Dialectics and its study was derived from the philosopher and author of Science of Logic, G. W. F. Hegel, who, in turn, had studied the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Heraclitus taught that everything was constantly changing and that all things consisted of two opposite elements which changed into each other as night changes into day, light into darkness, life into death etc.
Engels’s work develops from the comments he had made about science in Anti-Dühring. It includes the famous “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man”, which has also been published separately as a pamphlet. Engels argues that the hand and brain grew together, an idea supported by later fossil discoveries (see Australopithecus afarensis#Bipedalism).
Most of the work is fragmentary, but it has points of interest. A quotation from its biology:
Vertebrates : Their essential character: the grouping of the whole body about the nervous system. Thereby the development of self-consciousness, etc. becomes possible. In all other animals the nervous system is a secondary affair, here it is the basis of the whole organisation
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