialectical materialism insists on the
temporary, relative, approximate character of all these
milestones in the knowledge of nature gained by the progressing science of man. The electron is as
inexhaustible as the atom, nature is infinite, but it infinitely exists . And it is this sole categorical,
this sole unconditional recognition of nature’s existence outside the mind and perception of man that
distinguishes dialectical materialism from relativist agnosticism and idealism.

Let us cite two examples of the way in which the new physics
wavers unconsciously and instinctively between dialectical
materialism, which remains unknown to the bourgeois scientists,
and “phenomenalism,” with its inevitable subjectivist (and, subsequently, directly fideist) deductions.

This same Augusto Righi, from whom Mr. Valentinov was unable to get a reply on the question which interested
him about materialism, writes in the introduction to his book:
“What the electrons, or electrical atoms, really are remains even now a mystery; but in spite of this, the new theory
is perhaps destined in time to achieve no small philosophical
significance, since it is arriving at entirely new hypotheses
regarding the structure of ponderable matter and is striving to
reduce all phenomena of the external world to one common
origin.

“ For the positivist and utilitarian tendencies of our time
such an advantage may be of small consequence, and a theory is
perhaps regarded primarily as a means of conveniently ordering
and summarising facts and as a guide in the search for further
phenomena. But while in former times perhaps too much confidence
was placed in the faculties of the human mind, and it was
considered too easy to grasp the ultimate causes of all things,
there is nowadays a tendency to fall into the opposite error” (op. cit., p. 3).

Why does Righi dissociate himself here from the positivist and
utilitatian tendencies? Because, while apparently he has no
definite philosophical standpoint, he instinctively clings to
the reality of the external world and to the recognition that
the new theory is not only a “convenience” (Poincaré), not only an “empirio-symbol”
(Yushkevich), not only a “harmonising of experience” (Bogdanov), or whatever else they call such subjectivist
fancies, but a further step in the cognition of objective
reality. Had this physicist been acquainted with dialectical materialism, his opinion of the error which
is the opposite of the old metaphysical materialism might
perhaps have become the starting point of a correct philosophy. But these people’s whole environment estranges
them from Marx and Engels and throws them into the embrace of
vulgar official philosophy.

Rey too is entirely unfamiliar with dialectics. But he too is
compelled to state that among the modern physicists there are
those who continue the traditions of “mechanism” (i.e., materialism). The path of
“mechanism,” says he, is pursued not only by
Kirchhoff, Hertz, Boltzmann, Maxwell, Helmholtz and Lord
Kelvin. “Pure mechanists, and in some respects more mechanist than anybody else, and representing the culmination
(l’aboutissant) of mechanism, are those who follow Lorentz and Larmor in formulating an electrical theory of
matter and who arrive at a denial of the constancy of mass,
declaring it to be a function of motion. They are all mechanists because they take real motion as their starting point ” (Rey’s italics, pp. 290-91).

“. . . If, for example, the recent hypotheses of Lorentz,
Larmor and Langevin were, thanks to certain experimental
confirmation, to obtain a sufficiently stable basis for the
systematisation of physics, it would be certain that the laws of
present-day mechanics are nothing but a corollary of the laws of
electromagnetism: they would constitute a special case of the
latter within well-defined limits. Constancy of mass and our
principle of inertia would be valid only for moderate velocities
of bodies, the term ‘moderate’ being taken in relation to our senses and to the phenomena which constitute our
general experience. A general recasting of mechanics would
result, and hence also, a general recasting of the systematisation of physics.”

“ Would this imply the abandonment of mechanism? By no means. The purely mechanist tradition would still be followed,
and mechanism would follow its normal course of development” (p. 295).

“ Electronic physics, which should be ranked among the theories of a generally mechanist spirit, tends at present to
impose its systematisation on physics. Although the fundamental
principles of this electronic physics are not furnished by
mechanics but by the experimental data of the theory of
electricity, its spirit is mechanistic, because: (1) It uses
figurative (figurés), material elements to represent physical properties and their laws; it expresses
itself in terms of perception. (2) While it no longer regards
physical phenomena as particular cases of mechanical phenomena,
it regards mechanical phenomena as particular cases of physical
phenomena. The laws of mechanics thus retain their direct continuity with the laws of physics; and the concepts of mechanics remain concepts of the same order as physico-chemical
concepts. In traditional mechanism it was motions copied
(calqués) from relatively slow motions, which, since they alone were known and most directly observable,
were taken. . . as a type of all possible motions. Recent experiments, on the contrary, show that it is necessary to
extend our conception of possible motions. Traditional mechanics remains entirely intact, but it now applies only to
relatively slow motions. . . . In relation to large velocities,
the laws of motion are different. Matter appears to be reduced
to electrical particles, the ultimate elements of the atom. . . . (3) Motion, displacement in space, remains the only
figurative (figuré) element of physical theory. (4) Finally, what from the standpoint of the general
spirit of physics comes before every other consideration is the
fact that the conception of physics, its methods, its theories,
and their relation to experience remains absolutely identical with the conception of mechanism, with the
conception of physics held since the Renaissance” (pp. 46-47).

I have given this long quotation from Rey in full because owing
to his perpetual anxiety to avoid “materialist metaphysics,” it would have been impossible to expound his
statements in any other way. But however much both Rey and the
physicists of whom he speaks abjure materialism, it is nevertheless beyond question that mechanics was a copy of real
motions of moderate velocity, while the new physics is a copy of
real motions of enormous velocity. The recognition of theory as
a copy, as an approximate copy of objective reality, is
materialism. When Rey says that among modern physicists there
“is a reaction against the conceptualist [Machian] and energeticist school,” and when he ranks the physicists of
the electron theory among the representatives of this reaction
(p. 46), we could desire no better corroboration of the fact
that the struggle is essentially between the materialist and the
idealist tendencies. But we must not forget that, apart from the
general prejudices against materialism common to all educated
philistines, the most outstanding theoreticians are handicapped
by a complete ignorance of dialectics.

---
Notes:
[1]
L. Houllevigue, L’évolution des sciences

[ The Evolution of the Sciences], Paris (A. Collin), 1908, pp. 63, 87, 88; cf . his article:
“ Les idées des pbysiciens sur la matière ”, [ The Physicists’ Ideas of Matter] , in

L’année psycbologique , [6] 1908.
— Lenin

[2]
Cf . Oliver Lodge, Sur les électrons, Paris, 1906, p. 159. “The electrical
theory of matter,” the recognition of electricity as the
“fundamental substance,” is “an approximate accomplishment of that to what the philosophers strove always,
that is, the unity of matter"; cf . also Augusto Righi,
Ueber die Struktur der Materie

[ On the Structure of Matter ], Leipzig, 1908; J. J. Thomson, The Corpuscular Theory of Matter, London, 1907; P. Langevin, “ La physique des électrons ”

[ The Physics of the Electrons ], Revue générale des sciences , [7] 1905, pp. 257-76.
— Lenin

[6]
L’anée psychologique (The Psychological Year) —the organ of a group of French bourgeois
idealist psychologists, published in Paris from 1894. It ’was
first edited by Alfred Binet, and afterwards by H. Piéron

[3]
The idea of the compound nature of the atom arose at the end of the
nineteenth century as a result of the discovery of the periodic
system of elements by Mendeleyev, the electromagnetic nature of
light, the electron, and the phenomena of radioactivity. Various
models of the atom were proposed. Lenin regarded as most
probable the planetary model, the idea of which ’was advanced as
a guess at the end of the nineteenth century. It was experimentally confirmed by Ernest Rutherford, who investigated
the penetration of various substances by alpha-particles
(positively charged helium nuclei) and came to the conclusion
that the positive charge is concentrated at the centre of the
atom, occupying a very small part of the latter’s volume. In
1911 he suggested a model of the atom having a positively
charged nucleus at the centre, with a mass almost equal to the
whole mass of the atom, around which electrons revolve in
various orbits, like planets round the sun. This model, however,
could not explain the stability of the atom. The first successful attempt to create a theory of atomic structure was
based on Rutherford’s model and made use of the quantum
postulates of Niels Bohr (1913). According to this first quantum
theory of the atom, an electron moves in one of the “stable”
orbits (corresponding to definite discrete energy values)
without radiation; radiation or absorption of a definite portion
of energy by the atom occurs only on the passage of the electron
from one orbit to another.

Further advances in physics enriched the representation of the
structure of the atom. An important part was played here by
Louis de Broglie’s prediction of wave properties of micro-objects and the subsequent creation of quantum mechanics
by Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others. According to modern ideas the atomic nucleus is
surrounded by a cloud of electrons, which occupy various orbits
corresponding to definite energy values, and which form with the
nucleus a single interconnected system.

The development of physics has shown that the atomic nucleus
consists of elementary particles—nucleons (protons and neutrons). New properties of the electron—besides its mass
and charge, which were already known in the early twentieth
century—have been discovered, including the possibility of
its conversion into other particles. In addition to the
electron, a number of new elementary particles with diverse
properties have been discovered (photons, protons, neutrons,
neutrinos, various kinds of mesons and hype Ions). Particles
have also been, discovered which possess characteristics equal
in magnitude to those of other particles but of opposite sign
(so-called anti-particles).

The development of knowledge of the structure of matter has led
to man’s mastery over nuclear processes and the utilisation of
nuclear energy, initiating a new technical revolution of
tremendous significance for the future of mankind.

[4]
Positive electron— the name given at the turn of the century to the elementary particle bearing a charge of positive
electricity. The existence of the positive electron (positron)
in the modern sense was predicted in 1928 by the British
physicist Paul Dirac; in 1932 the American physicist Carl
Anderson discovered the positron in cosmic rays.

[7]
Revue géntrale des sciences purer et appliquées (General Review of Pure and Applied Science) —a journal of
natural science published in Paris from 1890. It was founded by
Laurence Olivier.

[5]
This refers apparently to mechanical mass, which classical
p3iysics regarded as an eternal and unchanging property of
matter.

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