社会的需求对科技进步的作用要超过十所大学
有一位先哲说过，社会的需求对科技进步的作用要超过十所大学。
——吴军《浪潮之巅》第二章第二小节
寻根溯源，发现这位先哲是恩格斯。
Engels in 1877, in Brighton, by William Hall
原句如下：
社会一旦有技术上的需要，这种需要就会比十所大学更能把科学推向前进。
——恩格斯《恩格斯致瓦·博尔吉乌斯》
除此之外，在读《恩格斯致瓦·博尔吉乌斯》时，2.(b)中恩格斯关于历史和所谓的伟大人物问题的思考和我对这个问题的观点不谋而合。本文其余部分也相当具有启发意义，遂将《恩格斯致瓦·博尔吉乌斯》中英文版本转载过来。
中文版
恩格斯致瓦·博尔吉乌斯
（1894年1月25日于伦敦）
尊敬的先生：
对您的问题回答如下：
1.我们视之为社会历史的决定性基础的经济关系，是指一定社会的人们生产生活资料和彼此交换产品（在有分工的条件下）的方式。因此，这里包括生产和运输的全部技术。这种技术，照我们的观点看来，也决定着产品的交换方式以及分配方式，从而在氏族社会解体后也决定着阶级的划分，决定着统治和被奴役的关系，决定着国家、政治、法等等。此外，包括在经济关系中的还有这些关系赖以发展的地理基础和事实上由过去沿袭下来的先前各经济发展阶段的残余（这些残余往往只是由于传统或惰性才继续保存着），当然还有围绕着这一社会形式的外部环境。
如果像您所说的，技术在很大程度上依赖于科学状况，那么科学却在更大得多的程度上依赖于技术的状况和需要。社会一旦有技术上的需要，这种需要就会比十所大学更能把科学推向前进。整个流体静力学（托里拆利等）是由于16世纪和17世纪意大利治理山区河流的需要而产生的。关于电，只是在发现它在技术上的实用价值以后，我们才知道了一些理性的东西。在德国，可惜人们撰写科学史时习惯于把科学看作是从天上掉下来的。
2.我们把经济条件看作归根到底制约着历史发展的东西。而种族本身就是一种经济因素。不过这里有两点不应当忽视：
（a）政治、法、哲学、宗教、文学、艺术等等的发展是以经济发展为基础的。但是，它们又都互相作用并对经济基础发生作用。并非只有经济状况才是原因，才是积极的，其余一切都不过是消极的结果。这是在归根到底总是得到实现的经济必然性的基础上的互相作用。例如，国家就是通过保护关税、自由贸易、好的或者坏的财政制度发生作用的，甚至德国庸人的那种从1648—1830年德国经济的可怜状况中产生的致命的疲惫和软弱（最初表现于虔诚主义，尔后表现于多愁善感和对诸侯贵族的奴颜婢膝），也不是没有对经济起过作用。这曾是重新振兴的最大障碍之一，而这一障碍只是由于革命战争和拿破仑战争把慢性的穷困变成了急性的穷困才动摇了。所以，并不像人们有时不加思考地想象的那样是经济状况自动发生作用，而是人们自己创造自己的历史，但他们是在既定的、制约着他们的环境中，在现有的现实关系的基础上进行创造的，在这些现实关系中，经济关系不管受到其他关系——政治的和意识形态的——多大影响，归根到底还是具有决定意义的，它构成一条贯穿始终的、唯一有助于理解的红线。
（b）人们自己创造自己的历史，但是到现在为止，他们并不是按照共同的意志，根据一个共同的计划，甚至不是在一个有明确界限的既定社会内来创造自己的历史。他们的意向是相互交错的，正因为如此，在所有这样的社会里，都是那种以偶然性为其补充和表现形式的必然性占统治地位。在这里通过各种偶然性而得到实现的必然性，归根到底仍然是经济的必然性。这里我们就来谈谈所谓伟大人物问题。恰巧某个伟大人物在一定时间出现于某一国家，这当然纯粹是一种偶然现象。但是，如果我们把这个人去掉，那时就会需要有另外一个人来代替他，并且这个代替者是会出现的，不论好一些或差一些，但是最终总是会出现的。恰巧拿破仑这个科西嘉人做了被本身的战争弄得精疲力竭的法兰西共和国所需要的军事独裁者，这是个偶然现象。但是，假如没有拿破仑这个人，他的角色就会由另一个人来扮演。这一点可以由下面的事实来证明：每当需要有这样一个人的时候，他就会出现，如凯撒、奥古斯都、克伦威尔等等。如果说马克思发现了唯物史观，那么梯叶里、米涅、基佐以及1850年以前英国所有的历史编纂学家则表明，人们已经在这方面作过努力，而摩尔根对于同一观点的发现表明，发现这一观点的时机已经成熟了，这一观点必定被发现。
历史上所有其他的偶然现象和表面的偶然现象都是如此。我们所研究的领域越是远离经济，越是接近于纯粹抽象的意识形态，我们就越是发现它在自己的发展中表现为偶然现象，它的曲线就越是曲折。如果您划出曲线的中轴线，您就会发现，所考察的时期越长，所考察的范围越广，这个轴线就越同经济发展的轴线接近于平行。
在德国，达到正确理解的最大障碍，就是著作界对于经济史的不负责任的忽视。不仅很难抛掉那些在学校里已被灌输的历史观，而且更难搜集为此所必需的材料。例如，老古·冯·居利希在自己的枯燥的材料汇集中的确收集了能够说明无数政治事实的大量材料，可是他的著作又有谁读过呢！
此外，我认为马克思在《雾月十八日》一书中所作出的光辉范例，能对您的问题给予颇为圆满的回答，正因为那是一个实际的例子。我还认为，大多数问题都已经在《反杜林论》第一编第九至十一章、第二编第二至四章和第三编第一章或导言里，后来又在《费尔巴哈》一书最后一章里谈到了。
请您不要过分推敲上面所说的每一个字，而要把握总的联系；可惜我没有时间能像给报刊写文章那样字斟句酌地向您阐述这一切……
转载自中文马克思主义文库—-恩格斯致瓦·博尔吉乌斯
英文版
Engels to Borgius
(London, January 25, 1894)
Here is the answer to your questions!
(1) What we understand by the economic conditions, which we regard as the determining basis of the history of society, are the methods by which human beings in a given society produce their means of subsistence and exchange the products among themselves (in so far as division of labour exists). Thus the entire technique of production and transport is here included. According to our conception this technique also determines the method of exchange and, further, the division of products, and with it, after the dissolution of tribal society, the division into classes also and hence the relations of lordship and servitude and with them the state, politics, law, etc. Under economic conditions are further included the geographical basis on which they operate and those remnants of earlier stages of economic development which have actually been transmitted and have survived – often only through tradition or the force of inertia; also of course the external milieu which surrounds this form of society.
If, as you say, technique largely depends on the state of science, science depends far more still on the state and the requirements of technique. If society has a technical need, that helps science forward more than ten universities. The whole of hydrostatics (Torricelli, etc.) was called forth by the necessity for regulating the mountain streams of Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We have only known anything reasonable about electricity since its technical applicability was discovered. But unfortunately it has become the custom in Germany to write the history of the sciences as if they had fallen from the skies.
(2) We regard economic conditions as the factor which ultimately determines historical development. But race is itself an economic factor. Here, however, two points must not be overlooked:
(a) Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic base. It is not that the economic position is the cause and alone active, while everything else only has a passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of the economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself. The state, for instance, exercises an influence by tariffs, free trade, good or bad fiscal system; and even the deadly inanition and impotence of the German petty bourgeois, arising from the miserable economic position of Germany from 1640 to 1830 and expressing itself at first in pietism, then in sentimentality and cringing servility to princes and nobles, was not without economic effect. It was one of the greatest hindrances to recovery and was not shaken until the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars made the chronic misery an acute one. So it is not, as people try here and there conveniently to imagine, that the economic position produces an automatic effect. Men make their history themselves, only in given surroundings which condition it and on the basis of actual relations already existing, among which the economic relations, however much they may be influenced by the other political and ideological ones, are still ultimately the decisive ones, forming the red thread which runs through them and alone leads to understanding.
(b) Men make their history themselves, but not as yet with a collective will or according to a collective plan or even in a definitely defined, given society. Their efforts clash, and for that very reason all such societies are governed by necessity, which is supplemented by and appears under the forms of accident. The necessity which here asserts itself amidst all accident is again ultimately economic necessity. This is where the so-called great men come in for treatment. That such and such a man and precisely that man arises at that particular time in that given country is of course pure accident. But cut him out and there will be a demand for a substitute, and this substitute will be found, good or bad, but in the long run he will be found. That Napoleon, just that particular Corsican, should have been the military dictator whom the French Republic, exhausted by its own war, had rendered necessary, was an accident; but that, if a Napoleon had been lacking, another would have filled the place, is proved by the fact that the man has always been found as soon as he became necessary: Caesar, Augustus, Cromwell, etc. While Marx discovered the materialist conception of history, Thierry, Mignet, Guizot, and all the English historians up to 1850 are the proof that it was being striven for, and the discovery of the same conception by Morgan proves that the time was ripe for it and that indeed it had to be discovered.
So with all the other accidents, and apparent accidents, of history. The further the particular sphere which we are investigating is removed from the economic sphere and approaches that of pure abstract ideology, the more shall we find it exhibiting accidents in its development, the more will its curve run in a zig-zag. So also you will find that the axis of this curve will approach more and more nearly parallel to the axis of the curve of economic development the longer the period considered and the wider the field dealt with.
In Germany the greatest hindrance to correct understanding is the irresponsible neglect by literature of economic history. It is so hard, not only to disaccustom oneself of the ideas of history drilled into one at school, but still more to rake up the necessary material for doing so. Who, for instance, has read old G. von Gülich, whose dry collection of material nevertheless contains so much stuff for the clarification of innumerable political facts!
For the rest, the fine example which Marx has given in the Eighteenth Brumaire should already, I think, provide you fairly well with information on your questions, just because it is a practical example. I have also, I believe, already touched on most of the points in Anti-Dühring I, Chapters 9-11, and II, 2-4, as well as in III, I, or Introduction, and then in the last section of Feuerbach.
Please do not weigh each word in the above too carefully, but keep the connection in mind; I regret that I have not the time to work out what I am writing to you so exactly as I should be obliged to do for publication.
REFERENCE
This letter was first published without any mention of the addressee in the journal Der socialistische Akademiker No 20, 1895, by its contributor H. Starkenburg. As a result Starkenburg was wrongly identified as the addressee in all previous editions.— from Progress Publishers, 1968
转载自marxists.org—-Engels to Borgius