Lenin's relationship to the ideas of physicists

Abstract

History and the philosophy of science have played a very important role in dialectical materialism; their results have been destined to support the correctness of the ideas of Marxist philosophers, especially in their application in historical materialism.

From this point of view, the circumstances of the origin of the works of the Marxist classics cannot be neglected: Engels wrote hisDialectics in Nature in the period of classical physics, and Lenin published hisMaterialism and Empirio-Criticism at the beginning of the 20th century when our modern physics first began: shortly before the publication of Lenin's book, Röntgen and Becquerel discovered new kinds of radiation, Balmer published his ideas concerning the regularity of the hydrogen spectrum, Plank wrote his first articles about the elementary quantum and Einstein published his three famous articles (1905).

During this period, physicists themselves did not understand their results, so important for the further development of physics. In this atmosphere of uncertainty, Lenin — a lawyer and politician — undertook his attempt to criticise the ideas of physicists.

We trace one misinterpretation by Lenin of these ideas from books by Mach and Helmholtz.