On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ : A Free Reflex of Spirit — part forty nine.
‘Musing on the roaring ocean’
by Robert Burns (1759–1796)
Musing on the roaring ocean,
Which divides my love and me,
Wearying heaven in warm devotion
For his weal where’er he be:
Hope and Fear’s alternate billow
Yielding late to Nature’s law,
Whispering spirits round my pillow,
Talk of him that ‘s far awa.
Ye whom sorrow never wounded,
Ye who never shed a tear,
Care-untroubled, joy-surrounded,
Gaudy day to you is dear.
Gentle night, do thou befriend me!
Downy sleep, the curtain draw!
Spirits kind, again attend me,
Talk of him that ‘s far awa!
‘Sinnend am bewegten Meere’
von Adolf Wilhelm Ernst von Winterfeld (1824–1888)
‘Sinnend am bewegten Meere,
Das mein Lieb und mich getheilt,
Send’ ich in die weite Leere,
Gruß und Kuß ihr, wo sie weilt.
Furcht und Hoffnung, wechselweise,
Streiten um die Herrschaft beid’,
Flüstern um mein Lager leise,
Stets von ihr, die, ach, so weit.
Ihr, von Sorgen nie verwundet,
Nie im Bett vor Thränen wach,
Die Euch Scherz und Jubel mundet,
Euch ist theuer jeder Tag.
Süße Nacht, o hab’ Erbarmen,
Komm mit deinem Schlummerkleid,
Träume, o erzählt mir Armen,
Doch von ihr, die, ach, so weit.
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831). ‘Philosophy of Nature’. ‘Organic Physics’.
Supernatural nature.
Continuing to follow the thread of what Alison Stone, (1972 — ), refers to as cluster naturalism, (see previous article) we arrive at the question of the rejection of belief in supernatural entities and processes.
The supernatural? Is there much point in discussing it? Would we know what we are discussing anyway? We are all a part of nature. There may well be a supernatural, how can we know? And let us suppose that there is. But of what use is the concept to us?
The supernatural, is it not unfalsifiable? Undisciplined? Does it not explain nothing? Or produce nothing? Or so DarkMatter2525 contends, (in an age restricted video, who knows why? Maybe because of Aphrodite of the Conveniently Long Hair):
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As far as there being only one God then if God is the ultimate explanation of the universe then there can indeed only be one ultimate explanation of the universe hence philosophy which is concerned with the ultimate explanation of the universe should always aspire to monism. But if God is a supernatural entity what does the supernatural explain?
And what of transcendence? Transcendence, from the Latin prefix trans-, meaning beyond, and scandare, to climb, when you achieve transcendence, you have gone beyond ordinary limitations and the term is frequently used to describe a spiritual or religious state or a condition of moving beyond physical needs and realities. Jordan Peterson is continually harping on about the transcendent, (1962 — ), moral grounding depends on it, science depends on it etc ….
He has everything back to front as always, ontologically transcendent is oxymoronic gibberish, and transcendence .. what that means is transcending human experience and it is impossible for a human to transcend what is beyond human experience. The writer J. G. Ballard, (1930–2009), understood this, or rather albeit his novels depict a human race apparently rushing toward destruction only because it takes an enormous act of imagination to consider what shape the alternative, that is to say, transcendence, would take, the point being that the future has to be accepted and transcended through a process Ballard designates as ‘normalizing of the pycho-pathological’ so we can come through to the other side and he appeals to Joseph Conrad’s, (1857–1924), observation that the writer must immerse him (or herself) in the most destructive element of the times and see if he (or she) can swim:
‘A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns…The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up…In the destructive element immerse’.
- ‘Lord Jim’
In one of his stories Ballard implies that if God exists He needs to be un-invented for human beings cannot bear too much eternity (transcendence). But something is amiss here, I mean with regard to his account of how we discover the existence of God through science:
‘During the spring and summer of 1980 an extraordinary rumour began to sweep the world…. In a few countries, notably Canada and Brazil, the persistence of the rumour caused a dangerous drop in commodity prices, and firm denials were issued by governments of the day. At the United Nations headquarters in New York the Secretary-General appointed a committee of prominent scientists, churchmen and business leaders with the sole purpose of restraining the excitement which the rumour was beginning to generate by the late spring. This, of course, convinced everyone that something of universal significance would soon be disclosed … When the meeting began the President of the united Nations called on a succession of prominent scientists, led by the director of the radio-observatory at Jodrell Bank in Britain. After a preamble in which he recalled science’s quest for the unifying principle that lay behind the apparent uncertainty and caprice of nature, he described the remarkable research work undertaken during recent years with the telescopes at Jodrell Bank and Arecibo in Puerto Rico. Just as the discovery of radioactivity had stemmed from the realization that even smaller particles existed within the apparently indivisible atom, so these two giant telescopes had revealed that all electromagnetic radiations in fact contained a system of infinitely smaller vibrations. These ‘ultra-microwaves’, as they had been called, permeated all matter and space. However, the speaker continued, a second and vastly more important discovery had been made when the structure of these microwaves was analysed by computer. This almost intangible electromagnetic system unmistakably exhibited a complex and continuously changing mathematical structure with all the attributes of intelligence. To give only one example, it responded to the behaviour of the human observer and was even sensitive to his spoken thoughts. Exhaustive studies of the phenomenon confirmed beyond all doubt that this sentient being, as it must be called, pervaded the entire universe. More exactly, it provided the basic substratum of which the universe was composed. The very air they were breathing in the assembly hall at that moment, their minds and bodies, were formed by this intelligent being of infinite dimensions. At the conclusion of the statement a profound silence spread through the General Assembly, and from there to the world beyond’.
- ‘The Life and Death of God’
But of course were such a thing to happen it would be a very interesting discovery and a mind implies beliefs, desires, yearnings, and we would certainly want to know what they are for this mind. But we could not say we have proven the existence of God. Why not? Saul Aaron Kripke, (1940–2022), explains why, though he is talking about unicorns:
‘So it is said that though we have all found out that there are no unicorns, of course there might have been unicorns. Under certain circumstances there would have been unicorns. And this is an example of something I think is not the case. Perhaps according to me the truth should not be put in terms of saying that it is necessary that there should be no unicorns, but just that we can’t say under what circumstances there would have been unicorns. Further, I think that even if archeologists or geologists were to discover tomorrow some fossils conclusively showing the existence of animals in the past satisfying everything we know about unicorns from the myth of the unicorn, that would not show that there were unicorns’.
- ‘Naming and Necessity’
Do unicorns have an affinity for virgin maidens? Yes, according to the myth of unicorns. What flavour of pizza do unicorns prefer? The question is unanswerable unless the myth provides the answer which as far as I know does not. There is no counterfactual situation properly describable as one in which there would have been unicorns. General terms for natural kinds are to be assimilated to proper names of individuals and regarded as nondescriptive rigid designators (a rigid designator designates the same object in all possible worlds in which that object exists and never designates anything else) of these kinds, so that ‘tiger’ (or ‘the tiger’) is the rigid designator of an actual species and ‘unicorn’ (or ‘the unicorn’) is the rigid designator of a mythical species. There are several distinct hypothetical species (some mammalian, some reptilean) which would have had the external appearance of unicorns in the myth. No one of them can therefore be such that we can correctly say of it that it ‘would have been the species of unicorns’ if it had existed and been so describable.
But David I hear you protest ‘God’ neither rigidly designates an actual species or a mythical species. God is not a natural kind, rather, a supernatural kind we might say.
Well ok the notion of rigid designators is not as straightforward as it might appear, and we cannot appeal to the mention of unicorns in the King James Bible which is very likely a mistranslation anyway. Re’em, also reëm (Hebrew רְאֵם), an animal mentioned nine times in the Hebrew Bible translated as unicorn in the King James version. Maybe it was a rhinoceros, it could not have been a unicorn, because there are no unicorns.
‘Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?’
- ‘Job’ 39:9–12.
Of course, Christian apologists like to assert that God’s existence cannot be proven or disproven by science, what has natural science to do with the non-natural? What has physics to do with the non-physical? Though no doubt were the Ballard story to play itself out in the world then they will be changing there tune claiming that science has proven God’s existence albeit as I explained even in those circumstances it hasn’t done.
Could we ask Ballard’s God the question Hegel asks at the start of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’: ‘Why has God determined himself in order to create nature?’
Anyway, whether the supernatural or the transcendent can be meaningfully talked about I shall press on (and not before time .. yes I agree with you). Naturalism, the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted, such a belief is standardly opposed to various modes of pre-modern belief in supernatural entities be it God, the devil, angels, demons, spirits of the forest, elements and humours, relations of sympathy and communication between ostensibly very different natural things, for instance diseased bodily organs and particular plants, or Platonic or Aristotelian forms or essences instantiated by particular empirical things. One may suppose however that pre-moderns considered all such sorts of entities not as supernatural but natural for after all they took such entities as organising, populating, and pervading the natural world but hence pre-moderns regarded nature itself as a supernatural realm that is one structured internally by supernatural forces and powers which raises the question in what sense are these various forces and powers supernatural?
Charles Taylor, (1948 — ), contends that in the modern world of disenchantment the ‘only locus of thoughts, feelings, spiritual elan is what we call minds [and] the only minds in the cosmos are those of humans’ whereas people experienced the enchanted pre-modern world to be populated by ‘spirits, demons, and moral forces’. Forces were felt to reside directly in things for instance the curative agency attributed to relics of the saints or the sacramental power of the Host, and meanings in addition were taken to dwell in things independent of and exterior to our minds and such objectively existing meanings could be communicated across things or imposed upon us as could the sacred power that transmits itself if we touch a saint’s garment. Taylor infers that no sharp line was drawn between ‘personal agency and impersonal force’ and furthermore, he contends, that the kind of influence that an item such as a saint’s relic was thought able to exercise was not efficient causation, the productive action of the agent, or efficient cause, or the relationship of such a cause to its effect. Taylor alleges for instance that in the medical theory of four humours black bile was not seen as the efficient cause of melancholy but rather as embodying melancholy, whereby this relation of embodiment was not a causal relation.
Maybe the relation was causal if we are prepared to allow for other kinds of causation beyond efficient causation whereby perhaps black bile and psychical melancholy both instantiate a higher-level form or meaning common to them both, melancholy in a general and not exclusively physical or psychical form, or maybe black bile realises at a more concrete bodily level melancholia in the psyche. There are forms in nature on either view which different things instantiate, embody, and realise to varying degrees and such forms include meanings that are at times common to superficially different things so that for instance the flower lungwort can cure diseased lungs since both partake in a common field of lung-related meaning.
Lying beneath such a pre-modern way of thinking is acceptance of final and formal causes whereby the cause of something’s being as it is, the spleen overfull of black bile, is the form, melancholia, that the spleen instantiates and so here the form of any natural thing is the telos guiding its development so that it realises this form as fully as possible and this remains true even for the disordered spleen which is disordered n virtue of it realising a disturbed form. As for what renders such a mode of thought supernaturalistic for those of a mechanistic materialist bent such as Baron d’Holbach, (1723–1789), it is supernaturalistic (expialidocious) to believe in formal or final causes at all since forms and purposes are not material.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), does not subscribe to such a view in any straightforward manner, straightforwardly take that view yet he does contend that if one believes in real non-material concepts or plans that really affect and regulate material processes then one is postulating a special kind of supernatural cause.
‘Now in order to keep physics strictly within its bounds, we there abstract entirely from the question as to whether natural purposes are purposes intentionally or unintentionally, since otherwise we would be meddling in extraneous affairs (namely, those of metaphysics). We settle for regarding natural purposes as objects that are explicable solely in terms of natural laws that must be conceived of by using the idea of purposes as principle, and that are even internally cognizable only in this way as regards their intrinsic form. Therefore we must avoid any suspicion, in physics, that we might presume to mix something in with our bases of cognition that does not belong to physics at all-viz., a supernatural cause. That is why, when in teleology we speak of nature as if the purposiveness in it were intentional, we do so in such a way that we attribute this intention to nature, i.e., to matter. This serves to indicate that this term refers here only to a principle of reflective, rather than of determinative, judgment. (It indicates this inasmuch as no one would attribute to lifeless material an intention in the proper sense of the term, and so no misunderstanding can arise.) It indicates, therefore, that we are not trying to introduce [into physics] a special causal basis, but are trying to introduce only another method for our use of reason in investigation — a method different from the one in terms of mechanical laws-in order to compensate for the inadequacy we find in the latter method when we search even empirically for all the particular laws of nature. Thus, when we apply teleology to physics, we do quite rightly speak of nature’s wisdom, parsimony, foresight, or beneficence. But in speaking this way we do not turn nature into an intelligent [verstandig] being (since that would be absurd), nor are we so bold as to posit a different, intelligent being above nature as its architect, since that would be presumptuous. Rather, we use these terms only to designate a kind of causality of nature by analogy with the causality we have in the technical use of reason, since that helps us to keep in view the rule we must follow in investigating certain products of nature’.
‘Why, then, does teleology usually not constitute a distinct part of theoretical natural science, but is employed by theology as a propaedeutic or transition? This is done so that, when we study nature in terms of its mechanism, we keep to what we can observe or experiment on in such a way that we could produce it as nature does, at least in terms of similar laws; for we have complete insight only into what we can ourselves make and accomplish according to concepts. But organization, as an intrinsic purpose of nature, infinitely surpasses all our ability to exhibit anything similar through art. As for extrinsic natural arrangements that we consider purposive (such as wind, rain, and so on), physics does indeed examine the mechanism in them; but it is quite unable to exhibit their reference to purposes insofar as this reference is to be a condition that attaches to the cause necessarily, since that necessity in the [causal] connection concerns nothing but the connection of our concepts, and does not concern the character of things’.
- ‘Critique of Judgement’
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‘Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then. Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I reached the boat; at any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which Nature utters only in her wildest moods.When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital; brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries’.
- ‘Dagon’
So Saul died, and his three sons, and all his house died together.
And when all the men of Israel that were in the valley saw that they fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, then they forsook their cities, and fled: and the Philistines came and dwelt in them.
And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his sons fallen in mount Gilboa.
And when they had stripped him, they took his head, and his armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to carry tidings unto their idols, and to the people.
And they put his armour in the house of their gods, and fastened his head in the temple of Dagon.
- 1 ‘Chronicles’ 10. 6–10
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Final causation has sometimes also been charged with being supernaturalistic on the grounds that it implicates acceptance of backwards causation. As for belief in real forms it need not as such be supernaturalistic but the medieval worldview is perhaps still supernaturalistic for several reasons for in this worldview final and formal causation pervade nature and are its dominant forms of causation and furthermore there is relatively speaking not much interest in investigating empirically into relations of efficient causation and even further as a consequence again a myriad of particular formal and final causal relations are invoked to explain events usually with no account or no credible empirically justified account of any efficient causal relations that support such final and formal relations and enable them to take place, for instance there is no account of any efficient-causal mechanisms by which lungwort leaves might have curative effects on diseased lungs.
In the absence of support from efficient causal mechanisms the putative formal and final causal relations become mysterious and magical and in that sense supernatural albeit they would necessarily not be so if we knew of efficient-causal mechanisms supporting and enabling them and on these three counts we may situate the medieval worldview at the supernaturalistic end of the spectrum. As it happens in Hegel’s day many biologists were reintroducing belief in final and formal causes and they viewed this as entirely consistent with and in fact required by their inquiries into efficient causation. Kant provided a justification for this practice upon the condition that belief in final and formal causes remain regulative, we cannot understand organisms in exclusively mechanical terms.
‘… as far as nature’s construction in terms of particular laws is concerned (for whose systematic coherence we do not have the key), those principles pertain merely to reflective judgment: they do not determine the actual [an sich] origin of these beings, but only say that the character of our understanding and of our reason is such that the only way we can conceive of the origin of such beings is in terms of final causes. And hence we are certainly permitted to strive as hard and even as boldly as possible to explain such beings mechanically. Indeed, reason calls on us to make this attempt, even though we know that there are subjective grounds why we can never make do with a mechanical explanation, grounds that have to do with the particular kind and limitation of our understanding (and not with any intrinsic contradiction between a mechanical production and an origin in terms of purposes). Finally we saw, in the solution of the antinomy, that the possibility of reconciling the two ways of presenting [how) nature is possible may very well lie in the supersensible principle of nature (nature outside as well as within us). For presentation in terms of final causes is only a subjective condition of the use of our reason, [which applies] when reason wants us to judge certain objects not merely as appearances but insists on referring these appearances themselves, along with their principles, to the supersensible substrate. Reason insists on making that reference so that it can consider as possible that there be certain laws unifying those appearances, laws that reason can conceive of only as arising from purposes (since [our] reason too has supersensible purposes)’.
- ‘Critique of Judgement’
The antinomy (contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable) that he refers to is that between the principles of the mechanical and the teleological kind of production of organic natural beings.
Organisms are to be understood with reference to their purposes since the parts of organisms are reciprocally means and ends for each other each supporting the others in its functioning so that the whole system of means and ends has to be regarded as having come about so as to realise these functions hence organisms have to be seen as purposive wholes where the internal concept or the plan or purpose of the whole explains why all its parts arise and interrelate as they do yet for Kant these are simply regulative judgements that we are under an obligation to make concerning organisms which is to say we are under an obligation to regard organisms as if they had purposes and more generally to consider the entirety of nature as if it were suitable for our intellects as though nature were organised on a plan such that we can understand it through our classificatory and ordering schemes and hence as though nature were an ordered whole.
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[…] With my cross-bowI
shot the Albatross.
….
’Twas right, said they,
such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.
….
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot: Oh Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea
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According to Kant however we cannot know whether organisms or nature as a whole are really purposively organised in these ways since in the nature of the scientific project we in addition have to study nature and organisms on the assumption that their component interactions are entirely mechanical for in the absence of mechanism we cannot gain insight into the nature of things:
‘Reason is tremendously concerned not to abandon the mechanism nature [employs) in its products, and not to pass over it in explaining them, since without mechanism we cannot gain insight into the nature of things. Even if it were granted that a supreme architect directly created the forms of nature as they have always been, or that he predetermined the ones that in the course of nature keep developing according to the same model, still none of this advances our cognition of nature in the least; for we do not know at all how that being acts, and what its ideas are that are supposed to contain the principles by which natural beings are possible, and [so I we cannot explain nature by starting from that being, i.e., by descending (in other words, a priori) [from that being to nature]. Or suppose we try to explain by ascending (in other words, a posteriori), i.e., we start from the forms of objects of experience because we think they display purposiveness, and then, to explain this purposiveness, we appeal to a cause that acts according to purposes: in that case our explanation would be quite tautologous and we would deceive reason with [mere I words-not to mention that with this kind of explanation we stray into the transcendent, where our cognition of nature cannot follow us and where reason is seduced to poetic raving, even though reason’s foremost vocation is to prevent precisely that’.
- ‘Critique of Judgement’
But if nature and organisms were actually completely mechanical and were actually purposively organised then a contradiction rears its head and the solution to such an antinomy of teleological judgement is that both assumptions, that nature and organisms are purposive wholes and that their processes are entirely mechanical, have to be made in a merely regulative non-realist spirit.
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Daniel O. Dahlstrom (1948 — ) says that for Kant:
‘There is nothing contradictory about attempting to explain natural phenomena ‘according to mechanical laws alone’, insofar as that can be done, and at the same time allowing that for some combinations of things in nature ‘a causality distinct from mechanism’ must be entertained’.
- ‘Hegel’s Appropriation of Kant’s Account of Teleology in Nature’,
According to Kant, to be legitimate our assumption that organisms behave as if they had guiding purposes must be made in a simply methodological and heuristic manner so that it does not contradict but operates in tandem with the converse assumption of mechanism and therefore does not obstruct but advances empirical inquiry into efficient-causal mechanisms and furthermore for Kant we are in the end obligated to make this assumption about organisms as a reflection of the requirements of our mental equipment, for the objective of our understanding is to synthesise that is to ascend in stages to apprehend things as a whole. Hence it suits our understanding to approach organisms as items whose parts flow out of their concepts holistically and more generally it suits us to consider nature as a whole that is so organised that in principle we can completely understand it through science as an ordered system and so the regulative assumption that there is order in nature once again motivates empirical inquiry for we would regard it as futile to investigate nature if we did not assume that we can understand it and that our investigations are going to add up and as a whole Kant’s contention is tat we ought to introduce or re-introduce assumptions concerning organic relations and natural order since made in a purely regulative way such assumptions further empirical scientific inquiry and so far as their content goes such assumptions are not naturalistic since they make reference to non-natural concepts or ground-plans within organisms and within nature as a whole and since these assumptions reflect the requirements of our intellect that Kant also interprets non-naturalistically yet as long as such assumptions remain regulative they do not mark a harmful throwback to medieval supernaturalism.
However quite a few scientists of the period immediately following Kant treated the Gestaltungskräfte, creative forces, or Lebenskraft. life force, upon which they discoursed not simply as heuristic postulates albeit sometimes they did but as real causes of the organisation of organisms and species, see Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer, (1765–1844), and (see Lenoir 1982: 159; his examples include Kielmeyer and Johannes Peter Müller, (1801–1858) so is it the case that these were an unhappy regression to a belief in really existing supernatural forces? Not necessarily. Well, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, (1775–1854), delivered a theoretical justification for the added step to reintroduce belief in real forces as a realist and not merely regulative kind of belief. Spanning across all the stages of his thought Schelling begins from the question concerning the possibility of knowledge possible his answer being that we can know only what is mind-like, what conforms in its structure at least to some extent to the structure of our own minds. ‘As long as I am myself identical with nature, then I can understand what living nature is as easily as I can understand my own life itself’, he said.
And furthermore he contends that insofar as natural scientists are advancing our knowledge this must be in virtue of the fact that nature really is mind-like, ‘the visible organism of our understanding’. It is not simply that we must assume that nature is suited to our understanding, nature must really be suited to our understanding in virtue of having a mind-like organisation in itself. ‘It is not that WE KNOW Nature as a priori, but Nature IS a priori; that is, everything individual in it is predetermined by the whole’. And unless nature actually were thus organised and suited to our comprehension modern scientists would not have been able to make the long steps forward in understanding that they have. Kant appears at times to anticipate Schelling in saying that to give point to empirical inquiry we must proceed not merely by treating nature as if it had order but by assuming that there is order in nature.
‘The highest formal unity, which is based upon ideas alone, is the unity of all things — a unity in accordance with an aim or purpose; and the speculative interest of reason renders it necessary to regard all order in the world as if it originated from the intention and design of a supreme reason. This principle unfolds to the view of reason in the sphere of experience new and enlarged prospects, and invites it to connect the phenomena of the world according to teleological laws, and in this way to attain to the highest possible degree of systematic unity. The hypothesis of a supreme intelligence, as the sole cause of the universe — an intelligence which has for us no more than an ideal existence — is accordingly always of the greatest service to reason. Thus, if we presuppose, in relation to the figure of the earth (which is round, but somewhat flattened at the poles), or that of mountains or seas, wise designs on the part of an author of the universe, we cannot fail to make, by the light of this supposition, a great number of interesting discoveries. If we keep to this hypothesis, as a principle which is purely regulative, even error cannot be very detrimental. For, in this case, error can have no more serious consequences than that, where we expected to discover a teleological connection (nexus finalis), only a mechanical or physical connection appears. In such a case, we merely fail to find the additional form of unity we expected, but we do not lose the rational unity which the mind requires in its procedure in experience. But even a miscarriage of this sort cannot affect the law in its general and teleological relations. For although we may convict an anatomist of an error, when he connects the limb of some animal with a certain purpose, it is quite impossible to prove in a single case that any arrangement of nature, be it what it may, is entirely without aim or design. And thus medical physiology, by the aid of a principle presented to it by pure reason, extends its very limited empirical knowledge of the purposes of the different parts of an organized body so far that it may be asserted with the utmost confidence, and with the approbation of all reflecting men, that every organ or bodily part of an animal has its use and answers a certain design. Now, this is a supposition which, if regarded as of a constitutive character, goes much farther than any experience or observation of ours can justify. Hence it is evident that it is nothing more than a regulative principle of reason, which aims at the highest degree of systematic unity, by the aid of the idea of a causality according to design in a supreme cause — a cause which it regards as the highest intelligence’.
- ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
Hence there are grounds for the contention that nature actually is objectively ordered and this being granted for nature as a whole it would be incongruous to deny that organisms also are objectively organised by their inner forms or plans hence organisms in actual fact display final and formal as well as efficient causation as does nature as a whole and in this way it can be said that organisms actually are purposive wholes and that nature actually is a large-scale purposive whole that is it possesses a world-soul.
According to Schelling acknowledging such realities need not preclude or deter empirical inquiry indeed their acknowledgement impels empirical inquiry in diverse manners. It gives researchers confidence that nature actually is an ordered whole such that they can know about this whole and can build up a complete system of knowledge of it. It directs empirical researchers to look for the efficient causal mechanisms within organisms that enable their purposive functionings to occur. It guides empirical researchers towards looking for the efficient-causal relations that obtain in non-organic nature in the assurance that these have an ordered place within the larger whole. In effect Schelling takes Kant’s arguments in defence of regulative assumptions about purposiveness and adapts those arguments in a realist direction. Hence he says:
‘It is an old illusion that organisation and life cannot be explained from natural principles. [That is, that they are supernatural and external to nature conceived as an exclusively mechanical realm.] — If it were thus to be said: the first origins of organic nature are physically inscrutable, then this unproven assertion serves only to discourage investigators’.
- ‘On the World-Soul’
Were we to discard life and organisation as inscrutable and hence if we conceive nature as purely mechanical then this actually discourages scientific inquiry since researchers have to believe that nature is an organised whole to give their inquiries a point and researchers may endeavour to meet that need by simply adopting the heuristic assumption that nature is a whole but if they cannot have confidence that this assumption has the status of real knowledge then they inevitably will become discouraged. And yet if nature is an organic order the parts of which flow from the whole then why can we not deduce the parts from the concept of the whole without the need to study nature empirically? Furthermore if all the realms of nature are organised by its overall concept and hence organically then how is it that there is any non-organic nature indeed how is it that the majority of natural processes are mechanical rather than organic? Schelling has to respond to such questions to differentiate his philosophy of nature from medieval supernaturalism and he does indeed condemn as meaningless ‘the old teleological modes of explanation, and the introduction of a universal reference to final causes into the science of nature, which was adulterated as a result’.
He addresses both questions together, most of nature is inorganic (anorganisch) since nature alienates itself in an ‘act of original diremption [ursprüngliche Entzweiung] in nature itself’ and nature is at base organic yet it divides within itself so that whole regions of nature become mechanical as do subordinate aspects of the region of nature that remains properly organic and as a consequence we cannot deduce nature’s parts from its whole since these parts to varying degrees in different realms of nature have actually become independent of and not directly organised by the whole, the parts remain ultimately derivative of the whole because it is through its self-alienation that they arise yet since they arise through the whole’s self-alienation, the parts fall outside that whole and must be apprehended in their own terms which is to say those of mechanism hence they must be studied empirically.
As for the issue of how organic nature alienates itself critically Schelling presents an account of this act of self-alienation by reconceiving organic purposiveness in terms of productive force whereby originally there exists a pure productive, active, generative force, Schelling’s equivalent of the vital force or Bildungskraft formative force postulated by various biologists of the time, for in any case in any organism a concept something non-material generates material organisation and this generative yet non-material power Schelling reconceives as productive force but productive force cannot generate anything determinate unless it is constrained by a second retarding force otherwise natural productivity would waste and deplete itself in a process of infinitely fast creation and destruction. Productive force has to divide into itself in its original productiveness and a second force of inhibition (Hemmung) that constrains this force in its original shape and this division is the self-alienation of productive force and therefore at the same time of nature as originally organic. While the interaction of both forces is necessary for any production the forces can combine in different proportions out of which various combinations the range of particular natural entities ensues and the more inhibiting force prevails the more mechanical the product, the less it is organised into a whole by the productive force, and conversely the more the productive force predominates the more organic the product.
By reintroducing actual polar forces Schelling presumably would not regard himself as having returned to medieval supernaturalism for as he saw it belief in real organism and real natural order enable and stimulate empirical inquiry, as a matter of fact if we correctly comprehend the manner in which nature is actually an organism then we apprehend the necessity of empirical inquiry into its constituent efficient-causal relations for nature cannot exist as an organic realm organised by productive force unless that force limits itself such that all of nature must be to varying degrees mechanical and hence such that the parts of nature cannot be deduced from nature’s concept but must be studied and their connections pieced together empirically. Hence Schelling does not intend to return to the old supernaturalism that postulated final causes throughout nature that were unsupported by efficient-causal mechanisms but on the contrary for Schelling nature is a pervasively mechanical realm and must be studied in the ways appropriate to that which means that every aspect of nature must be studied empirically.
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Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.
The souls did from their bodies fly, —
They fled to bliss or woe!And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my cross-bow!
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Nonetheless there remains a principle role for a priori reasoning in reconstructing how the various empirical products of nature derive from productive force and furthermore for Schelling every facet of nature has to be studied empirically in this way for even the organic part of nature is necessarily full of mechanical interactions since productive force is invariably coupled with a degree of inhibiting force. Yet Schelling apprehends well enough how nature is pervaded by mechanism with reference to the polarity of productive and retarding forces and the concern remains that such polar forces are actually somewhat mysterious. Productive force is merely pure brute creativity and not something we can rationally understand and so for Schelling the highest realisation of productive force is in human creative artistry that likewise transcends rational understanding. Albeit Schelling has departed by some distance from medieval supernaturalism he takes a significant step back towards supernaturalism with an appeal to productive force for he explicitly conceives this force as lying beyond rational comprehension and as being the prior condition of any operation of natural laws a force that transcends these laws just as it makes them possible.
The same problem does not arise for Hegel since the idea of productive and retarding forces plays no role in his philosophy of nature and he concurs with Schelling that nature is an ordered organised whole and that the kind of organisation that nature exhibits is most fully realised in the self-organisation of organic beings yet Hegel understands these matters without reference to polar forces and instead considers living beings as organised by their concepts the universal forms within them. Such forms are actually within these beings not simply thought by us and he likens these forms to Platonic forms and the unitary nature of these forms is such that they manifest themselves throughout and bind together the manifold material parts of these beings so that they become holistically organised and therefore living.
‘Theoretical consciousness, because of its one-sided assumption that the natural things over against us are persistent and impenetrable, creates a difficulty which is refuted point-blank by the practical approach, which displays the absolutely idealistic belief that individual things are nothing in themselves. In its relationship to things, appetite is defective not because its attitude towards them is realistic, but because it is all too idealistic. Philosophically valid idealism consists in nothing other than the determination that the truth of things lies in their immediate particularity or sensuousness, that they are in fact mere show or appearance. According to a metaphysics prevalent at the moment, we cannot know things because they are uncompromisingly exterior to us. It might be worth noticing that even the animals, which go out after things, grab, maul, and consume them, are not so stupid as these metaphysicians. The same determination, i.e. that we think natural objects, occurs in the second aspect of the theoretical approach already indicated. Intelligence does not of course familiarize itself with things in their material existence. In that it thinks them, it sets their content within itself, and to practical ideality, which for itself is mere negativity, it adds form, universality so to speak, and so gives affirmative determination to the negative of particularity. This universality of things is not something subjective and belonging to us; it is, rather, the noumenon as opposed to the transient phenomenon, the truth, objectivity, and actual being of the things themselves. It resembles the platonic ideas, which do not have their being somewhere in the beyond, but which exist in individual things as substantial genera. Proteus will only be compelled into telling the truth if he is roughly handled, and we are not content with sensuous appearance. The inscription on the veil of Isis, ‘I am what was, is, and shall be, and my veil has been lifted by no mortal’, melts before thought. Hamann is therefore right when he says, ‘Nature is a Hebrew word, written only with consonants; it is left to the understanding to add the points’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Furthermore Hegel interprets the relations between all the natural universals as organic in that each universal is a more full realisation of the one that precedes it, for instance time advances towards a successful resolution of the contradiction within space and by so doing time realises more fully than space the ontological structure that of differentiation into multiple units that was already immanent in space. That is to say Hegel identifies a contradiction within the structure of space. Space is divisible into a manifold of points and as such space is partes extra partes it consists of parts outside other parts yet these parts of space have no qualities by which they can be individuated from one another there is nothing to differentiate these parts from one another and so they prove after all to be identical with each other hence after all space is pure distinctionless homogeneity.
‘The primary or immediate determination of nature is the abstract universality of its self-externality, its unmediated indifference, i.e. space. It is on account of its being self-externality, that space constitutes collaterality of a completely ideal nature; as this extrinsicality is still completely abstract, space is simply continuous, and is devoid of any determinate difference’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Space is self-contradictory, it is pure difference and pure lack of difference and time embodies a step towards resolving this contradiction, time consists of a series of moments, an unending stream of nows each existing only momentarily and as each now momentarily stands out into existence it divides the past from the future and yet each moment vanishes at once upon immediately coming into existence, it exists so ephemerally that it has no positive existence at all and so temporal moments are nothing more than a manifestation of negating force and once that negation is done there is nothing more to the moment and it vanishes. Nevertheless in virtue of their negating force moments differ from one another more fully than spatial points do and for moments at least set themselves against everything else even if only momentarily so difference is more firmly realized in temporal moments than in spatial parts and in this manner time embodies an advance towards resolution of the contradiction within space.
As a whole therefore nature’s organising structure is organic and nature is in itself a living whole …
‘Nature is implicitly a living whole; more closely considered, the movement through its series of stages consists of the Idea positing itself as what it is implicitly, i.e. the Idea passes into itself by proceeding out of its immediacy and externality, which is death. It does this primarily in order to take on living being, but also in order to transcend this determinateness, in which it is merely life, and to bring itself forth into the existence of spirit, which constitutes the truth and ultimate purpose of nature, and the true actuality of the Idea’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
… albeit philosophers can only reconstruct this organisation by first learning from scientists about natural universals for instance about the structure of time then reconstructing a priori how one given universal realises more fully the structure of some other universal and again we can comprehend this organic structure of nature without the need to make reference to productive and retarding forces and we comprehend this structure upon rational grounds using reason rather than postulating these essentially mysterious forces, and further since nature is organic in structure organisms have to be situated upon a priori grounds as the highest-level realisation of nature as a whole hence Hegel organises the forms theorised by scientists into a hierarchy with the organic forms at the peak and the most mechanical the most devoid of organic structure including space and time as partes extra partes at the bottom.
Hegel’s parting of the ways from Schelling over productive and retarding forces led him to reconceive the way in which nature is the idea outside itself and while Schelling also perceived mechanism as the self-alienated form of organism he apprehended this self-alienation in terms of original productive force dividing into two. Hegel again dispenses with the reference to productive force for instead nature is the notion outside itself simply in the sense that within nature no particulars ever completely realise their universals.
‘If God is all sufficient and lacks nothing, how does He come to release Himself into something so clearly unequal to Him? The divine Idea is just this self-release, the expulsion of this other out of itself, and the acceptance of it again, in order to constitute subjectivity and spirit. The philosophy of nature itself belongs to this pathway of return, for it is the philosophy of nature which overcomes the division of nature and spirit, and renders to spirit the recognition of its essence in nature. This then is the position of nature within the whole; its determinateness lies in the self-determination of the Idea, by which it posits difference, another, within itself, whole maintaining infinite good in its indivisibility, and imparting its entire content in what it provides for this otherness. God disposes therefore, while remaining equal to Himself; each of these moments is itself the whole Idea, and must be posited as the divine totality. Distinctiveness can be grasped in three forms; the universal, the particular, and the singular.. ‘
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Constitutively nature is divided between matter and universal form and this is the ultimate reason why philosophers of nature cannot start with natural universals and deduce particular details from them since the particulars invariably go their own way.
‘In this externality, the determinations of the Notion have the appearance of an indifferent subsistence and isolation with regard to one another; the Notion is therefore internal, and nature in its determinate being displays necessity and contingency, not freedom’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Hence these particulars must first be investigated empirically and the starting-point for the formation of philosophy of nature must be empirical science and furthermore most of nature is non-organic so that most natural universals are the universal forms of certain sets of mechanically related particulars. Time and space, for instance, are the forms of particulars, spatial parts, temporal moments,that stand to one another albeit imperfectly in relations of external difference and as such it is only possible to gain an initial understanding of these universals by examining the particulars empirically and discerning how a universal form is operating imperfectly within them and here also the formation of philosophy of nature has to be be conditioned by science and this remains the case even for the study of organic beings. On the one hand within these beings mechanical causal relations are incorporated into final causal relations to become the conditions that enable organisms to achieve their purposive functions.
And yet organic beings never perfectly succeed in subordinating their parts and their efficient-causal relations to the whole and this is the reason why organisms are subject to illness, accident, violence, and ultimately are destined to die when the unstable dominance of their whole over their parts breaks down.
‘Universality, in the face of which the animal as a singularity is a finite existence, shows itself in the animal as the abstract power in the passing out of that which, in its preceding process (§ 356), is itself abstract. The original disease of the animal, and the inborn germ of death, is its being inadequate to universality. The annulment of this inadequacy is in itself the full maturing of this germ, and it is by imagining the universality of its singularity, that the individual effects this annulment. By this however, and in so far as the universality is abstract and immediate, the individual only achieves an abstract objectivity. Within this objectivity, the activity of the individual has blunted and ossified itself, and life has become a habitude devoid of process, the individual having therefore put an end to itself of its own accord’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Hence albeit organisms are really organised by their purposes we cannot derive the operations of the parts from the purposes since the purposes have not completely mastered those parts thus philosophers cannot comprehend organisms properly without first learning about organisms from empirical researchers. So, with regard to Hegel’s relation to naturalism and in particular to the naturalist rejection of supernatural entities and processes one of the most narrowly naturalistic positions possible is that of mechanistic materialists such as Julien Offray de La Mettrie, (1709–1751), who repugn any final or formal causes and regard nature as entirely composed of matter in efficient-causal relations and a not so naturalistic position is Kant’s for whom reference to non-material final causes, organic purposes, can be legitimate as long as these purposes are not treated as real existents, and even less naturalistic is Schelling’s view that we may legitimately claim that final causes really exist as long as we elaborate this claim in ways that acknowledges the pervasiveness of mechanism in nature and hence also encourages empirical research into efficient causal relations in nature and identifies efficient-causal mechanisms that enable organic relations to unfold. Hegel concurs with Schelling on such points yet adds that nature’s dimension of final and formal causality must be conceived in ways that make it rationally intelligible without recourse to any mysterious productive force.
In comparison to Schelling Hegel’s rejection of productive force marks a step back away from the supernaturalist end of the spectrum but according to Stone he is closer to supernaturalism than Kant or the mechanistic materialists since he admits the real existence of conceptual non-material forms throughout nature albeit this does not make Hegel a supernaturalist and naught else for his position stands at diverse removes that he specifies as just noted from the most supernaturalistic position thus far identified that is to say of medieval cosmology. Because Hegel is removed on these diverse counts from the most supernaturalistic position he is thus situated in or at least towards the middle of the spectrum from naturalism to supernaturalism according to Stone such that we can characterise Hegel’s position on nature as broadly naturalistic that is broader than what is generally understood by naturalism today but not simply supernaturalist.
It might be objected Stone concedes that if Hegel is a broad naturalist in this sense then he is equally a moderate supernaturalist, one who affirms the objective reality of organising, universal, non-material forms within nature, something that more resolutely naturalistic positions deny, yet Stone insists that her take on Schelling’s and Hegel’s differences over nature implicate that it is Schelling who is appropriately described as a moderate supernaturalist in that he rejects the medieval worldview but nevertheless affirms the reality of mysterious productive force and because Hegel denies the reality of this same force his difference from Schelling on this point can be signalled by not calling Hegel a moderate supernaturalist rather broad naturalism is the best description of Hegel’s position on nature, according to Stone (though I have many times pointed out that aligning Hegel with any kind of -ist is not being true to the spirit of his philosophy but this article is already to long for a rejoinder by me, thank you for reading thus far .. I trust you haven’t just skipped to the end to see if it is worth spending any time on reading the whole thing🙂),
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
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Dedicated to my transcendent resplendent One ❤️ a mere human such as myself can experience the transcendent after all .. through you .. let us together break on through to the other side ….
… You know the day destroys the night Night divides the day Tried to run Tried to hide Break on through to the other side Break on through to the other side Break on through to the other side, yeah
… We chased our pleasures here Dug our treasures there But can you still recall The time we cried Break on through to the other side Break on through to the other side
… Yeah C’mon, yeah
… Everybody loves my baby Everybody loves my baby She get high She get high She get high She get high, yeah
… I found an island in your arms Country in your eyes Arms that chain us Eyes that lie Break on through to the other side Break on through to the other side Break on through, ow Oh, yeah
… Made the scene Week to week Day to day Hour to hour The gate is straight Deep and wide Break on through to the other side Break on through to the other side Break on through Break on through Break on through Break on through Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
The Doors — Break On Through (To The Other Side):
Coming up next:
Medical science.
It may stop but it never ends.
