V. I. Lenin made an outstanding contribution to the growth of materialist dialectics as a science of development. He defended and provided comprehensive validation for the Marxist theory of development, and enriched it with propositions and conclusions corresponding to the new historical epoch. In the present article we analyze a number of Lenin's ideas having tremendous importance to the further elaboration of the Marxist theory of development.

Because of traditional scientistic optimism, which reached its culmination in the mid-twentieth century, scientific discussion of the problems of the ultimate fate of the world and of mankind has been rare. The scientistic-technocratic utopianism, which developed in the last two centuries and had numerous representatives in Russia—from N. F. Fedorov and N. G. Chernyshevskii to K. E. Tsiolkovskii—hindered the examination of the eschatological problem. In religious philosophy, the belief in an earthly paradise was characteristic of V. S. Solov'ev. Eschatological motifs (...) are prominent also in Marxism. (shrink)

Clarification of the essence of the mental reflection of reality means to reveal its most general and yet most specific characteristics, distinguishing it from all other phenomena and properties. It will be helpful to approach the solution of this problem from two sides. In the first place, this task calls for a consideration of the initial, elementary and genetically earliest form of the reflection of reality and the circumstances under which it arises. This elementary and lowest form may be understood (...) if, pursuing the method of Marx, we regard the lowest as a "hint" of the highest, when the highest is known . In the given instance, the developed forms of the mental reflection of reality are better known to us than their initial phases. In the second place, the question of the most general features of the property of reflection is closely related to a consideration of motion as the fundamental property of matter. Only a combination of these two lines of analysis will, in our opinion, make it possible, on the one hand, to keep in view the specific features of the process of reflecting reality in cognition and, on the other, to liberate us from anthropomorphic preconceptions ascribing to the elementary form of reflection of reality the characteristics of its highest form-conscious reflection. (shrink)

Some are inclined to perceive the liberation of our philosophical thought from the rule of official ideology as a total break with the Marxian tradition of investigating and interpreting historical reality, as the destruction of everything that had been developed and formulated in the mainstream of this tradition. The collapse of the totalitarian system has given rise to a fashion of "criticizing Marx," specializing in exposing theoretical mistakes and miscalculations, demonstrating his scientific bankruptcy, and even searching for evil intentions in (...) his writings. Marx's doctrine is described as false from the beginning, definitively obsolete, and compromised by the experience of its practical application in the twentieth century. (shrink)

1. Perestroika, the revolutionary renewal of Soviet society, has posed quite a few difficult tasks for the social sciences, one of which is a reexamination of dogmas and stereotypes of thought considered absolutely correct for decades, and hence never discussed, especially publicly. But today, on the pages of newspapers and magazines, on radio and television, a broad and open discussion has been unfolding of practically all the basic questions of history and of the theory and practice of socialism—a discussion such (...) as our country has never known since perhaps the 1920s. The main purpose of these discussions, as M. S. Gorbachev has pointed out, is to obtain results reflecting the contemporary dialectics of life. But this can be done only in an atmosphere of creativity, of a free, impartial, yet serious and responsible quest for truth. (shrink)

After the First Conference, the situation with regard to the relation between natural scientists and philosophers improved considerably in the sense that, as we can see, philosophers, by their work on questions of methodology, are helping natural scientists more and more, while natural scientists are giving increasing attention to the results of the work of philosophers, and are becoming interested in the philosophical conclusions following from their research and in general problems of philosophical significance.

I should like to supplement somewhat the interpretation of the data presented by D.E. Furman. It seems to me that to understand current processes, we must have a clearer idea of the starting point of the present intellectual movement—the "mass atheism" of the preceding period. What was this mass atheism?

The achievements of modern cybernetics and mathematical logic are of much importance to an understanding of the nature of the thinking process. One of the principal tasks which these branches of knowledge set themselves is a study of the laws of thought with the aid of exact mathematical methods and modeling techniques. It goes without saying that neither cybernetics nor mathematical logic can pretend to offer a complete explanation of so complex a process as that of thinking. The physiological aspect, (...) which relates to the fact that life is the specific form of existence of proteins, is outside the framework of cybernetics and especially of mathematical logic. Likewise, cybernetics and logic do not and cannot replace the social sciences in explaining the specifics of the social aspect of the thinking process. (shrink)

Violence is a natural human state, a natural means of communication between one individual and another and it will remain so as long as society is in the stage of its "animal" evolution, as long as man in the mass remains, as Nietzsche put it, a "superchimpanzee." Violence is natural, and goodness and altruism are artificial; one must make a great effort to be good. To be good is an art. There are no laws that make us love one another. (...) But there are laws according to which we must fear or hate, or try to subjugate others. These are the laws of nature. (shrink)

As with every new trend in science, cybernetics has revived many old philosophical problems and posed a number of new ones. They include problems of similarity and difference in the functioning of the brain and of cybernetic machines, interrelationships between artificial creations and human beings, the nature of the machine, etc. An imprecise posing of these intimately related problems is often the source of confusion in discussions of the philosophical problems of cybernetics.

The principal fact that strikes the eye upon study of the present state of analytical philosophy is that virtually all its spokesmen share the belief that logical positivism, once the most influential of the analytical currents, is on the decline. The present-day philosophy of analysis is regarded as a kind of "post-positivism.".

At the contemporary stage in the development of humanity, an increasing number of problems, affecting both individuals and society as a whole and having in the past had a local character, are acquiring in the 1970s and 80s—an epoch of ever-accelerating scientific and technical progress and further socio-economic development—a global character, touching to one degree or another the interests of all countries and peoples. Such problems cause anxiety for wide circles of the public and are attracting the increasing attention of (...) scientists, government figures, and political activists. The prospects for humanity and society on the threshold of the third millenium depend upon how fruitful the scientific analysis of global problems and the efficiency of practical measures will be. (shrink)

The Monk Andronik, in secular life Aleksei Fedorovich Losev, was born on September 23, 1893, and was named in honor of one of the Kiev-Pecherskii reverend fathers, Aleksii . He died on the memorial day of the Apostles Bartholomew and Barnabas on May 24, 1988.

When the Nineteenth All-Union Party Conference was taking place, tens of millions of people followed its course. Literally the entire country was drawn into those heated debates in the congress hall. One can say without exaggeration that the conference was a revelation. It showed that it is possible to live differently from the way we have been accustomed, or the way we have learned over many decades, i.e., to say what we think and what we want to say, not somewhere (...) in a back corridor but in public, even at a top Party forum. All this is the result of that mighty revolution in consciousness that began in people's minds that memorable April of 1985. And the press is today playing a special role in that revolution. (shrink)

I should like to begin with something that has been spoken of more than once in today's discussion: that actually no one in the audience remains indifferent to Dvoretskii's play. When I try to understand the reason for the success of that play, I explain it to myself very roughly, and not at all in terms of scientific principles in the study of literature, by saying that Dvoretskii's play is not a work of illustration but one that tackles a problem (...) and touches upon acute and important questions that many had not thought about previously. Naturally, these problems are not by any means confined to some single factory in Leningrad. They arise everywhere, including in research institutions, about which I am in some position to judge. The arrival of "a man from outside" or of "people from outside" almost always creates a dramatic situation. People are carriers of specific traditions and ideas, and in conflicts among human beings, a genuine creative artist can detect those really existing in contemporary society. (shrink)

"The Party's struggle to educate the people as atheists," said Comrade L. F. Il'ichev in his report to the Ideological Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU, November 25, 1963, "has had a history and has gone through stages, at each of which concrete problems were solved, and forms and methods of work specific to the given period were developed.".

The problem of epistemological reflection has many aspects. Epistemology and logic are not the only disciplines in which it is studied. The life sciences, social sciences, and certain of the theoretical technological disciplines - all have a direct bearing upon it. In studying this complex problem it is desirable once again to seek a clarification of the fundamental features of the basic "unit" of reflection, employing the data of these sciences to this end. This is desirable not only with respect (...) to specialized studies of the reflection problem, but also because of the trend toward combining them, as, for example, in efforts to model mental functions in cybernetics. (shrink)

The concept of reflection has many complex aspects; it is by no means something that is self-evident in nature. The object of this article is to examine that which is specific to reflection, its fundamental aspects and characteristics, and to demonstrate, in the spectrum of these characteristics, the place of the special mathematical concept of information, which corresponds to the quantitative measure of information in the statistical theory of information . But the word "information" is employed in two other senses (...) as well. In works on the theory of automatic regulation and control one often finds the terms "ordering," "organization," and "structure" employed as a synonym for it. Finally, in scientific usage the word "information" is often employed in place of the terms "model," "image," "knowledge," and "data." Therefore, in our further presentation we shall employ, each in its place, three meanings of this word: "the mathematical concept of information," "information," and "information in the ordinary meaning of the word.". (shrink)

Of course you know the movie, just by cultural assimilation if not by having seen it. There’s this young elephant, Dumbo, who has laughably big ears and has been pitiably separated from his mom. He’s aided by a friendly talking mouse[ii] into translating those otherwise hapless ears into the power of flight, which he eventually uses to rescue his mom and live happily ever after. The way the wily mouse gets Dumbo to believe that he could fly is to give (...) him a “magic feather” which, held in his trunk, demonstrably imparts the gift of flight. Naturally the mouse believes throughout all this that Dumbo can fly anyway, but he also knows that Dumbo needs the feather as a confidence-builder to do so. At the critical juncture of the tale Dumbo loses the feather after being pushed off a precipice, and he thus plummets perilously towards earth—only to find at the last moment that he can indeed fly on his own. (shrink)

In recent years, the phenomena of hormonal control, embryonic determination and pattern formation have been receiving intensive scrutiny from molecular biologists. In the following «Roots» contribution, Professor Sir Vincent B. Wigglesworth reviews some of the seminal work that he did on these subjects in the insect Rhodnius prolixus.

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfängen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen für die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfügung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden müssen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben.