U

Ugly, The

An aesthetic category denoting phenomena inimical to the beautiful, and man's negative attitude to these phenomena. In society ugliness, as opposed to beauty, is the result of social conditions that are inimical to the free manifestation and flowering of man's vital energy, its restricted and grotesquely one-sided development and the consequent collapse of the aesthetic ideal. In true art the portrayal of what is aesthetically ugly is one way of asserting the ideal of beauty.

Umov, Nikolai Alexeyevich (1846–1915)

Russian physicist, professor of Moscow University; in 1911, resigned from the university with other progressive scientists in protest against the actions of the tsarist government. Umov studied problems of theoretical and experimental physics, first introduced the concept of the energy flow (the Umov-Poynting Vector). He was a mechanistic materialist, and Descartes was his ideal in philosophy. Although the break-up of the concepts of classical physics struck a strong blow at a number of Cartesian principles, Umov remained loyal to materialism and opposed relativism and physical idealism. A splendid organiser, populariser of science, and teacher, Umov played a big part in founding the Russian materialist school of physicists.

Uncertainty Principle, The

A proposition of quantum mechanics formulated by W. Heisenberg in 1927, according to which it is impossible to specify or determine simultaneously both the position and velocity of a particle as accurately as is wished. The Uncertainty Principle is expressed in terms of the quantitative correlations between the so-called uncertainties of conjugate variables: position and momentum, and also time and energy. The less uncertain a particle's position is, the more uncertain is its momentum, and vice versa. A similar correlation obtains between the measurement of the momentum of time and that of a particle's energy.

The Uncertainty Principle is an objective characteristic of the phenomena of the microcosm associated with their wave-corpuscular nature; uncertainties are inherent in the real state of the microobject and do not limit cognition. Heisenberg and Bohr deduced the Uncertainty Principle from the action of the instrument determining a particle's position upon its momentum (e.g., the action of an aperture in the diaphragm, through which an electron passes, on the electron's momentum) and from the action of the instrument determining the particle's momentum on its position in space. This is also true of the action of time-measuring instruments on the energy of a particle and of energy-measuring instruments on the possibility of an accurate determination of time.

The Uncertainty Principle prompted certain philosophers to draw positivist conclusions up to the point of negating the causality of states of an elementary particle and the objectivity of the microcosm, its independence of cognition (so-called instrumental idealism; see Instrument). Materialist criticism of such idealistic distortions of quantum mechanics was instrumental in ascertaining its actual meaning.

Unconscious

1. Qualifying an action, unconscious means performed automatically, by reflex, before the reason for it has reached the consciousness, e.g., defensive reaction, etc., or when consciousness is naturally or artificially switched off (sleep, hypnosis, intoxication, sleep-walking, etc.).

2. In idealist theories, a term for a special region of psychic activity in which are concentrated eternal and immutable desires, motives and aspirations determined by the instincts and incomprehensible to consciousness. The idealist doctrine of the Unconscious was most fully developed in Freudism, which divided the psyche into three layers—the unconscious, the subconscious, and the conscious. The Unconscious is the deep foundation of the psyche and determines the whole conscious life of the individual and even of whole nations. Unconscious desires for pleasure and death (instinct of aggression) form the core of all emotions and emotional experiences. The subconscious is a special frontier zone between the conscious and the unconscious. This zone is invaded by unconscious desires and here they are strictly censored by consciousness. Consciousness is a superficial manifestation of the psyche at the point of contact with the real world and it is largely dependent on mystical, unconscious forces. The Unconscious figures in the theories of Herbart, Schopenhauer, and other idealists as the mystical, unknowable basis of conscious action.

Unity and Conflict of Opposites, Law of

A universal law of reality and its understanding by the human intellect, expressing the essence, the "core" of materialist dialectics. Every object contains opposites. By opposites dialectical materialism means elements, "aspects", etc., that (1) are in indissoluble unity, (2) are mutually exclusive, not only in different respects, but in one and the same respect, i.e., (3) interpenetrate each other. Their unity is relative, their conflict is absolute. The conflict of opposites means that the contradiction within the essence of an object is being perpetually resolved and just as perpetually reproduced, thus bringing about the transformation of the old into the new. The law of the Unity and Conflict of Opposites thus explains the objective inner "origin" of all motion without calling in any external forces and allows us to understand motion as self-motion. It reveals the true, concrete unity of diversity as a concrete and not dead identity and enables us to conceive the concrete wholeness and development of an object "in the logic of concepts". That is why this law forms the "core" of dialectics.

It pinpoints the antithesis between dialectical and metaphysical thinking, which interprets the "origin" of motion merely as something different from, and external to, motion itself, and unity as "alien" to diversity. Metaphysics leads one to substitute for motion and the concrete unity of diversity a mere description of the external results of motion and the aspects of an object compared purely externally. The history of dialectics is the history of the controversy surrounding these problems and the attempts to resolve them. The founder of the dialectics of contradictions was Heraclitus. The Eleatics (Zeno) converted contradiction into something purely subjective and reduced it to a means of denying motion and diversity ("negative dialectics", aporia). Plato attempted to achieve a synthesis. In the Renaissance the idea of the "coincidence of contraries" was developed by Nicholas of Cusa and Bruno. Kant "eliminated" antinomies only by separating the subject from the object. Attempts to overcome this split led to the idea of dialectical contradiction (see Fichte, Schelling and Hegel). Hegel did all that was possible towards solving the problem of contradiction within the framework of idealism.

In modern idealist philosophy the characteristic tendencies are, on the one hand, to irrationalise contradiction as something insoluble, and, on the other hand, to attempt to dismiss this category altogether and replace it by terminological distinctions (various positivist conceptions). Marxism has interpreted and defined the law of the Unity and Conflict of Opposites "as a law of cognition (and a law of the objective world)" (Lenin). Materialist interpretation, based on the principle that dialectics, logic, and the theory of knowledge coincide, prevents the law being reduced to a "sum of examples". The objective universality of the law forms the foundation of its methodological functions in the process of cognition.

This law also determines the structure of scientific theory inasmuch as it reveals the dialectical division of unity. A classical example of this structure is found in Marx's Capital, in which the solution of contradictions carries the investigation forward in accordance with the logic of the subject itself and provides a rational means of evolving new concepts. Dialectical contradiction in the process of cognition is not merely a matter of setting thesis and antithesis against each other; its purpose is to arrive at their solution. To understand dialectical contradiction means to understand how it is resolved and the solution has nothing in common with removing formal logic's confused contradictions in reasoning. The dialectical contradiction within a theory can be adequately formulated only in the process of ascending from the abstract to the concrete (see The Abstract and the Concrete). The full exposition of a theory cannot, therefore, be confined within the framework of a single "system devoid of contradictions".

The process of development proceeds through the clash of external, relatively independent opposites. Dialectics regards external opposites not as primordially distinct essences but as the result of the division of unity, and ultimately as derivatives of internal opposites. The Marxist doctrine of social development rests on the application of this law, on investigation of the contradictions in society; it forms the basis of the thesis of the class struggle as the motive force in the development of class society and draws upon this thesis for all its revolutionary conclusions. Socialism is the natural result of the development and solution by means of social revolution of the contradictions of capitalism. There are various kinds of contradictions and various ways of resolving them. Socialism also develops by means of contradictions, but these contradictions are of a specific nature (see Antagonistic and Non-Antagonistic Contradictions). The category of dialectical contradiction is important from the point of view of method in modern natural science, which is more and more often confronted with the contradictory nature of objects.

Unity and Diversity of the World

The unity of the world lies in its materiality, in the fact that all things and all phenomena are various forms or attributes of matter in motion. There is nothing in the whole world that is not a concrete form of matter, or the manifestation of its qualities and interrelations. The unity of the world is expressed in the universal connection of phenomena and objects, in the fact that all forms of matter possess such universal attributes as motion, space, time, the ability to develop, etc., in the existence of universal dialectical laws of being, operating at all levels in the structural organisation of matter.

But the unity of the world should not be understood as uniformity of structure, as the simple endless repetition of what already exists and the subordination of everything to identical specific laws. In nature there is an infinite number of qualitatively different levels in the structural organisation of matter, at each of which matter possesses different properties and structure and is subject to different specific laws of motion. We now know several of these levels, which correspond to different scales: atomic nuclei and elementary particles, atoms and molecules, macroscopic bodies, cosmic systems of various orders. The quantitative and qualitative diversity of natural phenomena presents no insuperable barrier to acquiring authentic knowledge of them. Proceeding from the unity of natural phenomena and the universal qualities and laws of material motion, the human mind discovers in every finite phenomenon elements of the infinite, and in the transient, aspects of the eternal.

Universal

See Individual, Particular, Universal.

Universal Connection of Phenomena

The most general law governing the existence of the world; the result of the universal interaction of all things and phenomena. It expresses the inherent underlying structural identity of all elements and properties in every integral system and the infinite multiformity of connections and relations between all systems or phenomena. The universal interaction of bodies determines the existence of specific material objects and all their specific properties and features.

Universal Connection of Phenomena is infinite in its manifestations. It includes all the relations existing between particular properties of bodies and between particular natural phenomena expressed in specific laws and also the relations between the universal properties of matter and the trends of development governed by the universal dialectical laws of being. Every law is, therefore, a specific expression of the Universal Connection of Phenomena. Without Universal Connection of Phenomena the world would be a chaotic agglomeration of phenomena rather than the integral, law-governed process of motion that it is.

The connections between objects and phenomena may be mediate or immediate, permanent or temporary, essential or unessential, necessary or accidental, functional or non-functional (see Functional Dependence), etc. Universal Connection of Phenomena is closely related to causality. However, cause and effect as such are conceivable solely in isolation from the universal connection between the one or more phenomena concerned and other phenomena. If considered in their connection with the whole, cause and effect pass one into the other and become universal connection and interaction. Reverse connection is a particular case of interaction in all self-regulating systems.

Connections between phenomena are not to be reduced to the merely physical interaction of bodies. There also exist incalculably more complex biological and social relations, governed by their own specific laws. The development of matter and the conversion to more highly organised forms produces more complex types of interaction between bodies, creating qualitatively new motion. This also applies to the development of human society, where progress in the mode of production and the development of civilisation result in more complex relations between individuals and between states, producing a growing multiformity of political, economic, ideological and other relations.

The concept of Universal Connection of Phenomena has great cognitive significance. Cognition of the objective world is possible only through the investigation of the causal and other connections between phenomena, and through the identification of the more essential connections, relations, etc. Cognition proceeds through motion of thought from reflection of the less profound and less general connections to the determination of more profound and more general connections and relations between phenomena and processes. The structure and classification of the sciences is a reflection of Universal Connection of Phenomena. This explains why the connections and relations between sciences become continuously closer, keeping pace with the progress of scientific cognition. "Marginal" sciences appear, which connect formerly remote fields of knowledge (e.g., biochemistry, astrophysics, etc.).

Universal Significance

A determinant of the truth-value of human knowledge in subjective idealist philosophy. The propositions concerning Universal Significance, "socially organised experience" merely disguise the conclusion of solipsism which follows from the subjective idealist premises. The propositions concerning Universal Significance as the criterion of truth are insolvent. (Lenin, Vol. 14, pp. 122-26.) Not everything of universal significance is true. For example, notwithstanding the recognition of religious dogmas by believers they are false. On the other hand, everything true sooner or later becomes universally significant. Universal Significance is merely one of the consequences of the truth of knowledge and not a criterion of truth.

Universals

The name given to general ideas in medieval philosophy. The dispute about Universals centred on whether they are objective, real or merely names of things; whether, on the one hand, they exist "before things", ideally, as held by extreme realism and Erigena or "in things" as held by moderate realism and Thomas Aquinas; or, on the other hand, whether they exist only in the mind "after things", in the form of mental constructions, as professed by conceptualism or are even mere words as held by extreme nominalism, Roscellin, and William of Occam.

Universe

All surrounding nature, infinite in time and space, embracing the endless multiplicity of qualitatively different forms of matter. Modern means of investigation (with a range of up to 3,000 million light years) show that matter is irregularly distributed in the Universe. They disclose the existence of different integral systems—planets, stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies. No specific law governing the existence or structural organisation of matter is applicable to the whole Universe because matter is qualitatively infinite and its laws are heterogeneous in respect of space-time relations (see Astronomy; Cosmology).

Upanishads

Ancient Indian religious and philosophical commentaries on the Vedas, compiled over many centuries. The oldest Upanishads date back to the 10th-6th centuries B.C. The Upanishads invest the vedic gods and rites with new philosophical content. They are interpreted as the allegorical portrayal of man and the Universe. Belief in the reincarnation of the soul receives a moral foundation. Upanishads raises the question of what is supreme reality, the knowledge of which gives knowledge of everything. The answer is idealistic: that from which everything existing is born, in which it lives after birth, and to which it returns after death is brahma, the creative principle of the Universe; brahma is identical with the spiritual essence of man, atman.

To rid himself of the cycle of new births on earth, man, according to the Upanishads, must dedicate himself to contemplation of the unity of his soul with brahma. The Upanishads also provide an idea of the materialist doctrines they opposed. Those doctrines held that one of the material elements—water, fire, air, light, space or time—was the primary foundation of the world and denied the existence of the soul after man's death. Commentaries on the Upanishads written by Badarayana and later Samkara (8th century) became the foundation of the Vedanta.

Utilitarianism

A bourgeois ethical theory which considers the usefulness of an action as the criterion of its morality. It was founded by Bentham, who formulated its basic principle as the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" by satisfaction of their individual interests. The morality of an action can be mathematically calculated as the balance of the pleasure and suffering resulting from it. John Stuart Mill introduced into Utilitarianism the principle of qualitative assessment of pleasures and the demand that mental pleasures be preferred to physical ones. Utilitarianism also underlies the understanding of the functions of state and law. The application of the principle of utility to the theory of knowledge gave rise to pragmatism. In contemporary bourgeois ethics, Utilitarianism is replaced by an "analysis of ethical statements". (See Emotivism; Logical Positivism in Ethics).