The understanding of nature and its motion through Hegelian dialectics brings the notion of the organism that is intertwined with its inorganic nature. This notion is crucial first and foremost to comprehend life in its wholeness, as becoming that is in constant movement. To attain this comprehension, it is necessary to treat beings as entities invariably determining each other in their reciprocal relatedness. In this way, it becomes possible to set both the organism and its environment free of their fixity (...) and quiescence. Within the work, to derive this mode of reasoning, the sciences and the dialectics are asserted in their unity. The relationship between the organism and its inorganic nature is one of tension. The organism in its finitude is in opposition to its inorganic nature; it is compelled to act to sublate the latter’s independence, indifference, and exteriority for its self-preservation. This is called the melting of the non-organic into fluidity that renders the organism infinite. The relationship, as tension, elicits the notion of freedom; it signifies that freedom is not merely a matter of free will, it rather pertains to the organism’s penetration into its exteriority, in which it can determine ever-changing goals for itself. (shrink)

It is a widespread view that Marx did not apply dialectics to nature, and that Engels’s writings on this subject are a distortion of his outlook. This paper examines Marx’s discussion of elliptical motion and some other physical phenomena, and shows that he did indeed find contradictions and oppositions in nature, and thus recognised a dialectics of nature. In addition to analysing relevant passages in Marx’s texts, his study of the physics and mathematics of elliptical motion is reviewed and compared (...) with Hegel’s position. Marx’s conception of how dialectical contradictions are resolved is reviewed in order to interpret his claim that the contradiction in elliptical motion is ‘solved’ but not ‘overcome’ by that motion. Textual evidence is presented that Marx regarded ‘real contradictions’ as resolved only by ‘development’, a process in which the conflict between the opposing sides of the contradiction becomes more intense. The consequences of this interpretation for Marx’s analysis of elliptical motion are explored, and some alternative interpretations are discussed. (shrink)