Commentary on the Philosophy of Nature, Chapter 38
A Direction in Which the Answer Might Lie
If nature as a whole exhibits self-organization — at every level, with the emergence of new qualities —, then it is natural to read its history as the gradual realization of ever more moments of the living: from minimal self-organization, where atoms spontaneously form crystals, through autocatalytic cycles, to organisms in which all three processes are fully developed.
This would take up an idea of Schelling’s again — his talk of nature’s productivity in various potencies, that is, degrees. Hegel criticized this: too much formalism, too little concept. The objection was well aimed. But it no longer applies once Schelling’s intuition is worked out with Hegel’s own determination of life — with three named processes instead of polarities in indeterminate degrees.
The categories of objectivity would not thereby disappear, but would remain as moments that appear with different weight in different systems. A star has mechanical aspects — gravity holds it together —, chemical aspects — fusion produces elements — and teleological aspects: hydrostatic equilibrium is a self-regulation. Not three separate objects, but three moments of a structure with a determinate degree of self-organization.
Whether this holds up is not for this volume to decide. It is a direction, not an execution — and it would require a philosophy of nature that takes the current state of science as seriously as Hegel took the science of his own time. It is named here because it shows what the doctrine of stages could achieve if it worked on today’s material. [KF]