Commentary on the Philosophy of Nature

Part One: Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature

1. I. What It Undertakes

  1. Why This Part Has the Worst Reputation
  2. Three Things to Keep Apart
  3. Hegel Himself on the Boundary
  4. What the Lectures Show
  5. The Question That Remains
  6. Where This Volume Stands in the System

2. Excursus: The Logical Determinations and Their Application

  1. What Logic Provides
  2. What Logic Delivers and What It Does Not
  3. What the Philosophy of Nature Adds

3. II. Mechanics (§§ 253–271)

  1. The Stages in Detail
  2. Why Hegel Begins with Space and Not with Body
  3. The Newton Critique
  4. The Number of the Planets — an Accusation Standing on Its Head
  5. The List of Errors — and Why It’s Shorter Than Its Reputation
  6. What Mechanism Lacks — The Stone Falling from the Roof
  7. What Remains of Mechanics

4. III. Physics (§§ 272–336)

  1. Why This Part Is the Weakest
  2. Three Misunderstandings to Clear Away in Advance
  3. The “Wide Field” — Why Physics Contains So Much
  4. What Physics Deals With
  5. The Escalation from Magnetism to Chemism
  6. What Hegel Fastens Magnetism To
  7. The Four Elements — and Why They Are Not a Regression
  8. Two Passages Where Hegel Anticipates Later Developments
  9. Why Nature Often Has Four Steps, Not Three
  10. What Remains of Physics

5. IV. Organics (§§ 337–376)

  1. What the Organics Deals With
  2. The Geological Organism
  3. Plant and Animal
  4. Gaia, Ecosystems, Viruses — the Borderline Cases
  5. What Organics Has Survived
  6. The Question of Evolution
  7. What Remains of Organics

6. V. What Remains

  1. A Pattern That Repeats
  2. What Hegel Achieved on His Own
  3. The Three Levels, Once More
  4. Where the Question Stands Today
  5. A Direction in Which the Answer Might Lie
  6. Retrospect and Transition

Part Two: The Reception

7. VI. The Disciples: Erdmann, Rosenkranz, and Michelet

  1. The Contradiction from Which the Sequence of Stages Follows
  2. What Separates Erdmann from the Other Two
  3. What Both Undertake

8. VII. The Historians: Neuser and Petry

  1. Neuser: why nature is the sphere of externality
  2. Neuser: The Other Logical Tradition
  3. Petry: The State of Knowledge, Passage by Passage

9. VIII. The Present: Stekeler and Winfield

  1. Stekeler: The Reach of Forms of Explanation
  2. Winfield: Determination Applied to a Present-Day Object

10. IX. The Overall Picture

  1. Four Approaches, Compared
  2. What the Four Together Add Up To