Revisiting the Question of the So-Called Physical Concept of Matter

(A Reply to V. G. Friedman)

S. G. Suvorov

V. G. Friedman’s letter to the editors of the journal Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk *) shows that the anti-Marxist conception of the existence of “two concepts of matter” still has its adherents, which is to be regretted.

At last year’s discussion at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, certain defenders of this conception even tried to substantiate “theoretically” its legitimacy. It seems necessary once again to return to this question, to examine the arguments of V. G. Friedman and of some of his like-minded colleagues.

1. First of all, V. G. Friedman tries to show that the conception of “two concepts of matter” is defended by V. I. Lenin, while I, supposedly, ignore this defense. He cites three quotations from V. I. Lenin’s work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. It must be supposed that V. G. Friedman considers the quotations he adduces to be the most convincing in favor of the conception of “two concepts of matter.” Therefore we are obliged to examine them. Incidentally, this will help us understand the theoretical baggage of the defenders of this conception.

Here is the first quotation. Lenin writes: “The mutability of human conceptions of space and time no more refutes the objective reality of the one and the other than the mutability of scientific knowledge of the structure and forms of motion of matter refutes the objective reality of the external world” **). V. G. Friedman comments: “This ‘mutability of conceptions’ and of ‘scientific knowledge’ relates, of course (!?—S. S.), 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 ... Here Lenin quite definitely compares and distinguishes the philosophical and the natu—

) See UFN, vol. XLIX, pp. 623–625.
) V. I. Lenin, Works*, vol. 14, p. 163. (Emphasis mine.—S. S.)

“... a natural-scientific understanding of matter and of the form of its existence” (p. 623).

However, from the quotation it follows “quite definitely” only that V. I. Lenin is speaking of scientific knowledge about the structure and forms of motion of matter (see what is emphasized in the quotation from V. I. Lenin’s work), about the mutability of this knowledge, and about the fact that this mutability does not refute the objective reality of the external world. It is precisely this argument that Lenin directs against “physical” idealism. The Machists identify knowledge of the object of cognition with the object of cognition itself. This means that outside knowledge of the object, for them, there is nothing, there is no object independent of cognition, of the cognizing human being. But this is precisely the subjective line in philosophy which Lenin exposes. He says: our knowledge (which is mutable) is one thing; objective reality itself (which exists independently of the state of our knowledge of it) is another.

But Lenin’s formulation of the problem at the same time reveals the scientific untenability of metaphysical materialism as well. In fact, the question stands as follows: our scientific knowledge of the structure of the object is mutable, but the existence of the object does not depend on the state of our knowledge of it. Hence it follows that the definition of matter must be based precisely on the independence of the object from our consciousness. This is what V. I. Lenin does. But metaphysical materialism bases the definition of matter precisely on the historically changing image of matter. And this leads to the idealist conclusion about the “disappearance of matter” when the development of science leads to the disappearance of a given limit of knowledge about the structure of matter.

But V. G. Fridman does the very same thing. Look at what he calls the concept of matter. It is what Lenin calls “scientific knowledge about the structure and forms of motion of matter.” Of course, after Lenin had given the definition of matter as a philosophical category, V. G. Fridman can no longer call this knowledge of the structure of matter the concept (or philosophical concept) of matter; he calls it the physical concept or natural-scientific concept of matter, which he considers just as legitimate as the philosophical one, which he places alongside the philosophical concept of matter. However, from V. I. Lenin’s quotation it is clear that he establishes no “natural-scientific concept of matter” whatsoever. This is an invention of V. G. Fridman and his like-minded colleagues, for which Lenin is not responsible.

The second quotation. V. I. Lenin writes: “One thing is the question of how exactly, with the aid of the various sense organs, man perceives space and how, by a long historical development, abstract concepts of space are worked out from these perceptions—an entirely different thing is the question of whether these perceptions correspond ...”

and this concept of humanity, an objective reality independent of humanity”*). V. G. Fridman comments: “Here again, ‘one thing’ is the question of the natural-scientific understanding of matter and its basic forms of being, and ‘quite another thing’ is the philosophical understanding” (p. 623, much emphasized.—S. S.).

It is easy to see that in this quotation as well V. I. Lenin is not defending the conception of “two concepts of matter,” nor does he place alongside the concept of matter as a philosophical category any “natural-scientific concept” of matter. It is not difficult for the reader to understand that here V. I. Lenin is discussing another question, namely: one thing is the process of the formation of certain concepts, and another thing is the question of whether objective reality corresponds to these concepts.

The third quotation. V. I. Lenin writes: “When physicists say: ‘matter disappears,’ they mean by this that hitherto natural science reduced all its investigations of the physical world to three ultimate concepts—matter, electricity, ether; now only the last two remain, for matter can be reduced to electricity...”**). V. G. Fridman comments: “Undoubtedly, Lenin is speaking here of a change in the physical concept of matter; the terms ‘matter,’ ‘electricity,’ and ‘ether’ here denote physical concepts worked out by physicists and changing in the process of its development” (pp. 623–624).

In this comment V. G. Fridman is right in one respect: in the words “matter, electricity, ether,” “matter can be reduced to electricity,” the term “matter” denotes not the philosophical concept of matter as objective reality (for the concept of matter as a philosophical category cannot, after all, be “reduced to electricity”), but rather the understanding that natural scientists invested in this term; and by this term they understood substance (physicists, indeed, believed at that time that substance was reducible to electricity). There can be no mistake about this, not only by virtue of logic, but also by virtue of the fact that Lenin himself says directly that he is setting forth the ideas of physicists, what “they mean by this,” i.e., the physicists.

But allow us to ask our critic: whence does it follow that Lenin himself takes the position that this is a physical concept of matter, legitimately existing alongside the concept of matter as a philosophical category? This follows from nowhere; it is an invention of the apologists of the conception of “two concepts of matter.” Precisely following the above—

*) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 14, p. 174. (Emphasis mine.—S. S.)

**) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 14, p. 247.

brought forward by the cited quotation from V. I. Lenin, explains over several pages what the delusion of the physicists consists in, namely: in metaphysical thinking, in accepting as the definition of matter the limit of our knowledge, historically limited and therefore changing. Immediately after this quotation V. I. Lenin shows what the only possible scientific concept of matter must be. Here is the passage from Lenin’s work: “‘Matter disappears’^)—this means that the limit within which we have hitherto known matter disappears, our knowledge (emphasis mine.—S. S.) goes deeper; properties of matter disappear which formerly seemed absolute, immutable, primary (impenetrability, inertia, mass, etc.) and which are now revealed to be relative, inherent only in certain states of matter. For the sole ‘property’ of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being objective reality*, of existing outside our consciousness.

The error of Machism in general, and of the Machist new physics, consists in ignoring this basis of philosophical materialism and the distinction between metaphysical materialism and dialectical materialism. The recognition of any immutable elements, of an ‘unchanging essence of things,’ and so forth, is not materialism, but is metaphysical, i.e. anti-dialectical, materialism.”^**)

Does it not follow from this text of Lenin that what V. G. Fridman calls the “physical concept of matter” (which allegedly has the right to exist!) Lenin calls “the limit of our knowledge” about the structure of matter? Does it not follow from this that the identification of this knowledge with the definition of matter is directly connected by Lenin with metaphysics, which he calls upon us to cast aside, replacing it with dialectical materialism and adopting the corresponding, uniquely scientific concept of matter, namely—the concept of matter as a philosophical category?

Thus, in all three cases V. I. Lenin fights against the attempt of metaphysicians to pass off the limit of our knowledge as the definition of matter and calls for casting aside (and not preserving alongside it!) the incorrect interpretation of matter and for adopting the correct one. There are no two coexisting concepts of matter in V. I. Lenin. V. G. Fridman substitutes for what Lenin writes what Fridman wants to read. No, it is impossible to find in Lenin quotations suitable for Fridman. Therefore, after twisting the quotations, he is nevertheless compelled to admit: “True, Lenin nowhere ... indicates—

^*) Lenin puts the words “matter disappears” in quotation marks as an expression that does not belong to him. What is meant is the disappearance of what physicists mistakenly called matter and what some of them at that time considered to be disappearing.

^) V. I. Lenin, Works, vol. 14, pp. 247–248.

... directly states that one should distinguish the philosophical and the natural-scientific concept (understanding) of matter” (p. 624)*).

But if that is so, then why was it necessary to quote? For under these circumstances no quotations will help.

1. Having suffered a fiasco with quotations, V. G. Fridman calls for “judging Lenin’s principled position” not in a pedantic, not in a formal way, but by penetrating into its essence. Well then, the proposal to penetrate into the essence of Lenin’s works is always a fair one. The trusting reader now expects an analysis of the essence of “Lenin’s principled position.” But, having proclaimed a new task, V. G. Fridman immediately makes a sharp turn and again returns the reader to the former quotations: “As the few statements of Lenin cited by me show... in this struggle of Lenin’s (against physical idealism.—S. S.)... the distinction between the philosophical and the natural-scientific concepts of matter had paramount significance...” (p. 624).

Permit the reader to ask the author of the letter: after all, you yourself have just admitted that the statements of Lenin cited do not show what you want to read into them! And where, then, is your analysis of the essence of “Lenin’s principled position”?

The promised analysis never took place, which did not prevent the author from delivering the most resolute and severe verdict.

We are compelled to accept V. G. Fridman’s challenge and at least briefly (and, of necessity, schematically) to consider the logic of V. I. Lenin’s reasoning.

Natural scientists of the nineteenth century, who stood on the position of spontaneous materialism, thought: we know what matter is—it is indivisible atoms, which are the ultimate, immutable bricks of nature; the indivisibility of atoms, impenetrability, weight, and certain other physical properties—all these are inalienable properties of matter; we assert that each time we are dealing with matter when we encounter the properties inherent in it.

Among the majority of natural scientists there reigned an atmosphere of complete confidence in the unshakability of these assertions concerning the inalienable physical features of matter. And suddenly this atmosphere

*) It cannot be left unnoted that the very identification of the “concept of matter” and the “understanding of matter” is a philosophically incorrect confusion of an objective category with a subjective one.

Incidentally, V. G. Fridman displays wavering here: on the one hand, he somewhat more than once emphasizes that he identifies these categories; on the other hand, in publishing his letter, in a number of places he changes the term “concept” to the term “understanding.” He does both in order to gain the possibility both of attacking and of defending himself, should this become necessary. However, this does not save his position, but only more vividly emphasizes its weaknesses.

certainty over the course of some ten years was destroyed. A series of discoveries in physics showed that atoms, too, are divisible, and that in nature there exist objects with other properties, not those that had from time immemorial been associated with matter. Then many natural scientists were at a loss, while the idealists raised their heads and declared: hence, “matter has disappeared,” hence, science has refuted materialism.

The position of materialism was defended by V. I. Lenin. He pointed out that it is not matter that “disappears”; what disappears is the limit of that knowledge of the properties of matter which had been attained up to that time. The properties of matter are inexhaustible. Knowledge of these properties is mobile, changeable; it goes ever deeper. But knowledge of the properties of matter is one thing, and matter itself is another—an objective category independent of human cognition. One must renounce the metaphysical notions of matter created by physicists, who are only spontaneous materialists. One must accept the conception of matter that has been worked out by dialectical materialism, for only it corresponds to the truth and moves knowledge forward.

Such is the logic of V. I. Lenin. In setting it forth, we have said nothing new, but have merely rendered in our own words what is contained in Lenin’s statements.

Lenin’s logic ruthlessly exposes the idealists. But the question arises: where, in this logic, is there room for a “physical concept” of matter? On what basis do V. G. Fridman and his co-thinkers confuse the issue, asserting that even if Lenin gives no direct indications, in essence he nevertheless distinguished two concepts of matter—the philosophical and the physical—considering both to be equally scientifically necessary concepts? No, in Lenin’s book there is not, and cannot be, any conception that would allow, alongside the scientific concept of matter as a philosophical category, still another concept of matter, allegedly worked out by the particular sciences.

The anti-scientific essence of the conception of the “two concepts” of matter becomes especially clear after the reader turns to the clarification of the following questions: just what content do the defenders of this conception put into the “physical concept of matter,” how do they apply it, and what, in fact, are they concerned about?

3. Subsequently V. G. Fridman decided to tell the readers of the scientific journal Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk what the “physical definition of matter” is “at the present stage of the development of physics,” a definition the neglect of which is, according to Fridman, a transgression against Marxism. Here is this definition: “Matter is something consisting of moving (in one way or another) elementary particles—protons, neutrons, electrons, etc.—structurally connected with one another by forces of attraction and repulsion, possessing, in connection with this, energy, forming structures capable of mutual pre-

...rotations of atoms, with the release or absorption of energy in the process, something possessing a number of common properties, such as: extension, impenetrability, inertia, porosity, compressibility and expansibility, weight, energy, etc.; something that changes lawfully in various physical phenomena” (p. 625).

From this “physical definition of matter” it is clear that V. G. Fridman’s conceptions of the physical structure of matter and the forms of its motion are far from corresponding to the level of contemporary natural science and philosophy. Thus, from V. G. Fridman’s “definition” there has dropped out such a form of matter as the field, whose establishment is the greatest achievement of nineteenth- and twentieth-century physics, and on the investigation of whose properties the greatest materialist physicists labored already in the last century—Faraday, Maxwell, Hertz, Popov, Umov, Lebedev, and others.

The argument that “matter is something... possessing a number of common properties, such as:... impenetrability,... porosity, compressibility and expansibility...” takes into account not only none of the properties of the field, but not even the atomistic structure of matter and the properties of atoms and elementary particles; it is worthy of the level, perhaps, only of the eighteenth century.

However, the matter does not lie in the individual shortcomings of V. G. Fridman’s definition; it lies in the defectiveness of his very method. V. G. Fridman gives a “physical definition of matter” by enumerating physical attributes. But not a single idealist denies that physics deals with definite attributes; he does not even deny the existence of atoms, but only... regards them as the framework of our thought, uniting the totality of definite physical attributes. The Copenhagen school of physicists has even invented a special term, “physical reality,” but this is not at all reality as something objectively existing outside human consciousness.

It is time to understand that so long as a physicist speaks only of a totality of attributes, but does not speak of the objective reality that possesses these attributes, he is still not a modern materialist; the brilliant works of V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin, who waged a tremendous struggle against modern forms of idealism, have made these questions clear to everyone who wishes to defend the positions of materialism in science.

By the method of enumerating attributes one cannot construct either a “physical concept of matter” or, in general, any concept whatsoever. The formation of concepts through the enumeration of attributes is a primitive notion of the process of concept formation in general, one characteristic not of dialectical but of metaphysical logic. If V. G. Fridman wants to remain a materialist, he must overcome the theoretical weaknesses of his positions.

Can V. G. Fridman’s “physical concept of matter” serve as a guiding principle in research, as a criterion of what

in a definite case are we dealing with matter? No, such a criterion cannot serve as V. G. Fridman’s concept, for the investigator may encounter matter that does not possess at all one or several of the attributes that V. G. Fridman has enumerated (for example, of a field it cannot be said that it possesses the property of impenetrability). What conclusion, then, should the investigator draw? Either he must acknowledge that he has encountered an objective reality independent of human consciousness which possesses other properties than had hitherto been known to him. In that case he will simply discard the physical definition of matter as unsuitable—it does not help him, but pulls him backward—and in fact will proceed from the concept of matter as a philosophical category. Or he will conclude that he has encountered something that does not fall under his “physical definition of matter.” And this will inevitably put him at an impasse until he frees himself from the “physical definition of matter” that is entangling him and adopts the only possible Marxist definition of matter as a philosophical category.

Was it not precisely this process that in fact occurred at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries during the crisis in physics? Does not what has been said already mean that the conception of “two concepts of matter” provides no way out of the crisis in physics; that one of the conditions for overcoming the crisis in physics was the renunciation of the metaphysical concept of matter and the transition from it to the only scientific concept of matter as a philosophical category, elaborated by dialectical materialism?

The attempt to restore, alongside Lenin’s definition of matter as a philosophical category, also a “physical definition of matter” is profoundly defective in its very foundation. Already from the “physical definition of matter” cited above by V. G. Fridman it is evident that he and those who think like him are concerned with nothing other than securing the right of citizenship, alongside the Marxist concept of matter, for precisely that concept which was characteristic of metaphysically thinking natural scientists of the nineteenth century and which Lenin considered it necessary to reject as having failed to justify itself in science.

That the propagandists of the conception of two concepts of matter are concerned precisely with this is clearly evident from certain statements. At discussions on this question held in 1951 in the Scientific Council of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, in which it was asserted that those who fight against this conception thereby revise Lenin’s proposition on natural-historical materialism, which, since it exists, elaborates its own concept of matter. Even examples were cited of such elaboration of the concept of matter by certain natural scientists.

Undoubtedly, natural-historical materialism exists, and there is no doubt that it elaborates its own concept of matter. All ...

the question “only” of what the attitude of Marxists should be toward the natural-historical materialism of natural scientists. None other than V. I. Lenin showed what natural-historical materialism is. “...natural-historical materialism, i.e. the spontaneous, unconscious, unformed, philosophically unconscious conviction of the overwhelming majority of natural scientists in the objective reality of the external world reflected by our consciousness”—this is how V. I. Lenin characterizes this materialism). Marxists must, of course, support natural scientists who stand on the positions of natural-historical materialism when they come out against idealist obscurantism in science. But they cannot support them when they insist on the existence of a physical definition of the concept of matter and thereby try to free themselves from the guiding influence of advanced materialist philosophy. None other than Lenin never tired of calling upon natural scientists to rise from spontaneous, philosophically unconscious materialism to scientific, dialectical materialism, in order to withstand the struggle against the pressure of bourgeois ideas and the restoration of the bourgeois world outlook. “In order to withstand this struggle and carry it through to the end with complete success,” Lenin wrote, “the natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, that is, he must be a dialectical materialist”*).

The task of a Marxist is not to set, alongside the Marxist definition of matter as a philosophical category, yet another “physical” definition of matter given by natural scientists, but to raise natural scientists to the Marxist definition of matter.

1. The conception of “two concepts of matter” is a harmful, antiscientific attempt by a part of natural scientists to free themselves from the guiding role of Marxist philosophy, an effort to show as though in natural science one can defend materialist positions without studying and without being guided by the Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge.

Such is the objective meaning of this conception, although, of course, there are its defenders out of thoughtlessness.

However the apologists of this conception may interpret the synthesis of two concepts of matter, in reality what takes place is the contraposition of the “physical concept of matter” to the only possible scientific concept of matter, formulated by Marxist philosophy.

) V. I. Lenin, Works, vol. 14, p. 331.
) V. I. Lenin, Works*, vol. 33, p. 207.

Let us show this with several examples.

In S. A. Artsybushev’s physics textbook, the field is considered. He finds that the field is an objective reality and rightly asserts that it is one of the forms of matter. However, the author also seeks physical signs confirming the materiality of the field: “Is there not here (i.e., in the assertion that the field is matter.—S. S.) a contradiction with the physical definition of matter, according to which all matter must possess mass. Of course, there is no contradiction. The point is that to every energy there corresponds a definite mass.”*)

Thus, for S. A. Artsybushev the objectivity of the field, now proved by the entire practice of mankind, is not a sufficient criterion of its materiality. It turns out that one must show whether the assertion of the materiality of the field does not also contradict the “physical definition of matter”! S. A. Artsybushev believes that he has grounds to fear that readers might have doubts about this. Why does he think so? Because for him the field, considered on the physical plane, is first of all energy (see above). In this way, the definition of matter as objective reality is placed by the author on the same level as the “physical definition of matter.” And it is fortunate that the field was lucky enough to have the physical relation $E = mc^2$ discovered; otherwise S. A. Artsybushev would have found it difficult to find a way out of the “contradiction” and to decide whether the field is matter or not!

Whether the assertion that the field is an objective reality contradicts the “physical concept of matter” is a contrived, philosophically unfounded question. In fact, another question is relevant: to prove that the field is an objective reality, i.e., that it corresponds to the concept of matter as a philosophical category.

It is known that for a long time many physicists interpreted the field not as a form of matter, but as a formal method of calculating the force with which a body “forming a field” acts on a body with mass equal to one. It was precisely this formalistic approach to the field that lay at the basis of conceptions of action at a distance. At the basis of action by contact lay conceptions of the existence of a certain medium between bodies. A prolonged struggle took place between the two tendencies. Neither of them had the advantage in the struggle as long as physicists dealt with static fields. A purely formal conception of the field continued to persist. It received a serious blow when electromagnetic waves were reproduced (Hertz), and especially when, for the first time in the world, A. S. Popov sent a radiogram. The fact of transmitting signals of the required

*) S. A. Artsybushev, Physics. A Textbook for Medical Students. Fifth edition, Medgiz, 1950, p. 178.

ON THE SO-CALLED PHYSICAL CONCEPT OF MATTER

of a kind propagating with finite velocity, confirmed that physical processes take place in the space between transmitter and receiver. P. N. Lebedev proved that the field exerts pressure on solid bodies and gases. Radio telegraphy, which entered broad practice, and the experiments of P. N. Lebedev showed that the field perceives the action of a certain kind of matter (veshchestvo) and itself acts upon it. From these facts it followed that the field is not a method of calculation; it is a real object. True, later there were attempts by the positivists to deny the reality of the field by introducing so-called “retarded potentials”: they pretended that nothing had happened in physics, that it was still possible to proceed from action at a distance, that is, from the fact that action is transmitted through the void, but… with an amendment introduced into it: the action is delayed. The artificiality of this device became ever more obvious. The hypothesis of retarded action at a distance could not explain why the action is delayed and why the delay is always proportional to the distance over which the action is transmitted and inversely proportional to the speed of light. Einstein advanced yet another conception of the field: he tried to represent the field as “physical space.”

The decisive blow to these positivist attempts was dealt by the discovery of the fact of the mutual transformation of kinds of matter, namely, the discovery of the transformation of substance into field and conversely (the transformation of an electron–positron pair into photons and conversely).

This fact—that the field is a kind of matter—does not need to be proved; and its proof is the practical confirmation that the field interacts with known kinds of matter, that it is transformed into these kinds and arises at the expense of these kinds. No other proofs that the field is one of the kinds of matter are required.

1. In the example given, the course of reasoning is incorrect, but its end is more or less successful. However, the desire to rely on a “physical criterion” of materiality does not always end so comparatively well. Things can be worse. Here is the conclusion reached in 1934 by Academician A. F. Ioffe, who also sought a “physical criterion of materiality”: “If we proceed from the fact that only that which is conserved can be matter…, then energy may be considered matter, the sole quantity at present which does not disappear and is not created anywhere… If energy itself is physical matter (!?—S. S.), then the conception of matter as the bearer of this energy, and of energy as one of the properties of this bearer, falls away; energy itself then becomes matter”*).

) A. F. Ioffe, “The Development of Atomistic Views in the Twentieth Century,” PZM*, No. 4, 1934, p. 62.

We see that the “physical criterion of materiality” led Academician Ioffe to the denial of matter as the bearer of motion, i.e. to energetism. Perhaps some readers will think that Acad. Ioffe did not know of the existence of the Marxist definition of matter as a philosophical category? No, that is not so. His report is devoted to the 25th anniversary of V. I. Lenin’s book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and one must assume that in it he noticed Lenin’s definitions of matter, emphasized more than once. Academician A. F. Ioffe, apparently, was even quite certain that his physical criterion of materiality was fully compatible with the philosophical definition of matter: energy is, they say, an objective reality independent of human consciousness, etc. However, in physics he preferred, above all, the “physical concept of matter,” while leaving the philosophical concept for the needs of philosophy.

Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR T. P. Kravets approaches this question from the same positions. Considering energy and also relying on the “physical criterion of materiality,” which in his case is somewhat different than in the preceding authors, T. P. Kravets writes: “Energy appears to us as a certain substance, in every respect similar to weighty matter and endowed with all those properties which make us consider weighty matter to be a substance: it is indestructible and uncreatable; it is localized in space; it moves and is transmitted; it possesses inertial mass; it has weight; it is divided into atoms. An exact law of equivalence is established between energy and matter. It may be asserted that both are, to an equal degree, the essence of what we call matter.”*)

And in this case we see how the conception of two concepts of matter, the application of a special physical concept of matter alongside the philosophical one, leads to a conclusion that is in glaring contradiction with scientific philosophy—dialectical materialism.

If T. P. Kravets had not been guided by the harmful conception of the “physical concept of matter,” but had proceeded from the only scientifically possible concept of matter as a philosophical category, he would not have arrived at a confused position which, although it does not entirely coincide with Ostwaldian energetism, nevertheless pours water on its mill.

The examples cited convincingly show into what a swamp physicists are led by the desire to bypass Marxist-Leninist philosophy and to be guided by the “physical criterion of materiality.” Natural scientists, if they only wish to defend advanced materialist positions in their science, cannot with impunity neglect Marxist philosophy.

) T. P. Kravets, The Evolution of the Doctrine of Energy, UFN*, vol. XXXVI, no. 3, p. 357.

It is not difficult to see wherein the philosophical error of A. F. Ioffe and T. P. Kravets consists. In fact, dialectical materialism has developed an integral doctrine of matter, which includes the formulation of the essence of matter as a philosophical category, and also the doctrine of the forms of its existence—space, time, motion, and law-governed interconnection. Energy is the measure of the motion of matter, and not matter itself. Motion is uncreatable and indestructible just as matter itself is uncreatable and indestructible, but this gives no grounds either for identifying motion (or energy) with matter, or for removing the question of what it is that moves (or, in A. F. Ioffe’s terminology, the question of matter as the bearer of energy). The form of existence of matter does not exist without matter and is not identical with it.

It is therefore impossible to draw the conclusion: that which is conserved is matter. Momentum and angular momentum are also conserved; why, in that case, should they not also be called matter? The identification of mass with matter (apparently on the same grounds) has, as is known, old traditions. It seems to me that the need has matured to formulate more precisely the meaning of the law of conservation of matter.

1. In our time, it would apparently be more correct to broaden the formulation of this law. We now know that there exist various kinds of matter—fields, substance, or more precisely, molecules, atoms, electrons, etc.*). In the twentieth century it has been established that not only molecules, but also atoms and elementary particles transform into one another, and electron–positron pairs transform into photons and back.**) There is no doubt that all kinds of matter, under certain conditions, transform into one another. It would be more correct to speak of the law of the conservation and transformation of matter.

This law plays an essential role in the discovery of new kinds of matter. It was precisely the transformation of substance into field and back, as was said above, that played a decisive role in proving that the field is a kind of matter, and it decisively refuted attempts at a formalistic interpretation of the field (retarded action at a distance, physical space, etc.). It is precisely on the law of conservation and transformation of the kinds of matter that physicists rely in their conviction of the existence of the neutrino. It is precisely in the processes of transformation of various kinds of matter into one another that the possibility arises of using, for technical purposes, enormous quantities of energy; these same processes underlie the creation of substances with predetermined properties. There is no doubt that the basic task of modern physics is to create a theory of the transformations of the various kinds of matter. Even in modern technology these transformations play an essential role, although they are based to a considerable—

*) V. I. Lenin called electrons a kind of matter (see, for example, V. I. Lenin, Works, vol. 14, p. 116).

**) Transformations of some particles (protons and others) apparently occur at high energies.

to an appreciable extent on empirical material. The physics of the future, however, is the physics of transformations of the various kinds of matter.

What, then, is the law of conservation of matter?

Usually in physics the law of conservation of matter is understood to mean the law of conservation of mass, the total quantity of which can be completely exhausted by successive operations, for example weighings. However, the law of conservation of matter and the law of conservation of mass are not identical.

The essence of the conservation of matter consists in the fact that matter is capable of completely (in quantitative and qualitative respect) renewing the entire cycle of its development as soon as suitable conditions are created for this. Engels spoke of this property of matter, struggling against a primitive, purely quantitative interpretation of conservation*).

This general property of matter, characterized as its conservation, finds its expression in any physicochemical changes in the form of equivalences of a number of measures. Such, for example, are mass, energy, momentum, angular momentum. The conservation of matter is not reducible to the conservation of any one of the measures; it necessarily presupposes the conservation of the entire totality of the measures characterizing it, and this totality cannot be exhausted by those named. The law of conservation of the various measures is not an accidental, unrelated set of conservation laws, from which any one law may even drop out without detriment to the others; it is an integral unity, whose basis is the conservation of matter. Thus, one may say that the conservation of matter is expressed in the totality of a number of conservation laws. Not a single property of matter disappears**), but, upon transformation, finds its equivalent in a new form, and is again manifested in the former one upon the reverse transformation, if the necessary conditions for the latter have been created.

Thus, the law of conservation of matter is broader and deeper than the law of conservation of mass (or of any other measure). At the basis of the law of conservation of mass lies the general law of conservation of matter as its fundamental property. But cognition of the general property of the conservation of matter is accomplished through cognition of the laws of conservation of individual measures, through clarification of the interconnectedness of these laws, through clarification of the fact that conservation should be understood not only in a quantitative, but also in a qualitative sense.

Lomonosov’s treatment of the law of conservation of masses is therefore deep: precisely thereby it rises above the interpretation of natural—

) See, for example, F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature*, Introduction.

) F. Engels wrote: “Matter, in all its transformations, remains eternally one and the same... none of its attributes can ever be lost...” (F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, Introduction).

testers of two centuries: that in a particular law of conservation he saw the manifestation of the general property of the conservation of matter; that he considered the particular laws of conservation (of mass, motion, time) in connection with this general property. S. I. Vavilov was the first to understand this peculiarity in Lomonosov’s treatment of the law of conservation, in view of which he quite justifiably called it Lomonosov’s law*). The highest generalization of the law of the conservation of matter on the basis of Marxist philosophy was given by Friedrich Engels.

Such is the situation with the law of the conservation of matter.

In view of what has been said, it would be wrong to identify the conservation of any one of the measures with the conservation of matter. This would mean identifying mass, energy, momentum (or another measure) with matter. In the final analysis this would mean identifying matter with those measures which characterize the form of its existence.

7. Let us now examine the question of the crisis of physics and of whether the conception of the “two concepts of matter” is a way out of it, as V. G. Fridman maintains.

The term “crisis of physics” was not introduced into circulation by V. I. Lenin. It was introduced by the physicists themselves. The signs of a serious crisis in physics were written about, for example, by the well-known French theorist in the field of the physico-mathematical sciences, Henri Poincaré). A rich summary of this question was given by the French writer on philosophical questions of physics, Abel Rey*). The statements of these writers are also considered by V. I. Lenin.

Both Poincaré and Rey characterized the essence of the crisis of physics in their own way. They saw it in the fact that the new discoveries of physics allegedly undermine the physical principles—the principle of the conservation of energy, the foundations of Newtonian mechanics, and so forth. V. I. Lenin cites Poincaré’s statement: before us are the “ruins” of the old principles of physics.

The metaphysically thinking positivists A. Poincaré, A. Rey, and others regarded science as a sum of completed knowledge, of laws and propositions formulated once and for all, of natural-scientific concepts defined forever according to the method of operationalism. Every study of physical concepts, every transition to a new, deeper form of a law, resulting from new discoveries in physics, from their point of view is nothing other than the “collapse of laws,” a “crisis of physics,” and so on. The idealists were interested in widely instilling the idea of the existence of a “crisis of physics,” of the hopeless situation of science, of the presence of extreme disagreements

) S. I. Vavilov, “Lomonosov’s Law,” Pravda*, January 5, 1949.

) H. Poincaré, La valeur de la science, Paris, 1905.

*) Abel Rey, La théorie de la physique chez les physiciens contemporains, Paris, 1907.

among scientists to the basic guiding ideas of physics,—thereby making it easier to impose upon natural scientists the idealist conclusion: consequently, science has no objective value; consequently, science has proved the collapse of materialism.

V. I. Lenin considered the turning points in the development of science from positions that were fundamentally opposite. For a dialectical materialist, the breaking down of concepts is an inevitable process in the development of science, and therefore this breaking down must be regarded not as a crisis of science, but as its progressive movement forward. To call the inevitable development and deepening of the concepts and laws of physics its crisis means to use words not in accordance with their meaning, but in a directly opposite sense.

In accordance with this, former knowledge as well—if only, of course, it is scientific knowledge—is not an error from which one must free oneself, but merely a stage at which knowledge expresses a certain degree of man’s penetration into the essence of the object, and from which one must pass to a new stage, to a deeper immersion in its essence. In dialectical materialism these propositions constitute the doctrine of the movement of knowledge through relative truths toward absolute truth. Precisely for this reason V. I. Lenin called the greatest discoveries in physics at the turn of the twentieth century—discoveries that led to the breaking down of a number of physical concepts, to the collapse of the metaphysical absolutization of the laws of physics—not a crisis of physics, but “the latest revolution in natural science,” which he deemed it necessary to reflect even in the title of the fifth chapter of his work (Materialism and Empirio-Criticism), in which the questions of the crisis of physics are considered.

V. I. Lenin sees the crisis of physics not at all in what the positivists A. Poincaré, A. Rey, and others saw it in—not in the breaking down of physical concepts as such, but in those illegitimate, unscientific, idealist conclusions which certain physical schools drew from the breaking down of concepts, in those conclusions which called into question the objective value of science itself.

It is precisely in this sense that V. I. Lenin gives a characterization of the essence of the crisis of physics. Here is this characterization.

In stating the “crisis” of physics noted by A. Rey (V. I. Lenin here puts the word crisis in quotation marks), and its meaning, V. I. Lenin writes that from Rey’s words it is clear what reactionary elements are striving to take advantage of it and to aggravate it—these are the fideists and anti-intellectualists, striving to put faith in the place of science. And V. I. Lenin concludes: “Consequently, in the philosophical respect the essence of the ‘crisis of modern physics’ consists in the fact that the old physics saw in its theories ‘real knowledge of the material world,’ i.e. the reflection of objective reality. The new trend in physics sees in theory only symbols, signs, marks for practice, i.e. it denies the existence of objective reality, independent of na—”

…of consciousness and reflected by it”*). And further: “The essence of the crisis of modern physics consists in the breaking down of old laws and basic principles, in the rejection of objective reality outside consciousness, i.e., in the replacement of materialism by idealism and agnosticism”**). V. I. Lenin mentions here the breaking down of old laws and basic principles, but this breaking down is only a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the emergence of a crisis. Only the replacement of materialism by idealism and agnosticism in the course of the breaking down of concepts creates a crisis of physics, i.e., precisely that which hinders the forward movement of physics, delays the resolution of the tasks confronting it.

In accordance with this understanding of the essence of the crisis of physics, V. I. Lenin also indicates the ways out of it: “The basic materialist spirit of physics, as of all contemporary natural science, will overcome all crises, but only with the indispensable replacement of metaphysical materialism by dialectical materialism”***). And here Lenin by no means seeks to include in this all-embracing phrase “all and every kind of crisis” also the “crisis of physics” in Poincaré’s and Rey’s sense, i.e., as a crisis of physics in itself; for for V. I. Lenin the concept of the “crisis of physics” is connected only with the crisis of the epistemological instrument, and therefore he points to the sole way out of all and every kind of crisis—the way out on the epistemological plane. He reproaches the conciliationist Rey for trying to obscure the fact that “the crisis of modern physics consists in its retreat from the direct, decisive, and irrevocable recognition of the objective value of its theories...”****).

In the same vein, in revealing the epistemological essence of the crisis of physics, V. I. Lenin also identifies the two causes of “physical” idealism—the oblivion of matter by the mathematicians and the absolutization of relativism.

Finally, V. I. Lenin repeatedly points out in his work that the breaking down of concepts in science only confirms dialectical materialism. Here is one quotation. “But dialectical materialism insists on the approximate, relative character of every scientific proposition concerning the structure of matter and its properties, on the absence of absolute boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving matter from one state into another, apparently incompatible with it from our point of view, and so forth. However bizarre from the standpoint of ‘common sense’ the transformation of imponderable ether into ponderable matter and vice versa may be, however ‘strange’ the absence in the electron of any mass other than electromagnetic mass may be, however unusual the restriction of mechanical laws of motion to only one domain of phenomena of nature and their subordination to the deeper laws of electromagnetic

*) V. I. Lenin, Works, vol. 14, p. 243.
**) Ibid., p. 245.
***) Ibid., p. 292. (Emphasis mine.—S. S.).
****) Ibid., p. 292.

phenomena, and so forth—all this is only further confirmation of dialectical materialism.”*)

It is evident from this that V. I. Lenin could not have regarded the breaking up of concepts and principles in physics as a crisis of science; on the contrary, it is evidence of the movement of science forward. A crisis of science arises only when natural scientists, by virtue of a number of socially conditioned circumstances, display a hostile attitude toward dialectical materialism, neglect it in a Hilferding-like manner or are ignorant of it, and begin, at turning points in the development of science, to be guided by a theory of knowledge which does not lead science forward but retards it.

1. What has been said is in complete contradiction with V. G. Fridman’s assertion that “Lenin distinguished a crisis in the philosophical and physical respects.” Nowhere in V. I. Lenin is there any indication that there is a crisis of physics in two respects, in particular a crisis of physics in the physical respect. In order to create the impression that V. I. Lenin has such a distinction of the crisis, V. G. Fridman prepares the Leninist text, artificially divides the indivisible Leninist formula on the crisis of physics into two parts, and presents each in the garnish of his own interpretations. The result is the following production: “According to Lenin, in the physical respect (there follows a Leninist quotation.—S. S.) ‘the essence of the crisis of contemporary physics consists in the breaking down of old laws and basic principles’ (here V. G. Fridman breaks off the quotation and inserts his own words.—S. S.), and in the philosophical respect (here V. G. Fridman again, as never happened, continues the broken-off quotation.—S. S.) ‘in the rejection of objective reality outside consciousness, i.e. in the replacement of materialism by idealism and agnosticism’” (p. 624). Above we have already given an interpretation of this indivisible formula of V. I. Lenin and have shown that the breaking down of old laws and principles is regarded as a crisis of science not by dialectical materialists, but by metaphysical positivists such as H. Poincaré, A. Rey, and others like them.

Why, then, does V. G. Fridman need such a treatment of the Leninist formula on the crisis? It is clear: if the conception of two concepts of matter provides a way out of the crisis, then its opponent will be put to shame. Immediately after the quotation cited, he writes: “And Lenin resolves the question (what question?—S. S.) thus: ‘In order to pose the question from the only correct, i.e. dialectical-materialist, point of view, one must ask: do electrons, ether, and so forth exist outside human consciousness as objective reality or not? To this question natural scientists ... must answer and constantly do answer yes... And thereby the question is resolved in favor of materialism, for the concept of matter... epistemologically means nothing other than: objective reality existing independently

) V. I. Lenin, Works*, vol. 14, p. 248.

“from human consciousness and reflected by it.” Here it is quite clearly visible, comments V. G. Fridman, that Lenin not only distinguished the philosophical and physical concepts of matter for the struggle against every kind of idealism, but also applied this distinction to the resolution of the philosophical crisis of physics, to finding a materialist way out of it. Without this distinction, a way out of the crisis would not have been found (p. 624).

And once again we must introduce a factual correction to V. G. Fridman’s commentary: in these words of Lenin there is no assertion of the legitimacy of two concepts of matter; on the contrary, the sole scientific concept of matter as a philosophical category is being considered. It is easy to see that in this statement V. I. Lenin raises the question of the pseudo-scientific character of the conclusion that “matter has disappeared.” And it is in no way possible to see in it what is not there—the basis for the conclusion that “without this distinction (between two concepts of matter.—S. S.) a way out of the crisis would not have been found.”

V. G. Fridman never did reveal the secret of what he understands by this formula. This silence on the most important point is characteristic of all his like-minded associates: they have no program of struggle for materialism in concrete science. The logic of this attempt to rely on the fabricated division of two concepts of matter consists only in the fact that it is sufficient to wage struggle only against the idealist conclusions of scientists. If one of the physicists has drawn the idealist conclusion that “matter has disappeared,” a ready answer is now prepared for him: you will not fool us, they say; we know that there is a physical concept of matter, and there is a philosophical one; your conclusions do not concern the philosophical concept of matter, but they do concern it...—though just how they concern it is impossible to say without the risk of falling either into absurdity or into the denial of the worthlessness of acknowledging two concepts of matter as the key that opens the way out of the crisis of physics.

V. I. Lenin revealed the gnoseological basis of the crisis of physics. He exposed the anti-scientific character of the conclusion—“matter has disappeared”—by showing that this conclusion is the direct result of the application of an idealist theory of knowledge in physics. The inestimable significance of V. I. Lenin’s work in this respect consists precisely in the fact that he uncovered this connection between the idealist conclusion about the “disappearance” of matter and an idealist gnoseology in science.

The positivists masked their age-old idealist gnoseology, suggesting to natural scientists that physics consists of experiments, facts, scientific propositions not subject to any “philosophical analysis.” They asserted that physics develops its own “natural-scientific” theory of knowledge, which supposedly is likewise a “positive science,” not subject to discussion, which supposedly arose outside the sphere of the development of philosophical thought, outside connection with the struggle of materialism and idealism.

V. I. Lenin exposed positivism, counterposed to it, and substantiated another logic, the logic of Marxism. It consists in the following. Every science is a process of cognition, a process of reflecting definite objects of nature in human consciousness. Science is not a collection of facts; science investigates the object in all its aspects, its connections, generalizes the results of these investigations, and creates an image of the object, expressed in concepts and theories, for the purpose of the object’s practical use. The essence of the crisis of physics consists in the fact that, in the process of reflecting the object, an idealist theory of cognition is applied, in which the very idea of the object is destroyed.

Thus, the task is to be guided in physics by a materialist theory of cognition, to construct physical theories in such a way that it is clear that they reflect the properties of the object. It is precisely in this, and not in the mythical separation of two concepts of matter, that the way out of the crisis of physics indicated by V. I. Lenin consists.

Incorrect, anti-scientific conceptions of the subject of cognition, which deny its objectivity, cannot fail to show themselves in the fact that its properties, although expressed in concepts and theories, are expressed to a certain extent as in a distorting mirror. A theory whose content is related not to the object but to “instrument readings” cannot be a full-fledged one. To realize Lenin’s indications concerning the ways out of the crisis of physics means critically examining whether the existing physical concepts, theories, and general system of views of the object correctly reflect the real object and its relations; and, if they do not, finding a more precise image of the object. This means solving concrete physical problems along a materialist path. For Soviet physicists such critical work is especially important, for it means creating the conditions for the rapid solution of the principal task—the creation of the physics of transformations.

9. Let us sum up.

Already in V. G. Fridman we see a certain, in its way “consistent,” line: one thing is the philosophical concept of matter, another thing is the physical concept of matter; one thing is the crisis of physics in the philosophical respect, another thing is the crisis of physics in the physical respect. Two planes, two lines of solving theoretical-cognitive problems proceed in parallel—the line of solving them in philosophy and, as it were, a special line of solving them in physics. In this lies the essence of the question; this is the basis for why so much attention is being given to this problem.

The assertion that, alongside the concept of matter as a philosophical category, there also exists a physical concept of matter, by which physicists allegedly may be guided independently of

ON THE SO-CALLED PHYSICAL CONCEPT OF MATTER

of the Marxist doctrine of matter—is an expression of a conception according to which physics creates for itself its own “theory of physical knowledge.” This is an attempt—conscious or unconscious, that is another matter—to free oneself from the influence of Marxist philosophy in the investigation of a concrete field of natural science. It testifies to a failure to understand that real connection which exists between Marxist philosophy and the concrete sciences*). Undoubtedly, this is a conception alien to Marxism, alien both in its content and in its origin. It was none other than the positivists who came forward under the slogans of creating the “newest” allegedly “natural-scientific theory of knowledge,” which supposedly follows directly from the new discoveries of physics. It was precisely the Machists who instilled in natural scientists the harmful ideas that the natural scientist is his own philosopher.

The history of the struggle of philosophical trends in modern physics shows quite clearly the striving of the positivists to “substantiate” the idea that physics develops its own theory of knowledge. Did not the Copenhagen school of physicists preach the conception that, by opening up the microworld, modern physics established that materialist notions of the object, of causality, of space and time as forms of the existence of matter are collapsing; that modern physics proved the determining role of the observer and of the apparatus in the creation of “physical reality”? Did it not proclaim a “new era” in philosophy—the era of the conception of complementarity, which generalizes all this clerical nonsense under the guise of the latest theoretical-cognitive achievements of physics?

The history of the ideological struggle in physics also shows that some Soviet physicists believed that there really exists a special “nature of physical knowledge” and that it is necessary to popularize and propagandize the ideas of complementarity among a broad audience. Did not the prominent theoretical physicist M. A. Markov try to substantiate the view***) that the new physics had advanced the problem of the “nature of physical knowledge,” i.e., of the legitimacy of the conception of complementarity? This position was held by more than one M. A. Markov.

The conception of two concepts of matter is, in the final analysis, a conception of the legitimacy of two theories of knowledge: one, Leninist-Stalinist, supposedly obligatory only for philosophers; the other—the “theory of physical knowledge,” allegedly necessary “for professional needs.” This conception inevitably leads to an uncritical—

) Since this question was considered in my previous article (see UFN*, XLVI, August 1951), I shall not touch upon it here.

*) M. A. Markov, On the Nature of Physical Knowledge, Questions of Philosophy, No. 2, 1947.

10 UFN, vol. XLIX, issue 1

to our perception of the positivist views that reach us from capitalist countries. That is why the conception of the “two concepts of matter” must be rejected, for it is objectively directed against making the genuinely scientific Leninist-Stalinist theory of knowledge the guiding theory, the instrument of scientific cognition in every concrete science.

Such is the situation with the conception of the “two concepts of matter.”

As for V. G. Fridman’s reference to the explanatory note to the “Physics Programs for Technical Schools,” approved by the Ministry of Higher Education, in which this conception is presented—what can be said here? People compiled it, and people will correct it.