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C. Fuchs:
"Dialectical Materialism and the Self-Organisation of Matter";
Talk: International Nonlinear Sciences Conference 2003, Wien (invited); 2003-02-07 - 2003-02-09.

The aim of this paper is to show that the theory of self-organisation in some respect proves the topicality of dialectical thinking and that an alternative concept of substance makes sense within the framework of dialectical materialism. The first part of the paper shows that the classical dialectical thinkers opposed the notion of substance because for them this notion was connected with the assumption of mechanical materialism that there is an eternal, unchanging stuff in the world to which all existence can be reduced. But an alternative concept of substance is implicitly present in these works because the permanent change of matter and its movement that produces new organisational forms of matter is considered as the eternal aspect of the world. Ernst Bloch has later explicitly formulated this concept of process-substance in opposition to mechanical materialism. Such an alternative conception of substance can as the second part of this paper shows also be expressed as the permanent and eternal self-organisation of matter. Concepts from self-organisation theory such as control parameters, critical values, bifurcation points, phase transitions, non-linearity, selection, fluctuation and intensification in self-organisation theory correspond to the dialectical principle of transition from quantity to quality. What is called emergence of order, production of information or symmetry breaking in self-organisation theory corresponds to Hegel’s notions of sublation (Aufhebung) and negation of the negation. Self-organisation theory shows that a dialectical conception of nature is still very topical and that dialectical materialism contrary to mechanical materialism and idealism hasn’t been invalidated, it rather seems to be confirmed that dialectics is the general principle of nature and society.