Talk:Dialectical materialism

Splitting the article

I suggest that we split the article and move much of the "Contributions of X person" stuff to somewhere like "Marxists' views on dialectical materialism". As noted many times above, this article doesn't explain anything even for the knowledgeable reader, yet alone the uninitiated. Egezort (talk) 18:08, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

On a separate note, I suggest framing the lede in a way that explains what dialectical materialism posits in terms of the materialism vs idealism debate. While mostly not wrong, this lede doesn't tell anything about this. Boguslavsky's book about dialectical materialism has very easy to grasp and intuitive explanations of these.

I want to start working on this article to salvage it, but it's in such bad shape that it'll be very hard. Egezort (talk) 18:11, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Fang Lizhi

This paragraph (last paragraph in "As a heuristic in science..." should either be deleted or supported by text that shows how it relates to dialectical materialism. Currently it has nothing to do with the article's topic! Hewer7 (talk) 13:28, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Could start with taking the briefest of glances at the cited source, which makes the connection crystal clear to those not already familiar with Fang. Look, I permit that it's a bit obscure at the moment, but to say it "has nothing to do with the article topic" is just to say that you are underinformed about Chinese society during the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

I'm about to take a look now, but I almost guarantee it's so oblique at present because someone ran through here before and tendentiously carved out a lacuna for a preceding block of text that was particularly embarrassing for them some way or another. Remsense 🌈 论 13:34, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Ha! I knew it: original addition and the deliberately obtuse lying liar, pants on fire.

@Hewer7, this is why it often doesn't pay to immediately delete content that seems disturbed or out of place. The text has wonderful mysteries in its revision history to share. Remsense 🌈 论 13:46, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Ok Hewer7 (talk) 14:01, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Link to Dialectic somewhere in the lead or first section (§ The term)

This article should link to the article on Dialectic somewhere in the lead or first section (§ The term).

I don't know where exactly, but somewhere, gosh dangit. Because the word is rather obscure to most readers today, I think, and altho if one follows enough links (or rather the right one(s)) from this article they can find it ("Hegelian dialectic" in § Historical background does link to the article, albeit only a section thereof).

Without such a link or explanation, people might easily come away believing (especially from the lead text) that "dialectic" is a word & meaning that only refers to dialectic materialism, or that Marxists invented the concept and only they use or have ever used it.

I know people on here often get ""touchy"" about there being ""too many"" links in articles, so I will leave the task of locating a suitable place to mention the meaning of the word "dialectic" and/or link to its article to Someone Else. Peace! ✌ ~2026-53300-9 (talk) 23:30, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Lead is way too lengthy and detailed

The lead is supposed to provide a concise overview of the topic, not a detailed explanation. I see multiple editors have reverted attempts to fix this, so I'll open a discussion first.

The following 5 paragraphs:

"The first law of dialectics is about “the unity and conflict of opposites”. An example of this unity and conflict is the negative and positive particles that make up atoms.

The second law of dialectics is ‘quantity into quality’: that small quantitative changes, such as increasing the heat of water by one degree at a time, at a certain point result in a qualitative change when the water turns into steam.

The third law is the ‘negation of the negation’. In the history of life on Earth, photosynthetic organisms evolved, and their byproduct—molecular oxygen—was toxic to life. At this point oxygen negated life. But when life evolved bacteria that utilized oxygen for its own metabolism, oxygen stopped being a toxin for a whole branch of organisms. This was the 'negation of the negation', and an example of something turning into its opposite.

Karl Marx stated in the postface to Das Kapital, "I openly avowed myself as the pupil of that mighty thinker Hegel," acknowledging his use of Hegel's dialectical method but stating that he stood it "right side up again" by grounding it in material reality rather than Hegel's abstract ideas, so creating dialectical materialism and applying it to economics."

Dialectical materialism recognises the evolution of the natural world, and thus the emergence of new qualities of being human and of human existence. Engels used the metaphysical insight that the higher level of human existence emerges from and is rooted in the lower level of human existence. He believed that the higher level of being is a new order with irreducible laws, and that evolution is governed by laws of development, which reflect the basic properties of matter in motion.

need to be condensed into a concise summary, currently this is just a bunch of content lifted up from the body. DiodotusNicator (talk) 20:52, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Frank Sinatra's Contribution

The claim of this famous singer for what happens when an irresistible force meets and implacable object is that "Something's Gota Give!" should also be mentioned because it incorporates the same Hegelian philosophy. ~2026-34791-34 (talk) 21:13, 13 June 2026 (UTC)