Commentary on the Philosophy of Nature, Chapter 11
Why Hegel Begins with Space and Not with Body
The division ends with the planet, which has its centre within itself. That it begins with space is the other half of the same decision — striking as soon as one sets beside it how others began.
The physics textbooks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries begin with the body and develop from it extension, place, impenetrability, divisibility, mobility, inertia. They start from the quality of matter and quantify afterward. Hegel begins with space.
This follows from the question. Whoever asks after the poorest form of being-apart cannot start with something that already has properties. Space is being-apart without any further determination — and precisely for this reason it stands at the beginning. [KF]