Hegel's metaphysics of nature

Abstract

AbstractHegel often criticizes the use of unobservable entities postulated in scientific theories. For example, he claims that atoms are not things but, rather, thoughts, and that various imponderable stuffs such as caloric are not independently existing things but, rather, “moments” of material bodies. In this paper I argue that, in such passages, Hegel expresses his original metaphysics of nature, which I relate to the different positions on the relation between what Sellars has called the “scientific image” and the “manifest image.” I reconstruct those aspects of Hegel's philosophy of inorganic nature that allow us to understand Hegel's position in detail, as well as his reasoning in support of it. I argue that, for Hegel, mechanical properties of bodies are abstractions from the bodies that have a full complement of physical and chemical properties standing in specific relations of dependency. Such bodies correspond to the objects of our manifest image, which thus has priority over the scientific image for Hegel.