Commentary on the Philosophy of Nature, Chapter 5
The Question That Remains
If one subtracts the outdated particulars and lets the method stand: what remains?
This volume’s answer: a theory of stages. Hegel does not ask what nature consists of, but in what forms connections can be determined — and he orders them according to how much self-relation they contain. From the mere externality of space, through the interaction of bodies, to the organism that maintains itself.
This question is not settled. It presents itself differently today, because we know evolution, and it presents itself more sharply, because natural science has its own concepts of stages — emergence, self-organization, autopoiesis. What Hegel contributes to this is not a result, but a distinction: what does it mean for an order to arise from the matter itself and not from outside?