Soviet Marxism and Natural Science: 1917-1932

439 Pages·2008·18.602 MB·English

by  David Joravsky

AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
SOVIET MARXISM AND
NATURAL SCIENCE
SOVIET MARXISM AND NATURAL
SCIENCE
1917-1932
By
DAVID JORAVSKY
Volume 17
I~ ~~o~J~~~~~up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 1961
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© 1961 David Joravsky
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ISBN 10: 0-415-42029-6 (Set)
ISBN 10: 0-415-47486-8 (Volume 17)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-42029-7 (Set)
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contact.
SOVIET MARXISM
AND
NATURAL SCIENCE
1917 - 1932
by
DAVID JORAVSKY
Routledge and Kegan Paul
LONDON
First published 1961
by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane
London, E.C.4
Printed in Great Britain
by Cox and J¥yman, Ltd
London, Fakenham and Reading
Copyright David Joravsky 1961
No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without permission from
the publisher, except for the quotation
of brief passages in criticism
To
DORIS
CONTENTS
Preface page lX
PART ONE
THE PRE-REVOLUTIONARY HERITAGE
Orthodox Marxism and Natural Science 3
I.
2. Lenin and the Partyness of Philosophy 24
PART TWO
THE SOVIET SETTING, 1917-1929
3. Intra-Party Politics and Philosophy 47
4. The Cultural Revolution and ' Bour-
geois' Scientists 62
5. The Cultural Revolution and Marxist
Philosophers 76
PART THREE
THE ANOMALOUS REJECTION OF POSITIVISM
6. Mechanism as a Tendency 93
7. The First Challenges to Mechanism,
1922-1924 107
8. The Formation of Factions, 1924-1926 119
9. The Mechanist Faction: Propagandists
and Philosophers 132
10. The Mechanist Faction: Natural
Scientists 150
Deborin and His Students 170
I I.
12. Deborinite Natural Scientists 182
13. Social Theorists the Deborinite
10
Faction 198
14. Closing the Controversy, 1926-1929 205
vii
CONTENTS
15. 'Classical' Authority and the Cultural
Revolution page 215
PART FOUR
'f H E G REA T B REA K , I 929-I 932
16. The Great Break for Natural Scientists 233
17. The Great Break for Philosophers 250
PART FIVE
PHYSICS ANi) BIOLOGY IN THE FIRST PHASE
1917-1932
18. The 'Crisis' in Physics 275
19· The Crisis in Biology 296
20. Conclusion 311
Abbreviations 316
Notes 317
Bibliography 391
Index 423
viii
PREFACE
T
HIS book did not grow out of an interest in the capability
of Soviet technologists, which has had a tendency to dominate
recent discussions of Soviet science. It grew out of an interest in
the intellectual history of the Russian Revolution, out ofa desire
to understand the modern analogues to Marat and Lavoisier in
an earlier revolution, or to Calvin and Servetus in another. It
may be naive for a contemporary of Lysenko and N. I. Vavilov,
who enter the last pages of this history and will be major figures
in the sequel, to believe that interest in such a subject can be
different from animus or enthusiasm, that a desire to under
stand such people need not be a desire to expose or vindicate.
Naive or not, that is my belief. I hope that this history will be
a contribution, however limited, to the satisfaction of a similar
interest and desire in others.
The focus here is on Soviet Marxist philosophy of natural
science, as it developed in its first phase, from 1917 to 1932.
'Na tural science' is used in the conventional sense to mean the
systematized knowledge of nature, with the exception
equally conventional-of human nature. The 'philosophy of
natural science' is, of course, a controversial concept that may
be used to indicate such diverse things as emotions, Weltan
schauu.ngen, or methodologies that claim derivation from and
application to natural science. Fortunately, it has not been
necessary to attempt a definition of my own in order to review
the arguments that Soviet Marxists fell into when trying to
define theirs. But it has been necessary to make extended
excursions into their philosophical heritage from pre-revolu
tionary times, into certain policies and dissensions of the Soviet
Communist Party from the Revolution to the early 'thirties,
into the changing nature of t.h e Soviet scholarly community
IX