Letters to the Editor

Concerning S. G. Suvorov’s Article “On Two Concepts of Matter”

In UFN, vol. 44, issue 4 for 1951, S. G. Suvorov’s article “On Two Concepts of Matter” was published; in it the author asserts the harmfulness of distinguishing two concepts of matter—the philosophical and the natural-scientific (physical) one. Being categorically in disagreement with this assertion and considering it harmful, I must draw the attention of the readers of UFN* to the following.

In Lenin’s remarkable philosophical work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (Lenin, Works, vol. 14, 4th ed.), we read (p. 163): “The variability of human conceptions of space and time no more refutes the objective reality of either than the variability of scientific knowledge of the structure and forms of motion of matter refutes the objective reality of the external world.” This “variability of conceptions” and “scientific knowledge” relates, of course, to the natural-scientific understanding (and, therefore, in the final analysis, to the concept) of matter, space, and time, and not to the philosophical one, which reduces to establishing the philosophical category (concept) for designating the objectively real, existing independently of man, in real space and time—matter, primary in relation to consciousness. Here Lenin quite definitely compares and distinguishes the philosophical and the natural-scientific understanding of matter and of its forms of existence.

And on p. 174 we read: “One thing is the question of how, precisely, with the aid of various sense organs, man perceives space, and how, as a result of long historical development, abstract concepts of space are worked out from these perceptions; an entirely different thing is the question whether objective reality, independent of mankind, corresponds to these perceptions and these concepts of mankind.” Here, again, “one thing” is the question of the natural-scientific understanding of matter and of its principal forms of being, while “an entirely different thing” is that of the philosophical understanding.

On p. 247 Lenin writes: “When physicists say: ‘matter is disappearing,’ they mean by this that until now natural science had reduced all its investigations of the physical world to three ultimate concepts: matter, electricity, ether; now only the two latter remain, for matter can be reduced to electricity.” There is no doubt that Lenin is speaking here of a change in the physical concept of matter; the terms “matter,” “electricity,” and “ether” here denote physical concepts developed by physicists and changing in the course of its development. To contrast here matter, electricity, and ether Lenin could, of course, only as physical concepts, but by no means as philosophical ones.

* S. G. Suvorov’s article was entitled “On the So-Called Physical Concept of Matter.” (Ed.)

True, Lenin nowhere in his work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism directly indicates that one should distinguish between the philosophical and the natural-scientific concept (understanding) of matter. But this by no means means that he did not distinguish them. In order to judge correctly Lenin’s principled position on this question, one cannot approach the matter pedantically, formally; one must penetrate into the essence of the whole line which Lenin pursued in this work of his, devoted largely to the struggle against physical idealism. As will be shown below, not only many separate statements of Lenin (and considerably more such statements could be cited), but, in this struggle of Lenin’s, in this defense by Lenin—according to Stalin’s expression—of the theoretical foundations of Marxism-Leninism, the primary significance belongs precisely to Lenin’s distinction between the philosophical and the natural-scientific concepts of matter, of physical teachings about matter, and to the definition of it as a philosophical category.

Lenin’s distinction between the philosophical and natural-scientific concepts of matter was made the basis of his solution of the question of the crisis of bourgeois physics; moreover, Lenin distinguished the crisis of physics in the philosophical and in the physical relations. According to Lenin (p. 245), in the physical relation “the essence of the crisis of modern physics consists in the breakdown of old laws and basic principles,” while in the philosophical relation it consists “in the rejection of objective reality outside consciousness, i.e. in the replacement of materialism by idealism and agnosticism.” And Lenin resolves the question thus (p. 248): “In order to pose the question from the only correct, i.e. dialectical-materialist, point of view, one must ask: do electrons, ether, etc., exist outside human consciousness as objective reality, or not? To this question natural scientists ... will have to answer and do answer constantly yes ... And this decides the question in favor of materialism, for the concept of matter ... means nothing else epistemologically than: objective reality, existing independently of human consciousness and reflected by it.”

Here it is quite clearly evident that Lenin not only distinguished the philosophical and physical concepts of matter for the struggle against all idealism, but also applied this distinction to resolving the philosophical crisis of physics, to finding the materialist way out of it. Without this distinction, no way out of the crisis would have been found.

Suvorov’s demand that the Leninist distinction between the philosophical and natural-scientific concepts of matter be abandoned means, in essence, a departure from the Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge, depriving contemporary Soviet natural scientists of the basic principled weapon in the struggle against the striving of bourgeois ideologists to use the latest successes of natural science (and the continuing breakdown of physical concepts connected with them) for the most obscurantist idealist conclusions, with the aim, in the final analysis, of supporting the class interests of the world bourgeoisie. It is correctly said in the Explanatory Note to the “Programs in Physics for Technical Colleges” (approved by the Ministry of Higher Education on July 20, 1949): “One of the causes of confusion in ideas about the world and its knowability is the inability to distinguish between the philosophical and the physical understanding of matter. The physical understanding of matter is the totality of teachings about the concrete properties of matter, about individual forms of the motion and structure of matter.” This is said in precise correspondence with the essence and spirit of the Leninist teaching on matter.

S. Suvorov asserts that, owing to the harmful conception of two concepts of matter, Soviet scientists began to think that it is enough to know the general theory of Marxism as applied to social phenomena and that they have no need to apply Marxism-Leninism in their special profession. According to Suvorov, the main tendency here is as follows: “At the price of recognizing the existence of objective matter, to free oneself from the labor

creatively apply the materialist theory of knowledge in the field of concrete science.”

Needless to say, such a tendency among some of our scientists does indeed exist, but it by no means follows from the distinction between two concepts of matter. It follows from these scientists’ insufficient awareness (in particular, among physicists) of the importance of the Leninist and Stalinist principle of partisanship in science, which obliges Soviet scientists not only to assist, by their special work, in the building of communism in our country and in the struggle for peace throughout the world, but also to introduce Marxist-Leninist teaching into this special work of theirs, to apply the Marxist dialectical method in it and to defend Marxist philosophical materialism, thereby safeguarding the purity and efficacy of Marxism-Leninism.

One of the most effective and necessary means for this is to observe and put into practice Lenin’s distinction between two understandings of matter, which dialectically connects and at the same time does not identify the philosophical and the natural-scientific understandings (and hence also concepts) of matter, which is one and at the same time manifold in its concreteness. Opponents of the distinction between the physical and the philosophical concept of matter (including Suvorov) do not understand that the connection, obligatory for every physicist-materialist and for every Soviet physicist, between the physical understanding of matter and its correct, i.e. dialectical-materialist, understanding does not mean the elimination of the distinction between these two concepts; nevertheless, the physical understanding of matter remains definitely different from the philosophical one, and they must in no way be confused.

A contemporary physicist at the present stage of the development of physics could give approximately the following physical definition of matter (of course, inevitably incomplete, as is every definition of a concrete thing, something Lenin explained many times): matter is something consisting of moving (in one way or another) elementary particles—protons, neutrons, electrons, etc.—structurally connected with one another by the forces of attraction and repulsion, possessing in connection with this energy, forming atoms capable of mutual transformations with the release or absorption of energy, something possessing a number of general properties, such as extension, impenetrability, inertia, discreteness, compressibility and extensibility, weight, energy, and so on; something that changes lawfully in various physical phenomena.

And so, the Marxist-Leninist philosopher, expounding the philosophical understanding of matter, will say that this something is objective reality, existing independently of man as primary in relation to him, in principle fully knowable by him through the sensations caused by this something in man. At the same time, this philosopher will state that not all these physical properties are necessary, from the philosophical point of view, for resolving the so-called basic philosophical question (for example, impenetrability, inertia, as Lenin indicated on p. 247), and that the “sole ‘property’” of matter, with the recognition of which philosophical materialism is connected, is the property “of being objective reality, of existing outside our consciousness” (Lenin).

Of course, every Soviet physicist is obliged to connect the physical study of the various physical properties of matter and of its structure, which leads to a physical understanding of matter, with the correct philosophical understanding of it; but one should not confuse one with the other, distinguishing the physical and the philosophical understandings (concepts) of matter, contrary to Suvorov’s opinion on this point.

S. Suvorov’s conclusions on this question are completely unacceptable.

V. G. Fridman