Table Of ContentV. Gott
THIS AMAZING,
AMAZING,
AMAZING
BUT
KNOWABLE
UNIVERSE
Progress Publishen
Moscow
Trans1ated from the Russian
Ьу John Bushnell and Кrlstlne BushneП
Designed Ьу Inпa Borfsova
в. с. rотт
УДИВИТЕЛЬНЫЙ. НЕИСЧЕРПАЕМЫЙ,
ПОЗНАВАЕМЪIЙ МИР
На английском лзыке
First printing 1977
© Издательство <<Знание~>, 1974
@ Translation into English. Progress PuЫishers 1977
Printed in the Union of Soviet SociaJist RejJuhlic1
i0502-8!6
r 62 77
014(01)-11 -
CONTENTS
Introduction • • • . • • . . . • . . • S
Concepts, Categories, Cognition. • • . • • • 21
Matter and Motion • • • • • • . . • • 40
The Uncreatedness and Indestructibility of Matter • • 63
On the Inexhaustibility of Moving Matter. . . . . 80
The Laws of Conservation in Modern Physics . . • . . tOl
The Reflection of the Continuity and Discontinuity of the
Material World in Cognition , . . . . . . . . . 142
The Principle of Symmetry and Its Role in Cognition . . . 158
The Principles of Phyi;ics and Their Place in Cognition 180
The Dialectic of the Absolute and the Relative . . • . . 222
Conclusion . • • • • . . . . . • • .. . . . . 2114
INTRODUCTION
An enormous, fascinating and to a)arge extent
unknown world surrounds man from the first moments
of his existence down to the moment when he draws his
last breath. Resting on preceding generations'
advances in science and culture, each new generation
makes its own contribution to our knowledge of the
unknown�
The more inan knows, the more clearly he
understands that there is still something unknown to
be sought, for example, in atomic nuclei, in the
structure of "elementary'' particles, in the deeps of
space, in the depths of' the Earth; that we need to
uncover the secret of the origin of life from non-life, to
grapple with many unsolved problems.
The presence of the unknown gives rise to two i
contradictory fele ings: pessimism in some, optimism (
in others, and this makes the question of the world's l
cognizability most relevant. However, this question '
passes beyond the limits of natural sciences into the
realm of philosophy.
We should ·immediately make clear the sort of
philosophy we are referring to. In the history 9f
philosophy, millennia passed before the pre-scientific
philosophy of Babylon, Egypt, An�ient Greece,
MediaevaJ Europe, of the 18th and the first half of the
s
19th centuries, was supplanted by the scientif1c
philosophy of Marxism-Leninism. There is nothing in
this assertion to belittle what was done by the great
philosophers of the past-Democritus, Plato, Aristotle,
Descartes, Spinoza, the French materialists of the 18th
century, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach and many others. We
have something else in mind. Even the most brilliant
pre-Marxist philosophers were limited in their work by
the historical framework within which they lived; they
could not create a scientific philosophy. Only after
capitalism had become the dominant economic system
in a number of European countries and the proletariat
had emerged into the historical arena as a class able
not only to free itself from exploitation but also, by
·means of revolutionary upheaval, to eliminate the
exploitation of man by man, only when the natural
sciences began to advance rapidly, were the necessa,nr
conditions present for the emergence of a scientific
philosophy that could serve as the theoretical basis for
the world outlook of the most progressive class in
huma n history-the working class.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, generalizing from
the experience of the workers' movement and the
achievements of natural science, and making use
of-and critically reworking-the best of earlier
philosophy, worked a major revolution in philosophy,
creating the philosophy of dialectical materialism,
which is a creative, developing doctrine on the most
general laws of nature, human SOFiety and thinking.
After Marx and Engels, scientific philosophy was
further developed in the works of V. I. Lenin, his
followers and disciples and in the documents of
Communist and Workers' parties throughout the
world.
In order to explain to the reader the idea of this
book, I shall permit myself a short digression of a
personal nature. While still quite young, my attention
6
was caught by many phenomena in nature and social
. life, and I sought for explanations in books on phy
)sics, astronomy, chemistry, biology and the 4istory of
the ·workers' movement; I also became interested in
archaeology, the history of art, philosophy and 'o/Or�d
history. I read unsystematically Orest Khvolson, Elisee
Reclus, Camille Flammarion, Francis W. Aston, and
Plato, but only when I read Engels' The Developmef!,t
of Socialism from Utopia to Science at age 15, and
..
somewhat later Leriin's Materialism and Empirio·
Criticism, did I alize that it was necessary to.select a
re
clearly delimited range of questions to .the study of
which one should dedicate �>ne'slife. I understood, too,
and.. . subsequent__years conflml.ed it, thaj intense study
of finite scientific problems is most efI�tive_.given a
brpad approach, on the basis of th� general
· .
methodology of Marxism-Leninism. Since that time
the .study of the natural sciences and phil9sophy have
·
for me been a single process.
·
·.Many years later, I came across a remark by the
well-known French physicist, Paul �Langevin, which
beautifully expresses the naturalist's relationship to
¥arxism-Leninism. Speaking in December· 1938 at
a
conference of the French. Communi�t Party; Langevin
..
said:
"To your Party has ·fallen the honor .pf closely
uniting thought and action.
"A Communist, it is said, must constantly learn. I
want to say that the more I learn, the more I feel myself
· ·
a Communist.
"In the great communist doctrine developed by
.
Marx, . Engels and. Lenin I found the ·answer to
.
questions relating to my own science, and I would
never have found it without this doctrine�
"1
1 W.,dd Maubt Review, No. 2, February 1972, p. 45.
7
At fttst independent study of some of the Marxist·
Leninist classics, especially on philosophy, and then
systematic ,study of them at the university level, helped
me, as it did many of my colleagues, to carry out
research in the physics of the atomic nucleus., a
. problem with which I was concerned for more than ten
years, and then-in other research.
The son of a worker and myself a worker in 1930,
,
�fter completing the workers' courses I entered the
first year of the newly established department of
physics and mechanics at the Kharkov Mechanical and
Engineering Institute, simultaneously beginning work
at the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology
UPT), which had opened in the same year.
Young physicists from Leningrad · formed the
nucleus of the Ukrainian IPT. Under their benevolent
influence theoretical and experimental physics began
,
to make rapid strides in the Ukraine. The personnel
constituted a harmonious, · international research
group. The Leningrad physicists L. Landau,
I. Obreimov, A. Leipunsky, K. Sinelnik.ov, A. Valter,
V. Gorsky, L. Shubnikov among others, in addition to
,
carrying out an immense amount of research, began to
train physicists for the research institutes and industry
of the USSR, the Soviet Ukraine included.
There was only a slight difference in age between
ourselves"---Students and laboratory assistants-and our
professors and academic ad.visors. In 1933, when
Landau taught our course on theoretical physics, he
was only 25; Leipunsky was 30, Valter 28; the students
in my group-Evgeni Lifshits and Aleksandr
Kompaneyets among others-e.nd I were between 18
and 20. We were together during lectures and lab
assignments in the department during research work
,
in· the Ukrainian IPT, and took part in sports and
excursions together. We often discussed current issueS'
in physics and philosophy, literature and art, and
problems in domestic and international life
.
s
The situation in the Institute in those years was
conveyed well by a newspaper article "IIlgh-Voltage
Komsomol Lab", published September 1, 1933. The
article deals with the atomic ("high-voltage")
laboratory where pioneering work was being done in
breaking down the nuclei of a number of chemical
elements and in the search for peaceful ·ways of using
the enormous resenres of intra-nuclear energy.
"The high-voltage Komsomol team bombards the
atomic nucleus in order, like the Soviet Union, qaving
destroyed the o�d to create the new, magnificent,
enormous and fine. ... This young cluster of Soviet
scientists is marked by its multiplicity of qualities:
Russian revolutionary sweep, American practicality,
the concentrated focus of the German scientist and the
buoyancy of the very young man who sees his goal and
has the opportunity to reach it.'' Reporting the
research being conducted in the laboratory, the
newspaper wrote: "The work would go badly without
the activity of the students Taranov, Vodolazhsky,
Gott and Marushak, who have put together all of the
high-voltage circuitry. At 19 to 20 years of age, these
Komsomol members have joined the ranks of the
leading scientific pathfinders . Komsomol scientists,
. ..
people with enormous concentration, purposefulness
and organization, they are blazing the trail into the
unknown on the basis of harmonious collective work."
We presented sunreys of current literature and
reported on the results of our own.. . research at
seminars. This was an arduous and difficult test, we
had to be prepared to answer the searching ..a nd
pointed questions of "Dau" (L. D. Landau) and
I. V. Qbreimov. At these seminars we put to test the
scientific data of?tained, and acquired the ability to
carry on a scientific dispute. All this made for a special
atmosphere of joint involvement in the solution of the
icurrent problems of modem physics, demanded an
9
