On the Rationality and Limitations of the Mechanistic Materialist View of Nature

These people ......The work of the dialectics of nature is instigated by doing so.

Mechanical materialism holds that the world is a precision machine, and that as long as the initial conditions are given, then everything in the entire universe from its birth to its end is uniquely determined. Chance is nothing more than the result of a lack of known conditions. With regard to human consciousness, mechanistic materialism holds that human consciousness is nothing more than the result of hormone secretion, and that every decision is the result of a chemical reaction that occurs in the body of secretory substances.

Man has no soul and no true free will. Of course, this notion is problematic because I kill because I'm angry, and anger is determined by the chemistry in my body, and I'm just a victim of those chemical reactions. This is the reason why many people oppose mechanical materialism.

Hierarchy. Modern science has shown that nature has an infinite hierarchy of continuous series, each of which is in turn a discontinuous "joint point" of this series and manifests itself in a variety of different forms of matter. At the microscopic scale, quarks (layers) make up elementary particles and obey laws specific to this level, such as the laws of quantum chromodynamics.

Elementary particles, mainly protons and neutrons, are bonded into nuclei by strong interactions. The nucleus and electrons are then combined into atoms through electromagnetic interactions, which in turn combine into molecules, and so on. From the perspective of quantum field theory, any microscopic particle is a corresponding field quantum, which is both an intermittent particle and a continuous wave, so it can also be called a "wave particle".

The whole of nature is in constant flux and circulation, which leads to the birth of the dialectical materialist view of nature. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the natural sciences have undergone a new stage of development from the industrial revolution in Western Europe, which has not only impacted the traditional mechanical materialist view of nature, but also made the natural philosophy of speculation.

1. The ancient naïve view of nature grasped the origin and development of the natural world as a whole in an intuitive, dialectical and speculative way, but lacked a systematic and experiment-based scientific basis, especially the immaterial things as an independent existence before the material world, and believed that the material world was its derivative, which provided an excuse for the emergence of idealism and eventually led to the differentiation of human understanding.

2. The core of the mechanical materialist view of nature is that the natural world is absolutely unchanging, although it inherits and adheres to the ancient ideas of naïve materialism on the basis of empirical science, but does not understand the dialectical relationship between the general and the individual, movement and stillness, etc., and observes the natural world in a one-sided, isolated and static way, that is, without understanding the dialectic of the natural world, nature cannot adhere to materialism to the end.

3. The dialectical materialist view of nature overcomes the defects of the previous philosophical view of nature, adheres to the materialist monism principle of the objective reality of the material world, highlights the integrity and contradiction of the material world, suggests the universal connection of the material world, and emphasizes that human beings originate from the natural world, depend on nature, and can actively transform nature on the basis of grasping the laws of development of the natural world. The harmony between man and the natural world is emphasized.

The most important characteristic of mechanical materialism is that, although it acknowledges the materiality of the world, it interprets the world from an isolated, static and one-sided point of view, and does not see the universal connection and change and development of everything in the universe, or only recognizes the mechanical connection and the movement of machinery, believing that movement only increases or decreases in quantity or changes in places, and the reason for the change of things lies in the impetus of external forces, thus showing the characteristics of mechanism.

Mechanical materialism also has an important characteristic: it is materialistic in its view of nature, but idealistic in its view of social history.

Target. Modern mechanical materialism.

The emergence of the natural sciences was closely related to the development of natural science at that time. Of course, in addition to mechanics, which has developed to a relatively complete form, other natural sciences are still in the stage of collecting, sorting, and analyzing empirical materials in different categories.

Basic Introduction: Also known as mechanical materialism. There is a broad sense and a narrow sense, the broad sense refers to the materialist philosophy that explains the universe from a metaphysical point of view; In a narrow sense, it refers to the second form of materialism in the history of Western philosophy, that is, the materialist philosophy of the 16th and 18th centuries.

Metaphysical materialism.

Also known as mechanical materialism, the second form of materialist development. An isolated, static, one-sided view of the natural world and epistemology.

The problem of the Zhehong Tsai school of thought.

Typical of the metaphysical materialism of Western Europe in the century. It recognized that the world was material and played an active role in the struggle against idealism and religious theology. For example, the English materialist philosopher Hobbes.

It is believed that the object of philosophy is an objectively existing material entity, and that the object is something that does not depend on people's thoughts, and that it is the basis of all changes in the world.

There is nothing else in the world except for objects of extendedness. From this point of view, he argued for the material unity of the world and criticized religious deception and Descartes.

dualism. Metaphysical materialism also contains certain dialectics. Factor.

The dialectical understanding of the naïve materialist view of nature, the mechanical materialist view of nature, and the dialectical materialist view of nature is as follows:

The relationship between them can be described in two aspects, firstly, the naïve materialist view of nature, the mechanical materialist view of nature, and the dialectical materialist view of nature are all materialist views of nature, which recognize that the existence and development of the natural world is objective and materialistic in the view of nature. Secondly, there is also a difference between them, which is a change and development.

1. The naïve materialist view of nature is a naïve materialist and spontaneous dialectical view of nature, which holds that the natural world is a unity of infinite diversity. It grasps the origin and development of the natural world as a whole in an intuitive, speculative and speculative way, but lacks a systematic and experiment-based scientific basis, especially the immaterial things as an independent existence before the material world, and believes that the material world is its derivative, which provides a basis for the emergence of idealism and ultimately leads to the differentiation of human understanding.

2. The mechanistic view of nature made up for this shortcoming, absorbing the achievements of the natural sciences at that time, especially Newton's classical theory of mechanics, and summarizing the general views formed by nature and its relationship with human beings. It emphasizes the objectivity, materiality, and regularity of development in the natural world, but obliterates the multi-code and multi-dimensional nature of the form of material movement and its nature, and severs the inherent connection between nature and human society.

3. The dialectical materialist view of nature critically absorbs the rational factors in the French materialist view of nature and the German idealistic view of nature, overcomes the inherent defects of the mechanical materialist view of nature, and the dialectical materialist view of nature overcomes the defects of the previous philosophical view of nature, adheres to the materialist monist principle of the objective reality of the material world, highlights the integrity and contradiction of the material world, suggests the universal connection of the material world, and emphasizes the harmony and unity of man and the natural world.

1. Cell theory.

The cell is the basic structural unit of animal and plant organisms, as well as the basic unit of life activities. In this way, the structural unity of the whole biological world is demonstrated, and the cells connect all the species in the biological world, and there is a kinship between organisms. This is a theory of biological evolution.

A huge support. The establishment of the cell theory has strongly promoted the development of biology and provided an important natural scientific basis for dialectical materialism.

2. Theory of biological evolution:

In 1859, Charles Darwin, an English biologist and founder of the theory of biological evolution.

In his magnum opus "On the Origin of Species".

The theory of natural selection for biological evolution was proposed. The main point of the doctrine is that individuals in groups have differences in traits and that these individuals have different adaptations to the environment in which they live; Due to limited space and food, there is competition for survival among individuals, as a result, individuals with favorable traits are able to survive and pass on to their offspring through reproduction, while individuals with unfavorable traits are gradually eliminated; Due to the long-term effects of natural selection, the same species distributed in different regions may have divergent traits and lead to the formation of new species.

3. The law of conservation of energy and transformation.

The law of conservation and transformation of energy was an important theoretical cornerstone of natural science in the 19th century. The significance of conservation of energy is, first and foremost, to establish a certain physical quantity in the process of change in the motion of matter.

Equiquantitative relationship. In this regard, we do not need to know the actual interaction process between matter, nor do we need to know the transformation path between energy in the process of material motion change, as long as the relationship between energy and physical quantity corresponding to the state of matter motion is established, we can establish an equal relationship between the initial state and the final state in the process of material motion change, so as to facilitate the solution of the quantity of the material motion change process.

The mechanical materialist view of nature is a view of nature formed by modern natural philosophers based on modern mechanical mechanics and combined with materialism to summarize and summarize the view of nature and its relationship with human beings. It is a form or a stage of successive states of view of nature in history.

Natural Science and Philosophy of the Mechanistic Materialist View of Nature.

Mechanistic materialist view of nature in the natural sciences. From the 15th century to the 18th century, workshop handicrafts replaced cottage industries, production techniques gradually improved, and natural sciences gradually broke through the shackles of religious and theological concepts. The development of natural sciences in this period is represented by Galileo and Newton.

Galileo applied a combination of experimental and mathematical deductive methods to the field of physics, which made the mechanistic view of nature manifest"The mathematization of nature, the reduction of quality to quantity, the duality of man and nature, the duality of God and nature"Features. Newton unified celestial mechanics and ground mechanics, established a complete system of classical mechanics, and realized the first major synthesis of natural science. He believes that objects do not have the ability to change their state, inertia is their essential property, motion needs to rely on external forces, and the universe is a mechanical device designed according to a certain law of motion.

Since then, the modern natural sciences have used the concept of force and the laws of mechanical motion to study other phenomena of the natural sciences.

The philosophy of the mechanistic materialist view of nature. Descartes laid the philosophical foundation of the mechanical materialist view of nature, he believed that the movement of the world is in accordance with the laws of mechanics, and used this mechanical point of view to explain all material movements, including the movement of stars in the universe, the complex and changeable movement of the human body, and even the animal physiological movement of living organisms. This movement of matter is not a conscious movement that can be dominated by things, but an inanimate movement.

He believed that the world was strictly divided into two parts, the physical world and the spiritual world, both of which had God in common. Along with this distinction, he also separated morality and humanity from natural philosophy and science in human society.

The mechanistic materialist view of nature studies the natural world in an isolated, static way. The scientific research of natural sciences under the guidance of the mechanistic materialist view of nature explains the natural world from the perspective of isolation and static, denies the universality of the connection between things from the viewpoint of isolation, and uses the viewpoint of stillness to believe that things never change in essence, and attributes themselves to the idealistic camp of the Creator who created the whole natural world. Most of the fields and disciplines of the natural sciences in the 16th and 18th centuries were in the initial stage of collecting information and sorting them into categories.

For example, biologist Lin Nai isolates various plants and classifies them, believing that we must first know what the biological world is made of, and then we can study how they evolved and the interrelationships between various organisms. This method of decomposing the research object for study is limited by the level of research, and it inevitably becomes an isolated and static method of studying the natural world.

The influence of mechanical materialism on nature is very great on medicine, it promotes the development of hospitals, and at the same time, it can better judge the patient's condition, which is conducive to promoting the development of medicine.

The limitations of the mechanistic view of nature are embodied in five aspects: (1) The mechanical composition theory holds that the whole is the mechanical addition of parts, which denies the randomness of things. (2) The theory of linear motion reflects a deterministic conception that denies the diversity and multi-layeredness of things.

3) Rigid identity theory is a simple way of dealing with things, which denies the dialectical system of filial piety and hatred between things. (4) The theory of simple and fierce single foundation reflects the belief in the existence of the smallest bricks, which restricts the development of science. (5) The theory of external causes of action assumes the premise of things and does not recognize the interaction between substances.

Progressive significance. After all, the mechanical view of nature explains all kinds of natural phenomena with material causes, and thus it plays an important positive role in emancipating natural science from religious theology in the struggle against religious theology.