Abstract

In the history of philosophy, the problem of the simple and the complex, as it pertains to the universe, presents itself as the problem of the substance of the world, from which the concrete diversity of things comes into being. Two fundamental conceptions are to be seen in investigation of this latter problem in the history of materialism and natural science. The first of them, which essentially presupposes a dialectical understanding of development, regards the world as one, for all the variety of its naturally developing matter. The second, which in its completed form comprises the line of development of mechanical materialism, recognizes only a coming together and separation of permanent principles on which the universe is based