Hegel and his system failed to fulfil this task, because it started from Idealism not Materialism. It shared with theology the notion of some grand plan, standing outside of reality, to which the process of development was inexorably leading. But, its merit, Engels says, was that it posed the problem.
“On the one hand, its essential postulate was the conception that human history is a process of development, which, by its very nature, cannot find its intellectual final term in the discovery of any so-called absolute truth. But, on the other hand, it laid claim to being the very essence of precisely this absolute truth. A system of natural and historical knowledge, which is all-embracing, and final for all time, is in contradiction with the fundamental laws of dialectic thinking; which by no means excludes, but, on the contrary, includes the idea that systematic knowledge of the external world can make giant strides from generation to generation.” (p 30)
The Idealism of Hegel stood in opposition to the metaphysics and mechanical materialism of the 18th century. That earlier materialism was revolutionary in its historical context, precisely because it represented the rejection, by the revolutionary bourgeoisie, of all past history, of the idealism and theology of the old ruling-class, and its ideological apparatus, resting upon the Church, and the concepts of a fixed and frozen set of categories, where every one, as well as everything, knew their place. But, the crude deterministic nature of that materialism was also inadequate.
“In contrast to the naively revolutionary, flat rejection of all previous history, modern materialism sees history as the process of development of humanity, and its own task as the discovery of the laws of motion of this process.” (p 31)
The earlier materialism saw nature as more or less immutable, moving only within narrow circles. The idea of fixed categories of organic being was to be seen in the work of Linnaeus. Even in the 19th century, a prominent scientist such as Lord Kelvin could reject Darwin on the basis of his calculation that, given the temperature of the Earth, it could only be several million years old, and so not old enough for all of the processes described by Darwin to have occurred. Kelvin, of course, was wrong, because he did not know that the Earth's temperature was kept high as a result of radiation from its core.
“... modern materialism is essentially dialectic, and no longer needs any philosophy standing above the other sciences. As soon as each separate science is required to clarify its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things, a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous. All that remains in an independent state from all earlier philosophy is the science of thought and its laws — formal logic and dialectics. Everything else merges into the positive science of Nature and history.” (p 31)
In place of philosophy, therefore, we have psychology and sociology, as well as psychiatry and neurology. In terms of natural science, it was only when research and discovery enables the old ideas about immutable categories to be disproved that the concept of change and evolution is accepted. Darwin showed by extensive research and documentation that evolution of species, but, as noted, even Kelvin challenged that hypothesis. It was further scientific discoveries, such as that by Rutherford, and the development of radiometric dating of rocks, which removed those objections.
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