On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ : A Free Reflex of Spirit — part twenty.
‘The stars are mansions built by Nature’s hand’
by William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
The stars are mansions built by Nature’s hand,
And, haply, there the spirits of the blest
Dwell, clothed in radiance, their immortal vest;
Huge Ocean shows, within his yellow strand,
A habitation marvellously planned,
For life to occupy in love and rest;
All that we see — is dome, or vault, or nest,
Or fortress, reared at Nature’s sage command.
Glad thought for every season! but the Spring
Gave it while cares were weighing on my heart,
‘Mid song of birds, and insects murmuring;
And while the youthful year’s prolific art —
Of bud, leaf, blade, and flower — was fashioning
Abodes where self-disturbance hath no part.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831).
The totality of the Solar System. Being the final part of the first section of the ‘Philosophy of Nature’: ‘Mechanics’.
Now we lay in the mud
In the sea, deep beneath
And we wait where we lay
For the light, for the seep
Of a thought, for a touch
For your breath, for your love
To begin, to unfurl
To create a new world
In the gash, in the break
In this place, you animate
Come to us, penetrate
Come to us, animate
Come to us, from the muck
Learn to speak, learn to f***
Tongues are trained, fingers reach
Come to us, on the beach
Awake, awake
Awake, to sleep Awake, awake
Awake, to sleep
Is there really a mind?
(Ah) Is there really a mind?
(Ah) Is there really a mind?
Is there really a mind? (Mind)
Is there really a mind? (Mind)
Is there really a mind? (Mind)
Is there really a mind?
(Mind) (Mind) (Mind) (Mind) (Mind)
This is mine (Mind, mind)
This is mine (Mind, mind) Mine
(Mind, mind) Mine (Mind, mind)
(Mind) Am I ready to die?
(Mind) Am I ready to die?
(Mind) Am I ready to die?
(Mind) Am I ready to die?
(Mind) Am I ready to die?
(Mind) Am I ready to die?
(Mind) Is there really a mind?
(Mind) Is there really a mind?
(Mind) Is there really a mind? (Mind)
To recap on ‘Mechanics’:
Externality (Äußerlichkeit ), or as Hegel sometimes puts it extrinsicality (das Auß ereinander ) represents the basic conceptual element or boundary condition under which everything in nature exists and the first concept encountered in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ is Space which is nothing other than the immediate realization of nature’s basic determinateness which is also stated elsewhere:
‘All that is natural is spatial, time already being higher, already initiating inwardness; spatiality is nothing other than something extrinsic, everything having place in space, where everything is affirmative, determinate, and does not interfere with anything else. Space is the subsisting of all things, where each is indifferent to the others. This is the abstract absolute determinateness of nature, extrinsicality’.
- ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit’
Two important insights to mull over here, first, spatiality qua basic element of any natural existence is externality and that externality means initially a mode of mere co existence in which nothing interfere with anything else and, second, which is merely implied above, time is fundamentally different from space, by not being a mode of mere coexistence time is the now that excludes any other now in contrast to space which in its immediacy is the here that does not interfere with other heres. While we are accustomed to speaking of them as simply two different concepts, or different coordinates, the spatial coordinates x , y , z versus the time coordinate t, Hegel makes clear at the beginning of his ‘Mechanics’ that it is not satisfying philosophically merely to distinguish these concepts without asking about their relation to each other. Space and time are generally taken to be poles apart: space is there, and then we also have time. Philosophy fights against this mere ‘also’ (‘dieses‘ Auch’ bekämpft die Philosophie’).
‘Space is the immediate determinate being of quantity, in which everything remains subsistent, and even limit has the form of a subsistence. This is its deficiency. Space is a contradiction, for the negation within it disintegrates into indifferent subsistence. As space is merely this inner negation of itself, its truth is the self-transcendence of its moments. It is precisely the existence of this perpetual self-transcendence which constitutes time. In time therefore the point has actuality. Through the generation of difference within it, space ceases to be mere indifference, and through all its changes, is no longer paralysed, but is for itself. This pure quantity as: difference existing for itself, is that which is implicitly negative, i.e. time; it is the negation of the negation, or self-relating negation. Negation in space is negation relative to another; in space therefore the negative does not yet come into its own. In space the plane is certainly negation of the negation, but in its truth it is different from space. The truth of space is time, so that space becomes time; our transition to time is not subjective, space itself makes the transition. Space and time are generally taken to be poles apart: space is there, and then we also have time. Philosophy calls this ‘also’ in question’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
This can be regarded as a definition of dialectic philosophy according to which thought fights against the ordinary representation insofar as the latter considers concepts and things as originally independent from or external one to another, relations between them being mere epiphenomena, and philosophical thought has to invert this order and when asking about this relation we discover that space is on the verge of the transition into time and this can be seen by considering the infinitesimal element of space, the point. The point is the negation of space, more precisely of spatial extension yet it is more than that, the point is intuited negativity, the intuited exclusion of others, other points, and as such, it is in a nutshell what the moment of time is in a more concrete way and so it makes sense to claim that there is a transition from space to time and to illustrate this transition with the concept of the, geometrical, point, and conversely, there is also a transition from time to space, time becoming spatial is motion. While time is a sequence of now now now motion is a sequence of the form now here, then there, then there and motion is the unity of space and time posited in the logical form of time that is to say in a negative form. Alternatively motion may be called the unity of space and time in an ideal form since motion is something immaterial even though moving objects are not immaterial. Matter by contrast is the unity of space and time posited in the logical form of space that is to say in a positive form or in a real form. ‘Beide (= Materie und Bewegung) sind ein und dasselbe; die Verschiedenheit beider besteht nur darin, daß die Materie eben die Wahrheit des Raums und der Zeit ist, und zwar gesetzt auf einfache, selbst unmittelbar ruhende Weise, in der Weise des Raums. Dies Resultat nun gesetzt in der Form des Prozesses oder der Zeit, ist die Bewegung’. ‘Matter and motion are the same; their difference is just the following: matter is the truth of space and time, posited in a simple, immediate, quiescent way — in a spatial way. This result, posited in a processual form, or in a temporal form, is motion’
By reference to the law of conservation of momentum (in a closed system: total momentum before an event = total momentum after the event. A closed system is something that is not affected by external forces) Hegel endeavours to demonstrate that mass, the basic quantitative unit of matter, and velocity, the basic quantitative unit of motion, have the same effect and must therefore be closely related conceptually, a piece of matter hitting another one that has twice its mass will if it is thereby brought to rest in an elastic collision transfer only half of its velocity to the second one and also due to the same law of conservation of momentum or as Hegel would put it due to the exchangeability of the factors ‘ mass and velocity, a mass of 6 pounds traveling at speed 4 has the same impact on another object as a mass of 8 pounds traveling at speed 3.
Hegel speaks of force here where he should actually speak of impact:
‘To the extent that they are contained in one, masses also have being-for-self; this constitutes the other moment of repulsion, or the elasticity of matter. The one is merely the surface, and the whole is continuous, because the body is completely hard. Since only the whole is one however the one is unposited, and the body simply gives or is absolutely soft. By leaving its whole, however, it correspondingly increases the intensity of its oneness. The very softness, the sublation of the body’s outwardly exerted force, constitutes the restoration of this force through a return-into-self. The immediate reversion of these two sides is elasticity. What is soft also repels; it is elastic, it gives way, but only to a certain extent, and it cannot be driven out of place altogether. It is here that the being-for-self of matter becomes apparent, and it is by means of this being-for-self that matter asserts itself as internality (which may also be called force), against its externality, which is here its-being-for other, i.e. the being-within-it of another. The ideality of being-for-self consists in another asserting a prevalence within the mass, and vice versa. This determination of ideality, which appeared to come from without, shows itself to be the peculiar essence of matter, which at the same time itself belongs to matter’s internality; this is the reason why reflective thought makes use of the concept of force in physics’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
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…..
Breathe my breath into your head
Righteous, pure and sour with death
Here I am, just empty skin
There is no way out, there is no way in
Crucified in fractured fields of blue
All information is equally true
Feed on me
Feed on me
Feed on me now
Feed on me
Feed on me
Feed on me now
Over the plains and under the seas
Follow the lines: they all lead back to me
Tunnel the mountains and cut through the skies
Cut open your belly, look into my еyes
Come to me
Comе to me
Come to me now
Come to me
Come to me
Come to me now
You are not free
You are not free
Come to me
Come to me
Come here to me
You are not free
You are not free
You must come to me
You must come to me
You are not free
You are not free
Come to me
Come to me
Come here to me
Come to me
Feed on me
Come to me
Feed on me
I wonder what you are
I wonder where I am
I wonder if the water
Is swallowing the land
I wonder if an image
Is realer than the thing
I wonder if I’m singing
What you’re thinking me to sing
I wonder if I lost you
You were pulsing in my hand
Now the continents are shifting
From the future to the past
The deeper into space
The smaller that you’ll go
The more that you consume
The less you’ll ever know
I wonder where I was
I wonder where this is
I wonder what’s inside you
Will the glass reveal your bliss?
Am I broken into pieces
To be scattered in the wind?
When the revelation comes
Does it erase the host that lives
In the body of a sun
That itself exists within
An ever-shrinking sphere
That is contracting as we spin?
I wonder how we got here
I wonder if I care
I wonder if your breathing
Is stealing all the air
Breathing in
Breathe us in
Read my mind
Reach inside
======
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With this example we have already entered the second section of ‘Mechanics’ entitled ‘Finite Mechanics’ and this section treats inert matter as subject to different kinds of motion that cannot be sustained for long, but come to an end, impact and free fall . Elsewhere he points out that this motion, that is to say motion as considered in finite mechanics, transforms itself for itself into rest.
And furthermore:
‘It is an easy task for the understanding to show that everything asserted about the Idea is self-contradictory. But the proof can be sent home to the understanding; or rather, that has already been brought about in the Idea: this is the work of reason, which is not at all as easy as that of the understanding.-The understanding shows that the Idea contradicts itself, because the subjective, for instance, is merely subjective and the objective is really opposed to it; and being is something quite other than the concept, so that it cannot be plucked out of it; likewise, the finite is merely finite and the exact opposite of the infinite, so that it is not identical with it-and so on, through all determinations, one after the other. But the Logic demonstrates the opposite instead, namely, that the subjective that is supposed to be merely subjective, the finite that is supposed to be merely finite, and the infinite that is supposed to be merely infinite, and so on, do not have any truth; they contradict themselves and pass over into their opposites.-As a result, the passing-over and the unity, in which the extremes are [present] as sublated-i. e., as a shining or as moments-reveals itself as their truth’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
According to classical mechanics cases are conceivable in which an impact gives rise to a rectilinear motion that does not come to an end in time, namely in the case of the absence of any friction or forces acting at a distance, nonetheless Hegel considers this case of infinite unaccelerated rectilinear motion to be an empty abstraction and indeed, such a motion does not occur on Earth. Impact and fall in the way we encounter them in terrestrial nature constitute finite, first of all in the sense of temporally limited, processes, and furthermore they require for their realization initial conditions that are contingent and extrinsic to the moving bodies themselves, in many textbook cases these initial conditions are artificially produced, the free fall of a body for instance requires its being elevated to the starting point of fall, and this is a merely external and contingent condition.
The subject ‘Absolute Mechanics’ is the motion of celestial bodies more specifi cally the motion of bodies in a solar system. Why does Hegel make the motions of celestial bodies a wholly distinct stage of his ‘Mechanics’ rather than considering them merely as motions in a field of force under specific boundary conditions as is done in classical mechanics? First because the motions of bodies in the solar system appear as temporally infinite at least on time scales accessible to us and this infinity is more than a result of the boundary condition ‘ absence of friction since it is also connected with forms of motions that are entirely different from terrestrial ones, that is o say from ones in which friction generally plays a dominant role. Phenomenally there is a significant difference between natural motions observed under terrestrial conditions and the motions of the planets, the motions of bodies in the solar system appear to us as self-sustaining infinite motions, they proceed along closed orbits that are described mathematically to close approximation by conic sections and have an exact periodicity over extremely long times, afact that contributed to establishing astronomy as a science very early in human history.
This phenomenal and epistemological distinction between celestial and terrestrial natural motions is reflected in Hegel’s distinction between finite and absolute mechanics. With respect to the categories developed in the Logic of Being , Hegel observes that matter becomes qualified matter in being considered as a system of internal relations yet the qualification lies so far just in the different forms of motion, or, as John Burbidge puts it: ‘mechanics talks about how movement [we may add: and only movement] particularizes matter. The qualification hence remains relatively extrinsic to the members of the solar system themselves, the Sun instance does not by itself exhibit any essential relation to all the bodies revolving around it. The categorial development, the main driving force of the philosophy of nature, must therefore proceed to a kind of qualification that does not just consist in distinct shapes of trajectories of ‘ mass points’. It must proceed to a sphere where every individual part of a considered whole shows its being related to the whole, what the solar system is as a whole, is what matter has to become in particular.
‘In this way we conclude the first part; mechanics now constitutes a distinct whole. When Descartes said, ‘Give me matter and motion and I will construct the world’, he took the standpoint of mechanics as his first principle, and in these words he shows a greatness of spirit which we should not deny, despite the inadequacy of this standpoint. In motion, bodies are mere points, and gravity only determines the spatial relations between points. The unity of matter is simply the unity of place which matter seeks, it is not a single concrete unit. It is in the nature of this sphere that this externality of determinedness should constitute the peculiar determinateness of matter. Matter is weighted being-for-self seeking its being-in-self; in this infinity the point is merely a place, so that the being-for-self is not yet real. It is only in the whole solar system that the totality of being-for-self is posited, so that what the solar system is as a whole, matter should be in particular. The complete form of the solar system is the Notion of matter in general; its self-externality should now be present in each determinate existence of the completely developed Notion. Matter should find its unity by being for itself in the whole of its determinate being, which is the being for self of being-for-self. Put in another way, the self-motivation of the solar system is the sublation of the merely ideal nature of being-for-self, of mere spatiality of determination, of not-being-for-self. In the Notion, the negation of place does not merely give rise to its re-instatement; the negation of not-being-for-self is a negation of the negation, i.e. an affirmation, so that what comes forth is real being-for-self. This is the abstractly logical determination of the transition. It is precisely the total development of being-for-self which is real being-for-self; this might be expressed as the freeing of the form of matter. The determinations of form which constitute the solar system are the determinations of matter itself, and these determinations constitute the being of matter, so that determination and being are essentially identical. This is of the nature of quality, for if the determination is removed here, being also disappears. This is the transition from mechanics to physics’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Slowly, it’s taking me over and eventually I’ll be completely transformed: diffused in the earth, or incinerated and vaporized. It’s in the food I eat, in the air I breathe. It’s in the people I love and they frighten me. I can see a black shadow shimmering just beneath their skin. Despite my love for them, there’s nothing I can do for them, nor is there anything they can do for thеmselves. It’s slowly encroaching, rеlentless. Its appetite is endless and will never be filled
I shall just finish for now with problems inherent in the sciences as Hegel identifies them. On the one hand any philosophy of nature should be in accordance with the results of the respective contemporary sciences, while on the other hand there are severe problems inherent in the general methods of the sciences, problems that largely may not appear within scientific work itself rather they occur when scientific results and methods are taken without the critical guidance of philosophy as a basis for constructing a worldview. The features of science especially giving rise to serious issues in this regard are first the annihilation of qualitative differences in the course of scientific progress, second the atomistic consideration of nature, and third the search for dynamical laws of nature and their being preferred to phenomenological laws. I will deal here with the sciences annihilation of qualitative differences here and leave the other two for later.
Like Immanuel Kant, (1724–1804), recognised that scientific work necessarily involves abstraction and mathematization and he did not see this to be in itself a problematic feature of the sciences conceding that scientific descriptions of natural phenomena are fundamentally mathematical and abstract and abstractness is also a feature of philosophical views of nature:
‘In the theoretical approach (a) the initial factor is our withdrawing from natural things, leaving them as they are, and adjusting to them. In doing this we start from our sense-knowledge of nature. If physics were based only on perceptions however, and perceptions were nothing but the evidence of the senses, the activity of a natural scientist would consist only of seeing, smelling, hearing etc., so that animals would also be physicists. It is however a spirit, a thinking entity, which sees and hears etc. If we say that in the theoretical approach things are left as they are, we shall be referring only partly to the external senses, for these are themselves partly theoretical and partly practical (§ 358); only ideation or intelligence has this free relation to things. We can of course also look at them through the medium of the senses, but cognition will then be merely a means, not an end in itself. (b) In the second relation of things to us, they either acquire the determination of universality for us, or we transform them into something universal. The more thought predominates in ordinary perceptiveness, so much the more does the naturalness, individuality, and immediacy of things vanish away. As thoughts invade the limitless multiformity of nature, its richness is impoverished, its springtimes die, and there is a fading in the play of its colours. That which in nature was noisy with life, falls silent in the quietude of thought; its warm abundance, which shaped itself into a thousand intriguing wonders, withers into arid forms and shapeless generalities, which resemble a dull northern fog’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Gerd Buchdahl called these phrases some of Hegel’ s truly memorable formulations. He refers to A. V. Miller’ s in which the essential phrase reads: ‘The rustle of Nature’s life is silenced in the stillness of thought’. Such phrases make clear that Hegel is not opposing the abstractness of any scientific or philosophical view of nature, what he is opposing is rather the annihilation of qualitative differences within the realm of nature as a result of scientific work or rather as a result of a specific style of scientific work and the contention is that a proper understanding of the essence of nature is impossible if the human intellect puts “everything on the same level that is to say if it does not take into account the categorial determinateness of the individual stages of nature. As for the term stages:
‘Nature is to be regarded as a system of stages, the one proceeding of necessity out of the other, and being the proximate truth of that from which it results. This is not to be thought of as a natural engendering of one out of the other however, but as an engendering within the inner Idea which constitutes the ground of nature. Metamorphosis accrues only to the Notion as such, for development is nothing but the alteration of the same. In nature the Notion is however partly a mere inner principle, and partly an existence which is simply a living individuality; existent metamorphosis is therefore limited solely to this individuality’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Broadly speaking new levels of determinateness emerge, according to Hegel, not merely through aggregation or the summation of parts, but through new modes of relation that add new qualities to the parts. Hegel’s criticism of reductionist approaches in the sciences is expressed as the attempt being made to put everything on the same level and everything can be treated from a chemical point of view but everything can also be treated from a mechanical point of view and when bodies are treated at one stage this does not exhaust the nature of other bodies however as for instance when vegetable or animal bodies are treated chemically.
‘The main difficulty one encounters in grasping the meteorological process comes from confusing physical elements with individual bodies. The first are abstract determinatenesses, for they are still lacking in subjectivity, and what is true of them, is therefore not yet true of subjectivized matter. The natural sciences fall into the greatest confusion when these differences are overlooked. The attempt is made to put everything on the same level. Everything can of course be treated from a chemical point of view, but everything can also be treated from a mechanical point of view, or as electricity. When bodies are treated at one stage, this does not exhaust the nature of other bodies however, as for example when vegetable or animal bodies are treated chemically. This division, by which each body is treated according to its particular sphere, is essential. The appearance of air and water in their free elemental connection with the Earth at large, is quite different from what it is when they are submitted to the conditions of a completely different sphere. In a parallel situation, one might wish to observe the human spirit, and to this end one might bring customs officers or sailors under observation; one would then encounter the spirit in its submission to finite conditions and precepts which would not exhaust the nature of it. Water is expected to reveal its nature in the retort, and to display no further characteristics in its free connections. The attempt is usually made to demonstrate the universal appearances of physical objects, such as water, air, and heat. ‘What are they? What do they do ?’ are the questions that are asked. It is not thought determinations, but the modes of material existence that are expected to constitute this ‘what’. Existent material forms have two sides, for they are air, water and heat, conjoined into another object. Phenomenal appearance is the result of both these aspects’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
And furthermore:
‘Something similar is also asserted of the genera, i.e. that they are not such a ranging together of that which is similar, an abstraction made by us, that they not only have something in common, but that they are the peculiar inner essence of objects themselves: what is more, that the orders are not merely our mental vision, but form a graduated scale in nature itself. The distinguishing features are claimed to be the universal, the substantial element of the genus. Physics regards these universals as its triumph, and it is unfortunately true to say that too much of its activity is concerned with such universalization. The current philosophy is called the philosophy of identity. It might be much more appropriate to apply this name to this kind of physics, which simply dispenses with determinateness. Contemporary electro-chemistry, in which magnetism electricity and chemism are regarded as one and the same thing, is a good example. It is a fault in physics that it should involve so much identity, for identity is the basic category of the understanding’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Hegel defends the old view of nature as a system of qualitatively distinct stages, as it was understood to be in the concept of the scala naturae or the great chain of being. The idea of a scala naturae ascribes, as noted by Arthur Lovejoy (for whom Hegel does not play a particular role in Lovejoy’ s version of the story of this concept) three basic features to the universe: plenitude, continuity , and gradation. The principle of plenitude states that the universe exhibits the greatest possible diversity of kinds of existence. According to the principle of continuity , the universe is composed of an infinite series of forms, each of which shares with its neighbour at least one attribute. According to the principle of gradation this series ranges in hierarchical order from the barest type of existence to the most perfect conceivable entity that is to say God. The old saying, or law as it is called, non datur saltus in natura is by no means adequate to the diremption of the Notion, the continuity of the Notion with itself is of an entirely different nature.
‘This leads on to the concept of a series of natural things, and in particular, of living things. The desire to understand the necessity of such a development makes us look for a law governing the series, or a basic determination which, while positing variety, recapitulates itself within it, and so simultaneously engenders a new variety. But to augment a term by the successive addition of uniformly determined elements, and only to see the same relationship between all the members of the series, is not the way in which the Notion determines. It is in fact precisely this conception of a series of stages and so on, which has hindered advances in the recognition of the necessity of formations. It turns out to be a hopeless task to attempt to arrange the planets, metals or chemical bodies in general, plants, and animals, into a series, and to look for a law governing such a series, because nature does not distribute its formations into series and member, and the Notion distinguishes according to qualitative determinateness, making leaps in the process. The old saying, or law as it is called, ‘non datur saltus in natura’ is by no means adequate to the diremption of the Notion. The continuity of the Notion with itself is of an entirely different nature’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
Now I can’t feel my fingers
But I’m trying to breathe
Where do I end?
I don’t think this is me
Well, I think that I’m thinking
But there’s too much to know
It seems that I’m shrinking
While I continue to grow
There’s someone inside me
But it’s not really clear
It seems that I’m changing
But I’m not really here
I can’t feel with these hands
I don’t think with this mind
It’s just that I’m looking
But don’t see with these eyes
Now I’m happy to be here
To contain what I’ve lost
Just by thinking this thought
Two parallels cross
Just by thinking I’m here
I will soon disappear
Who cares and who knows
Where I’ve been or will go?
My true name was written
In the water and snow
And that was the time
To let it all go
To let it all go
To let it all go
Freedom!
Freedom!
Freedom from fear!
Freedom!
Freedom!
Freedom from fear!
Freedom!
Freedom!
Freedom from…
While Hegel evinces some scepticism toward the principle of continuity he does defend the view that nature has a hierarchical order and represents a system of forms at the same time he points out that modern science tends to overlook or to doubt the existence of qualitative differences in nature. Especially when new tools, proving powerful in the mathematical treatment of natural phenomena, are developed such as Newton ’ s concept of force or, after Hegel ’ s death, the concept of energy conservation it regularly happens that nature is seen almost exclusively in the light of these. Formulations such as the following then typically prevail: The whole realm of nature is governed by forces, the differences consist only in the respective kinds of acting forces, or energy conservation governs all natural processes, both in the inorganic and in the organic world, or the struggle for existence creates all forms in nature. In his ‘Philosophy of Nature’ Hegel demonstrates a hostility toward this type of view some of which had not been explicitly developed during his lifetime each of which tries to reduce the full range of the scala naturae to one or to very few of its stages.
This antireductionism is one of the chief strengths of Hegel ’ s philosophy of nature and moreover of his system in general albeit science would be impossible without some sort of reductionism. As for a contemporary definition of antireductionism, cf., for instance, John Polkinghorne: ‘[Physics] pulls things apart into smaller and smaller pieces. We have learned all sorts of worthwhile and interesting things this way. The question is whether or not it is the only way to learn what things are really like. In the end, are we just immensely complicated collections of quarks, gluons, and electrons? People who answer ‘Yes’ to this last question are called reductionists. In their view, the whole reduces simply to a collection of the parts. They are sometimes also called ‘nothing butters’, for they believe we are ‘nothing but’ collections of elementary particles. Those… who do not share this view are called antireductionists’.
Nonetheless given that the specific stages or principles to which more or less successfully the complexity of nature is reduced vary significantly in the course of history as for instance Aristotle considers the living organism and its entelechy a sort of paradigm for the description of natural phenomena, Newton uses mechanical forces as a paradigm of his physics, several physicists of the nineteenth century assigned a similar role to the concept of energy, it is necessary to point out the limited validity of any particular version of reductionism. ‘Der Philosophie fällt daher das Wächteramt zu, kraft dessen sie jeden Uebergriff einer empirischen in eine andere Disziplin, bzw. in die Philosophie selbst, zu verhüten und die Grenzen der Wissenschaften mit kritischer Strenge zu schützen hat. ‘It is hence up to philosophy to prevent the encroachment of any one empirical discipline into another or into philosophy itself; it is up to her to guard the limits of individual sciences with critical rigor’.
Point it out he does, focussing upon Newton’s particular model of reducing natural phenomena to forces and furthermore Hegel’ s criticism of reductionist world views paves the way for a nonreductionist philosophy of mind. Only by conceiving a hierarchical system of categories, within which it is illegitimate at any point to explain a more complex level wholly in terms of basic levels that is to say to call them nothing but arrangements or combinations of the basic levels can Hegel elaborate a philosophical anthropology and psychology in a nonreductive way and by contrast a philosophy of mind that tries to oppose the reduction of mind to mere properties of matter without a general concept of qualitatively distinct ontological levels deprives itself of forceful points that Hegel must needs make.
THE END OF THE FIRST SECTION OF THE THREE SECTIONS OF THE ‘PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE’
Coming up next:
Section two : ‘Physics’
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Dedicated to my lovely One who gives me my love of life …
For the love of life (for the love of life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
In the light of life (in the light of life)
For the love of light (for the love of light)
And the strong survive (and the strong survive)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
And the strong will rise (and the strong will rise)
In the endless light (in the endless light)
For the blood of life (for the blood of life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
In the bloodless light (in the bloodless light)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
In the blood, is light (in the blood, is light)
In the light, is life (in the light, is life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
In the endless light (in the endless light)
For the blood of life (for the blood of life)
Now, the strong will rise (now, the strong will rise)
For the love of light (for the love of light)
In the bloodless light (in the bloodless light)
Now, the strong survive (now, the strong survive)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
For the blood of life (for the blood of life)
And the heavens come (and the heavens come)
For the strongest ones (for the strongest ones)
In a universe (in a universe)
Made of blood and love (made of blood and love)
In the blood, is light (in the blood, is light)
In the light, is life (in the light, is life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
In the endless light (in the endless light)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
In the endless light (in the endless light)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
For the love of life (for the love of life)
Swans, my favourite band, have a new album out by the way. ‘The Beggar’, available from Amazon, or you can order it direct from Young God Records and have it signed by M. Gira, which is what I did.
