Written: 1915
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th Edition, Moscow, 1976,
Volume 38, p. 328
Publisher: Progress Publishers
First Published: 1930 in Lenin Miscellany.
Published according to the manuscript
Translated: Clemence Dutt
Edited: Stewart Smith
Transcription & Markup: K. Goins (2008)
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute, display and
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Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Note on Paul Volkmann’s book “Erkenntnistheoretische Grundzüge der Naturwissenschaften” (Wissenschaft und Hypothese. IX) 2. Auflage, Leipzig, 1910 [Paul Volkmann, Epistemological Foundations of the Natural Sciences (Science and Hypothesis. IX), 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1910] is contained in a notebook following the comments on Genov’s dissertation.
(Nat. IV. 171 in Bern library)
The author is an eclectic and vulgariser in philosophy, especially when speaking against Haeckel, about Buckle, etc., etc. Nevertheless, the tendency is materialist, e.g., p. 35[1]—“The question whether we dictate concepts to nature, or nature to us” is, he says, a combination of both points of view. Mach, he says, is right (p. 38), but I counterpose to it (Mach’s point of view) the “objective” point of view:
“Thus I hold that logic in us has its origin in the uniform course of things outside us, that the external necessity of natural events is our first and most real schoolmis tress” (p. 39).
He rebels against phenomenology and modern monism,—but completely fails to understand the essence of materialist and idealist philosophy. In fact, he reduces the matter to “methods” of natural science in a general positivist sense. He is not even capable of raising the question of the objective reality of nature outside the consciousness (and sensations) of mankind.
[1] Volkmann, P., Erkenntnistheoretische Grundzüge der Naturwissenschaften, Leipzig-Berlin, 1910.—Ed.
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