Hegel's Philosophy of Nature

Volume III

G.W.F. Hegel, M.J. Petry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317832126
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie de la philosophie

This is Volume III of Hegel's philosophy of nature, which is part of a wider collection of seven volumes on Hegel. Originally published in 1970, this text looks at Organic Physics.

Chapter One

Geological nature
(The terrestrial organism)

§338

The primary organism, in so far as it is initially determined as immediate or implicit, is not a living existence, for as subject and process, life is essentially a self-mediating activity. Regarded from the standpoint of subjective life, the first moment of particularization is that the organism converts itself into its own presupposition, and so assumes the mode of immediacy, in which it confronts itself with its condition and outer subsistence. The inward recollection of the Idea of nature as subjective life, and still more as spiritual life, is basically divided between itself and this unprocessive immediacy. This immediate totality presupposed by subjective totality, is simply the shape of the organism; as the universal system of individual bodies, it is the terrestrial body.

Addition. In the chemical process, the Earth is already present as this totality; the universal elements enter into the particular corporealities of the Earth, and are partly causes and partly effects of the process (§ 328 Add. II. 185, 34). This is simply abstract motion however, for the corporealities are merely particular. The Earth is now certainly a totality, but as it is only the implicit process of these bodies, the process falls outside its perenniating product. The content of this totality cannot lack any determination belonging to life, but as extrinsicality constitutes the mode of these determinations, this content lacks the infinite form of subjectivity. Consequently, as it is presupposed by life as its foundation, the Earth is posited as being unposited, for the positing is concealed by the immediacy. The other moment is then the self-dissolution of this presupposition.

A.

History of the Earth

§339

As this organism has being merely as an implicitness, its members do not contain the living process within themselves but constitute an external system. The forms of this system exhibit the unfolding of an underlying Idea, but its process of formation belongs to the past. The powers of this process, which nature leaves behind as independent and extra-terrestrial, are the connection and position of the Earth within the solar system, its solar, lunar, and cometary life, and the inclination of its axis to the orbit, and the magnetic axis. Standing in closer relationship to these axes and their polarization are the distribution of sea and land, the connected diffusion of land in the northern hemisphere, the division and tapering off of the land masses towards the south, the additional separation into an old and a new world, and the further division of the old world into the various continents. These continents are distinguished from one another by the physical, organic, and anthropological characteristics which distinguish them once again from the younger and less mature characteristics of the new world. Mountain ranges etc., may also be considered here.

Addition. 1. The powers of this process appear independently of their product, while the animal, which is a process in itself, contains its powers, for its members are the potences of its process. The Earth on the contrary is as it is merely because it has this place in the solar system, and occupies this position in the planetary series. In animal existence however, each member contains the whole, so that the extrinsicality of space is sublated within the soul, which is omnipresent within its body. If we speak in this way however, we are positing a spatial relationship again and this is not the soul’s true relationship. The soul is certainly omnipresent, but undivided, not as an extrinsicality. The members of the geological organism are in fact external to one another however, and they are therefore without a soul. The Earth is the most eminent of all the planets. It is the middling planet, and exhibits individuality, and it owes this kind of existence solely to the permanence of its relations. If any one of these relations lapsed, the Earth would cease to be what it is. The Earth appears as the dead product of these relations; but it is maintained by these conditions, which form a single chain or whole. As the Earth is the universal individual, moments such as magnetism, electricity and chemism come forth freely by themselves within the meteorological process. The animal is no longer magnetism however, and electricity is something which is subordinate to it.

2. It is precisely because the Earth itself is not a living subject, that the process of formation does not reside within it. Consequently, the Earth is not born out of this process, as living being is; it endures, it does not produce itself. It is for this reason that the persistence of the Earth’s members is not a mark of the Earth’s superiority. Living being on the contrary has the virtue of being born and passing away. In its singularity, living being is the manifestation of the genus, but it is also in conflict with the genus, which exhibits itself through the destruction of the singular. In so far as the process of the Earth has being for itself as a universal individual, it is simply an inner necessity, for it is merely implicit, and does not exist in the members of the organism. In the animal however, each member is both product and productive. Considered within the limits of the Earth’s individuality, this process is to be seen as a past event, which leaves its moments behind it as independencies extraneous to the Earth.¹ Geognosy attempts to expound this process as a conflict between the elements of differentiation, i.e. fire and water. According to the vulcanists, the Earth’s shape, stratifications, and rock species etc. are of igneous origin. The theory put forward by the neptunists is equally one-sided, for they assert that everything is the result of an aqueous process. Forty years ago², in Werner’s time, these two theories were the cause of much controversy. Both their principles have to be recognized as essential, but by themselves they are onesided and formal. In the crystalline form of the Earth, in volcanoes, springs and in the meteorological process in general, fire is just as operative as water.

Three aspects of the terrestrial process have to be distinguished. (a) The universal and absolute process is the process of the Idea, it is the process which is in and for itself, and by which the Earth is created and maintained. The creation is eternal however; it has not only taken place once, but is eternally producing itself, for the infinite creative power of the Idea is a perenniating activity. Consequently, we do not see the universal emerge in nature, which means that the universality of nature has no history. Science and government etc. have a history however, for they are the universal within spirit. (b) The process also exists on the Earth, but only in a general way, for it does not produce itself as subject. It is the general vitalization and fructification of the Earth i.e. the possibility which the living subject draws from this vitalized being. It is the meteorological process which makes the Earth the animated ground and basis of living being. (c) In the Scriptures it is said that, ‘Heaven and Earth shall pass away,’ and in this sense the Earth must certainly be regarded as having had an origin and as passing away. The Earth and the whole of nature are to be regarded as produced; the Notion makes this necessary.¹ One’s second task is then to point out this determination in the constitution of the Earth in an empirical manner; this is the principal subject-matter of geognosy. It is immediately apparent from the constitution of the Earth, that it has had a history, and that its condition is a result of successive changes. It bears the marks of a series of prodigious revolutions, which belong to a remote past, and which probably also have a cosmic connection, for the position of the Earth with regard to the angle which its axis makes with its orbit could have been changed. The surface of the Earth bears evidence of its having supported a vegetation and an animal world which are now extinct (a) at great depth, (b) in immense stratifications, and (c) in regions where these species of animals and plants do not thrive.

This state of the Earth, according to Ebel’s description in particular, (‘On the structure of the Earth’ vol. II p. 188 etseq.), is roughly as follows:—Petrified wood, even whole trees, and dendrolites etc. may be found in fletz-formations, and to an even greater extent in alluvial terrains. Immense forests, which have been flattened, lie buried below beds of deposit at depths of 40–100 feet, and sometimes even of 600–900 feet. The vegetable state of many of these forests is preserved intact; the barks, roots, and branches are filled with resin, and make an excellent fuel, while other vegetable material is petrified into siliceous agate. For the most part, the different species of wood are still identifiable. Palm-trees are often found for example; one might mention a fossilized forest of palm-tree trunks in the Neckar valley not far from Kannstadt, etc. In the fossilized forests of Holland and the Bremen area, the trees that are found are usually intact, and lying flat, firmly joined to their root stocks. Elsewhere the trunks are broken off cleanly, and separated somewhat from their root-stocks, which are still firmly fixed in the ground. In East Friesland, Holland, and the Bremen area, the crowns of these trees all lie pointing south-east or north-east. These forests have grown in these areas, but on the banks of the Arno in Tuscany, fossilized oaks may be found, lying incidentally beneath palm-trees, and flung together with fossilized sea-shells and huge bones. These immense forests occur in all the alluvial terrains of Europe, the Americas and northern Asia. Sea-shells, snails, and zoophytes have pride of place in the animal kingdom with regard to numbers. In Europe, they occur wherever there are fletz-formations, and consequently they may be found throughout the continent. They are just as common throughout Asia, in Anatolia, Syria, Siberia, Bengal, and China etc., in Egypt, Senegal, and at the Cape of Good Hope, and in America. They are to be found at great depths in the strata immediately overlaying the primitive rocks, and to an equal extent at the greatest heights. They occur on Mont Perdu for example, which is in the highest part of the Pyrenees, and rises to an altitude of 10,968 feet. The explanation Voltaire gave of this was that fish and oysters etc., had been taken up there by travellers as provisions. They also occur in the Jungfrau, which is the highest peak of the limestone Alps, and rises to 13,872 feet, and on the Andes in South America, at heights ranging from 12,000 to 13,242 feet above sea-level. Remains of this kind are not dispersed throughout the whole of the massif, but only in certain strata, where they occur in families in the strictest order, and are so well preserved, that they seem to have settled there peacefully. In the most ancient of the stratified formations, which are the immediate overlayers of the primitive rocks, the shells of sea-animals are on the whole much less in evidence, and only certain species occur. They increase in number and variety in the later fletz-formations however, and it is there also that fossil fish are to be found, although only very rarely. Fossil plants first occur in the more recent stratified formations however, and the bones of amphibia, mammals, and birds, are only to be found in the most recent of these rocks. The most remarkable bones are those of quadrupeds such as elephants, tigers, lions, bears, whose species are now extinct. All these huge animals merely lie near the surface under sand, marl, or loam, in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and particularly in Asiatic Russia, where the tusks are excavated, and give rise to a considerable trade. Humboldt found mammoth bones in the vales of Mexico, Quito, and Peru, always at the height of between 7,086 and 8,934 feet above sea level. In the River Plate he found the skeleton of a huge animal 12 feet long and 6 feet high. Traces of violent revolution and exterior generation are not only to be found in these remains of the organic world, but are equally apparent in the geognostic structure of the Earth, and in general, in the whole formation of alluvial terrain. Within mountain ranges, which are themselves configurations giving rise to individual peaks and further chains, there are whole formations consisting entirely of boulders or debris which have been fused together. The nagelflue found in Switzerland is a species of rock consisting of smoothed stones cemented together by sandstone and limestone. The stratifications of its beds are extremely regular; one stratum for example will consist of large stones almost all of which are six inches thick, the next of smaller stones, and the third of still smaller stones, and this will then be followed by a bed consisting of larger boulders. This breccia is composed of the most varied kinds of debris; granites, gneisses, porphyries, amygdaloids, serpentines, siliceous schists, hornstones, flints, saline and compact limestones, argillaceous and ferruginous stones, and alpine sandstones, are all to be found in it. One nagelflue contains more of one kind of debris, another contains more of another kind. One of these nagelflues forms a chain of mountains, the breadth of which varies from 1 to 3 leagues; it reaches heights of between 5,000 and 6,000 feet above sea-level (Rigikulm is 5,723 feet high), and therefore rises above the Swiss tree-line. With the exception of the Alps and the Pyrenees, this chain is not exceeded in height by any other mountains in France and England. Even the highest peak of the Giant’s Mountains in Silesia is only 4,949 feet high, and the Brocken only reaches 3,528 feet. Finally, there are the frightful signs of tremendous laceration and demolition apparent in all primitive massifs, and granite ranges and rocks. These formations are cleft longitudinally and transversally by innumerable joints and valleys etc., which have been superimposed upon one another by stages.

All this is a matter of history, and has to be accepted as a fact; it is not the concern of philosophy. If we want to explain this fact, we have to acquaint ourselves with the way in which it has to be dealt with and considered. The history of the Earth took place in former times and has now reached a state of quiescence. It is a life which once fermented within itself and embodied time; it is the spirit of the Earth, which has not yet reached opposition. It is the movement and dreams of a being that sleeps, until it awakes and acquires its consciousness in man, and so stands over against itself as immobile formation. The main interest of the empirical aspect of this former state of the Earth is taken to be the determination of time by the science of geognosy i.e. in designating the oldest stratum of rocks etc. The geological organism is usually grasped mainly by determining the order of succession of its various formations, but this is only an external explanation. The granitic primitive rocks which constitute the deepest strata, and which were formed one after the other, are said to be the first, and to be followed by regenerated granite, which has disintegrated and been deposited. The upper strata, such as fletz-formations, are supposed to have been deposited at a later date; solution is said to have run into the fissures etc. These are mere occurrences however, and display nothing but a temporal difference. Nothing whatever is made comprehensible by the succession of stratifications, which is in fact completely devoid of the necessity which characterizes comprehension. Dissolutions in water or fire are quite simple aspects of organic fermentation, and cannot express it fully. They are as inadequate to the comprehension of it as is the process of oxidation and dis-oxidation, or the completely superficial reduction of it to the opposition of the carbon and nitrogen series. This whole style of explanation is nothing but a transformation of collaterality into temporal succession. I make use of it when I see a house with a ground-floor, first-floor, second-floor, and roof, and after reflecting, conclude very wisely that the ground-floor was built before the second-floor etc. Why is the limestone more recent? Because in this instance limestone overlays sandstone. This is not difficult to grasp. Intrinsically, this interpretation is of no rational interest. The process has no other content than the product. It is nothing but a vain curiosity, which attempts to see that which is juxtaposed in the further form of succession. Interesting conjectures may be made about the wide intervals separating revolutions of this kind, about the profounder revolutions caused by alterations of the Earth’s axis, and about revolutions due to the sea. In the historical field these are hypotheses however, and this explanation of events by mere succession has nothing whatever to contribute to philosophic consideration.

There is something profounder in this sequence however. The significance and spirit of the process is the intrinsic connection or necessary relation of these formations, and here succession in time plays no part. The universal law of this sequence of formations may be understood without reference to its historical form, and this law is the essence of the sequence. It is only rationality which is of interest to the Notion, and at this juncture this consists of understanding the dispositions of the Notion within the law. The great merit of Werner is that he has drawn attention to this sequence, and on the whole assessed it correctly. The intrinsic connection exists at present as a juxtaposition, and must depend upon the constitution or content of these formations themselves. The history of the Earth is therefore partly empirical, and partly a conclusive ratiocination from empirical data. The point of interest is not to determine the conditions prevailing millions of years ago (and there is no need to stint on the years), but to concentrate upon that which is present in the system of these various formations. As an empirical science it is extremely diffuse. One is unable to grasp everything in this corpse by means of the Notion, for it is riddled with accidence. Philosophy has a similarity minimal interest in acquainting itself with rational and systematic legislation in the dismal condition of chaos, or in getting to know the temporal sequence and external causes by which this legislation has come into being.

The production of living being is generally envisaged as a revolution out of chaos, in which vegetable and animal life, organic and inorganic being, were together in a single unity. The alternative postulate is that there was once a general living existence which has dispersed into various species of plants and animals, and into the races of mankind. Such prodigies are the postulates of the sensuous intuition of an empty imagination however, for it is not permissible to assume the sensuous appearance of this fission in time, or the temporal existence of such a general man. Natural and living being is not mixed, it is not a general medley of forms, it does not resemble an arabesque. There is essentially understanding in nature. The formations of nature are determinate and bounded, and it is as such that they enter into existence. Consequently, even if the Earth was once devoid of living being, and limited to the chemical process etc., as soon as the flash of living being strikes into matter, a determinate and complete formation is present, and emerges fully armed, like Minerva from the brow of Jupiter. The account of the creation given in Genesis is still the best, in so far as it says quite simply that the plants, the animals, and man were brought forth on separate days. Man has not formed himself out of the animal, nor the animal out of the plant, for each is instantly the whole of what it is. Such an individual certainly evolves in various ways, but although it is not yet complete at birth, it is already the real possibility of everything it will become. Living being is the point at which the soul is present; it is subjectivity and infinite form, and is therefore immediately determined in and for itself. The crystal already exhibits complete shape or totality of form as point, so that the point’s ability to grow is merely a quantitative change. T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• ORGANICS § 337
• Chapter One: The terrestrial organism (Geological nature) § 338
• Chapter Two: The plant (The vegetable organism) § 343–346
• Chapter Three: The animal (The animal organism) § 350–352
• NOTES
• INDEX TO TEXT
• INDEX TO NOTES