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C. Fuchs:
"Dialectical Philosophy and Self-Organisation";
in: "Emergence, Causality, Self-Organisation", C. Fuchs, V. I. Arshinov (Hrg.); NIA-Priroda, Moskau, 2003, ISBN: 5-9562-0006-5, S. 195 - 244.

The aim of this paper is to show that the theory of self-organisation in some respect proves the topicality of dialectical materialism and that an alternative concept of substance makes sense within the framework of dialectical materialism. The first part of the paper shows that Marx and Engels 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. An alternative concept of substance is implicitly present in Engels’ works because he says that the eternal aspect of the world is that matter is permanently changing and moving and producing new organisational forms of matter. Ernst Bloch has explicitly formulated this concept of process-substance within the framework of dialectical materialism and 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 Engels’ Dialectics 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.

http://www.self-organization.org/results/book/EmergenceCausalitySelf-Organisation.pdf