헤겔의 자연 철학에 대해

Philosophizing about Nature: Hegel’s Philosophical Project

Kenneth R. Westphal

University of Kent, Canterbury

In: F.C. Beiser, ed., The Cambridge Companioni to Hegel & Nineteenth-Century Philosophy

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 281–310.

ABSTRACT: Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature centrally aims to systematically order our

most basic ontological and natural-scientific concepts and principles (§§246Z,

247Z, 249 & Z), beginning with the most abstract, undifferentiated and universal

(space and time, §§254–7), and developing finely differentiated and integrated

stages (§249) up to the most complex: the organic life of animal species (§§367–-

76). Hegel classifies his philosophy of nature as ‘rational physics’: physical theory

highlighting the conceptual foundations and basic principles of physics and how

these can explain and comprehend particular physical phenomena. Newton identi-

fied the genre of his Principia as ‘rational mechanics’ (a proper part of rational

physics); rational physics remains a serious discipline today, with professional

journals and recent textbooks to show for it. Hegel’s study of gravitational theory

was central to developing his ‘dialectic’ from a destructive set of sceptical equipol-

lence arguments to counter contemporaneous physics and astronomy, into a

constructive set of philosophical principles based on gravity exhibiting the essen-

tial interrelatedness of physical bodies. In life sciences and anthropology, Hegel

sought to avoid both substance dualism and eliminative reductionism by develop-

ing a sophisticated and subtle emergentism. ‘Emergence’ refers to properties or

behaviour of a complex system which are not aggregative functions of the proper-

ties or behaviour of the individual parts or materials of that system. Emergentism

thus highlights structures and functions, opposing eliminative reductionism,

though not (necessarily) materialism. Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature is fascinating in

its own right and also illuminates the character of Hegel’s philosophy as a whole,

because as Henry Harris noted, ‘the Baconian applied science of this world is the

solid foundation upon which Hegel’s ladder of spiritual experience rests’.

Note: Problems with production editing and two errors require corrigenda, which are

made here without notice. The original author/date reference system is restored, with

references listed at the end. Pagination and note numbering match the published version;

please pardon the resulting odd page breaks and bottom margins.

1 INTRODUCTION.

Though initiated by Pythagoras, expanded in Plato’s Timeaus, comprehensively

developed by Aristotle and healthy throughout the Mediaeval, Renaissance and

Modern periods well into the Nineteenth Century,¹in the Twentieth Century

among analytic and scientifically-minded philosophers, ‘philosophy of nature’

apparently vanished. Fortunately, the increasing calibre of recent research in

history, methodology and philosophy of science has once again revealed fasci-

nating issues at the intersections among the natural sciences, scientific method-

ology, history of science and philosophy of science which today – precisely

because no discipline can plausibly monopolize them – are rightly designated

philosophy of nature. Placing Hegel’s notorious Philosophy of Nature within this

interdisciplinary area does not yet illumine it.

[p. 282]

Hegel classifies his philosophy of nature as rational physics.²‘Rational physics’

may sound quaint, outdated, even presumptuous. However, Newton identified

the genre of the Principia as ‘rational mechanics’ (a proper part of rational phys-

ics),³and rational physics remains a serious discipline today, with professional

journals and recent

¹See, e.g., Cassirer (1999), Meixner & Newen (2004), McKeon (1994), Malament (2002).

²Enz. II, Introduction; MM 9:10–11; Hegel 1970c, 2.

³Newton (1999), 381, cf. 11.

textbooks to show for it.⁴‘Rational physics’ is physical theory which empha-

sizes the conceptual foundations and basic principles of physics and how these

can be used to explain particular physical phenomena, rendering them com-

prehensible. This is the key aim of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, because suffi-

cient analysis of the conceptual foundations of natural sciences requires philo-

sophical resources which complement the resources found within scientific

theories and methods, which alone, he argues, are insufficient to the task. He-

gel’s Philosophy of Nature is fascinating in its own right and also sheds important

light on the character of Hegel’s philosophy as a whole, because as Henry

Harris notes, ‘the Baconian applied science of this world is the solid founda-

tion upon which Hegel’s ladder of spiritual experience rests’.⁵Indeed, Hegel’s

study of gravitational theory played a central role in the development of his

‘dialectic’ from a merely destructive set of sceptical equipollence arguments

directed against contemporaneous physics and astronomy to a constructive set

of philosophical principles based on gravity exhibiting the essential interrelat-

edness of physical bodies.⁶

Though it has been easy to condemn Hegel’s alleged errors – the supposed

debacle regarding Bode’s Law of interplanetary distances and the discovery of

the asteroid, Ceres; his apparently scandalous attack on Newton’s Principia –

such criticisms generally redound upon their sources, once Hegel’s sources have

been properly identified and assessed.⁷Hegel’s post-graduate instruction in

physics was excellent,

⁴E.g., Kilmister & Reeve (1966).

⁵Harris (1997), 2:355.

⁶Ferrini (1999); cp. De Orbitis Planetarum, GW 5:247.29; Hegel (1987), 295.

⁷And once corruptions in the Latin of Hegel’s Dissertatio are corrected; see Ferrini (1995) and

the critical edition in GW 5:231–53. Regarding Bode’s Law, see Neuser (1986, 50–60) and

Ferrini (1998). Regarding Newton, see below, §2, Edward Halper’s contribution to this vol-

ume, Ferrini (1995 &c), Ziche (1996, 133–99) and Petry (1993).

283

and he had sufficient background in mathematics to understand it thoroughly.⁸

Michael John Petry’s massive three volume edition of Hegel’s Philosophy of

Nature shows conclusively that Hegel was both broadly and deeply versed in

the natural sciences of his day, as well as any non-specialist possibly could be

and far more than his vociferous critics ever were, that Hegel made very few

outright errors about contemporaneous science and that those errors usually

stem from credible sources.⁹Though not a professional mathematician, Hegel

taught calculus and understood mathematics well enough to have informed

reasons for preferring French schools of analysis, particularly LaGrange’s

(§267 n. 2).¹⁰Indeed, he was sufficiently well informed about problems in the

foundations of (mathematical) analysis to critically assess Cauchy’s ground-

breaking ‘first reform’ of analysis.¹¹Moreover, Hegel was a rarity among phi-

losophers, because he was also directly engaged in

⁸See Pfleiderer (1994); for discussion see Westphal (2008).

⁹Petry (1970), 1:49–59. Petry’s edition (Hegel 1970b) also indicates the original date of publi-

cation of the various passages included in Hegel’s final edition (1830). A somewhat better

translation is provided by Miller (Hegel 1970c); see Buchdahl (1972). Hegel’s Philosophy of

Nature is the second of three parts of his Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, comprising

§§245–375. This Encyclopedia was Hegel’s lecture syllabus. It contains consecutively numbered

sections, often complemented by published Remarks (Anmerkungen). Posthumous editions of

Hegel’s Encyclopedia have appended relevant lecture notes from students to these sections as

‘Zusätze’ (additions). All otherwise unattributed section numbers refer to Hegel’s Encyclopedia.

These may be followed by ‘Anm’. for Hegel’s published Remarks, a ‘Z’ for lecture material,

or an ‘n’ for Hegel’s published footnotes. As a lecture syllabus, Hegel’s Encyclopedia was in-

tended for oral elaboration; his lecture notes are crucial resources. Recently, several complete

sets of lecture transcripts have been found, edited and published. The most important of

these are Hegel (2000, 2002). The recent English translations of Hegel’s works listed among

the References provide the pagination of GW; hence no page numbers are cited for these

translations.

¹⁰The second edition of LaGrange’s Théorie des fonctiones analytiques (1811) is now available in

English translation (LaGrange 1997). Hegel used the first edition, LaGrange (1797).

¹¹Wolff (1986).

284

natural science, specifically geology and mineralogy.¹²Hegel simply is not the

charlatan whose image still arises in connection with his philosophy of nature.

Understanding the philosophical character of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature

requires recognizing some basic legitimate philosophical issues embedded in

the development of physics from Galileo to Newton (§2). These issues illumi-

nate the character of Hegel’s analysis of philosophical issues regarding nature

(§3) and the central aims and purposes of Hegel’s philosophy of nature (§4).

2 GALLILEO, NEWTON AND PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE.

2.1 Galileo directly disputed authority as a criterion of truth in scientific

matters. He also knew that sensory evidence could not serve as this criterion;

he recognized that motion is relative and that illusions and appearances can

infect observation. Galileo held that mathematical formulation of laws of

nature can afford demonstrations of genuine regularities in natural phenom-

ena. This requires that mathematical formulae be fitted to careful observation,

whilst the joint satisfaction of these two demands must also be rationally intel-

ligible. The crucial methodological point is that giving mathematical expression

to natural regularities guides the physical analysis and explanation of the phe-

nomena. The factors in the mathematical formula must be plausibly interpret-

able as factors in the physical situation. Galileo explicitly disavowed metaphys-

ics as a guide to determining the plausibility of those factors, at the beginning

of Day 3 of his Discourses Concerning the Two New Sciences. This incensed Des-

cartes and the same attitude in Newton worried Kant, though it was decisive

for the development of modern science and became even more pronounced in

Newton’s Principia.¹³Newton’s mathematical theory of orbital motion forged

an important kind of independence of physical theory from metaphysical and

physical questions about the ultimate nature of space, time or gravity: For New-

ton’s work it sufficed to regard gravity as a centrally

¹²Ferrini (2009a, 2009b).

¹³Descartes to Mersenne, 11 Oct., 1638; Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (here-

after ‘Foundations’), 4:472–3.

285

directed force, where that centre is specified only by its mass and location.¹⁴

The relevance of this point to Hegel can be seen by considering Gerd

Buchdahl’s (1980) account of how scientific theories are developed, evaluated

and revised within a methodological framework comprising three broad kinds

of considerations, a ‘probative component’ regarding proper standards and

techniques for collecting and assessing observational and experimental data, a

‘systemic component’ regarding the internal unity of a theory and its integra-

tion with other scientific theories and an ‘explicative component’ concerning

the intelligibility or plausibility of the basic concepts or factors involved in a

scientific theory, including heuristic principles and basic principles of explana-

tion. In a phrase, Hegel’s philosophy of nature is dedicated to showing that,

when properly explicated, the basic concepts involved in an adequate scientific

theory are mutually contrastive and interdefined in such a way that no genuine

further questions about explanatory causes remain. The questions set aside by

Galileo and Newton, the very questions Descartes and Kant sought to answer,

are not, in the final Hegelian analysis, genuine questions at all. This point can

be illustrated and further specified by considering part of Hegel’s critique of

Newton.

2.2 Newton sought to answer two questions: Given an orbiting body’s tra-

jectory, find the law of force, and more importantly, Given a law of force, find

the trajectory of an orbiting body.¹⁵Newton’s theory involves generalizing

Galileo’s law of free fall to regard the deviation of an orbit from its tangent as

an indicator of centrally directed force, where the extent of deviation is pro-

portional to the square of the time. Since the motion in question is an elliptical

orbit, the direction of deviation from a tangent is directed towards a focal

centre, and so is not constant. Since the orbit is elliptical, the force which

produces the deviation also varies with the distance from the centre (by an

inverse square proportionality). These facts require incorporating time into the

geometrical calculations. Newton included time by generalizing Kepler’s law of

areas; the time elapsed when traversing a given arc of its orbit is proportional

to the area of the sector swept out by a radius from the centre point to the

orbiting body. Because the direction of motion changes continuously, the

geometrical calculations must be restricted to very small or nascent

¹⁴De Gandt (1995), 265–72.

¹⁵De Gandt (1995), 8.

286

motions. Combining these factors required sophisticated mathematical analysis

which eluded Newton’s predecessors, though they perceived many of the

relevant physical factors.

Because one of the two central problems was to derive the law of force

from a given orbit, it is significant though unsurprising that Newton’s inverse

square law of gravitational attraction can be derived from Kepler’s orbits.

Hegel contends, however, that Newton’s purely mathematical demonstration

of Kepler’s laws is inadequate because Newton’s mathematical analysis alone

cannot establish the reality of Kepler’s physical laws (§270R; see below, §2.3).¹⁶

Yet Newton’s second problem is more important and more acute: to derive a

body’s orbit from the law of attraction. Newton developed a bevy of ingenious

geometrical techniques to solve this problem, but it ultimately is beyond those

means to handle. In principle, Newton’s expanded geometrical methods can

only determine, one point at a time, the trajectory of a body which begins

motion with any initial velocity under the influence of any central force de-

pending on distance. However, only with integral calculus can the curve of the

trajectory be completely described and can the geometrical species of the

curve (if it has one) be determined. The problem and the solution were first

demonstrated by Jean Bernoulli using integral calculus.¹⁷

Though I have found no reference by Hegel to Bernoulli’s works, Hegel

refers directly to the weaknesses of Newton’s proof that the planets move in

ellipses; in particular, his remarks suggest the problem of the uniqueness of the

ellipse as a solution to the problem of determining the orbit on the basis of the

law of force. The problem of the uniqueness of the solution was taken up

from Bernoulli by subsequent analyses using integral calculus, including Fran-

coeur’s Traité élémentair de Mécanique (1801) to which Hegel refers in this con-

nection (§270Anm.). Hegel cites (in 1827 and 1830) Laplace’s Exposition du

Systèm du Monde (1796) to the same effect in his lectures (§270Z). Yet Hegel

learned of this problem much earlier from Castel (1724), a rare work widely

publicized by Montucla (1758), which Hegel likely studied when visiting the

university library in Geneva from Bern and which he implicitly used both in

his dissertation, De Orbitis Planetarum,¹⁸and in his Science of

¹⁶See Ferrini (1994), Westphal (2008).

17

DeGandt (1995), 248–9, 263–4. [This is incorrect; see Pourciau (1992) and Nasti De

Vincentis (1995, 1998), who correctly identifies the Newtonian problem Hegel highlights.]

¹⁸Hegel (1801, 1987); see Ferrini (1994, 1995, 1997a).

287

Logic.¹⁹Castel showed that Newton’s demonstration of Kepler’s areal law en-

tails the absurd conclusion that all central orbits are circular.²⁰This is a crucial

example of a point repeatedly emphasized by Hegel’s physics instructor,

Pfleiderer (1994): to determine what can, and what cannot, be accomplished

using geometry and what instead requires analysis (calculus).

2.3 Newton’s point-by-point calculation of an orbit illustrates Hegel’s com-

plaint about the ‘unspeakable metaphysics’ unleashed by Newton’s Principia

(§270Anm.). Newton’s point-by-point calculations require dividing up a con-

tinuous motion and dividing up the various factors which constitute that mo-

tion and treating them as if they were mutually independent quantities. The

point of Hegel’s critique is that no sensible physical interpretation can be given

to the mathematical factors involved in Newton’s calculations:

The presuppositions, the course, and the results which analysis requires and

provides, remain quite beside the [present] point, which concerns the physical

value and the physical significance (Bedeutung) of those determinations and that

course [of Newton’s geometrical demonstration]. (§270Anm.)

Hegel objects to Newton’s reifying his analytical factors into apparently mutu-

ally independent realities; he contends that Newton’s geometrical methods

cannot but encourage this misleading tendency by carving up a continuous

mutual causal interaction into fictitious discrete impulses (cf. §266 note). In-

deed, this contrast illuminates Hegel’s repeated stress on how ‘modern [mathe-

matical] analysis’ has dispensed with Newton’s methods of proof (e.g., §270

Anm.).

2.4 Hegel’s criticism of Newton’s intricate geometrical methods illuminates

Hegel’s account of causal dispositions and causal laws. Consider three standard

views of scientific laws and explanations. It is often supposed

¹⁹WL, GW 21:378.29-379.4, 379.6-379.9; see Ferrini (1997b), 413–4.

²⁰Nasti De Vincentis (1998).

288

that genuinely explanatory laws refer to ‘subobservable’ theoretical entities,

whose properties and interaction produce an observed macroscopic phenome-

non. In sharp contrast to this, instrumentalism regards theoretical entities as

mere fictions for calculating predictions and retrodictions of observable phe-

nomena.²¹A third view is that scientific laws should be ‘phenomenological’ in

the sense that they merely describe regularities in manifest, observed phenom-

ena. Kepler’s laws are of this type, this view of natural laws is also found, e.g.,

in the theories of Joseph Black, John Keil, W. J. M. Rankine and Gustav

Kirchhoff.²²Among the standard options, this third view is closest to Hegel’s.

However, Hegel’s logical cum philosophical explication seeks the insight or

comprehension promised by explanatory laws while avoiding recourse to a

potentially sceptical gap between observed phenomena and theoretical posits.

The clue lies in Hegel’s supposed ‘Aristotelianism’, that is, his opposition to

corpuscularism.

2.5 Corpuscular theories of matter rejected Aristotelian accounts of ‘natures’

to account for change. According to corpuscularism, matter is discrete, inert

and consists solely of extension and impenetrability. Because matter is inert, all

changes of matter must result from some non-material cause, either directly or

indirectly; no forces are inherent in matter. The postulation of inert matter

fared ill as science developed. Newton ascribed the power of inertia to matter.

Eighteenth-century physicists lost their Cartesian and corpuscular aversions to

ascribing gravity as a physical force to matter and the development of chemis-

try, beginning with Newton himself, though especially as developed by Black,

Priestly and Lavoisier, required ascribing other active forces

²¹Cf. Hume (1975), §VII Part I, final note (on vis inertiae and gravity).

²²See Westphal (1989a), 160, 273 note 29. This third view is ascribed to Hegel by Buchdahl

(1984, 20) and Falkenburg (1998, 132 note 3).

289

to matter.²³The alternative theory of matter was dynamic; it attributed active

forces or dispositions directly to matter. First unambiguously advocated in

chemistry, the dynamic theory of matter lent itself directly to Newtonian phys-

ics because it afforded a way to understand gravitational force as inherent in

matter and thus removed one prop supporting mechanical explanations of

gravity. The other prop was the problem of action at a distance, which is only

a problem for completely mechanical conceptions of matter which in principle

require contact for one body to change the motion of another body. This

problem, too, is alleviated by a dynamic concept of matter.

I say that the dynamic concept of matter was first unambiguously advo-

cated in chemistry, even though Newtonian mechanics ultimately ascribes

gravitational force to matter. Throughout his life, out of deference to the Car-

tesian tradition he opposed and in accord with the corpuscular tradition to

which he adhered, Newton insisted that ‘gravity’ was only a mathematical, and

not a physical characteristic of matter.²⁴Newton was deliberately evasive in

formulating his Quaeries in the Opticks in 1717. It remained for later Eighteenth

century physicists to rescind their corpuscular and Cartesian qualms about the

active forces of matter and to take Newton’s famous Quaery 31 at face value.

(Newton himself regarded impenetrability as a fundamental characteristic of

body, while Descartes held that it derives from the primary characteristic of

extension.)²⁵

A central objection to Newton’s theory of gravity from both the Cartesian

and the corpuscular traditions was that Newton’s theory of gravity appeared to

reinstate discredited Aristotelian forms or active powers of matter. Newton

sought to remain neutral about the causes of gravitational attraction. Yet this

official agnosticism about the nature and status of gravity ultimately compro-

mises the natural-scientific credentials of Newton’s physical system of the

world because it required Newton to

23

For discussion of the chemical revolution in connection with Kant, see Friedman (1992),

264–90.

²⁴See Koyré (1965), Hall & Hall (1960). [This claim about Newton is incorrect; see Westphal

(2008).]

²⁵Newton (1952), 389, 400, (1962), 106. Descartes (1991), 3:361, 372. On Newton’s corpus-

cularism, see Mandelbaum (1964), 66–88.

290

insert a transcendent, theological postulate into his erstwhile physical theory,

namely that God set the astronomical clockwork going and occasionally inter-

venes to prevent the whole system from running down. As Hegel recognized

in his Dissertatio, this postulate simply rescinds the key aim of offering an en-

tirely natural and thus genuinely scientific explanation of natural phenomena.²⁶

Hegel further recognized, however, that Newtonian physical theory in fact

provides adequate grounds for ascribing gravitational attraction directly to

matter; matter is ‘essentially heavy’ in the sense that material bodies inherently

tend – they gravitate – towards one another (§§262, 269).²⁷Indeed, Hegel held

that adequate scientific explanation provides the only possible grounds for

ascribing active characteristics – causal dispositions – to material phenomena.

Comprehending essential characteristics of things provides explanatory insight.

This is Hegel’s view beginning already in the Phenomenology of Spirit, which he

developed there in nuce, expressly leaving its full development for his system of

‘science’,²⁸which came to include not only his Science of Logic, but also his

Encyclopaedia, including centrally the Philosophy of Nature.

2.6 In ‘Force and Understanding’ (Phenomenology, chapter 3) Hegel repeatedly

criticizes attempts to reify aspects or moments of force into supposed distinct

or independent entities. For example, he criticized the reification of ‘expressed’

and ‘repressed’ force (e.g., the contrast between kinetic and potential energy) or

‘solicited’ and ‘soliciting’ force. Kant used the term ‘solicitation’ to refer to the

effect of a moving force on a body in a given moment, which gives the mo-

ment of acceleration. Kant used this to try to prove the law of continuity

(Foundations, 4:551–3). Hegel’s point is that thinking of forces in

²⁶GW 5:247.12–23; Hegel (1987), 294. For discussion of Newton’s view, see Carrier (1999).

²⁷See Buchdahl (1984, 18–25). Buchdahl (1972, 260–61) recognizes Hegel’s ‘Aristotelianism’,

but never reconciles it with Hegel’s alleged preference for ‘phenomenological’ laws of nature

because he doesn’t quite see Hegel’s enriched account of ‘phenomenological’ laws which I

highlight here. This important point is already central to Hegel’s Dissertatio (GW 5:247.29;

Hegel 1987, 295).

²⁸PhdG, GW 9:101.17–27/M 102. Natural science is also fundamental to Hegel’s analysis of

‘The Certainty and Truth of Reason’ and ‘Observing Nature’; see Ferrini (2009a, 2009b).

291

terms of ‘moments’ of solicitation encourages a misleading division of a con-

tinuously effective force into a series of (quasi-mechanical) impulses of just the

sort found in Newton’s geometrical analysis of gravitational force (above,

§2.4). Hegel described a set of theoretical causal laws, such as Newton’s Prin-

cipia, Book One, as a ‘quiet supersensible realm of law’ because abstract formu-

lations of laws of nature don’t account for actual phenomena precisely because

they are abstract idealizations. Accounting for actual phenomena additionally

requires providing their specific parameters, their initial conditions and the

theoretical links between the abstract formulae of general laws of nature and

the specific versions of those laws which pertain to the specific domain in

question.²⁹Likewise, subsuming particular laws of phenomena under more

general laws requires tremendous abstraction – from particular phenomena

and their complex, fully determinate conditions.³⁰Thus explaining particular

phenomena requires re-introducing their specific parameters. Nevertheless, the

fact that various specific phenomena can be brought under a common general

law, and not merely a common mathematical function, shows that these phe-

nomena are in fact interrelated; they are not mutually independent, self-suffi-

cient objects or events.³¹The very concept of law-like relations, and likewise

the very concept of force, requires interdefined factors into which the phe-

nomena can be analysed.³²Thus ‘the force is constituted exactly like the law’.³³Hegel

thus aims to show that adequate scientific explanation provides the sole and

sufficient grounds for determining the essential characteristics of the objects

and events in nature.³⁴Why ascribe forces to material

²⁹PhdG, GW 9:91.31–37/M 91. For further discussion, see Westphal (2008, 2009).

³⁰PhdG, GW 9:92.10–19/M 91.

31

PhdG, GW 9:92.23–26/M 91. Pfleiderer (1994) repeatedly drew his students’ attention to

mathematical functions exhibited in natural phenomena and their underlying causal laws, and

stressed that distinct causal laws may exhibit common kinds of mathematical functions. A

key error of Schelling’s philosophy of nature is his persistent tendency to mistake analogies

for identities, thus disregarding Pfleiderer’s crucial point. This error is one object of Hegel’s

condemnation of relying on mere analogies, especially on the basis of intuition (Enz. Intro-

duction, MM 9:9, Hegel 1970c, 1; §246Anm.). Schelling’s apologists have yet to address He-

gel’s devastating rebuke (cf. Houlgate 1999).

³²PhdG 93.7–94.28/M 92–3.

³³PhdG 95.12–13/M 95; original emphasis. Hegel’s claim is consistent with recognizing vari-

ous kinds of idealizations typically involved in stating causal laws, but these niceties cannot

be discussed here.

³⁴See Westphal (2008–09), §6.

292

phenomena? Because so far as logical, epistemic or metaphysical necessity may

be concerned, natural phenomena could instantiate any mathematical function,

or none whatsoever. Hegel realized that Kant’s Foundations fails utterly to ac-

count for this.³⁵The fact that a natural phenomenon exhibits a mathematical

function indicates, as nothing else can, that something in that phenomenon is

structured in accord with the relevant mathematical function exhibited in its

behaviour. That ‘something’ is the causal structure of the phenomenon, its

causal disposition(s). Hegel’s claim must be taken literally: the force is consti-

tuted exactly like the law.³⁶Hegel’s account of causation has great significance

for his ontology in general and especially for his Philosophy of Nature.

2.7 Despite his penetrating critique of Newton’s flawed geometrical meth-

ods, it is crucial to recognize that Hegel’s central account of concepts, of Begrif-

fe as internally complex, systematically integrated and instantiated conceptual

structures, owes its foundation, both for its meaning and for its justification, to

the Newtonian theory of universal gravitation.³⁷Hegel himself insists that:

Gravitation is the true and determinate concept of material corporeality, which

is realized as idea (zur Idee realisiert ist). (§269)

Universal gravitation as such must be recognized as a profound thought; it has

already acquired attention and confidence, above all through its associated

quantitative determination and has been vindicated by experience from the

solar system right down to the phenomenon of the capillary tube .... (§269

Anm.)

Hegel’s profound admiration for the enormous scope and integrative power of

the theory of universal gravitation, expressed briefly here, is something he

learned from his physics instructor Pfleiderer, who uses this

³⁵Westphal (1998b). Radical empiricists such as Bas van Fraassen hold that insisting on hav-

ing an ‘account’ is already to beg the question in favor of an illicit realism about explanations

and explananda. Radical empiricism of this sort, however, is an unwarranted hold-over of

misguided, early eighteenth-century philosophical preconceptions about science (Westphal

2006); also see Hüttemann (1997).

³⁶On Hegel’s analysis of causality in ‘Force and Understanding’ see Westphal (2008, 2009).

³⁷See Ferrini (1999).

293

lesson to explain an extremely important kind of scientific explanation. Pflei-

derer’s account serves as the best commentary on Hegel’s own brief remark:

Physics is concerned with the most exact knowledge of natural phenomena

possible. From what we observe in nature we make certain rules according to

which bodies interrelate under certain conditions. ... In the previous [example;

omitted] natural laws were expressed merely as general occurrent (eintretender)

consequences; but one also speaks of properties and capacities of bodies be-

cause it lies in the nature of our way of representing things (unseres Vorstellens)

to regard whatever we consistently remark in something as its property or

power. In this way we of course gain brevity and richness of expression, but

one must not thereby mislead oneself into believing that the cause of the phe-

nomenon has thus been found. If we say, for example, the body falls because

it is heavy, no cause is thus adduced; rather, heaviness is a mere designation of

the very same phenomenon. However if such a law is now found, e.g., that an

unsupported body moves toward the earth until it again finds support, in that

way we still don’t know the phenomenon sufficiently; what matters instead are

other circumstances, in this case the direction and speed of the motion and the

relations among various different bodies in this regard. To inform ourselves

about these requires experiments. For example, one places bodies in a space

from which as much air as possible is expelled and finds that now all bodies

fall with almost equal speed. The rules constructed from compiling and com-

paring individual phenomena are then applied again to explain other particular

complex phenomena, indeed ones which often at first seem to contradict

them, e.g., the swinging of the pendulum, the rising of light bodies, water

spouts, suction pumps, etc. These latter phenomena one used to believe were

explained by the so-called horror vacui; however this was basically no more than

an ill-suited expression for the phenomenon itself. Afterwards one found that

the matter could be fully explained by the pressure of air on the water, and that

in this way it could be traced back to the law of gravity, of which it first seem-

ed to make an exception. If one then wants to go further and adduce actual

causes of phenomena, then one must admittedly be satisfied with probabilities

and hypotheses. (Pfleiderer 1994, 59–60; tr. KRW)

Pfleiderer’s dismissive closing remark about ‘probabilities and hypotheses’

rather clearly alludes to Newton’s hypothesi non fingo.³⁸Pfleiderer’s point is that

mathematical description of natural regularities enables us to find common

regularities underlying diverse and apparently opposed or conflicting phenom-

ena and that this is centrally a

³⁸About what Newton counted and rejected as mere hypotheses, see the brilliant analysis by

Harper (2002), and especially his (forthcoming [2011]).

294

matter of exact mathematical description combined with comprehensive classi-

fication of natural phenomena under common mathematical functions.

Pfleiderer thus espoused the standard ‘phenomenological’ account of scientific

laws and explanations, which Hegel significantly refashioned when he realized

that this kind of empirical evidence coupled with exact mathematical descrip-

tion provides the sole and sufficient basis for ascribing causal dispositions to

natural phenomena (above, §2.5). Yet Hegel retained Pfleiderer’s lessons about

the inadequacy of the covering-law model of scientific explanation and the

enormous importance of seeking scientific explanation in systematic integra-

tion, a view that has only recently be considered by analytic philosophers of

science.³⁹With these basic points about Hegel’s view of Newtonian physics in

hand, we can now consider the basic philosophical character of Hegel’s Philoso-

phy of Nature, before considering its central systematic aims (below, §4).⁴⁰

3 HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE: ONTOLOGY, METAPHYSICS OR SE-

MANTICS?

Interpretations of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature tend to divide into two kinds:

According to some, Hegel’s development or derivation of the various concepts

treated in his Philosophy of Nature is purely conceptual and a priori, and merely

draws illustrative, corrigible examples from the empirical domains of the natu-

ral sciences. Others contend that the very basis of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature is

the entirety of natural science, so that the conceptual network developed in

Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature is as corrigible as natural science itself, which has

changed radically since 1830.⁴¹The holistic character of Hegel’s philosophy

together

³⁹E.g., Friedman (1974), Morrison (2000).

40

Further details of Hegel’s critical reconsideration of Newton’s Principia are discussed by

Halper (2008), in this volume. For detailed discussion of Hegel’s rational physics, and his

acute account of the role of mathematics in it, see Ihmig (1989), Moretto (2004) and Wand-

schneider (1982).

⁴¹Houlgate (1998), xiii–xiv. For a review of recent work on Hegel’s philosophy of nature see

Petry (2001).

295

with his epistemology renders suspect the dichotomy formed by these two

approaches, which presumes, in effect, the supposedly exclusive and exhaus-

tive Aristotelian distinction between ‘rational’ and ‘historical’ knowledge. Both

kinds of knowledge adhere to a foundationalist model of justification. ‘Histori-

cal’ knowledge (historia) is based squarely and solely on perception or empirical

evidence; it is inevitably partial and unsystematic, or at least cannot be known

to be otherwise. ‘Rational’ knowledge (scientia) is the only rigorous form of

knowledge, for it justifies conclusions solely by deducing them from original

‘first’ principles. This distinction held sway throughout the Modern period,

was central to Kant’s epistemology and is still detectable today in the deductiv-

ist assumptions often made about empirical justification.⁴²Hegel was deeply

suspicious of this classical dichotomy. This is indicated by his rejection, by

1802, of distinctions in kind between both the a priori and the a posteriori and

between the analytic and the synthetic.⁴³Hegel’s critique of Kant’s Critical

philosophy and his solution to the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion reject

the traditional dichotomy between scientia and historia, along with the founda-

tionalist model of justification they embody.⁴⁴More careful recent research

suggests more sophisticated lines of interpretation of Hegel’s Philosophy of Na-

ture which avoid the ultimately untenable dichotomy between ‘rational’ and

‘historical’ knowledge.⁴⁵

⁴²Descartes (1984, 1:13) uses this distinction in passing in the Third of his Rules for Directing

the Mind. This distinction gives the point to Locke’s (1975, 1.1.2) claim to use the ‘historical,

plain method’ and to Hume’s (1975, §8, ¶64.2) contrast between ‘inference and reasoning’

versus ‘memory and senses’ as sources of knowledge. Kant uses it in the same sense as Des-

cartes in a parallel context in the Critique of Pure Reason (A835–7/B863–5).

⁴³See Glauben und Wissen (GW 4:335.2–6).

⁴⁴Westphal (forthcoming).

⁴⁵My thinking about these matters owes much, though probably not yet enough, to Falken-

burg (1987, 1998), Ferrini (1995, 1999) and Houlgate (2005), 106–80, though I present a

distinctive interpretation anchored in Hegel’s epistemology and semantics. Houlgate’s com-

prehensive introduction is highly recommended, especially for its detailed synopsis of He-

gel’s Philosophy of Nature. Also see Ferrarin (2001), 201–33. A good background synopsis of

Hegel’s organicism is provided by Beiser (2005), 80–109. However, pace Beiser (2005, 107),

among many others, Hegel’s serious and independent engagement with natural science began

long before his arrival in Jena; it began at least by his time in Bern (Ferrini 1994, 1997).

296

Hegel insists that, while the two disciplines are distinct (§§7–9), natural

science is fundamental to philosophy:

Not only must philosophy accord with the experience nature gives rise to; in

its formation and in its development, philosophic science presupposes and is condi-

tioned by empirical physics. (§246R; cf. Hegel 2000, 72)

This remark, made very early in Hegel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of Nature,

concerns not only the second part of his Encyclopaedia. Nor does it concern

only the development of spirit out of nature in part three. It also and funda-

mentally concerns Hegel’s Logic. Just quoted was the second sentence of He-

gel’s Remark; the first sentence refers to Hegel’s discussion of the relation

between philosophy and the empirical sciences in the Introduction to the

Encyclopaedia as a whole. There Hegel states directly that philosophy is stimu-

lated by and grows out of experience, including natural-scientific experience,

and that the natural sciences develop conceptual determinations in the form of

generalizations, laws and classifications which must be reconsidered philo-

sophically (§12). Thus Hegel insists that his Logic cannot be properly under-

stood apart from his Philosophy of Nature, nor can his philosophy of nature be

understood apart from Hegel’s knowledge and understanding of the methods

and content of natural science. Hegel’s Logic examines the ontological and

cognitive roles of ontological categories (e.g., being, existence, quantity, es-

sence, appearance, relation, thing, cause) and principles of logic (e.g., identity,

excluded middle, non-contradiction). His Logic also analyses syllogism, judg-

ment and principles of scientific explanation (force, matter, measure, cogni-

tion; mechanical, chemical, organic and teleological functions), by using which

alone we are able to know the world. Even this brief list suffices to cast grave

doubt on the suggestion that Hegel’s Logic can be a purely a priori investigation,

for it involves too many quite specific concepts and principles, at least some of

which obviously derive from historical science (e.g., ‘chemism’). Much less so,

then, can Hegel’s attempt in his Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, to show

that and how these concepts and principles are specified and exhibited in

nature and in human life, be purely a priori.⁴⁶

46

Regarding Hegel’s treatment of chemistry, see Engelhardt (1976, 1984) and Burbidge

(1996).

297

Yet the fact that Hegel expressly avows the empirical and scientific sources

of many of the key concepts and principles analysed in his Logic and especially

in his Philosophy of Nature does not make his philosophical project merely em-

pirical nor merely explicative. In the remark just quoted Hegel distinguishes

sharply between the basis and development of his philosophy out of reconsid-

eration of the natural sciences and his philosophical science proper, for which

the natural sciences are not foundational. Instead, the foundation or basis of

Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature is something he calls ‘the necessity of the concept’

(§246 & Anm.), which philosophy elucidates in part with some of its own

conceptual resources (§9). In what can this conceptual necessity consist, if it

cannot be pure a priori and if many of the concepts and principles it involves

derive from natural science?

Calling the relevant necessity ‘metaphysical’ doesn’t help, though it recalls

Hegel’s observation that metaphysics is nothing other than ‘the full range (Um-

fang) of universal determinations of thought (Denkbestimmungen); as it were, the

diamond net in which we bring everything and thus first make it intelligible’

(§246Z). Hegel’s concern is that basic concepts and principles used in natural

science are either assumed to be familiar – as Newton assumed our familiarity

with space and time – or they are introduced independently of one another in

ways that obscure their conceptual significance, which is a function of how

each concept is both distinguished from and also integrated with other con-

cepts in its domain and their proper ontological interpretation (§246Z). Hegel

advocated moderate holism about conceptual content or meaning: concepts

can only be properly defined and understood by integrating them with their

proper counterparts within any specific domain, and likewise integrating spe-

cific domains under higher-order concepts or principles, while also integrating

specific concepts with their instances. Hegel’s moderate semantic holism rests

on what may be called his ‘co-determination thesis’.

3.1 Hegel’s co-determination thesis is an important semantic and cognitive

insight, which Hegel gained by reconsidering Kant’s theory of cognitive judg-

ment and what it reveals about the interdependence of categorical, hypotheti-

cal and disjunctive judgments. Hegel regarded Kant’s account of the Table of

Judgments as inadequate, though extremely instructive

298

(§171Z). Kant noted that a proper disjunctive judgment divides up the whole

of a specific range (‘sphere’) of predicates relevant to a particular possible

cognition.⁴⁷Denying one predicate of the relevant kind of subject entails that

another predicate within that range must be true of that subject. Conversely,

affirming a predicate of a relevant subject is tantamount to denying of that

subject the other predicates within that range. Hegel recognized that singular

categorical judgments and hypothetical judgments both presuppose disjunctive

judgments. Hypothetical judgments require disjunctive judgments because

establishing any judgment of the form, ‘If A then B’, requires judging that no

relevant alternative to B either follows or results from A. Such conjoined hy-

pothetical and disjunctive judgments are central to Kant’s Analogies of Experi-

ence, because causal judgments are discriminatory: Identifying any one causal

relation requires distinguishing it from its causally possible alternatives.⁴⁸

Hence the categorical judgments required to identify objects or events in syn-

thetic judgments a priori about them – judgments required for us to be self-

conscious – also require disjunctive judgments whereby we discriminate any

one object from other objects and other kinds of objects. Because such dis-

junctive judgments require a grasp of the whole of the relevant range of alter-

natives within a class or ‘sphere’, singular cognitive judgments about objects

are possible only on the basis of (locally) holistic judgments about the relevant

class of objects and predicates, that is, about the relevant alternatives. This

requires (within any ‘sphere’) a complete set of mutually exclusive categories,

at least some of which are in fact instantiated. Such a set of categories differs

significantly from a complete set of logically possible categories, such as the

traditional ‘sum of all possibility’, or taken as instantiated, the traditional ens

realisimum – the topics of Kant’s Ideal of Pure Reason (KdrV A571/B599f.). (Is

it logically possible that we could perceive more colours than are found in the

standard spectrum of visible light? Who would ‘we’ be if we could? What

genuine sense could an answer to either question have?) Hegel’s point is three-

fold: Hypothetical and categorical judgments are co-determined, they can be

co-determined only within a complete set or ‘sphere’ of contrasting predicates

(requiring

47

A73–74/B98–99. For brilliant discussion of Kant’s Table of Judgments, see Wolff (1995,

1998, 2000).

⁴⁸On the joint role of such judgments in Kant’s Analogies, see Westphal (2004a), 146–57.

299

disjunctive judgments) and they can be co-determined only in connection with

extant things and events. This is Hegel’s ‘Co-Determination Thesis’.⁴⁹

3.2 If ‘semantics’ is philosophical theory of conceptual content and cogni-

tive or linguistic reference, then ‘metaphysics’, as the study of our ‘diamond

[conceptual] net’ with which Hegel identifies his Logic, is fundamentally seman-

tic. Hegel’s philosophical analyses of issues in philosophy of nature exhibit

great sensitivity to the ontological implications of conceptual content and to

the importance of the ontological interpretation of metaphysical and scientific

principles (above, §2). This may sound anachronistic, but is not: Kant’s seman-

tics are far richer and more sophisticated than has generally been recognized⁵⁰

and Hegel adopted the core points of Kant’s semantics. Thus I agree with

Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer that Hegel’s Logic is fundamentally a critical theory

of meaning.⁵¹If this is surprising, this is only due to the pre-Kantian, Cartesian

character of so much recent philosophy (and the neglect of semantics and

epistemology by most of Hegel’s expositors).⁵²Kant was

⁴⁹This way of making Hegel’s point decouples it from intellectual intuition and thus suggests

how Hegel could retain this view in his mature philosophy without relying on any kind of

intuitionism. On Hegel’s co-determination thesis and his rejection of intuitionism, see West-

phal (2000a, 2008–09).

⁵⁰See Hanna (2001), Westphal (2004a).

51

Stekeler-Weithofer’s (1992) semantic interpretation of Hegel’s Logic dove-tails perfectly

with Hegel’s transcendental-pragmatic epistemology, on which see Westphal (2003a, 2003b,

2003c, 2006a). This is a strong consideration in favor of Stekeler-Weithofer’s interpretation.

The excellent conspectus of Hegel’s Logic by Burbidge (2004) also corroborates these points.

⁵²The misfortune here lies in failing to appreciate that semantic and epistemological consid-

erations can be put to sound hermeneutical use in understanding Hegel’s philosophy, espe-

cially in view of his explicit epistemological and also semantic concerns.

300

the first great anti-Cartesian in philosophy, and Hegel learned Kant’s lessons

well.⁵³The Denkbestimmungen analysed in Hegel’s Logic and Philosophy of Nature

are, Hegel argues, fundamental structures of the extant world itself (Denkbe-

stimmungen des Seins).⁵⁴One of the most important Denkbestimmungen, Hegel

argues, is ‘force’, especially as introduced and justified by Newton. Hegel al-

ready understood the central role of natural scientific investigation, on the one

hand, and conceptual and semantic analysis on the other, for determining

whether and to what extent alleged Denkbestimmungen are indeed genuine struc-

tures of nature. Hegel’s cognitive semantics is equally fundamental both to his

Logic and to his Philosophy of Nature. Only by pursuing both of these investiga-

tions together can we identify Denkbestimmungen that are indeed basic structures

of what is (des Seins) and in particular of nature.⁵⁵

4 CENTRAL SYSTEMATIC AIMS OF HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE.

Hegel’s lead question in the Philosophy of Nature is simple to state, though puz-

zling to understand: ‘What is nature?’⁵⁶Is this a philosophical question? Why?

The Modern corpuscular answer, that nature is nothing but bodies in motion,

only generates more questions: What bodies and what kinds of bodies? What

motions and what kinds of motions? What, exactly, is ruled out – and ruled in

– by the clause, ‘nothing but’? Yet the seventeenth-century materialist view of

nature has proven amazingly durable among philosophers, even many who

profess a marked interest in philosophy of science, or who proclaim that phi-

losophy is nothing but an extension of or appendage to natural science.⁵⁷The

⁵³Westphal (2007).

⁵⁴Enz. §24Z; Hegel (1808), §164/Hegel (1986), 158.

55

WL I, GW 21:11–12, Hegel (2001), 153.584–593, 155.644–659; see Westphal (1989a),

chapter 10, and (2008–09), esp. §§4, 6.

⁵⁶Enz. II, Introduction; MM 9:12; Hegel (1970c), 3.

⁵⁷Westphal (2006b).

301

corpuscular answer echos throughout the narrowly reductionist conceptions of

‘naturalism’ prevalent in contemporary analytic philosophy.⁵⁸

The mind-body problem is unknown to the Greeks and Mediaevals.⁵⁹In a

world comprising various kinds of enmattered forms, where the behaviour of

each particular is a function of its Aristotelian essence or soul, and where each

casts off its perceptual ‘species’ (literally ‘shapes’) by which we can grasp its

essence, the now-obvious mind-body problem was profoundly unfamiliar.

One key source of its development was the newly quantified science of nature,

physics. Central to scientific investigation of natural phenomena, whether

terrestrial or celestial, are the size, shape, location, motion, number and mate-

rial constitution of objects. These ‘primary’ qualities were regarded as the only

fundamental or ‘real’ qualities of bodies. All the others qualities that make life

so colourful, tasty and delightful are thus ‘secondary’ qualities, derivative from

the effects of the primary qualities of bodies on our sensory receptors. With

the mechanization of nature inevitably came the mechanization of the human

body. Descartes’ innovation was not the mind, it was the body as machina: it

too is exhaustively describable in purely quantitative terms, hence it too is

open to purely scientific, mechanical explanation. Thus even our sensory or-

gans cannot themselves be qualified by the ‘secondary’ qualities – colours,

odours, tastes, or auditory tones – we experience so abundantly. This is the key

shift away from Aristotelian and Mediaeval notions of the human body. Since

we do experience such qualities, they must ‘be somewhere’ or inhere in ‘some-

thing’; since we experience them, they must inhere in our minds. This line of

reasoning gave strong impetus for regarding sensed qualities as ‘modes’ of the

mind, caused by physical objects in our surroundings and transmitted to us

mechanically via our bodies and sensory physiology. From here it was but a

short step, or rather a short leap to representationalist theories of perception,

according to which all we are ‘directly’ aware of are our mental representations

or ‘ideas’, which are caused by objects in our surroundings, and which (in

favourable circumstances) enable us to perceive objects in our surroundings.

Yet if ‘mind’ consists solely in non-extended, active, thinking substance, and if

‘body’ consists solely in non-thinking, inert, extended substance, how

⁵⁸See the excellent discussion in Rouse (2002).

⁵⁹Matson (1966), King (2005).

302

can mind and body interact? If all we are directly aware of is our mental repre-

sentations, how can we know anything about our surroundings? Can we deter-

mine whether we know anything about our surroundings? If Copernicus, as it

were, dislodged the earth from the centre of our universe, Galileo’s distinction

between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ qualities ultimately dislodged us from our

natural surroundings, from what had been thought and profoundly believed to

be our natural home and habitat. The Cartesian predicament of modern episte-

mology is borne of profound alienation from nature, not only from our physi-

cal and biological environment, but also from our own physiological embodi-

ment.

Philosophy became ‘Modern’ with a profoundly changed world view, a

view of the world to which quantitative natural science was fundamental. Yet

if this modern world view dispenses with Aristotelian forms and perceptual

species, one of Kant’s central questions looms: How is natural-scientific, or

even commonsense knowledge of the world possible?⁶⁰Since it is actual, it

must be possible, but how? Hegel’s transcendental proofs of mental content

externalism show that we have some empirical knowledge, if we’re self-con-

scious enough even to wonder about whether we do.⁶¹Yet knowing that we

have at least some empirical knowledge of nature around us doesn’t at all tell

us how extensive is our knowledge of nature, nor how extensive it can be. Part

of the answer to the broad question of how empirical knowledge is possible

belongs to epistemology and cognitive psychology, which Hegel treated ac-

cordingly.⁶²But general epistemology does not answer questions about the

character and possibility of specifically natural-scientific knowledge. Answer-

ing these questions requires, inter alia, examining specific scientific concepts,

principles of reasoning, methods and their actual use in observational and

experimental science. Hegel examines key concepts and principles of reason-

ing central to natural science in his Logic, including causal dispositions and

laws, and the core principles of mechanical, chemical and biological explana-

tion. He re-examines these concepts and

⁶⁰KdrV B20, Prolegomenon §§15, 23, 24.

⁶¹Westphal (1996, 1998b, 2004b).

⁶²On Hegel’s cognitive psychology, see Hegel (1994), deVries (1998) and Westphal (2006a).

303

principles in connection with theories and examples drawn from natural sci-

ence throughout his Philosophy of Nature.⁶³

One reason for Hegel’s so doing is to show that the concepts and principles

analysed in his Logic are in fact instantiated in nature and are reflected (if often

only obliquely) in natural scientific knowledge (§246Anm.). A second reason

for his so doing is to show that the concepts, principles and forms of classifi-

cation and explanation used in natural science in fact capture genuine features

of nature and so are not merely conventional expressions convenient for non-

cognitive reasons or purposes (§§229Anm., 246Z, 367Z).⁶⁴A third aim in his so

doing is to show the great extent to which the world, nature, is knowable.

Hegel undertakes this examination in order to justify his rationalist aspiration

to show that all the fundamental features of the world are knowable and are

knowable by us – even if philosophy only makes a limited contribution to this

knowledge (§270Z).

How must we reconceive our minds and cognition in order to understand

the new phenomenon of natural science and the new knowledge of nature it

provides? One strategy for avoiding Descartes’ dualism was to consider whe-

ther matter might not have the power, if properly configured, to think. Per-

haps materialism does not require eliminating mental phenomena, even if it

banishes ‘the mind’ as a distinct kind of substance.⁶⁵Kant deployed another

strategy: Rather than asking what the mind is made of, ask what it does. What

are our key cognitive functions and how can or do they provide us genuine

empirical knowledge? Kant’s answers to these questions are ultimately func-

tionalist.⁶⁶However, Kant refused to develop his functionalist insights explic-

itly and insisted on a dualist account of biological phenomena.⁶⁷Kant insis-

tently argued that principles involving purposes of any kind can have only a

heuristic, regulative role in natural science (Critique of Judgment §§74, 75). Schel-

ling dispensed with Kant’s Critical restrictions on the

63

The centrality of scientific experiments to Hegel’s philosophy of nature is established by

Renault (2001), 159–290.

⁶⁴See Westphal (2008–09).

⁶⁵See Yolton (1983).

⁶⁶See Meerbote 1990; Kitcher 1990a, 1990b; Brook 1994.

⁶⁷Kant, Foundations, 4:544.7–19, Critique of Judgment §§61, 66, 64, 73, 80, 81.

304

use of teleological principles and boldly ascribed intrinsic purposes to biologi-

cal organisms. His so doing gave crucial impetus to the development of bio-

logical science in the eighteenth century,⁶⁸though Schelling can hardly be

credited with any careful analysis of functionalist and teleological principles of

explanation, nor the basis for their legitimate (justifiable) ascription to various

organisms. Hegel did so, and carefully articulated some key ways in which

teleological organization involving conscious purposes requires and can only

build upon the more basic level of functional organization involved in, e.g.,

biological organisms.⁶⁹

Hegel’s analysis of the distinctions between (merely) functional and teleo-

logical principles of organization is one stage of a broad and ambitious pro-

gram: Hegel sought to avoid both substance dualism and eliminative

reductionism by developing a sophisticated and subtle emergentism.⁷⁰Long

derided by reductionist philosophers, emergentism has recently regained philo-

sophical credibility among analytical philosophers both in philosophy of biol-

ogy and in philosophy of mind.⁷¹

⁶⁸See Richards (2002).

⁶⁹DeVries (1991).

70

To say that Hegel is an emergentist is to reject strongly holistic interpretations of Hegel’s

views, according to which ‘the whole’ has ontological priority over its parts and determines

their characteristics, or at least, more so than vice versa. Hegel’s holism is moderate because he

insists, inter alia, that any ‘substance’ and its ‘accidents’ are thoroughly mutually interdepen-

dent for their existence and characteristics (Westphal 1989, 141–45; 2003a, §§32, 34). Hegel

inverts philosophical tradition by insisting that there is nothing more to any ‘substance’ than

the totality of its ‘accidents’ (1810/11, §§62, 63, 68/Hegel 1968, 87–8; WL I, GW

11:394.33–35, 395.3–5, 395.39–396.26; Enz. §151), a view Hegel developed by 1805 and

which he deploys both in social ontology and ontology of nature. As Harris (1983, 364–5,

367–8, 370) notes, Hegel’s moderate holism puts paid to ‘totalitarian’ interpretations of He-

gel’s philosophy. On Hegel’s approach to biology, see Engelhardt (1986), Dahlstrom (1998)

and E. Harris (1998).

⁷¹See Simon (1962), Beckermann, et al (1992), Wimsatt (1994, 2000).

305

‘Emergence’ refers to properties or behaviour of a complex system that are

not simple aggregative functions of the properties or behaviour of the individ-

ual parts of that system. Emergence thus highlights the importance of the

organization of the parts within a complex system to enable or to produce

properties or behaviours which may be ‘realized’ (or instantiated) in various

different kinds of component parts, or are ‘autonomous’ from the dynamic

properties of the individual component parts or which display regularities that

are ‘anomalous’ with respect to regularities exhibited by the system’s individual

component parts. Emergentism thus opposes eliminative reductionism,

though not (necessarily) materialism.⁷²There are various kinds and aspects of

emergent behaviour of complex systems and there are complex issues about

which of these kinds are exhibited in any particular case. These important

questions cannot be considered here; here it suffices to note that the core

principles of emergentism are philosophically legitimate and that they have

regained philosophical legitimacy in large part because they are so important to

understanding so many kinds of natural phenomena.

One of Hegel’s aims in his Philosophy of Nature is to systematically order our

most basic ontological and natural-scientific concepts and principles (§§246Z,

247Z, 249 & Z), beginning with the most abstract, undifferentiated and univer-

sal (space and time, §§254–7), and working through a finely-grained series of

steps (§249) towards the most complex, the organic life of animal species

(§§367–76). The third part of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia then continues this series of

levels, no longer merely in nature, but in the human or moral sciences (‘spirit’,

Geist, §§377–87), from anthropology (§388) through cognition, action and

freedom at the individual level (§§445–482) and then through social, moral,

political and legal philosophy (§§483–552) – treated with much greater detail

and sophistication in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right – up to a brief sketch of ‘abso-

lute spirit’ in its three forms, art, manifest religion and philosophy (§§553–77),

topics treated in extenso in Hegel’s Berlin lectures.

Why does Hegel undertake this ambitious project? Hegel’s question can be

put in a kantian formula: All of these natural and social phenomena are actual.

How are they possible and how is our knowledge of them possible? Hegel’s

philosophical contribution to answering this

⁷²Harris (1983, 238–98) contends that by 1803/04 Hegel’s philosophy of nature became ma-

terialist and is properly characterized as a kind of neutral monism.

306

broad question is to identify, clarify and integrate, as accurately and thoroughly

as possible, the specific concepts and principles required at each level and at

each relevant sub-level, in order to understand each kind of phenomenon and

its proper species. This involves identifying both the preconditions of each

kind of phenomenon and identifying what is unique and new to it vis à vis

preceding levels. For each basis level, Hegel seeks to determine why it alone

affords the necessary basis for its emergent successor level. For each emergent

level, Hegel seeks to determine what is unique in it, and through a similar

analysis of a series of sub-levels within that new level, how it provides the

necessary basis for enabling in turn the emergence of its successor (§252Z).

Hegel insists that this conceptual sequence of stages and sub-stages does not

concern the natural development (historical genesis) of ever more sophisti-

cated organizational complexity (§249).

What kind of ‘necessity of the concept’ (§246 & Anm., cf. §249) guides this

development? Hegel’s phrase may appear to mean either of two things, both

misleading. It may seem that the relevant necessity lies in a preordained ratio-

nalist telos of a completely self-developing and self-explicating system. Hegel

does have some such telos in view, but the notion that it is in anyway preor-

dained relies on transferring conscious purposes from their proper domain

(human behaviour) to a transcendent, theistic domain which at best can be

nothing but idle speculation. If there is a first rule of Hegel’s metaphysics, it is:

Posit no transcendent entities. The other notion stems from purely a priori

interpretations of Hegel’s Logic and Encyclopaedia, which require that Hegel’s

logic uses some special successor notion to formal-logical deduction.⁷³It must

be a successor notion, because formal-logical deduction does not permit infer-

ring the more specific from the more general. Despite long favour among He-

gel’s expositors, I confess that I do not yet understand what any such succes-

sor notion could be, despite many attempts in the literature. Fortunately, there

is another alternative.⁷⁴

73

An excellent, highly informative presentation of this kind of interpretation is Houlgate

(2005), 106–80. I am indebted to Stephen for many years of discussion of these and related

issues, despite our divergence on this central point.

⁷⁴Another problem with the ‘top down’ approach, beginning with Hegel’s Logic and examin-

ing its instantiation in nature (in Enz. II), is that this approach cannot avoid the charge Hegel

hurled at Schelling of ‘schematizing formalism’. Hegel can avoid the sin of schematizing

formalism only by showing, on the basis of an internal examination of natural phenomena

for their own sake, that those phenomena exhibit the kinds of conceptual structures and

principles articulated in Hegel’s Logic.

307

Kant understood the ‘deduction’ of a concept or principle in a legal sense,

of showing that we are entitled to use it in genuine, justifiable judgments, whe-

ther cognitive or practical (Critique of Pure Reason, B117). Though Hegel’s strat-

egy for justifying concepts and principles in his Philosophy of Nature is not tran-

scendental, it does share this general kantian sense of ‘deduction’ (§88). Hegel

seeks to determine the extent to which, and the ways in which, we are justified

in using various concepts and principles in genuine cognition of natural phe-

nomena. This is built into his emergentist agenda of showing why nothing less

than a certain set of concepts and principles suffices to comprehend natural

phenomena of a certain level of systematic complexity and how these concepts

and principles provide the necessary basis for understanding the successor

level. The upper end-point or telos of this series of levels is provided, not by

antecedent divine preordination, but by the facts of human cognition and

action, on the one hand, and their – that is, our – remarkable productions in

the natural and social sciences and more generally in society, history, art, reli-

gion and philosophy on the other. Carefully demarcating in the Philosophy of

Nature the natural preconditions of these human phenomena shows in broad

outline how nature makes our human form of mindedness possible, both by

providing for humanly-minded individuals and by providing for humanly

comprehensible objects of knowledge (taken as a whole, nature) and a hu-

manly manipulable context of action (nature). This is Hegel’s emergentist

strategy for avoiding both (Cartesian) substance dualism and eliminative mate-

rialism.

Obviously there is a rich historical and metaphysical background to Hegel’s

emergentist and (moderately) holistic world view. It is important both to rec-

ognize and yet not to over-estimate the significance of that background. Hegel

certainly does seek to identify and defend a richly systematic orderliness in

nature, and indeed in all phenomena. In this context it is important to recall

Hegel’s standard approach to the grand aspirations of theology. Hegel consis-

tently argues that the theistic and metaphysical ascription of such aspirations

to a transcendent creator who tends to them (God) is in every case a human

projection of human needs onto the fabric of the universe. Yet unlike Feuer-

bach, Marx or Freud, Hegel interprets such projections as reflecting, if figura-

tively, genuine and legitimate human aspirations.⁷⁵Hegel

⁷⁵Westphal (1989), 163–4; Harris (1997), 1:64 112, 192–3, 409–10, 417–18; 2:125–30, 252–3,

344–6, 367, 448, 533–4, 537–40, 678, 681–2, 691, 738, 746; Chiereghin (2009); di Giovanni

(2009).

308

seeks to show the ways in which and the extent to which the actual world

(natural, social and historical) in fact satisfies these aspirations, to a much

greater extent than is typically appreciated.⁷⁶This is part of Hegel’s on-going

effort to overcome our modern alienation from the world, including our

epistemological alienation wrought by Descartes’ mechanical and eliminativist

account of the body (cf. §246Z). In the present case, Hegel thinks that the pre-

Modern ‘great chain of being’ expressed, however metaphorically and inade-

quately, a legitimate aspiration and anticipated, however obliquely, a correct

idea: Nature does form a systematically ordered hierarchy (§246Z) within which

human beings have a particular and quite special place: Through our knowl-

edge of the world-whole, the world-whole gains knowledge of itself. We are, as

it were, the homunculi in Geist. In performing this role within the world-whole,

we determine through a properly conceived and executed philosophy of nature

– despite modern forms of alienation, including the cognitive alienation

wrought by Gallileo’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities and

by Descartes’ dualism – that nature is our proper environment, both as cogni-

tive and as active agents.⁷⁷

5 CONCLUSION.

When considering the aims, character and merits of Hegel’s Philosophy of Na-

ture, it is important to consider carefully an observation by Henry Harris:

The balance of social influence has shifted so drastically between Hegel’s time

and ours ... from the religious to the scientific establishment, that Hegel’s own

contribution to this shift has itself become an obstacle to the right understand-

ing of what he said. He wanted to swing religious consciousness into full sup-

port of

⁷⁶Westphal (1991), §IV.

77

In Westphal (2006b, cf. 2008–09) I contend that Hegel’s epistemology provides an ap-

proach to understanding natural scientific knowledge that is far superior to those of his pre-

decessors, including Kant, and to Hume’s twentieth-century empiricist heirs.

309

a scientific interpretation of human life .... His own choice of language was

conditioned by the Christian teaching, but also by the knowledge that the

Christian doctrine of spirit was derived from Stoic sources. (Harris 1983, 302)

The Stoics were, as Hegel knew, thoroughgoing materialists and naturalists.

The common disregard of Hegel’s philosophy of nature, especially among

Anglophone Hegel scholars, leaves two central members of Hegel’s philosoph-

ical system, Logic and Philosophy of Spirit, precariously imbalanced because they

lack their third supporting member, Philosophy of Nature. This neglect inevitably

generates serious misunderstandings of Hegel’s philosophy, both in part and in

whole. Fortunately recent, mainly European research has begun rectifying this

neglect. Certainly Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature has grand, if not grandiose aspira-

tions; Hegel himself would eagerly and thoroughly revise much of it in view of

subsequent developments in the natural sciences. Nevertheless, Hegel’s Philoso-

phy of Nature is a landmark in the philosophical assessment of nature and the

natural sciences that deserves careful consideration today, for its central aims

and issues, for its methods, for its staggering erudition and for its bold attempt

to make philosophical sense of nature as a whole whilst appreciating its pro-

fuse diversity.⁷⁸

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Digitally signed by Kenneth R.

Westphal

DN: cn=Kenneth R. Westphal,

o=Academia Europea, ou=Prof. Dr.

Philosophy, ret.,

email=westphal.k.r@gmail.com,

c=IT

Date: 2024.09.18 15:54:17 +02'00'

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