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MEGA-Studien 1998/2

Herausgegeben von der Internationalen Marx-Engels-Stiftung Amsterdam

URL: www.iisg.nl /IMES/MEGA-Studien

Rezension

Pradip Baksi

Anneliese Griese, Hans Jrg Sandkhler (Hrsg.), Karl Marx Zwischen Philosophie undNaturwissenschaften, Philosophie und Geschichte der Wissenschaften. Studien und Quellen, Bd. 35(Frankfurt/M. [etc.]: Peter Lang, 1997), 250 S., sFr. 64, - . ISBN 3-631-32105

This is a collection of papers on Karl Marxs extensive and multi-dimensional study of the naturalsciences of his time. In their Preliminary Remarks the editors have rightly commented that, in view ofthe circumstances and the intensity of Marxs preoccupation with the natural sciences (p. 7), it is rathersurprising that this aspect of his work has remained largely neglected. This volume contains seven papersrelated to the excerpts generated by Marxs study of the natural sciences. These excerpts have eitheralready been, or are going to be, included in the various volumes1 of MEGA2. It also contains a survey ofthe marxist interventions, and a bibliography, on the theme.

The volume opens with Anneliese Grieses paper on Die naturwissenschaftlichen Studien von KarlMarx. Zwischen philosophischer Tradition und modernem Wissenschaftsvertndnis, and takes us straightto the title theme, namely, the assertion that Marxs intellectual journey through the natural sciences of histime demonstrates a tension between (Zwischen) the conflicting demands of the traditional

philosophical and the modern scientific understanding of nature. Griese describes how Marx was exposedto the various philosophies of nature: of Feuerbach and the European materialists of the 17 th and 18th

centuries (pp. 1721), of Fourier and Saint-Simon (pp. 2124), of Hegel and Aristotle (pp. 2432); and tosome of the findings of the modern natural sciences: the mechanical theory of heat, Darwins studiesabout natural evolution and, the molecular theory in chemistry (pp. 3240). These very differentexposures, we are told, make their presence felt, in Marxs excerpts on the natural sciences, as a conflictbetween the demands of the old philosophy and those of the new sciences.

The next paper, Zwischen Philosophien und Wissenschaften. Eine epistemologische Kritik derMarxschen Bezugnahme auf die Naturwissenschaften by Hans Jrg Sandkhler, continues the title themeof conflicts between the demands of the empiricist paradigm of the new sciences on the one hand, andthose of metaphysical speculations about substances on the other (pp. 4554). Sandkhler elaborates on

the contextual interrelationships connecting Marxs study of human social labour, with his study of theother natural processes (pp. 5461), the epistemic contexts of the natural sciences of the 1840s proximateto the inductive logics of William Whewell, John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg (pp. 7780) and, inter alia poses a number of questions about Aristotle and Hegel, the empirical and thedialectical, facts and their inductive generalization, speculation and empirical data, measurement andthe ideal of the sciences, reality and critique.

Next comes a brief report on Marxs natural science excerpts jointly prepared by Peter Jckel andPeter Krger: Aktualisierte bersicht ber die naturwissenschaftlichen Exzerpte von Karl Marx (1846bis 1882). It includes a chronological table listing Marxs excerpts on: the geographical distribution of

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natural resources (raw materials), agricultural chemistry, the nature and property of soils, general geology,mineralogy, petrography, stratigraphy (history of the earth), inorganic and organic chemistry,physiological chemistry and physiology (pp. 9598), indicating the sources of these excerpts and thecorresponding volumes of MEGA2. Some of the years related to Marxs physics and mathematics studiesare mentioned, but in some cases the authors refrain from specifying their sources. There are some otherblemishes too; e.g., line 3 of p. 98 should be: 18781881 Mathematik I/28, and not IV/28; and p. 99

begins rather abruptly, in the form of a broken para. Why?Seungwan Hans paper Die Metapher der Zelle. Zur Rekonstruktion Marxscher epistemischerKontexte (pp. 10525), attempts to reconstruct Marxs epistemic context during the 1860s, in the light ofhis use of the metaphor of the cell. Here too the old speculative philosophy/new positive science dualityis posed, and the conflicts between their different demands faced by Marx, while attempting sometheoretical innovations, is dwelt upon.

In Zur Stellung des Stoffwechselbegriffs im Denken von Karl Marx (pp. 12950), Gerd Pawelzigdraws our attention to the role played by Marxs study of physiology in shaping his understanding ofmaterial changes, and to the use of this understanding in his study of the multi-layered economic life ofhuman society, inclusive of some questions of ecology, which are pertinent even today.

Peter Krger situates Marxs geology excerpts vis--vis the innovations that took place in geology

around 1860 and attempts to formulate the possible motives of Marxs natural science studies since 1870,in his Innovationen in der Geologie um 1860 und die spten Geologie-Exzerpte von Karl Marx. Zueinigen mglichen Motiven seiner naturwissenschaftilichen Studien nach 1870 (pp. 15178). Krger alsomarshalled some evidence about the influence of contemporary geological knowledge on Marx and hisentourage, with the help of extracts from his correspondence and of some hitherto unpublished excerptscontaing Marxs free-hand sketches of some fossils and geological profiles (pp. 17988).

Peter Jckels Arbeiten zur Physiologie als Quellen der Marxschen Ezerpte zur unorgainschen undorganischen Chemie (pp. 189203), is devoted to an examination of how some works on physiologyserved as sources for some of Marxs inorganic and organic chemistry excerpts. Jckel seeks todemonstrate, with the help of Marxs excerpts on physiological chemistry, the fact that Marx was alertabout the then emerging discipline of biochemistry.

Finally, Martin Kochs survey, Karl Marx und die Naturwissenschaften. Ein Literaturbericht bermarxistische Diskussion (pp. 20519), introduces and lists the Marxist interventions of the period 190695, on the theme Marx and the Natural Sciences.

The volume ends with a rich bibliography pertaining to its theme (pp. 22130). However, some of theomissions, both in Kochs survey and in the bibliography, are inexplicable. These include: 1. Marksizm iestestoznanie (Moskva, 1933); 2. A. M. Krinitskii, Rabota K. Marksa nad voprosami estestvoznaniia(soobshchenie po neopublikovannym materialam), Voprosy filosofii, 1/3 (1948); 3. B. M. Kedrov,Marks i edinstvo nauk estestvennykh i gumanitarnykh, Voprosy filosofii, 5 (1968) [English transl. inKarl Marx and Modern Philosophy (Moscow, 1968)]; 4. B.M. Kedrov, A. P. Qgurtsov, Marksistskaiakontseptsiia istorii estestvoznaniia XIX vek(Moscow, 1978).

All things considered, this is an interesting publication. It deserves to be translated into as many

languages as possible, in the interests of further investigations in the field, and those of a propercomprehension of Marx. A proper comprehension of Marxs study of various disciplines and theirinterrelationships must orient itself not only on the relative autonomy of these disciplines, their mutualdifferences, but also on their historical interdependence, their common grounds, their interpenetration. Inthe case of philosophy and the natural sciences, the domains that connect the different contributions in thevolume under review this interrelationship is mediated through what have come to be called the scientificprogrammes2. Incidentally, while going through the results of painstaking research contained in thisvolume one continually wonders, why even scholars who are quite aware of philosophy and naturalsciences as historically evolving interrelated domains of human cognitive endeavour, of the paradigm

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shifts in the history of sciences, did not utilize the concept of scientific programme in their analyses, andremained content with the dominant academic dogma that one-sidedly absolutises the conflict betweenphilosophy and the sciences?

NOTES

1. See Jacques Grandjonc, Jrgen Rojahn, Der revidierte Plan der Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, MEGA-Studien,1995/2, S. 6289; and Jrgen Rojahn, Publishing Marx and Engels after 1989: the Fate of the MEGA, Critique, no. 30-31 (Glasgow, 1998), pp. 196-207.

2. On the concept of scientific programme in general and, on the dominant Cartesian, Newtonian, Leibnitzian andatomistic programmes of our time, see: P.P. Gaidenko, Evoliutsiia poniatiia nauki. Stanovlenie i razvitie pervykhnauchnykh program (Moscow, 1980); id., Evolution of Science: the Cultural-Historical Aspects, Social Sciences, 12/2(1981), pp. 131144; id.,Evoliutsiia poniatiia nauki (XVIIXVIII vv.). Formirovanie nauchnykh program novogo vremeni(Moscow, 1987).

MEGA Studien, 1998/2, S. 107 110.

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