自然哲学（黑格尔，英文版）

The Philosophy of Nature Georg Hegel Table of Contents The Philosophy of Nature...................................................................................................................................1 Georg Hegel.............................................................................................................................................1 Preliminary Concepts...............................................................................................................................1 I. Mathematics..........................................................................................................................................2 II. Inorganic Physics................................................................................................................................7 III. Organic Physics...............................................................................................................................23 The Philosophy of Nature i The Philosophy of Nature Georg Hegel This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online. http://www.blackmask.com Preliminary Concepts• I. Mathematics• II. Inorganic Physics• III. Organic Physics• Preliminary Concepts § 192. Nature has presented itself as the idea in the form of otherness. Since in nature the idea is as the negative of itself or is external to itself nature is not merely external in relation to this idea, but the externality constitutes the determination in which nature as nature exists. § 193. In this externality the determinations of the concept have the appearance of an indifferent subsistence and isolation in regards to each other. The concept therefore exists as an inward entity. Hence nature exhibits no freedom in its existence, but only necessity and contingency. For this reason nature, in the determinate existence, which makes it nature, is not to be deified, nor are the sun, moon, animals, plants, and so on, to be regarded and adduced as the works of God, more excellent than human actions and events. Nature in itself in the idea, is divine, but in the specific mode by which it is nature it is suspended. As it is, the being of nature does not correspond to its concept; its existing actuality therefore has no truth; its abstract essence is the negative, as the ancients conceived of matter in general as the non−ens. But because, even in this element, nature is a representation of the idea, one may very well admire in it the wisdom of God. If however, as Vanini said, a stalk of straw suffices to demonstrate God's being, then every representation of the spirit, the slightest fancy of the mind, the play of its most capricious whim, every word, offers a ground for the knowledge of God's being that is superior to any single object of nature. In nature, not only is the play of forms unbound and unchecked in contingency, but each figure for itself lacks the concept of itself. The highest level to which nature drives its existence is life, but as only a natural idea this is at the mercy of the unreason of externality, and individual vitality is in each moment of its existence entangled with an individuality which is other to it, whereas in every expression of the spirit is contained the moment of free, universal self−relation. − Nature in general is justly determined as the decline of the idea from itself because in the element of externality it has the determination of the inappropriateness of itself with itself.−A similar misunderstanding is to regard human works of art as inferior to natural things, on the grounds that works of art must take their material from outside, and that they are not alive.−It is as if the spiritual form did not contain a higher level of life, and were not more worthy of the spirit than the natural form, and as if in all ethical things what can be called matter did not belong solely to the spirit − The Philosophy of Nature 1 Nature remains, despite all the contingency of its existence, obedient to eternal laws; but surely this is also true of the realm of selfconsciousness, a fact which can already be seen in the belief that providence governs human affairs. Or are the determinations of this providence in the field of human affairs only contingent and irrational? But if the contingency of spirit, the free will, leads to evil, is this not still infinitely higher than the regular behaviour of the stars, or the innocence of the plants? § 194. Nature is to be viewed as a system of stages, in which one stage necessarily arises from the other and is the truth closest to the other from which it results, though not in such a way that the one would naturally generate the other, but rather in the inner idea which constitutes the ground of nature. It has been an awkward conception in older and also more recent philosophy of nature to see the progression and the transition of one natural form and sphere into another as an external, actual production which, however, in order to be made clearer, is relegated to the darkness of the past. Precisely this externality is characteristic of nature: differences are allowed to fall apart and to appear as existences indifferent to each other; and the dialectical concept, which leads the stages further, is the interior which emerges only in the spirit. Certainly the previously favoured teleological view provided the basis for the relation to the concept, and, in the same way, the relation to the spirit, but it focused only on external purposiveness−(cf § 151) and viewed the spirit as if it were entangled in finite and natural purposes. Due to the vapidity of such finite purposes, purposes for which natural things were shown to be useful, the teleological view has been discredited for exhibiting the wisdom of God. The view of the usefulness of natural things has the implicit truth that these things are not in and for themselves an absolute goal; nevertheless, it is unable to determine whether such things are defective or inadequate. For this determination it is necessary to posit that the immanent moment of its idea, which brings about its transiency and transition into another existence, produces at the same time a transformation into a higher concept. § 195. Nature is, in itself a living whole. The movement of its idea through its sequence of stages is more precisely this: the idea posits itself as that which it is in itself; or, what is the same thing, it goes into itself out of that immediacy and externality which is death in order to go into itself; yet further, it suspends this determinacy of the idea, in which it is only life, and becomes spirit, which is its truth. § 196. The idea as nature is: (1) as universal, ideal being outside of itself space and time; (2) as real and mutual being apart from itself particular or material existence, − inorganic nature; (3) as living actuality, organic nature. The three sciences can thus be named mathematics, physics, and physiology. I. Mathematics § 197. (1) The first or immediate determination of nature is the abstract generality of its self−externality,−its unmediated indifference, space. It is the wholly ideal juxtaposition, because it is being outside of itself and absolutely continuous, because this being apart from itself is still entirely abstract, and has no specific difference within itself. Much has been said, from different theoretical positions, about the nature of space. I will mention only the The Philosophy of Nature I. Mathematics 2 Kantian determination that space is, like time, a form of sensory intuition. It has also become customary to establish fundamentally that space must be regarded only as something subjective in representation. Disregarding what, in the Kantian conception, belongs to subjective idealism and its determinations (cf § 5), the correct determination remains that space is a mere form, i.e., an abstraction, that of immediate externality. − To speak of points of space, as if they constituted the positive element of space, is inadmissible, since space, on account of its lack of differentiation, is only the possibility and not the positing of that which is negative and therefore absolutely continuous. The point is therefore rather the negation of space.−This also settles the question of the infinitude of space. Space is in general pure quantity (§ 53f), though no longer as a logical determination, but rather as existing immediately and externally. Nature, consequently, does not begin with quality but with quantity, because its determination is not, like logical being, the absolute first and immediate, but essentially a mediated being, a being external to and other than itself § 198. Space has, as the concept in general (and more determinate than an indifferent self−externality) its differences within it: (a) in its indifference these are immediately the three dimensions, which are merely diverse and quite indeterminate. But geometry is not required to deduce that space necessarily has precisely three dimensions, for it is not a philosophical science, and may therefore presuppose space as its object. Moreover, even apart from this, no thought is given to the demonstration of such a necessity. The necessity rests on the nature of the concept, whose determinations, however, because they depict themselves in these first elements of being apart from themselves, in abstract quantity, are only entirely superficial and a completely empty difference. One can also, therefore, not say how height, length, and width differ from each other, because they only ought to be different, but are not yet differences.−Height has its more precise determination as direction according to the center of the earth, but this does not at all concern the nature of space for itself Following from this point it is equally as indifferent whether this direction is called height or depth, or length or breadth, which is also often called depth. § 199. (b) But the difference of space is essentially a determinate, qualitative difference. As such it is (a) first, the negation of space itself because this is immediate and undifferentiated self−externality, the point. (b) The negation as negation, however, is itself spatial, and the relation of the point to space is the line, the first otherness of the point. (c) The truth of the otherness is, however, the negation of the negation. The line, therefore, passes over into the plane, which on the one hand is a determinacy opposed to line and point, and thus is plane in general, but on the other hand is the suspended negation of space, and thus the re−establishment of spatial totality, which, however, now contains the negative moment within itself an enclosing surface, which splits off an individual, whole space. That the line does not consist of points, nor the plane of lines, follows from their concepts, for the line is the point existing outside of itself relating itself to space, and suspending itself and the plane is just as much the suspended line existing outside of itself.−Here the point is represented as the first and positive entity, and taken as the starting point. The converse, though, is also true: in as far as space is positive, the plane is the first negation and the line is the second, which, however, is in its truth the negation relating self to self the point. The necessity of the transition is the same.− The other configurations of space considered by geometry are further qualitative limitations of a spatial abstraction, of the plane, or of a limited spatial whole. Here there occur a few necessary moments, for example, that the triangle is the first rectilinear figure, that all other figures must, to be determined, be reduced to it or to the square, and so on.−The principle of these figures is the identity of the understanding, The Philosophy of Nature I. Mathematics 3 which determines the figurations as regular, and in this way grounds the relationships and sets them in place, which it now becomes the purpose of science to know. It may be noted in passing that it was an extraordinary notion of Kant's to claim that the definition of the straight line as the shortest distance between two points is a synthetic proposition, for my concept of straightness contains nothing of size, but only a quality. In this sense every definition is a synthetic proposition. What is defined, the straight line, is in the first place the intuition or representation, and the determination that it is the shortest distance between two points constitutes in the first place the concept (namely, as it appears in such definitions, cf. § 110). That the concept is not already given by the intuition constitutes precisely the difference between the two, and is what calls for a definition. That something seems to the representation to be a quality, though its specificity rests on a quantitative determination, is something very simple, and also the case for example with the right angle, the straight line, and so on. § 200. (2) Negativity, which as point relates itself to space and in space develops its determinations as line and plane, is, however, in the sphere of self−externality equally for itself and appearing indifferent to the motionless coexistence of space. Negativity, thus posited for itself is time. § 201. Time, as the negative unity of being outside of itself, is just as thoroughly abstract, ideal being: being which, since it is, is not, and since it is not, is. Tune, like space, is a pure form of sensuousness, or intuition; but, as with space, the difference between objectivity and a contrastingly subjective consciousness does not matter to time. If these determinations are applied to space and time, then space is abstract objectivity, whereas time is abstract subjectivity. Time is the same principle as the I = I of pure self−consciousness; but the same principle or the simple concept still in its entire externality, intuited mere becoming, pure being in itself as sheer coming out of itself. Time is just as continuous as space, for it is abstract negativity relating itself to itself and in this abstraction there is as yet no real difference. In time, it is said, everything arises and passes away, or rather, there appears precisely the abstraction of arising and falling away. If abstractions are made from everything, namely, from the fullness of time just as much as from the fullness of space, then there remains both empty time and empty space left over; that is, there are then posited these abstractions of exteriority.−But time itself is this becoming, this existing abstraction, the Chronos who gives birth to everything and destroys his offspring.−That which is real, however, is just as identical to as distinct from time. Everything is transitory that is temporal, that is, exists only in time or, like the concept, is not in itself pure negativity. To be sure, this negativity is in everything as its immanent, universal essence, but the temporal is not adequate to this essence, and therefore relates to this negativity in terms of its power. Time itself is eternal, for it is neither just any time, nor the moment now, but time as time is its concept. The concept, however, in its identity with itself I= 1, is in and for itself absolute negativity and freedom. Time, is not, therefore, the power of the concept, nor is the concept in time and temporal; on the contrary, the concept is the power of time, which is only this negativity as externality.−The natural is therefore subordinate to time, insofar as it is finite; that which is true, by contrast, the idea, the spirit, is eternal. Thus the concept of eternity must not be grasped as if it were suspended time, or in any case not in the sense that eternity would come after time, for this would turn eternity into the future, in other words into a moment of time. And the concept of eternity must also not be understood in the sense of a negation of time, so that it would be merely an abstraction of time. For time in its concept is, like the concept itself generally, eternal, and therefore also absolute presence. The Philosophy of Nature I. Mathematics 4 § 202. The dimensions of time, the present, future, and past, are only that which is becoming and its dissolution into the differences of being as the transition into nothingness, and of Nothingness as the transition into being. The immediate disappearance of these differences into individuality is the present as now, which is itself only this disappearance of being into nothingness, and of nothingness into being. (1) The finite present is differentiated from the infinite in that the finite is the moment now and hence as its abstract moments, as past and future, which is different from the infinite as from the concrete unity. Eternity as concept, h r, contains these moments in itself and its concrete unity is therefore not the moment now, because it is motionless identity, concrete being as universal, and not that which is disappearing into nothingness, as becoming.−Furthermore in nature, where time is now, there does not occur the subsisting difference of these dimensions; they are necessarily only in subjective representation, in memory, fear, or hope. The abstract past, however, and future of time is space, as the suspended space is at first the point and time. (2) There is no science of time in opposition to the finite science of space, geometry, because the differences of time do not have the indifference of being outside of itself which constitutes the immediate determinacy of space, and therefore they can not be expressed as spatial configurations. The principle of time only reaches this ability when the understanding has paralysed it and reduced its negativity to the unit. This motionless unit, as the sheer carnality of thought, can be used to form external combinations, and these, the numbers of arithmetic, can themselves be brought under the categories of the truth as intuition or as understanding merely for itself because the latter is only abstract, whereas the former is concrete. This dead unit, now the highest externality of thought, can be used to form external combinations, and these combinations, the figures of arithmetic, can in turn be organised by the determination of the understanding in terms of equality and inequality, identity and difference. The science which has unity as its principle is therefore constituted in opposition to geometry. (3) The name of mathematics has moreover been used for the philosophical observation of space and time, because it lies close to this observation, despite the fact that mathematics, as noted, considers strictly the determinations of magnitude of its objects and not time itself but only the unit in its configurations and connections. To be sure, time becomes in the theory of movement an object of science, but applied mathematics is generally not an immanent science, precisely because it involves the application of pure mathematics to a given material and its determinations as derived from experience. (4) One could still, however, conceive the thought of a philosophical mathematics, namely, as a science which would recognise those concepts which constitute what the conventional mathematical science of the understanding derives from its presupposed determinations, and according to the method of the understanding, without concepts. However, since mathematics is the science of the finite determinations of magnitude, which remain fixed in their finitude and valid, and should not change in transit, thus it is essentially a science of the understanding. And since it has the ability to express spatial figures and