Introduction: the lexicon and the method
…eating and drinking are reckoned a more
intelligible business than thinking and
understanding.
Hegel's Science of Logic
In everyday life, we constantly come across expressions such as "power of love," "strength of spirit," "force of life." No one is confused by these words; we all understand each other just fine. However, should one pose a simple question, such as: what is love? what is life? what is spirit? - everyone will provide his own answer, different from all others’answers. This applies not only to the “simple” folk, but also to the people who are supposed to be intellectuals (scientists, authors). I read once a book written by a philosopher, where he collected the definitions of love given by some of the best-known personalities in the realms of science and culture; all these definitions taken together still do not make clear what love is. The situation is the same with the words “life”, “spirit”, “force”.
Force is to be the hero of this research work, though right away the question may arise: which force? Force as might, or force as violence? Or perhaps force as authority? Let us proceed without haste. For the time being I simply make use of the word “force” without drawing distinctions.
But as far as I am concerned, the problem of translation arises at once. How do you translate into Russian, for example, the expression "powers of forces" used by Newton in his famous Mathematical Principles? Both of these words are rendered into Russian with one and the same word “sila”. Or how about the expression "strengths of forces" that I came across more than once? Since two different words are used here, it stands to reason that different phenomena stand behind them. For example, in the Russian and English translations of Hegel’s Science of Logic in one place the German word Gewalt was translated respectively as moshch (might) and as power, even though the word Gewalt means violence. A serious perversion of Hegel’s thought took place here.
There are no fewer problems with translating that same word as used by the ancient Greek philosophers. Let me remind you that in the Greek language, as used, for example, by Aristotle, there are the words dynamis, energia and entelechia. The first of these translates into Russian as vozmozhnost' (possibility), into English as power. Energia and entelechia are translated into Russian as deistvitelnost' (reality) and deyatelnost' (activity), with the latter sometimes also translated as sila. In the English language both are rendered sometimes as force, other times as power, while entelechia is most often translated as actuality. The problem is that the Greek authors themselves put different meanings into these words. For that reason in every concrete case, when quoting, say, Aristotle, one is required to specify the meaning of the word used.
With Latin, things are much simpler; in that tongue two words are used for the most part to signify “force”: potentia and vis. The former means passive force, while the latter means an active one. However, into English they are both translated sometimes as force, sometimes as power; vis is often left without translation, or sometimes transformed into vis vivae (living force).
The greatest difficulties arise precisely with the English language, in which the equivalent of the Russian word "sila" has undergone the greatest development, multiplying into force, power, might, strength, violence and authority. By the way, it is precisely this variety that created confusion in social sciences, especially in the area called “international relations”. The only author who attempted to draw some distinctions between these words on the level of terminology was, strangely enough, a woman: Hannah Arendt, whose work we will have to address again in the corresponding part of the subsequent monograph. Here it is appropriate for the time being to provide the Webster dictionary definitions of these words, though even that is not so simple. For example, Webster defines the first meaning of strength as "the quality or state of being strong" and the second one as "power to resist force". However, considering the contexts in which these words are used, they will mean approximately the following: force is the force in the inorganic world, vis is the force in the organic world, power is force in society, might is what is called moshch in Russian, strength is individual force, close in meaning to the Russian word "tvyordost’". The table below contains the approximate translations of these words:
I repeat that these are just words, not even terms. A word becomes a term when it is imbued with a certain meaning. For example, the word "might" is used to signify many things: the might of a state, the might of reason, the might of the economy. But when I specify that I use the word “might” to mean only economic might (discarding state, reason, etc.), it becomes then and there a term with a precise meaning relating to economics. This is the first stage in moving away from ordinary consciousness toward scientific cognition, though it is not yet science. Scientific research begins when the researcher switches to the language of concepts and categories. In those cases where a science is only starting to form, it is unreasonable to expect from the very start the use of concepts and categories; they do not yet exist at the initial stage. The process of research is conducted then on the basis of mere words, or terms at best. This type of chatter is characteristic, for example, of the area of knowledge called “international relations”. As noted perfectly correctly by the renowned psychologist Lawrence Weiskrantz, “Definitions and precise theoretical constructs are the final product, not the starting point of inquiry.” Once the final product - concepts and categories - has been constructed, it is fair to say that this concrete area of knowledge has become a new science.
The problem with the word force, same as with the words life-love-spirit, is precisely this: they have no yet acquired conceptual content, at least not in social sciences. However, let us recall Hegel: "only in its Notion does something possess actuality, and to the extent that it is distinct from its Notion it ceases to be actual and is a non-entity; the side of tangibility and sensuous self-externality belongs to this null aspect." In other words, it belongs to the existential side of life, but not to its scientific part. Therefore, the phenomena that stand behind the above-discussed words are as yet not understood, barely studied, unpredictable.
Here is the paradox: in spite of all this, it is precisely these words that have been used to lay the foundations for many scientific theories and even laws. It turns out that such developments are possible. Newton wrote of this with some irritation in his Principles: I am incapable of discovering the phenomenon of gravity, since “I frame no hypotheses”; I practice experimental philosophy. The physicist Henri Poincaré formulated this idea laconically: “It is not important to know what force is; it is important to know how to measure it.” If so, the question arises: so what is it that is being measured?
To a certain degree I used to follow this rule myself when I formulated the laws of “poles of power” (might) and "centers of power" without knowing what power is in essence.[1] A very serious danger emerges in the process: is it really force that we are measuring? Could it be something else? At the intuitive level, everyone senses that force is something fundamental. But what is it?
Political scientists and scholars of international relations have given many definitions, and they will be presented in the appropriate place. However, all of them reminded me at once of that fortunate statement by Mr. Baturin: "In science they sometimes speak none too clearly of things that they don't have a very clear idea about. It is much more dangerous, though, when they speak clearly of things they don't understand clearly."
Clarity can only be introduced through establishing a hierarchy of language signs and their meanings while translating them into a scientific language that operates with concepts and categories. It is well known what a great importance was accorded to problems of scientific language by philosophers, for example Condillac and Leibniz. Even a simple clarification of the lexicon on the level of terms frequently clarifies the essence of the problems. When terms are elevated to the level of concepts and categories in their hierarchical interrelation, this creates the possibility of transforming an area of knowledge into a branch of science.
The present work is an attempt of this sort, and its ideological base is dialectical materialism that emerged in the 19th century through the efforts of three titans of mankind: Hegel, Marx and Engels. Two great books are particularly relevant with respect to my work: Dialectics of Nature by Engels and Science of Logic by Hegel. In the West, though, the scientific public prefers Kant to Hegel, with rare exceptions. There is a reason for that, but the discussion thereof is outside the scope of this book.
Let me remind you that Hegel had a reason for criticizing those mathematicians who asserted the truth of proofs in physics, on the grounds that mathematics is unable in principle to uncover “the qualitative nature of moments.” The reason is simple: "… this science (mathematics. - A.B.) is not philosophy, does not start from the Notion, and therefore the qualitative element, in so far as it is not taken lemmatically from experience, lies outside its sphere." In other words, the quality of nature - its essence - can only be uncovered through notions (concepts), through definitions of the concepts that “are laws”.
However, even if we agree that without concepts and categories it is impossible to cognize essences and phenomena, another problem emerges: that of distinguishing a concept from a category. Often even great philosophers use these words as synonyms. For example, V. I. Lenin offers a treatment of matter as a category, and then in the same space he speaks of it as a concept.
Here we encounter the problem of the inseparate unity of category and concept. In the words of M. A. Bulatov, "it is present in those texts in which one means at the same time the category’s relations to things split into rubrics, and their own internal content."
Therefore, we must determine from the very start what it a concept and what is a category. By the way, this topic in itself is one of the problems of philosophy, with different solutions offered by different philosophers and currents in philosophy.
Of course, the deepest, most interesting definitions of these terms were given by Hegel himself. In his theory of cognition, he made a clear distinction between the objective logic (it is the teaching about the concept as such, about categories) and the subjective logic that is the teaching about the concept as a concept of something. He goes on to specify: "The Concept is the Universal which is at the same time determinate; that which remains in its determination is the same Whole or Universal or it is the determinateness which grasps together within itself the different determinations of an object as a unity." Naturally, Hegel's dialectics lead him to recognize the internal contradiction of the concept, since "… any Notion whatever to be a unity of opposed moments to which, therefore, the form of antinomic assertions could be given."
In that same work, Hegel gives a definition of the term "category". He writes: "According to its etymology and Aristotle's definition, category is what is predicated or asserted of the existent."
As mentioned above, there exist other ideas about concepts and categories inherent to different schools or currents in philosophy, which deserve to be analyzed in a separate work. I shall limit myself to presenting my understanding of these terms, which boils down to the following:
A category defines the most general properties of the being or reality, such as matter, time and space. Concepts are aspects of categories, or forms or thought that reflect some particular side of the categorical being. To put it simpler, categories are used to analyze "the thing in itself", while concepts are used to analyze "the thing outside", i.e. implied in the concept is the need to cognize, understand the essence through its manifestations.
One should keep in mind that the word "category" is also used in the meaning of systemizing, rubricating, splitting of this or that group of objects. It is this meaning that is used to define this term, say, in the Oxford philosophical dictionary: "Categories. The most fundamental divisions of some subject-matter." This meaning is easily identified; in my work, I shall be using this word for the most part precisely in its ontological meaning.
To repeat one more time: the concept is an area of thought in the sphere of subjective reality, in which the objective reality is imprinted. Categories, meanwhile, are embedded in objective reality itself; they reflect the existing being in thinking.
One more important thing needs mentioning: the transformation of categories into concepts and the other way round. A category is transformed into a concept when that of which it is a reflection is cut away from it, i.e. being itself or its attributes. What happens is a transition from objective reality to subjective reality, which, even though tied to the former through reflection, already has an independent meaning as a method of thinking. For example, force can be viewed as a category of being, but it can also be viewed as something mutually related to other reflected phenomena - might, for example - and then it becomes a concept.
In this same fashion, concepts can be transformed into categories when functions or properties of being are added to them. They become categories even more assuredly when they are endowed with functions of division, etc.
In principle, I should have described here the method of cognition that I had chosen for this work. There is an infinite multitude of these methods; the choice depends on the scientific milieu in which the researcher dwells, and on the literature toward which he gravitates due to his preferences or due to some circumstances. In this connection, I shall refrain from asserting that some particular method of research is preferable, but for a host of reasons I gravitate toward a method of research that is not recognized by the majority of scientists in the West - namely, I repeat, dialectical materialism. Its core is the dialectics of Hegel, which can be described schematically on the gnociological level in this fashion:
According to Hegel, the ordinary consciousness, or reason, proceeds from the separateness of the content of cognition and its form, i.e. truth and reliability. In the first stage of cognition it is supposed that the matter of cognition exists on its own, outside of thinking, as some ready world. Thinking is connected to this matter as some form from outside, filling it and acquiring a certain content within it. It follows from this that Hegel viewed concepts as something subjective, set opposite the object in the capacity of “outside reflection“. Here the concept, or, more exactly, the knowledge about the object, opposes this latter as the immediate. The concept only verifies the presence of the object through its manifestations. The truth remains for the time being “in itself“. This is natural, since the thinking that grasps the manifestations of the object is the abstracting reason and conducts itself as ordinary common sense, capable of reflecting the sensuous reality which is precisely what confers on it pithiness. But common sense is very militant, and often it passes itself off as reason, even though in reality it is not, since it cognizes only the sensuous reality (=subjective truth), i.e. phenomena rather than the nature of things.
The second stage is the stage of objectification of the notion, when it steps out of its subjectivity, “internality” and sinks into the object, becoming adequate to it. Then comes the truth which is "the agreement of thought with the object, and in order to bring about this agreement―for it does not exist on its own account―thinking is supposed to adapt and accommodate itself to the object."
The projection of this idea to any topic means that, in subjecting ourselves to this object, we have discovered the truth “for ourselves”. In other words, having exhibited common sense, we discovered only just the presence of the object. It is necessary here to keep in mind one important thing: even if we admit that a certain notion really does adequately reflect reality, it is in this case only just a change in the mode of thoughts and perceptions. "In its relation to the object, therefore, thinking does not go out of itself to the object; this, as a thing-in-itself, remains a sheer beyond of thought." That is, the self-aware process of definition does not change in this stage the object itself (for example, economics, politics); it belongs exclusively to thinking. This thinking, though, is different from the preceding thinking: reason has become elevated to intelligence, or, put differently, negation of reason by intelligence took place. There is progress here, a certain leap, but a substantial minus remains: even the changed thinking (intelligence) does not touch on the essence of the object; the latter remains on its own, "the empty abstraction of the Thing-in-itself." It is Kant's teaching in the purest form: if no subsequent progress takes place, i.e. until things and thinking about them become adequate to each other, thinking in its imminent definitions and the true nature of things will not form a single content. According to Kant, it is impossible in principle, since his "Thing-in-itself is an empty abstraction." And Hegel, as stressed by Lenin, "demands abstractions which correspond to the essence," since, as the progress of consciousness shows, “it is only in absolute knowing that separation of the object from the certainty of itself is completely eliminated: truth is now equated with certainty and this certainty with truth."
Thus attained in the third stage is such a unity of the subjective and the objective in which the concept finds its adequate expression. This mutual penetration of opposites - the thought and the object - means the revealing of the truth.
Let me remind here that the progress toward truth unfolds in this sequence: "The understanding determines, and holds the determinations fixed; reason is negative and dialectical, because it resolves the determinations of the understanding into nothing; it is positive because it generates the universal and comprehends the particular therein." The joining of the two results in "positive reason, or intuitive understanding", which equals the positive.
Anyone familiar with Marx' theses about Feuerbach will notice that Hegel's reasoning reproduced above served as the foundation for the criticism of the German materialist's conception of cognition. According to Marx, Feuerbach's main shortcoming is that "the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively." This approach contradicts Hegel's views in principle by excluding the active aspect of thinking, its merging with the object - thinking as object-oriented activity. The assertion of this approach ultimately leads to the separation of thinking from the object, the separation of theoretical activity from practice; as a result, both thought itself and practice go into decay. Marx was opposed to this; he wrote: "The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice."
* * *
Let me reiterate one more time: there exist different principles of the thinking activity of reason and intelligence. Within ordinary consciousness, one usually operates with words, which offer the possibility to describe the phenomena of the surrounding world. Unfortunately, the area of knowledge that encompasses foreign policy and international relations - where the concept of force is key, in my opinion - does not possess its own language, i.e. a concept apparatus, and makes do with terms, at best. These terms have not yet acquired a conceptual definiteness. Therein lies their vulnerability, which means at the same time that this area of knowledge is not yet a science. Foreign policy and international relations as a sphere of research continue to rely on common sense, which reflects at best the sensually-concrete notions of the reason. And reason, as Hegel remarked wittily, follows in its thinking the principle "live and let live", i.e. it recognizes definitions and terms as "indifferent" to each other - with no contradictions, no coadunations. Therefore, the time is long overdue to introduce to this sphere of knowledge intelligence, which operates with concepts. Through concepts, opposites are cognized in their unity; the positive is learned in the negative, the negative in the positive. Intelligence retains concepts in their definiteness and proceeds from them in its cognizing activity.
Does "force" possess this abstract conceptual might in the area of social life and international relations? This work is precisely an attempt to answer that question; it consists of three parts, or books:
One: Dialectics of Force.
Two: Society: Force and Progress.
Three: Force and Progress in World Relations.
As I pointed out already in the Preface, contemporary political science and the theory of international relations proved unable to define the essence of force. This is not surprising at all, since even physicists - people who use this word all the time - do not understand what it means in essence. However, in nature phenomena do not exist in separation from their essence. In order to understand it one has to make use of philosophy, which could not avoid analyzing such an important category.
In Chapter One, I present different philosophers’ views on the topic. My choice of authors was determined not so much by their importance in the history of philosophy as by their attention to the category of force. Though every one of them made certain contributions to the analysis of the phenomenon in question, all of them together could not quite satisfy me, and ultimately I was compelled to give my own definition of this category in accordance with my conception of being. I had to introduce a new word for this definition: ontobia, or ontological force[2]; in my opinion, it may prove to be the most useful category for understanding the essence of force.
Chapter Two examines the manner in which this ontobia reveals itself in the inorganic world, mostly through the prism of the conceptions of the Big Bang and the operation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It was important here to show that force, being an attribute of being, can manifest itself in different guises, such as energy or "dark matter".
Chapter Three looks at the manifestation of force in the organic world. This chapter is important from the perspective of resolving the problem of boundaries between the animate and the inanimate nature, and determining the criterion for identifying the one and the other. Willy-nilly I had to become involved in the discussions about this problem; my variant of the solution is unusual, and it placed me in opposition to all modern directions and currents of thought.
Chapter Four is devoted to problems of the mind and the analysis of equally contrversial questions of what are consciousness and thought. I needed to find out also in what fashion - or through what phenomena - thought expresses itself in psychology. On the basis of combining philosophy and psychology, I presented a conception of thinking, which led me to a definition of progress that differs qualitatively from all known formulations.
The conclusions, formulations and regularities tied to ontobia provide, in my view, the methodological tools for analyzing the manifestations of force in society and in international relations. In other words, the conception of force presented in this part of the book makes it considerably easier to forecast social and international phenomena; the correctness of the time frames will practically depend only on the availability of databases.
In my research of force I drew on a wide selection of writings from the domain of natural sciences (physics, biology, psychology), authored for the most part by contemporary scientists in the English-speaking world. Where philosophy was concerned, or natural philosophy conceptions and theories of the 19th - early 20th centuries, I made use, naturally, of works by German and French authors in their Russian or English translations. Being Russian in origin, I could not avoid using some works by Russian scientists, though only a limited number of these - for the simple reason that their names, even the great ones, are unknown to the Western reader. In other words, their ideas are not subject to scholarly discussions in the West; they are not even given simple attention. There are certain grounds for this, but I shall not delve into them here.
Despite the abundance of the literature listed in the Bibliography, there is not one book there in the area of natural philosophy that is dedicated directly to force as such. In one aspect or another force has been analyzed in works of a more general scope, starting with the philosophers of Antiquity and up until the end of the 19th century. Then in the 20th century the analysis of force was transferred into social sciences, mainly in the aspect of power or authority. In spite of this force did not become either a category or a concept, i.e. it did not become the core of even one scientific conception or theory, within whose framework one could formulate the regularities of its functioning or manifestation. Nonetheless, there does exist a certain range of literature - not very large in quantity - where attempts are made to analyze systematically the fundamental problems of human cognition: how and why did the Universe emerge? what is life, what is man, and what is his purpose? Among the authors of this kind of works, I would like to single out the names of the following scientists of the 20th - early 21st century: V. I. Vernadsky, I. S. Shklovsky, Walter Hollitscher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, J. Bernal, Arthur Young, Armand Delsemme, Roger Penrose, Steven Weinberg. The value of their works lies in the fact that these scientists trace the Being from its beginning to Man - based, of course, on their own scientific and ideological views. In the present case, it does not matters whether I agree with their views or not; to me, it is important that they managed to span a wide range of different branches of science without losing the main thread of their analysis. Of all 19th century works, the one most relevant to the topic of my research is The Dialectics of Nature by Engels; it amazes not only with its universal grasp of different sciences, but also with its forecasts that came true in the 20th century. I believe that no textbook on natural sciences is worth the paper it is printed on unless it presents, if even only briefly, the ideas and views of the scholars listed above.
The reader has certainly noticed by now that I frequently quote Hegel. There is good reason for that; I deeply believe that no matter what ideological labels are attached to this name, it is impossible to reflect fully adequately on any topic without studying Hegel's works. In the time elapsed since his books Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic, mankind has not invented a better mechanism for developing thinking. My special attitude toward him is due, among other things, to the fact that it was Hegel who directed me toward the definition of force that took on the form of the category "ontobia".
[1] See: Battler, Alex. The 21st Century: The World without Russia, 267-72.
[2] The word “ontobia” consists of two Greek words: ontos – essence and bia – force.
(Philosophical-sociological Essay)