V.I.

Lenin

MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM

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

8. The Essence and Significance of
“Physical” Idealism

We have seen that the question of the epistemological deductions
that can be drawn from the new physics has been raised and is
being discussed from the most varied points of view in English,
German and French literature. There can be no doubt that we have
before us a certain international ideological current, which is
not dependent upon any one philosophical system, but which is
the result of certain general causes Iying outside the sphere of
philosophy. The foregoing review of the facts undoubtedly shows
that Machism is “connected” with the new physics, but at the same time reveals that the version of this connection
spread by our Machians is fundamentally incorrect . As in philosophy, so in physics, our Machians slavishly follow the
fashion, and are unable from their own, Marxist, standpoint to give a general survey of particular currents and
to judge the place they occupy.

A double falsity pervades all the talk about Mach’s philosophy being “the philosophy of twentieth-century
natural science,” “the recent philosophy of the sciences,” “recent natural-scientific
positivism” and so forth. (Bogdanov in the introduction to
Analysis of Sensations, pp. iv, xii; cf . also
Yushkevich, Valentinov and Co.) Firstly, Machism is ideologically connected with only one school in
one branch of modern science. Secondly, and this is the
main point, what in Machism is connected with this school is not what distinguishes it from all other trends and systems of idealist philosophy, but what it has in common with philosophical idealism in general . It suffices to cast a
glance at the ideological current in question as a whole in order to leave no shadow of doubt as to the truth
of this statement. Take the physicists of this school: the
German Mach, the Frenchman Henri Poincaré, the Belgian
P. Duhem, the Englishman Karl Pearson. They have much in common:
they have the same basis and are following the same direction,
as each of them rightly acknowledges. But what they have in
common includes neither the doctrine of empirio-criticism in
general, nor Mach’s doctrine, say, of the “world-elements” in particular. The three latter
physicists even know nothing of either of these doctrines. They
have “only” one thing in common—philosophical idealism, towards which they all, without exception,
tend more or less consciously, more or less decisively. Take the philosophers who base themselves on
this school of the new physics, who try to ground it epistemologically and to develop it, and you will again find the
German immanentists, the disciples of Mach, the French neo-criticists and idealists, the English spiritualists, the
Russian Lopatin and, in addition, the one and only empirio-monist, A. Bogdanov. They all have only one thing in
common, namely, that they all—more or less consciously,
more or less decisively, either with an abrupt and precipitate
slant towards fideism, or with a personal aversion to it (as in
Bogdanov’s case)—are vehicles of philosophical idealism.

The fundamental idea of the school of the new physics under
discussion is the denial of the objective reality given us in
our sensation and reflected in our theories, of the doubt as to
the existence of such a reality. Here this school departs from
materialism (inaccurately called realism, neo-mechanism, hylo-kinetism, and not in any appreciable degree
consciously developed by the physicists), which by general acknowledgment prevails among the physicists—and
departs from it as a school of “physical” idealism.

To explain this last term, which sounds very strange, it is
necessary to recall an episode in the history of modern
philosophy and modern science. In 1866 L. Feuerbach attacked
Johannes Müller, the famous founder of modern physiology,
and ranked him with the “physiological idealists” (Werke, Vol. X, p. 197). The idealism of this
physiologist consisted in the fact that when investigating the
significance of the mechanism of our sense-organs in relation to
sensations, showing, for instance, that the sensation of light
is produced as the result of the action of various stimuli on
the eye, he was inclined to arrive from this at a denial that
our sensations are images of objective reality. This tendency of
one school of scientists towards “physiological idealism,” i.e., towards an idealist
interpretation of certain data of physiology, was very accurately discerned by L. Feuerbach. The
“connection” between physiology and philosophical idealism, chiefly of the Kantian kind, was for a long time after
that exploited by reactionary philosophy. F. A. Lange made great
play of physiology in support of Kantian idealism and in
refutation of materialism; while among the immanentists (whom
Bogdanov so incorrectly places midway between Mach and Kant),
J. Rehmke in 1882 specially campaigned against the allegation
that Kantianism was con firmed by physiology. [1]

That a number of eminent physiologists at that time gravitated towards idealism and Kantianism is as
indisputable as that today a number of eminent physicists
gravitate towards philosophical idealism. “Physical” idealism, i.e., the
idealism of a certain school of physicists at the end of the
nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century,
no more “refutes” materialism, no more establishes the connection between idealism (or empirio-criticism) and
natural science, than did the similar efforts of F. A. Lange and
the “physiological” idealists. The deviation towards reactionary philosophy manifested in both cases by one school of
scientists in one branch of science is a temporary deflection, a
transitory period of sickness in the history of science, an
ailment of growth, mainly brought on by the abrupt breakdown of old established concepts.

The connection between modern “physical” idealism and the crisis of modern physics is, as we have already pointed
out, generally acknowledged. “The arguments of sceptical
criticism levelled against modern physics"—writes A. Rey,
who is referring not so much to the sceptics as to the outspoken
adherents of fideism, like Brunetiere—"essentially amount
to the proverbial argument of all sceptics: a diversity of
opinions” (among the physicists). But this diversity “proves nothing against the objectivity of physics.”
“In the history of physics, as in history generally, one
can distinguish great periods which differ by the form and
general aspect of theories. . . . But as soon as a discovery is
made that affects all fields of physics because it establishes
some cardinal fact hitherto badly or very partially perceived,
the entire aspect of physics is modified; a new period sets
in. This is what occurred after Newton’s discoveries, and
after the discoveries of Joule-Mayer and Carnot-Clausius. The
same thing, apparently, is taking place since the discovery of
radioactivity. . . . The historian who later sees things from
the necessary distance has no trouble in discerning a steady
evolution where contemporaries saw conflicts, contradictions,
and divisions into various schools. Apparently, the crisis which
physics has undergone in recent years (despite the conclusions
drawn from it by philosophical criticism) is no different. It
even excellently illustrates the typical crisis of growth
(crise de croissance) occasioned by the great modern discoveries. The undeniable transformation of physics which will
result (could there be evolution or progress without it?) will
not perceptibly alter the scientific spirit” (op. cit.,
pp. 370-72).

Rey the conciliator tries to unite all schools of modern physics
against fideisml This is a falsity, well meant, but a falsity
nevertheless; for the trend of the school of
Mach-Poincaré-Pearson towards idealism (i.e., refined fideism)

is beyond dispute. And the objectivity of physics that is associated with the basis of the
“scientific spirit,” as distinct from the fideist spirit, and that Rey defends so ardently, is nothing but a
“shamefaced” formulation of materialism. The basic materialist spirit of physics, as of all modern science, will
overcome all crises, but only by the indispensable replacement
of metaphysical materialism by dialectical materialism.

Rey the conciliator very often tries to gloss over the fact that
the crisis in modern physics consists in the latter’s deviation from a direct, resolute and irrevocable recognition of
the objective value of its theories. But facts are stronger than
all attempts at reconciliation. The mathematicians, writes Rey,
“in dealing with a science, the subject matter of which,
apparently at least, is created by the mind of the scientist,
and in which, at any rate, concrete phenomena are not involved
in the investigation, have formed too abstract a conception of
the science of physics. Attempts have been made to bring it ever
closer to mathematics, and the general conception of mathematics
has been transferred to the conception of physics. . . . This is
an invasion of the mathematical spirit into the methods of
judging and understanding physics that is denounced by all the
experimenters. And is it not to this influence, none the less
powerful because at times concealed, that are often due the
uncertainty, the wavering of mind regarding the objectivity of
physics, and the detours made or the obstacles surmounted in
order to demonstrate it? . . .” (p. 227).

This is excellently said. “Wavering of mind” as to the objectivity of physics—this is the very essence of
fashionable “physical” idealism.

“. . . The abstract fictions of mathematics seem to have
interposed a screen between physical reality and the manner in
which the mathematicians understand the science of this
reality. They vaguely feel the objectivity of physics. . . . Although they desire above all to be objective
when they engage in physics; although they seek to find and
retain a foothold in reality, they are still haunted by old
habits. So that even in the concepts of energetics, which had to
be built more solidly and with fewer hypotheses than the old
mechanism—which sought to copy (décalquer)
the sensible universe and not to reconstruct it—we are still dealing with the theories of the
mathematicians. . . . They [the mathematicians] have done
everything to save objectivity, for they are aware that without
objectivity there can be no physics. . . . But the complexity or
deviousness of their theories nevertheless leaves an uneasy
feeling. It is too artificial, too far-fetched, too stilted
(édifié) ; the experimenter here does not feel the spontaneous confidence which constant contact with physical
reality gives him. . . . This in effect is what is said by all
physicists who are primarily physicists or who are exclusively
physicists—and their name is legion; this is what is said
by the entire neo-mechanist school. . . . The crisis in physics
lies in the conquest of the realm of physics by the mathematical
spirit. The progress of physics on the one hand, and the
progress of mathematics on the other, led in the nineteenth
century to a close amalgamation between these two sciences. . . . Theoretical physics has become mathematical
physics. . . . Then there began the formal period, that is to
say, the period of mathematical physics, purely mathematical;
mathematical physics not as a branch of physics so to speak, but
as a branch of mathematics cultivated by the mathematicians. Along this new line the mathematician,
accustomed to conceptual (purely logical) elements, which
furnish the sole subject matter of his work, and feeling himself
cramped by crude, material elements, which he found insufficiently pliable, necessarily always tended to reduce them
to abstractions as far as possible, to present them in an
entirely non-material and conceptual manner, or even to ignore
them altogether. The elements, as real, objective data, as
physical elements, so to speak, completely disappeared. There remained only formal relations represented by
the differential equations. . . . If the mathematician is not
the dupe of his constructive work, when he analyses theoretical
physics . . . he can recover its ties with experience and its
objective value, but at a first glance, and to the uninitiated
person, we seem faced with an arbitrary development. . . . The
concept, the notion, has everywhere replaced the real element. . . . Thus, historically, by virtue of the mathematical
form assumed by theoretical physics, is explained . . . the
ailment ( le malaise ), the crisis of physics, and its apparent withdrawal from objective facts” (pp. 228-32).

Such is the first cause of “physical” idealism. The reactionary attempts are engendered by the very progress of
science. The great successes achieved by natural science, the
approach to elements of matter so homogeneous and simple that
their laws of motion can be treated mathematically, encouraged
the mathematicians to overlook matter. “Matter disappears,” only equations remain. In the new stage of
development and apparently in a new manner, we get the old
Kantian idea: reason prescribes laws to nature. Hermann Cohen,
who, as we have seen, rejoices over the idealist spirit of the
new physics, goes so far as to advocate the introduction of
higher mathematics in the schools—in order to imbue high-school students with the spirit of idealism, which is being
extinguished in our materialistic age (F. A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, 5. Auflage, 1896, Bd. II,
S. xlix). This, of course, is the ridiculous dream of a
reactionary and, in fact, there is and can be nothing here but a
temporary infatuation with idealism on the part of a small
number of specialists. But what is highly characteristic is the
way the drowning man clutches at a straw, the subtle means
whereby representatives of the educated bourgeoisie artificially
attempt to preserve, or to find a place for, the fideism which
is engendered among the masses of the people by their ignorance
and their downtrodden condition, and by the wild absurdities of
capitalist contradictions.

Another cause which bred “physical” idealism is the principle of relativism, the relativity of our
knowledge, a principle which, in a period of breakdown of the
old theories, is taking a firm hold upon the physicists, and
which, if the latter are ignorant of dialectics, is bound to lead to idealism.

The question of the relation between relativism and dialectics
plays perhaps the most important part in explaining the
theoretical misadventures of Machism. Take Rey, for instance,
who like all European positivists has no conception whatever of
Marxist dialectics. He employs the word dialectics exclusively
in the sense of idealist philosophical speculation. As a result,
although he feels that the new physics has gone astray on the
question of relativism, he nevertheless flounders helplessly and
attempts to differentiate between moderate and immoderate
relativism. Of course, “immoderate relativism logically,
if not in practice, borders on actual scepticism” (p. 215), but there is no “immoderate” relativism,
you see, in Poincaré. Just fancy, one can, like an apothecary, weigh out a little more or a little less relativism
and thus save Machism!

As a matter of fact, the only theoretically correct formulation
of the question of relativism is given in the dialectical
materialism of Marx and Engels, and ignorance of it is bound to
lead from relativism to philosophical idealism. Incidentally,
the failure to understand this fact is enough to render
Mr. Berman’s absurd book, Dialectics in the Light of the Modern Theory of Knowledge, utterly
valueless. Mr. Berman repeats the old, old nonsense about
dialectics, which he has entirely failed to understand. We have
already seen that in the theory of knowledge all the
Machians, at every step, reveal a similar lack of understanding.

All the old truths of physics, including those which were
regarded as firmly established and incontestable, have proven to
be relative truths— hence, there can be no objective truth independent of mankind. Such is the argument not
only of all the Machians, but of the “physical” idealists in general. That absolute truth results from the
sum-total of relative truths in the course of their development;
that relative truths represent relatively faithful reflections
of an object existing independently of man; that these reflections become more and more faithful; that every scientific
truth, notwithstanding its relative nature, contains an element
of absolute truth—all these propositions, which are obvious to anyone who has thought over Engels’
Anti-Dühring, are for the “modern” theory of knowledge a book with seven seals.

Such works as Duhem’s Theory of Physics, [2] or Stallo’s, [3] which Mach particularly recommends, show
very clearly that these “physical” idealists attach the most significance to the proof of the relativity of our
knowledge, and that they are in reality vacillating between
idealism and dialectical materialism. Both authors, who belong
to different periods, and who approach the question from
different angles (Duhem’s speciality is physics, in which
field he has worked for twenty years; Stallo was an erstwhile
orthodox Hegelian who grew ashamed of his own book on natural
philosophy, written in 1848 in the old Hegelian spirit),
energetically combat the atomistic-mechanical conception of
nature. They point to the narrowness of this conception, to the
impossibility of accepting it as the limit of our knowledge, to
the petrification of many of the ideas of writers who hold this
conception. And it is indeed undeniable that the old materialism did suffer from such a defect; Engels reproached the
earlier materialists for their failure to appreciate the
relativity of all scientific theories, for their ignorance of
dialectics and for their exaggeration of the mechanical point of
view. But Engels (unlike Stallo) was able to discard Hegelian
idealism and to grasp the great and true kernel of
Hegelian dialectics. Engels rejected the old metaphysical
materialism for dialectical materialism, and not for relativism that sinks into subjectivism. “The mechanical
theory,” says Stallo, for instance, “in common with all metaphysical theories, hypostases partial, ideal, and, it
may be, purely conventional groups of attributes, or single
attributes, and treats them as varieties of objective reality” (p. 150). This is quite true, if you do not deny
objective reality and combat metaphysics for being anti-dialectical. Stallo does not realise this clearly. He has
not understood materialist dialectics and therefore frequently
slips, by way of relativism, into subjectivism and idealism.

The same is true of Duhem. With an enormous expenditure of
labour, and with the help of a number of interesting and
valuable examples from the history of physics, such as one
frequently encounters in Mach, he shows that “every law of
physics is provisional and relative, because it is approximate” (p. 280). The man is hammering at an open
door!—will be the thought of the Marxist when he reads the
lengthy disquisitions on this subject. But that is just the
trouble with Duhem, Stallo, Mach and Poincaré, that they do
not perceive the door opened by dialectical materialism.

Being unable to give a correct formulation of relativism, they slide
from the latter into idealism. “A law of physics, properly
speaking, is neither true nor false, but approximate"—writes Duhem (p. 274). And this
“but” contains the beginning of the falsity, the beginning of the obliteration of the boundary between a
scientific theory that approximately reflects the object, i.e., approaches objective truth, and an
arbitrary, fantastic, or purely conventional theory, such as,
for example, a religious theory or the theory of the game of
chess.

Duhem carries this falsity to the point of declaring that the
question whether “material reality” corresponds to per ceptual phenomena is metaphysics (p. 10). Away with
the question of reality! Our concepts and hypotheses are mere
signs (p. 26), “arbitrary” (p. 27) constructions, and so forth. There is only one step from this to idealism, to
the “physics of the believer,” which M. Pierre Duhem preaches in the Kantian spirit (Rey, p. 162; cf., p. 160). But
the good Adler (Fritz)—also a Machian would-be
Marxist!—could find nothing cleverer to do than to “correct” Duhem as follows: Duhem, he claims,
eliminates the “realities concealed behind phenomena only
as objects of theory, but not as objects of reality .” [4]

This is the familiar criticism of Kantianism from the standpoint of Hume and Berkeley.

But, of course, there can be no question of any conscious
Kantianism on the part of Duhem. He is merely vacillating as is Mach, not knowing on what to base his
relativism. In many passages he comes very close to dialectical
materialism. He says that we know sound “such as it is in
relation to us but not as it is in itself, in the sound-producing bodies. This reality, of which our sensations
give us only the external and the veil, is made known to us by
the theories of acoustics. They tell us that where our perceptions register only this appearance which we call sound,
there really exists a very small and very rapid periodic
movement,” etc. (p. 7). Bodies are not symbols of sensations, but sensations are symbols (or rather, images) of
bodies. “The development of physics gives rise to a constant struggle between nature, which does not tire of
offering new material, and reason, which does not tire of
cognising” (p. 32). Nature is infinite, just as its smallest particle (including the electron) is infinite, but
reason just as infinitely transforms “things-in-themselves” into
“things-for-us.” “Thus, the struggle between reality and the laws of physics will continue indefinitely; to
every law that physics may formulate, reality will sooner or
later oppose a rude refutation in the form of a fact; but,
indefatigable, physics will improve, modify, and complicate the
refuted law” (p. 290). This would be a quite correct exposition of dialectical materialism if the author firmly held
to the existence of this objective reality independent of
humanity. “. . . The theory of physics is not a purely artificial system which is convenient today and unsuitable
tomorrow . . . it is a classification, which becomes more and
more natural, a reflection, which grows clearer and clearer, of
the realities that the experimental method cannot contemplate
face to face” (p. 445).

In this last phrase the Machian Duhem flirts with Kantian
idealism: it is as if the way is being opened for a method other
than the “experimental” one, and as if we cannot know the “things-in-themselves” directly,
immediately, face to face. But if the theory of physics becomes
more and more natural, that means that “nature,” reality, “reflected” by this theory, exists
independently of our consciousness—and that is precisely
the view of dialectical materialism.

In a word, the “physical” idealism of today, just as the “physiological” idealism of yesterday, merely
means that one school of natural scientists in one branch of
natural science has slid into a reactionary philosophy, being
unable to rise directly and at once from metaphysical materialism to dialectical
materialism. [5]

This step is being made, and will be made, by modern physics; but it is making for the only true method and the only
true philosophy of natural science not directly, but by zigzags,
not consciously but instinctively, not clearly perceiving its
“final goal,” but drawing closer to it gropingly, hesitatingly, and sometimes even with its back turned to
it. Modern physics is in travail; it is giving birth to
dialectical materialism. The process of child-birth is painful. And in addition to a living healthy being, there are
bound to be produced certain dead products, refuse fit only for
the garbage-heap. And the entire school of physical idealism,
the entire empirio-critical philosophy, together with empirio-symbolism, empirio-monism, and so on, and so forth, must
be regarded as such refuse!

---
Notes:
[1]
Johannes Rehmke, Philosophie und Kantianismus [Philosophy and Kantianism], Eisenach, 1882, S. 15, et seq .
— Lenin

[2]
P. Duhern, La théorie physique, son objet et sa structure,
Paris, 1906.
— Lenin

[3]
J. B. Stallo. The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics, London, 1882, There are French and German
translations.
— Lenin

[4]
Translator’s note to the German translation of Duhem, Leipzig, 1908,
J. Barth.
— Lenin

[5]
The famous chemist, William Ramsay, says: “I have been frequently asked: ‘But is not electricity a vibration? How
can wireless telegraphy be explained by the passage of little
particles or corpuscles?’ The answer is:
‘Electricity is a thing ; it is (Ramsay’s italics) these minute corpuscles, but when they
leave an object, a wave, like a wave of light, spreads through
the ether, and this wave is used for wireless telegraphy’” (William Ramsay, Essays, Biographical and Chemical, London, 1908,
p. 126). Having spoken about the transformation of radium into
helium, Ramsay remarks: “At least one so-called element
can no longer be regarded as ultimate matter, but is itself
undergoing change into a simpler form of matter” (p. 160). “Now it is almost certain that negative
electricity is a particular form of matter; and positive
electricity is matter deprived of negative electricity—that is, minus this electric matter”
(p. 176). “Now what is electricity? It used to be believed, formerly, that there were two kinds of electricity,
one called positive and the other negative. At that time it
would not have been possible to answer the question. But recent
researches make it probable that what used to be called negativc
electricity is really a substance. Indeed, the relative weight
of its particles has been measured; each is about one seven
hundredth of the mass of an atom of hydrogen. . . . Atoms of
electricity are named ‘electrons’” (p. 196). If our Machians who write books and articles on
philosophical subjects were capable of thinking, they would
understand that the expression “matter disappears,” “matter is reduced to electricity,” etc., is only an
epistemologically helpless expression of the truth that science
is able to discover new forms of matter, new forms of material
motion, to reduce the old forms to the new forms, and so
on.
— Lenin

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