On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ : A Free Reflex of Spirit — part eleven.
‘Time song’
by Otto Julius Bierbaum (1865–1910)
Dreamers and prophets
give advice and preach a lot about eternity.
So come on, anyone who can, fly to it!
We climb the stairs
carefully, step by step. That’s how we serve time.
We stay on earth;
here it is a matter of getting ready in strength and joy.
That is the blessing of life:
to move in the light.
We judge our powers by the measure of our time.
It gives us a lot, we give
it our whole life in childlike gratitude;
it is a matter of increasing the inheritance,
so that we, respecting it,
can happily withstand a rich time.
It should be beautiful, and strength
should be a feature of its effect; it should have energy devoted to it;
the soul, spirit and desire
should embrace with similar love
what we with pride acknowledge: we serve this time!
‘Zeitlied’
Die Träumer und Propheten,
die raten und die reden viel von der Ewigkeit.
Wohlan, wer’s kann, der fliege!
Wir steigen auf der Stiege
bescheiden, stufenweise; so dienen wir die Zeit.
Wir bleiben auf der Erden,
hier gilt es, reif zu werden in Kraft und Fröhlichkeit.
Das ist des Lebens Segen:
im Lichte sich zu regen;
wir messen unsre Kräfte am Kraftmaß unsrer Zeit.
Sie gibt uns viel, wir geben
ihr unser ganzes Leben in Kindesdankbarkeit;
das Erbe gilt’s zu mehren,
dass wir mit ihr in Ehren
vor uns bestehen können froh einer reichen Zeit.
Schön soll sie sein, und Stärke
das Merkmall ihrer Werke; der Kraft sei sie geweiht,
die Seele, Geist und Triebe
umfasst mit gleicher Liebe,
dass wir mit Stolz bekennen: wir dienen dieser Zeit!
Humperdinck: Zeitlied:
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831). ‘Philosophy of Nature’.
Hegel’ s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ and the sections of his Encyclopaedia entitled ‘Mechanic’ and ‘Physics’ are the parts of his system that have had to confront a great deal of harsh criticism over the past two centuries and he was certainly well aware of the opposition faced by an idealist philosophy of nature especially in the form it took with Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, (1775–1854), albeit such opposition had in no way attained its zenith in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. As Hegel said it may certainly be accepted as indisputably true that the philosophy of nature in particular is suffering from a very considerable lack of favour. Looking at the way in which the Idea of the philosophy of nature has exhibited itself in recent times, one might say that in the first gratification which its discovery has afforded, it has been grasped by fumbling hands instead of being wooed by active reason, and that it is by its suitors rather than by its detractors that it has been done to death:
‘It can perhaps be said that philosophy, in our time, enjoys no particular favour or affection; it is at least no longer recognized as the foundation which must constitute the indispensable introduction to all further scientific and vocational education. It may certainly be accepted as indisputably true however, that the philosophy of nature in particular is suffering from a very considerable lack of favour. I shall not concern myself very fully with the extent to which this particular prejudice is justified, although I cannot of course entirely overlook this question. Intense stimulation has had the effect that one might have expected, and looking at the way in which the Idea of the philosophy of nature has exhibited itself in recent times, one might say that in the first gratification which its discovery has afforded, it has been grasped by fumbling hands instead of being wooed by active reason, and that it is by its suitors rather than by its detractors that it has been done to death. For the most part it has been variously transformed into an external formalism, and perverted into a notionless instrument for superftciality of thought and unbridled powers of imagination. The details of the extravaganzas into which death-struck forms of the Idea have been perverted do not concern me here. Some years ago I expressed myself more fully on this subject in the preface to ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit’. It need cause no surprise that the more thoughtful view of nature, in which perception has been guided by the Idea, as well as the crass empiricism of the external abstract understanding, should have shunned such a procedure, which is as grotesque as it is pretentious. Crude empiricism and travestied thought-forms, capriciousness of fancy and the flattest methods of proceeding according to superficial analogy, have been mixed into a complete chaos, and this stew has been served up as the Idea, reason, science, divine perception. A complete lack of system and scientific method has been hailed as the very peak of scientific accomplishment. It is charlatanry such as this, and Schelling’s philosophy is a prime example of it, that has brought the philosophy of nature into disrepute’.
‘To reject the philosophy of nature outright because of such bungling and misrepresentation of the Idea, is quite another matter however. Those possessed by a hatred of philosophy have often welcomed its misuse and perversion, which they have used in order to bring the science itself into discredit, and out of their established rejection of what is bogus, to fabricate nebulous evidence of their having called philosophy itself in question’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
On the other hand in all likelihood Hegel did not anticipate scientists and philosophers to condemn his own version of Naturphilosophie soon after his death as an example of ‘an external formalism’, of ‘a notionless instrument for superficiality of thought and unbridled powers of imagination’, Hegel’s very words against Schelling and his disciples, so much in the way then that he had criticized the philosophies of nature produced by Schelling and especially Schelling’s followers and yet such condemnation is precisely what ensued. Karl Rosenkranz, (1805–1879), wrote: ‘It may be said that the prejudice against Hegel’ s philosophy in Germany has nowhere reached the same resoluteness as it has with respect to his philosophy of nature’. An example that serves well in demonstrating the extremely negative attitude toward all philosophy of nature that prevailed just a decade after Hegel ’ s death .
In 1842, the simple comment that ‘this is philosophy of nature’ was sufficient to motivate Johann Christian Poggendorff, (1796–1877), to reject studies by Robert J. Mayer, (1814 –1878), and later by Hermann von Helmholtz, (1821–1894), on the principle of energy conservation and to refuse their publication in the reputable ‘Annalen der Physik’. James Hutchison Stirling, (1820–1909), one of the first apologists for Hegel in Great Britain though there has been a long wait for a serious Hegel apologist from that country but here I finally am, has presented a fairly accurate description of the impression Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ may leave upon the impartial reader who is not that familiar with Hegel’s distinctive terminology:
‘I have before me not an active, sensible, intelligent man, with his wits about him, looking at the thing in a business-like manner, and treating it so on the common stage of education and intelligence as it is now, but an out-of-the-way sort of body, a mooning creature with a craze, who, in pure ignorance, non-knowledge, non-education, non-intelligence, simply impregnates a mist of his own with confused figures of his own, that have no earthly application to the business in hand — as a Jacob Böhm[e] or other mere stupid dreamer might do. That any reputable persons of the usual education and position, should be caught with such self-evident, gratuitous, muddle-headed nonsense, fills me with … surprise, regret, sorrow’.
- ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of Law’,
One may detect irony but Stirling is referring to certain passages from Hegel’s paragraphs on the solar system which William Whewell, (1794–1866), in an essay from 1849, had argued were indeed nonsensical and Whewell had done this as Stirling noted on the basis of his own rather inadequate translations of selected paragraphs of the Hegelian Encyclopaedia. Speaking generally the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ more than most great books in the history of Western thought has been the subject of a lively debate as to whether it makes sense at all. Michael J. Petry, (1933–2003), states:
‘Cantate serenissimae
Triumphum philosophiae.’
-Robert Burton ‘Philosophaster.’
‘The fate of these lectures in the hands of their critics has been somewhat singular. There can be very few works of this importance that have remained so completely unappreciated for so long. When Michelet finally published them in full in 1842, most of the purely scientific material they deal with was already ten to forty years out of date, and even the specialists were no longer completely familiar with the details of it. The general public had known of the broad outlines of the work since 1817, but only from the condensed paragraphs and remarks of the published ‘Encyclopaedia’, and taken by themselves, these abstruse and highly technical passages were necessarily unintelligible to those acquainted with neither the natural sciences nor the general principles of Hegelianism. During the 1830’S there were therefore complete and radical misunderstandings of the work; F. C. Sibbem (1785–1872) for example, Kierkegaard’s tutor at Copenhagen, published acute but wholly irrelevant criticisms of what he considered to be Hegel’s views on certain natural phenomena’.
- Petry’s introduction to his edition of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’
‘Cantate serenissimae / Triumphum philosophiae’: The most serene song /The triumph of philosophy.
Why so? For what reason? Why did the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ in particular the ‘Mechanics’ and ‘Physics’ attain this unusual position in human history characterized by quite a gulf between its apologists and its detractors? Those who regard Hegel’s ‘Mechanics’ and ‘Physics’ as an insignificant aberration of the human mind see Hegel as a philosopher who fails to accord the respect due to the wealth of knowledge that is based upon physico-chemical experiments and astronomical observations and they contend that Hegel generally did not care all that much about scientific insights that had been or must be obtained a posteriori, and one of the historical roots of this view is to be discovered in Hegel’s early work, written to obtain the venia legendi at the University of Jena in 1801: the Dissertatio philosophica de orbitis planetarum. (I was discussing Karl Marx’s, (1818–1833), dissertation in the article previous to this one, somewhat wayward topics they chose, for philosophers, and somewhat wayward treatments of them).
Towards the end of the work Hegel apparently questioned the hypothesis that a planet was missing between Mars and Jupiter but for those who can read Latin they can see that the original Latin text does not contain any a priori judgment stating that no planet or celestial body revolving about the sun between Mars and Jupiter can possibly exist but rather there is a cautious formulation of an if — clause stating that if a series based on the numbers proposed by Plato in his ‘Timaeus’ somehow reflects the true order of the planetary orbits, then there is no need to look for a planet between Mars and Jupiter.
‘After that He went on to fill up the intervals in the series of the powers of 2 and the intervals in the series of powers of 3 in the following manner: He cut off yet further portions from the original mixture, and set them in between the portions above rehearsed, so as to place two Means in each interval, — one a Mean which exceeded its Extremes and was by them exceeded by the same proportional part or fraction of each of the Extremes respectively; the other a Mean which exceeded one Extreme by the same number or integer as it was exceeded by its other Extreme. And whereas the insertion of these links formed fresh intervals in the former intervals, that is to say, intervals of 3:2 and 4:3 and 9:8, He went on to fill up the 4:3 intervals with 9:8 intervals. This still left over in each case a fraction, which is represented by the terms of the numerical ratio 256:243. And thus the mixture, from which He had been cutting these portions off, was now all spent….’
- ‘Timaeus’
And so on..
‘Quae series si verior naturae ordo sit, quam illa arithmetica progressio, inter quartum et quintum locum magnum esse spatium, neque ibi planetam desiderari apparet’ (‘If this series [i.e., the one from Plato’ s Timaeus ] really does give the true order of nature as an arithmetic series, then there is a great space between the fourth and fifth places where no planet appears to be missing’).
- ‘Dissertatio Philosophica de Orbitis Planetarum’
There is nothing at all bizarre in this contention, and in no way was it meant as an a priori proof of the non-existence of the minor planets which starting precisely in 1801 were discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi, (1746–1826), and other astronomers to be orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, nonetheless researchers such as Franz Xaver von Zach, (1754–1832), and Matthias Jakob Schleiden, (1804–1881), claimed that Hegel had dialectically annihilated the minor planets. ‘In 1801, Hegel had dialectically annihilated the asteroids. In 1801, Ceres was discovered, in 1802, Pallas was discovered’, said Schleiden.
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Hawkwind, ‘Seven by Seven’:
There is even a nonsense story about how Hegel had proven logically that the number of planets must be seven shortly before Neptune was discovered. And Karl Popper, (1902–1994), in what he thought was quite a hatchet job on Hegel, wrote:
‘Hegel, the source of all contemporary historicism, is a direct follower of Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle. Hegel achieved the most miraculous things. A master logician, it was child’s play for him with his powerful dialectical method to draw real physical rabbits out of purely metaphysical silk-hats. Thus, starting from Plato’s Timaeus and its number-mysticism, Hegel succeeded in ‘proving’ by purely philosophical methods (114 years after Newton’s Principia) that the planets must move according to Kepler’s laws. He even accomplished the deduction of the actual position of the planets, thereby proving that no planet could be situated between Mars and Jupiter (unfortunately, it had escaped his notice that such a planet had been discovered a few months earlier). Similarly, he proved that magnetizing iron means increasing its weight, that Newton’s theories of inertia and of gravity contradict each other (of course, he could not foresee that Einstein would show the identity of inert and gravitating mass), and many other things of that sort. That such a surprisingly powerful philosophical method was taken seriously can be only partially explained by the backwardness of German natural science in those days. For the truth is, I think, that it was not at first taken really seriously by serious men (such as Schopenhauer, or J. F. Fries), not at any rate by those scientists who, like Democritus, ‘ would rather find a single causal law than be the king of Persia’. Hegel’s fame was made by those who prefer quick initiation into the deeper secrets of this world to the laborious technicalities of a science which, after all, will only disappoint by its lack of power to unveil all mysteries; for they soon found out that nothing could be applied with such ease to any problem whatsoever, and at the same time with such impressive though only apparent difficulty, and with such quick and sure but imposing success, nothing could be used as cheaply and with so little scientific training* and knowledge, and nothing would give such a spectacular scientific air, as did Hegelian dialectics, the mystery method that replaced ‘barren formal logic’. Hegel’s success was the beginning of the ‘age of dishonesty’ (as Schopenhauer described the period of German Idealism) and of the ‘age of irresponsibility’ (as K. Heiden characterizes the age of modern totalitarianism); first of intellectual, and later, as one of its consequences, of moral irresponsibility; of a new age controlled by the magic of high-sounding words, by the power of jargon’.
- ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’
Well, I won’t go into all the mis-readings and mis-interpretations and evidence of lack of close reading or even lack of reading of texts at all manifested in what should have been a reputation destroying work and where the standard of argument is on the level of Richard Dawkins, (1949 -) in ‘The God Delusion’ and equally ill-informed and dogmatic and poorly written, but both ‘thinkers’ and I use that word wrongly seem to seem to have some weird kind of immunity and whatever nonsense they spout they continue to be well respected, indeed if a scientist is acquainted with the philosophy of science at all all that seems to mean for him or her is Popper. Suffice it for now for me to give a support to my claims about Popper’s text in the right at the start of his attack on Hegel he quotes Stirling without citing the source: ‘The philosophy of Hegel, then, was … a scrutiny of thought so profound that it was for the most part unintelligible..’ and he seems unaware that he is quoting from a defence of Hegel and that Stirling is being ironic.
Well as this needs to be put to bed once and for all I will save it for the next article and for now point out that there are many examples of similar judgments by scientists as well as philosophers and it is not at all surprising that corresponding prejudices against the author of De orbitis planetarum and later of the Encyclopaedia became very common among scholars of all disciplines and the general public yet the myth of the dialectically annihilated asteroids, influential though it was would not have been sufficient to establish so deeply rooted an aversion to Hegel’s philosophy of nature as the one that actually emerged and there had to be a more substantial point to Hegel’s and in part also to Schelling’s philosophy that provoked the resistance of so many learned thinkers, there had to be some Hegelian standpoint or starting point that significantly distinguished his philosophy from Immanuel Kant’s, (1724–1804), for throughout the nineteenth century the latter was respected by at least a quite significant number of scientists.
Why so? Well it is hardly surprising given that Popper is respected by a number of scientists too, yet perhaps it is due to Kant’s contention that conceptions without intuitions were empty which appears to limit the range of justified philosophical constructions much more strictly than Schelling and Hegel did after him. As John Burbidge explains the underlying problem:
‘Any philosophy of nature has a fundamental problem: How can the thinking of philosophy do justice to the facts of experience? Kant presented the challenge in a definitive way: thought involves concepts, and concepts, being general, express only possibilities. In sensation we encounter facts, and facts are singular and actual. … [W]here thought follows its own logic it can construct consistent theories, but these have no truth unless one can show how concept and fact correspond. In other words, explanations of nature are impossible without some point of contact between thought and … experience’.
- ‘Real Process. How Logic and Chemistry Combine in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature’
Even though Hegel did indeed largely recognize the latter point in his philosophy of nature, many of his opponents pretended that he did not. It is not only that philosophy must accord with the experience nature gives rise to; in its formation and in its development, philosophic science presupposes and is conditioned by empirical physics.
‘The material prepared out of experience by physics, is taken by the philosophy of nature at the point to which physics has brought it, and reconstituted without any further reference to experience as the basis of verification. Physics must therefore work together with philosophy so that the universalized understanding which it provides may be translated into the Notion by showing how this universal, as an intrinsically necessary whole, proceeds out of the Notion. The philosophic manner of presentation is not arbitrary, it does not stand on its head for a while because it has got tired of using its legs, nor does it paint up its every-day face just for a change; the ways of physics are not adequate to the Notion, and for that reason advances have to be made’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Hegel aspired to a philosophy that was to a degree a priori but also near to concrete phenomenal reality, and yet his critics saw his system in particular in his discussion of subjects that are also treated by the empirical sciences to be much more thoroughly a priori than Kant’s and much more abstract which may be due to a specific aspect of Hegelian thinking that Burbidge characterizes in this manner: philosophical thought, following the cognitive demands of the logic [i.e., Hegel’ s Science of Logic], could construct a model to represent the basic organization of matter, and then show how natural processes reproduced this conceptual structure. In other words … , the idea could derive natural principles by means of pure thought and then confirm its conclusions with reference to what actually happened in nature. This derivation using construction and proof would lead to a genuine cognition of nature’.
It is this issue of how to get from pure thought to what actually happens in nature that lies at the heart of many attacks against Hegel and his followers. The standard argument against Hegel, illustrated above by the dialectically annihilated asteroids, is that he intended to derive the structure of space, time, motion, matter, of the properties of light, electricity, magnetism, chemical elements, the essence of organisms (eventually including human beings, their history, etc.), completely and utterly from pure reason referring to empirical data where they somehow matched his ideas but ignoring them where they did not leading to the question of how Hegel in fact derives the basic terms and concepts of his philosophy of nature.
The Construction Principles of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’. The opening paragraphs of the second section of the ‘Philosophy of Nature, entitled ‘Physics’, provide important hints as to how any philosophy of nature should derive its basic terms. That which is immanently philosophical is the inherent necessity of the Conceptual determination, which then has to be illustrated by some natural existence or other.
‘To oriental intuition, it is the pure selfhood of consciousness which constitutes the substantial identity of spiritual and natural, and this constitutes the self-identical thought which in the abstract form of the true and the good is one with light. There is an attitude of mind which is said to be realistic, and which denies that ideality is present in nature; it should be asked to concern itself among other things with light, which is pure manifestation, and nothing but manifestation. The resultant self-identity now has matter within it as the primary abstract self of centrality, and is the simplicity of existent ideality. We have shown in the introduction, that in order to prove that this thought-determination is light, an empirical procedure has to be adopted. Here as everywhere, that which is immanently philosophical is the inherent necessity of Notional determination, which then has to be illustrated by some natural existence or other. Here I shall merely make a few remarks on the empirical existence of pure manifestation as light’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Notional determination/Conceptual determination, the original term is Begriffsbestimmung.
And furthermore and in the same sense:
‘The apriori Notional-determination of light is now the primary consideration. In the second instance we have to discover the mode and manner in which this Notional-determination occurs in our sensuous perception. As immediate, free, and independent motion returned into itself. matter is the simple self-equality of integrality. As motion has returned into itself, the celestial sphere has perfected and concluded the independent and ideal life within it. This completed being-in-self is the precise constitution of its integrality. As existent it is in itself; that is to say that this being-in-self of the totality is itself present. It contains the moment by which it is for another; that which is for itself is the power of its centre, or its self-containedness. This simple power is itself present however, and as it is the other of this determinate being, that which is merely internal is to the same extent external. As immediate, pure totality, matter therefore enters into the opposition between that which it is in itself, and that which it is for another as determinate being; for its determinate being does not yet contain its being-in-self. Apprehended as this incessant rotation of self-relating motion, as the return to being-in-and-for-self, and as this being-in-self which is there opposed to existence, matter is light. Light is the self-contained totality of matter; as mere purity of power it is the self-conserving and intensive vitality which is the concentration of the celestial sphere. Its rotation is precisely this immediate opposition of directions constituting selfrelating motion, in the flux and reflux of which all difference extinguishes itself. As existent identity it is pure line, and relates itself only to itself Light is this purely existent power, which fills space. Its being is absolute velocity, the presence of pure materiality, the being-in-self of real existence, or actuality as a transparent possibility. That which fills space has two aspects however, and if this filling subsists in being-for-self, light does not fill space, for the rigidity of that which offers resistance will then have lapsed. Light is present only in space therefore, and is certainly neither individualized nor exclusive. Space is merely abstract subsistence or implicit being, while as existent being-in-self, or determinate being which is in itself, and is s consequently pure, light is the power of being external to itself possessed by universal actuality as the possibility of confluxing with everything; it is the affinity with all which yet abides in itself, and by means of which determinate being surrenders none of its independence’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
The a priori Conceptual determination of light is now the primary consideration. In the second instance we have to discover the mode and manner in which this conceptual determination occurs in our sensuous perception. These phrases are in need of illustration, consider the conceptual determination of light. Light is pure self-identity, unity of intro-refl ection [reine Identität mit sich, als Einheit der Reflexion-in-sich ]. Such is a concrete example of a conceptual determination to be understood when we enter logically into the sphere of essence and this is a return into self in its other, its determinations appear within each other, and intro reflected in this way, now develop as forms. These forms are identity, diversity, opposition, and ground [Identit ät, Verschiedenheit, Gegensatz, Grund]. This is therefore an advance upon the primary immediacy of matter. (In Petry’s translation we find the term variety for the German word Verschiedenheit, but diversity is probably a more adequate translation).
‘The determinations of the Notion now take on materiality; the being-for-self of matter finds its point of unity, and as it is therefore the being-for-self of being-for-self, and the transition of the determinations, the disappearance of these determinations into one another has itself disappeared, and we enter logically into the sphere of essence. This is a return into self in its other; its determinations appear within each other, and intro-reflected in this way, now develop as forms. These forms are identity, variety, opposition, and ground. This is therefore an advance upon the primary immediacy of matter, in which space and time, motion and matter, passed over into one another, until in free mechanics matter finally appropriated the determinations as its own, and so revealed itself as self-mediated and determined. Impact is no longer external to matter, which is now differentiated as internal and immanent impact. It differentiates and determines itself by itself, and is intro-reflected. Its determinations are material, and express the nature of being material, and as it only consists of these determinations, it manifests itself within them. There are material qualities which belong to the substance of matter, and matter is whatever it is only through its qualities. In the first sphere the determinations are still distinguished from the substance, they are not material determinations; substance as such is still shut up within itself and unmanifest; and it was this which resulted in its merely seeking for its unity’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
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Hawkwind, ‘Lord of Light’:
Taken together this means that light the first phenomenon considered in the second section of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’, ‘Physics’, corresponds conceptually to the category of self-identity and so accordingly all phenomena treated in ‘Physics’ correspond to categories developed in the sphere of essence, that is, in the second section of the ‘Science of Logic’. In similar manner Hegel had pointed out in the first section of his ‘Philosophy of Nature’ that time is intuited becoming that is, that there is a correspondence between the category of becoming and the phenomenon occurring in our sensuous perception as time.
‘Time, like space, is a pure form of sensibility or intuition; it is the insensible factor in sensibility. Like space however, time does not involve the difference between objectivity and a distinct subjective consciousness. If these determinations were to be applied to space and time, the first would be abstract objectivity, and the second abstract subjectivity. Time is the same principle as the ego=ego of pure self-consciousness, but as time, this principle, or the simple Notion, is still completely external and abstract as mere intuited becoming; it is pure being-in-self, as a plain self-production. Time is as continuous as space is, for it is abstract negativity relating itself to itself, and in this abstraction there is as yet no difference of a real nature’.
‘It is said that everything arises and passes away in time, and that if one abstracts from everything, that is to say from the content of time and space, then empty time and empty space will be left, i.e. time and space are posited as abstractions of externality, and represented as if they were for themselves. But everything does not appear and pass in time; time itself is this becoming, arising, and passing away, it is the abstraction which has being, the Cronos which engenders all and destroys that to which it gives birth. That which is of a real nature is certainly distinguished from time, but is just as essentially identical with time. It is limited, and the other involved in this negation is outside it. Consequently, the determinateness is implicitly external to itself, and is therefore the contradiction of its being. Time itself consists of the abstraction and contradiction of this externality and of the restlessness of this contradiction. That which is finite is transitory and temporal because unlike the Notion, it is not in itself total negativity. It certainly contains negativity as its universal essence, but as it is not adequate to this essence and is one-sided, it relates itself to negativity as to its power. The Notion however, in its freely existing identity with itself, as ego=ego, is in and for itself absolute negativity and freedom, and is consequently, not only free from the power of time, but is neither within time, nor something temporal. It can be said on the contrary that it is the Notion which constitutes the power of time, for time is nothing but this negation as externality. Only that which is natural, in that it is finite, is subject to time; that which is true however, the Idea, spirit, is eternal. The Notion of eternity should not however be grasped negatively as the abstraction of time, and as if it existed outside time; nor should it be grasped in the sense of its coming after time, for by placing eternity in the future, one turns it into a moment of time’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Tangerine Dream, ‘Zeit’:
As a first approximation it can be said that all categories developed in the ‘Science of Logic’ have their respective counterparts in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ and also in the ‘Philosophy of Spirit’ and furthermore the succession of the logical categories and of their respective counterparts is roughly the same yet upon closer examination we discern subtle differences between content, structure, and the arrangement of the categories developed respectively in the ‘Science of Logic’ and in the two subsequent parts of Hegel’s system, for instance a dialectical step contains normally three moments in the sphere of Logic and in the sphere of spirit whereas it can contain four in some cases even five moments in the nature:
‘In nature taken as otherness, the square or tetrad also belongs to the whole form of necessity, as in the four elements, the four colours etc.; the pentad may also be found, in the five fingers and the five senses for example; but in spirit the fundamental form of necessity is the triad. The second term is difference, and appears in nature as a duality, for in nature the other must exist for itself as an otherness. Consequently, the subjective unity of universality and particularity is the fourth term, which has a further existence as against the other three. In themselves the monad and the dyad constitute the entire particularity, and the totality of the Notion itself can therefore proceed to the pentad’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature
A closer examination would lead too far astray here so suffice it to say that without any such differences, the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ would be nothing but an unnecessary repetition of the Logic and the basic point in the present context is that the following two-step construction scheme seems to underlie Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’. First the basic conceptual content of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ is derived from the categories developed in the ‘Science of Logic’ under the boundary condition that nature is the Idea in the form of otherness or externality.
‘Nature has yielded itself [i.e., at the end of the Science of Logic] as the Idea in the form of otherness. Since the Idea is therefore the negative of itself, or external to itself , nature is not merely external relative to this Idea (and to the subjective existence of the same, spirit), but is embodied as nature in the determination of externality’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
An alternative way of translating the last phrase is: Externality constitutes the determination in which nature as nature exists. The relation between idea Idea in the form of otherness and externality merits further investigation.
Second, Hegel makes several references to the sciences and to common sense perception of natural phenomena and they are to be understood as simply illustrations of the way in which the conceptual determinations occur empirically and although these two points may suggest Hegel is aiming for a completely a priori and hence non-empirical account of all natural phenomena this is false. First, Carl Siegel points out that a priori knowledge as conceived by Schelling and also by Hegel does not preclude reference to experience: as Siegel puts it, Schelling’ s and Hegel’s a priori is nothing other than conceptual necessity.
And what is conceptual necessity? A natural law is conceptually necessary if it reveals a structure or a relationship of concepts that corresponds to the basic principles of the ‘Science of Logic’ for instance the existence of natural motions is conceptually necessary in the sense that motion represents the unity of space and time that is derived dialectically at the start of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ in accordance with the development at the start of Logic of Being . That motion is the unity of space and time is evident from the fact that velocity, the basic quantity characterizing motion, is a relation between the length of a path and a corresponding duration. And within ‘Organics’ Hegel contends that it is conceptually necessary that higher animals do not eat all the time or that they have ‘interrupted intussusception’ their non-permanent eating corresponds to their individualized or rather self-individualizing relation with individuals and with inorganic nature and this contrasts with the behaviour of plants that nourish themselves if possible without break and that do not yet represent fully individualized organisms.
The analysis of Kepler’ s laws in the Encyclopaedia provides another example. Space and time have to be considered as two qualitatively distinct moments of planetary motions and Kepler’ s third law which states that the squares of the orbital periods of any two planets are proportional to the cubes of their distances from the sun is the mathematical formulation of the particular quantitative and qualitative relation between space and time in the case of planetary motion. So concerning the conceptual necessity of elliptical orbits since we know (a posteriori from Kepler’ s third law) that space and time are not merely exchangeable parameters in celestial motions (as they are, for instance, in unaccelerated rectilinear motion: s = const. · t , t = s / const.), it would not fit the level of complexity reached in celestial mechanics to conceive the planetary orbits as circular since a circle is defined by one and only one quantity namely its radius and in the mathematical description of the motion of a body on a circular orbit the spatial coordinate (for example, the position angle X ) and time coordinate t are precisely exchangeable parameters, linked with each other again by a simple linear function: X = const. · t . So the geometrical description of circular motion as X = const. · t would be largely the same as that of rectilinear motion and only if the speed of a body on a circular orbit were periodically to increase and decrease would the situation be different and as for this possibility even though it is conceivable that a uniformly increasing and decreasing motion should take place in a circle, this conceivability is only an abstract representability since there is no reason why the speed of a body moving along a line that is completely isotropic should increase and decrease at specific but geometrically equivalent points of its orbit. The term abstract representability (abstrakte Vorstellbarkeit ) is the opposite of conceptual necessity.
Only in the case of an elliptical orbit do space and time cease to be merely exchangeable parameters because here the function describing the time — dependence of the radius vector of a planet is a complex nonlinear equation (Kepler ’ s equation) that cannot be inverted in any analytic way and so for the motion of a planet along an elliptical orbit space and time are no longer exchangeable parameters and in this sense the elliptical orbits of the planets (described in Kepler’s fi rst law) are conceptually necessary in the light of the totality of Kepler’s laws and this example shows that conceptual necessity is closely linked to systematical coherence namely of a set of basic laws, logical structures, or metaphysical assumptions.
The above examples convey the formal idea of conceptual necessity and the principal point concerning conceptual necessity is that it does not preclude reference to experience on the contrary conceptual necessity justifies the content of empirical laws or observations, it is their rationalization by means of dialectics.
As far as the details of natural phenomena are concerned the claim is not made that philosophy should aim at deriving all of them a priori, that is to say, at proving that all natural phenomena necessarily present themselves in the way they do. Hegel expressly states that it is impossible for a philosophy of nature to account for all the details of natural processes and phenomena.
‘Philosophy has to proceed on the basis of the Notion, and even if it demonstrates very little, one has to be satisfied. It is an error on the part of the philosophy of nature to attempt to face up to all phenomena; this is done in the finite sciences, where everything has to be reduced to general conceptions (hypotheses). In these sciences the empirical element is the sole confirmation of the hypothesis, so that everything has to be explained. Whatever is known through the Notion is its own explanation and stands firm however, so that philosophy need not be disturbed if the explanation of each and every phenomenon has not yet been completed. Here I have merely traced the foundations of a rational interpretation, as this must be employed in the comprehension of the mathematical and mechanical laws of nature within the free realm of measures. Specialists do not reflect upon the matter, but a time will come when the rational concept of this science will be demanded!’
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Philosophy has to proceed on the basis of the Notion, and even if it demonstrates very little, one has to be satisfied. It is an error on the part of the philosophy of nature to attempt to face up to all phenomena … philosophy need not be disturbed if the explanation of each and every phenomenon has not yet been completed, the same scepticism toward a complete a priori deduction within the domain that has traditionally been called ontologia specialis occurs in the Preface to the ‘Philosophy of Right’ where Hegel criticizes Plato and Fichte for their ambition to demonstrate the necessity of particular positive laws, social institutions, and so on an ambition that he calls super-erudition, (Ultraweisheit).
As for the term ontologia specialis in relation to Hegel’ s system, Dieter Wandschneider correlates the ‘Science of Logic’ with the traditional ontologia generalis and both ‘Philosophy of Nature’ and ‘Philosophy of Spirit’ with the traditional ontologia specialis and it is particularly within ontologia specialis that a priori deductions become problematic. Hegel himself uses the term Realphilosophie as equivalent of ontologia specialis.
As for super-erudition:
‘Plato might have omitted his recommendation to nurses to keep on the move with infants and to rock them continually in their arms. And Fichte too need not have carried what has been called the ‘construction’ of his passport regulations to such a pitch of perfection as to require subjects not merely to sign their passports but to have their likenesses painted on them. Along such tracks all trace of philosophy is lost, and such super-erudition it can the more readily disclaim since its attitude to this infinite multitude of topics should of course be most liberal’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Right’
The property of nature that makes it impossible for spirit to comprehend everything in it as necessary or to derive all its features even is the impotence of nature ( die Ohnmacht der Natur). ‘The impotence of nature is to be attributed to its only being able to maintain the determinations of the Notion in an abstract manner. … ‘) This term reflects the fact that any even the most sophisticated system of classification of natural genera and species as well as any attempt to find basic forces, pure substances, and so on — in brief, each and every systematization of nature, is confronted with transitional phenomena, borderline cases, and exceptions that do not occur in pure logic. This impotence on the part of nature sets limits to philosophy and it is the height of pointlessness to demand of the Concept (Notion) that it should explain, and as it is said, construe or deduce these contingent products of nature, although the more isolated and trifling they are the easier the task appears to be. Which is to say contingency or chance plays an essential role in the realm of nature and philosophy should for this very reason refrain from any attempt to deduce all features of the material world from a priori principles.
The impotence of nature, and the limitations of our knowledge about nature at any given time, does this inhibits an a priori conceptual account of nature altogether or merely limits it? In the second option at least the structure or skeleton of the Philosophy of Nature is developed purely conceptually. As Stephen Houlgate observes: ‘Some argue that the structure or skeleton of the Philosophy of Nature is developed purely conceptually, but that the flesh, as it were, is derived from empirical observation and scientific experimentation and analysis. On this view, Hegel is led to the very idea of nature by the Science of Logic, develops the conceptual structure of nature a priori from the initial determination of nature as abstract externality, and then ‘maps’ natural phenomena as described by science on to the various conceptual determinations that arise. … Others argue, however, that scientific discoveries themselves condition, and perhaps even determine, the development of Hegel’ s conceptual account of nature’.
The second option is more likely to describe what Hegel actually does. As William Maker said: ‘Hegel articulates a philosophy of nature which …provides an a priori account of nature, not as it is given in all its specificity (as that must fall beyond systematic thought), but in terms of delineating and accounting for the general features of givenness as such’. Nonetheless it may be that any present day philosophy of nature should proceed further from that which Hegel foreshadowed: ‘to provide [only] a flexible framework which organizes in an intelligible way, and is wholly relative to, the scientific knowledge of a given time, and which changes with future scientific discoveries’, as Houlgate puts it.
‘Convegno in uno smeraldo’ (‘Conference in an emerald’), 1923, Fortunato Depero
SPACE AND TIME.
Nothing is merely general and nothing is merely individual and the general is the systematic unity, the inner vital principle as we might put it, of the individuals and the individuals are the self-expression of the general, and space and time are doubtless individuals but as systematic unities of particular spaces and times they are equally general, and if humanity, for instance, is a general notion it as the organic unity of human beings is also an individual entity. Hence time and space as wholes in which times and spaces have being are at once general and individual and the concrete universal is the same as the rightly conceived individual and if therefore the representation of objects in time and space as Immanuel Kant demonstrates is possible only through the synthetic act of putting them and their parts together, perception and conception, time and space and the categories must be seen as the correlatives of and inseparable from each other whereby neither can be reduced to the other and neither can be kept apart from the other and thought must have its counterpart in perception and perception its sustaining principle in thought and space and time as perceived facts presuppose thoughts as their essence and these thoughts if they are not to be empty forms have to be embodied, externalised in the multiplicity of sense and upon such an insight Hegel’s theory is grounded.
The logical ground of space is the category of quantum with its distinguishable moments of continuity and discreteness and the parts of a whole are external to each other and discrete because they are continuous with each other and their continuity means that they are distinct entities each repelling the others and forming the whole in its unity with the other and both these factors are implied in the oneness of the whole which as conceived is quantum and as perceived is space. The repulsion of the many visible units. The one view is as inadequate as the other. If space involves both continuity and discreteness it must be the same as quantity and it is evident that what this means is that quantity is the universal of thought of which space is a particular sensible form and the former is the basic principle of the latter, and from this it follows that there can be no dualism of matter and extension.
Space is not the empty receptacle in which things exist and the relation between them is not that of the container and the contained for we cannot think that if all matter were annihilated space would still continue to be, the being of the one is dependent upon that of the other and in the hierarchy of categories quantity arises out of quality and passes into the synthesis of both in measure and from measure again there emerges the distinction of essence and appearance which find their reconciliation in the concept of thing and its qualities though there are intermediate stages through which these transitions are made and the various categories are characterizations of the one ultimate reality of different degrees of completeness and adequacy and reality itself is at one level of interpretation quantity and is not something existing in space. Thus far there is agreement with René Descartes, (1596–1650), who regards matter as identical with extension yet matter although extension is more than extension and reality in its ultimate interpretation is infinitely more than matter. Space or quantity and matter are merely abstractions from the one all-inclusive Spirit the Absolute Idea.
A thing is extension but it is more it is the unity of various qualities and as substance is the identity that persists in its changes and the reduction of it to mere extension is therefore impossible and yet it is not other than extension and in order to be it must be extended quite as much as it must have qualities but its real nature is not disclosed until in the dialectical evolution of categories we observe it finally emerging as mind or spirit. So the characterisation of reality as extension is not incorrect but it is adequate, what is extended can be such not by itself but only as a phase or moment of the Absolute and the conception of matter as emerging from space-time is true only in this sense that matter is a more adequate characterisation of reality than quantity but it is itself a category of a very low grade and its real significance is disclosed only when we see it in its proper place in the organised system of the categories.
Time, like space, is continuous as well as discrete and is therefore quantitative but its essential nature is succession, flow, the passage from one moment to another and the category of which it is the counterpart in experience is Actuality and the specific forms of it with which Hegel begins are possibility, contingency and necessity and in actuality the antithesis of essence and appearance is finally overcome. When the distinction between them comes to be made the utmost stress is laid upon their opposition and the essence is regarded as the primordial unity of which immediate being is merely the show and the world of phenomena is transient and unreal and has its unchanging ground in the realm of essences behind them. And yet a little reflection shows that the essence cannot have such a primacy over appearance for if appearance presupposes essence the latter equally implies the former, they are the correlatives of each other and Essence conceived not as an underlying identity simply but as expressed in its own appearance is the Thing and the transition from the one to the other is affected through the intermediate categories of identity and difference, likeness and unlikeness, and the ground.
In the Thing essence and appearance come together but the antithesis between them still remains and reflection shows that the Thing cannot be apart from its properties, it is not anything in itself but is the bond which keeps its various properties together and is fully expressed in them and the properties therefore become matters not independent but interdependent on one another and in virtue of the one essence that is manifested in them the things are also elements of a connected whole and are real only as they exert influence on each other. Hence we pass to the conception of matter and form, phenomena and their laws and the intermediation of different things which is at the same time a unity of self-relation is their law or form. And the law or form implies the content, namely the related phenomena. We are here in the presence, implicitly, of the absolute correlation of content and form: namely., their reciprocal revulsion, so that content is nothing but the revulsion of form into content, and form nothing but the revulsion of content into form. This mutual revulsion is one of the most important laws of thought.
The correlation of form and content, law and phenomenon, viewed successively with increasing degrees of truth as whole and part, force and its expression inward and outward constitutes Actuality. In it the essence is no longer concealed behind its appearance but is quite on the surface. It is the inward which at the same time is the outward and the inner is no longer to be sought for somewhere at the back of the outer but is in full view in the outer itself but nevertheless the distinction is not and cannot be set aside. In Hegel’s gradation of the categories the higher category always retains the lower as a subordinated and transmuted element of itself and the identity of the outward and the inward does not mean that the difference between them has simply vanished it reappears in a new form in the palpable and visible. The Thing is not the mysterious substratum, the that I know not what of John Locke, (1632–1704), to which qualities are somehow attached. It is the outer object of perception itself but it is also the inward, the possibility of something else into which it alters and everything therefore is the actuality of that from which it arises and is the possibility of that which emerges from it and this is the new meaning which the inward and the outward acquire as moments of Actuality and if anything is taken merely as the inward it is only possible; if it is taken as the outward only, it is contingent and both are unreal abstractions and the real truth is that each of the successive states through which a thing passes in its alterations is the possibility, the inner of what follows it and is the actuality, the outer of what precedes it.
Immediate actuality is in general as such never what it ought to be, it is a finite actuality with an inherent flaw and its vocation is to be consumed and yet the other aspect of actuality is its essentiality and this is primarily the inside, which as a mere possibility is no less destined to be suspended. Possibility thus suspended is the issuing of a new actuality of which the first immediate actuality was the presupposition and here we see the alternation which is involved in the notion of a condition and the conditions of a thing seem at first sight to involve no bias any way. Really however an immediate actuality of this kind includes in it the germ of something else altogether and at first this something else is only a possibility, but the form of possibility is soon suspended and translated into actuality and this new actuality thus issuing is the very inside of the immediate actuality which it uses up.
Hence there comes into being quite an other shape of things and yet it is not an other: for the first actuality is only put as what it in essence was and the conditions which are sacrificed which fall to the ground and are spent only unite with themselves in the other actuality and such in general is the nature of the process of actuality and the actual is no mere case of immediate Being, but as essential being, a suspension of its own immediacy, and thereby mediating itself with itself. Actuality as the unity of essence with existence, or of inward with outward is no mere static being ut is essentially changeful, passing continually from one determination to another, ever hasting never resting, it is process, this it must necessarily be for if it is essential being it must manifest itself and now that it is seen to be impossible for it to be concealed behind its appearances its manifestation must take the form of its expression in its own changes and these successive determinations in virtue of their identity, are necessarily related to one another.
Developed Actuality, as the coincident alternation of inner and outer, the alternation of their opposite motions combined into a single motion, is necessity and what we ordinarily call a thing is only a cross-section of it and in its proper nature it is the whole unfolding entity, the being in the process of unceasing alteration. Now process is time, and time therefore must be regarded as the inmost essence of reality, its very life-blood, time is most certainly not an unreal appearance on the contrary it as an essential feature of reality in so far as reality involves change and things are not in time any more than they are in space, they are time just as they are quantity or space.
The Absolute is neither timeless nor in time it is time itself, in one aspect of it, at a particular grade of its being yet it transcends time because ultimately it is mind or spirit, and Substance, which is the developed form of actuality, is essentially changing, to be perpetually in a state of alteration is its very nature and in the actual condition in which it is at a particular moment it is the possibility of that into which it is translated at the next moment and without such alteration it would not be substance at all but in all its mutations it remains identical with itself and this absolute self-identity is substance as such which as necessity gives the negative to this form of inwardness and thus invests itself with actuality but which also gives the negative to this outward thing and in this negativity the actual as immediate is only an accidental which through this bare possibility passes over into another actuality.
Apart from change, process, time, substance is an unreal abstraction, it is an abiding unity fully revealed in its altering accidents, Substance is not beyond its accidents like essence, but is in them, it is the totality of the accidents, revealing itself in them as their absolute negativity, that is to say, as absolute power and at the same time as the wealth of all content yet this content is nothing but that very revelation since the character being reflected in itself to make content is only a passing stage of the form which passes away in the power of substance. Substantiality is the absolute form-activity and the power of necessity and all content is but a vanishing element which merely belongs to this process, where there is an absolute revulsion of form and content into one another.
If substance is fully revealed in its successive accidents and has no meaning independently of them it can only be regarded as the connecting link the bond of union between these accidents and so conceived it is causality and the earlier accident or determination is necessarily that is to say causally related to the later, because both are but different forms of the same substance. The identity of cause and effect in their difference is an essential ingredient here for both cause and effect are one and the same content using the notion of causality in a very limited and strict sense, carefully distinguishing it from reciprocity with with which it is liable to be confused in popular usage, we are to understand by it the relation of a substance, as affected by the various influences to which it is subject at the moment to its own immediately succeeding form into which it passes. A is the cause of B yet the real cause is not A but B as affected by A in its immediately preceding state. It is not the stroke of a hammer that breaks a thing into pieces but the things as struck by the hammer is the cause of its being broken into pieces and succession in time is thus implied in the causal relation and if the world is under the sway of the law of causality it must inevitably be a temporal world.
But change depends upon the mutual influence of different substances on one another, in an isolated substance absolutely unrelated to other substances if such a thing were possible there would be no sort of change whatever. The changes of things causally related to one another presuppose action and reaction or reciprocity and a thing can alter only by giving rise to alterations in other things and by itself in the same process being subject to their influences. The transition from causality to reciprocity is open to interpretation but apparently things can undergo causally connected changes only in so far as they exert influence on one another and this conclusion necessarily follows from the conception of the interconnectedness of things at which we have already arrived even at the stage of the category of Ground in the dialectical evolution of concepts. Things are real not in their isolation which is impossible but only in so far as they are related to one another and a change in a thing therefore means a change in its relations to other things yet such a change cannot be one sided it must also mean a change in their relations to it.
Changes of things in brief are always the correlated factors of a single transaction and so we see that the causally determined alterations of substances involving time presuppose their interaction as constituent elements of a single spatial or quantitative world and things that are interrelated parts of an all-containing whole are simply the more concrete forms of quanta and have in them all that the latter imply hence they cannot be without quantity or spaceless and it is such things that in their interaction undergo changes in time.
The objective world of experience is a world of reciprocally determining substances coexisting in space and manifesting themselves in their successive determinations in time related to one another according to the law of causality and change in time presupposes interaction of things in space, and things interacting in space are ipso facto things changing in time. Time and space therefore are inseparable from each other. The being of the one is implicated with that of the other and all the various phases and aspects of reality are inseparably connected yet the connection between space and time is especially close and intimate, they are not two entities but two aspects of one and the same entity which may be called space-time and time is related to space very much as the dimensions of space are related to one another.
‘Studio per ordura di un arazzo’ (‘Study for a tapestry border’), 1941, Fortunato Depero
Dedicated to my lovely One, your philosopher is struggling outside of his field here but he does his best for you I do everything for you and anyway:
Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the French I took
But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me, too
What a wonderful world this would be
Don’t know much about geography
Don’t know much trigonometry
Don’t know much about algebra
Don’t know what a slide rule is for
But I do know one and one is two
And if this one could be with you
What a wonderful world this would be
Now, I don’t claim to be an A student
But I’m trying to be
For maybe by being an A student, baby
I can win your love for me
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Coming up next:
Hegel and Newton.
To be continued ….
