The present study seeks to reveal the unknown political factor of the philosophical-ideological disputes over physics in the pre-war Soviet Russia. Previous studies on this issue assumed conflicts between the two definite fractions to have a basic framework: courageous leading physicists on one hand, and foolish communists or old-generation scientists on the other. Such a distinct dichotomy, however, may have to be reconsidered after studying archival material. That is to say, the relationship between A.A. Maksimov, one of the representatives of communist ideology, and V.F. Mitkevich, a prominent specialist of the electrical technology, was more ambivalent than it seems to be. These two men apparently had a common aggressive character: both of them charged leading physicists, such as Ya. I. Frenkel' and A.F. Ioffe, of having an idealistic view. Yet, the correspondences exchanged between these 'opponents' clearly show that they severely disagreed (until 1937) on issues such as ontological views on mathematical notions or terminologies to be used in the dispute. Occasionally, the communist even criticized the electric engineer for overemphasizing the dangers of modern physical theories to materialism, an official Soviet philosophical system. Hence, until the mid 1930's, Mitkevich and Maksimov did not become confident allies of each other. This awkwardness might be regarded as one of the reasons why the dispute over the interpretation of modern physics did not result in a clear break between the professional physicists and the 'opponents'.

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The Vaisesika School, which is one of six Indian orthodox schools of Philosophies, is known as ancient realism. In this paper, the author intends to examine the theoretical structure of the concept of 'matter' in this school, based on the three main texts, Vaisesikasutra (1C.A.D.), Dasapadarthi (勝宗十句義論4〜5C.A.D.), and Prasastapadabhasya (6C.A.D.). The Vaisesika system is said to have two substantial elements. One is rupa, the other murtatva. Basically, the rupa was a word meaning both color and form, and was used to indicate a matter in ancient India. Also in the Vaisesika school the meaning of rupa was the same as its general meaning in ancient India until the time of the Vaisesikasutra. But after the Dasapadarthi, the rupa was strictly restrained to only one meaning, that of color. On the other hand, the term of murtatva began to be used as a term for form simultaneously in the Dasapadarthi. In the following Prasastapadabhasya, moreover, the term of rupa was used only to mean color, and the term of murtatva meant form of the moving substance. From this, it can be confirmed that, at the time of the Dasapadarthi, the change of the concept of rupa occurred simultaneously with the new concept of murtatva relating to motion. We can, therefore, conclude that the problem of motion affected the concept of matter in the Vaisesika theory.

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This paper investigates the activities of early Chinese students who were dispatched by the Imperial University of Peking (京師大学堂) to the First High School (第一高等学校) in Japan. It is based on original sources which remain partly unsorted. First, the correspondence between the Late Qing's minister of Education Zhang Baixi (張百煕) and the Imperial University of Peking's Japanese teacher Hattori Unokichi (服部宇之吉) will be analyzed, which reveals details about motives and circumstances of the dispatch project. Secondly, documents preserved at the University of Tokyo show the study life and, in particular, mathematics education offered to the foreign students in the First High School. Thirdly, the contribution of the whole project to the modernization of mathematics, natural science and technology in China will be examined, on the basis of achievements of those students after their return.

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