Kommentar zur Naturphilosophie, Chapter 34
What Hegel Achieved on His Own
Amid the errors, one loses sight of the work in this volume that does not follow from logic but from expertise.
The critique of false ontologizations. Hegel turns against caloric, against phlogiston, against the theory of pores — that is, against substances invented to explain processes and later shown to be superfluous. In all three cases, he was proven right.
Conceptual clarification. What is space, what is time, what is matter, what is life? No measurement answers these questions, and the physics textbooks of his time presupposed the concepts instead of examining them.
The integration of empirical knowledge. Across hundreds of pages, he surveys the state of physics, chemistry, and biology, citing names and points of dispute. This is not derivation from the concept, but reading.
These achievements were won through expertise, not derived from logic. Anyone who scours the volume only for errors will find them — and will miss how much stands alongside them. [KF]