Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ed. Edward Craig, Vol

Home , Lorenz Oken, Naturphilosophie, Romanticism in science

Appeared in a slightly abriged form in: Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig, Vol. 6, London/ New York: Routledge 1998, 737-743.    Naturphilosophie

Naturphilosophie refers to the philosophy of nature prevalent especially in German philosophy, science and literary movements from around 1790 to about 1830. It pleaded for an organic and dynamic worldview as an alternative to the atomist and mechanist outlook of modern science. Against the Cartesian dualism of matter and mind which had given way to the mechanist materialism of the French Encyclopedists, Spinoza’s dual aspect theory of mind and matter as two modes of a single substance was favoured. The sources of this heterogene- ous movement lie in the philosophy of German idealism as well as in late classicism and Ro- manticism. The leading figure, Schelling, assimilated and stimulated the major trends and ideas through his work.   After the death of Hegel (1831) and of Goethe (1832), Naturphilosophie quickly dis- appeared from the mainstream. Yet it survived in various different forms, especially as an undercurrent of German culture and science, until the twentieth century.   1 Kant and Fichte 2 Schelling and the Naturphilosophen 3 Major doctrines of Naturphilosophie   1 Kant and Fichte  The leading role among the various trends in Naturphilosophie was played by Schelling’s philosophy of nature. To understand it, it is necessary to examine also the philosophy of Kant and subsequently that of Fichte.   Kant had a threefold influence on the movement of Naturphilosophie: through his Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science) (1786) where he took forces as the defining properties of matter; through his third critique, the Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement) (1790), where he treated the concept of purpose in nature, and finally in providing a frame for these ideas through the transcendental idealism of his first critique, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Rea- son) (1781/87).   In his Metaphysical Foundations Kant tried to clarify the concept of matter as it has to be presupposed by all possible scientific investigation. In contesting Newton’s views, he saw matter as constituted by the opposing forces of attraction and repulsion. Matter fills space by its repulsive force. The resulting dispersion is counteracted and limited by an attractive force. Thus Kant arrives at a dynamic view of matter which takes active opposing forces as fundamental and which avoids the conception of the atom and of empty space. His theory advanced a dynamic view of nature (‘dynamism’) as a research programme in physics, and made similar conceptions of the sciences appear in a new light (for example, positive and negative forces in magnetism and electricity).   In the Critique of Judgement, Kant tried to come to terms with the teleological structure of nature. Organisms as products of nature cannot be completely explained in the causal way in which one would explain a mechanical system. For in organisms not only do the parts determine the whole, but the purpose guiding the organism as a whole also determines its parts. In understanding organism and nature as a whole we have thus to grasp it as fulfilling a purpose, to see it as a self-organizing system which has the cause and effect of its action in itself (Kant 1790: §64). However, since we can talk of purposes only in relation to free action and since nature is not an intelligent being we can ascribe purposes to nature only in a meta- phorical, regulative sense, as if it were a free acting creature with its own purposes. Our grasp of organic nature is therefore inherently subjective and can never reach the objective validity of explanations by mechanical causality. Later Naturphilosophen attempted to overcome this Kantian limitation and to furnish nature with an objective, purposive structure which is constitutive of it, and thus to see nature as an autonomous and even indeterministic system.   In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had claimed that experience is not passively re- ceived by our mind but is determined and even produced by categories intrinsic to our own understanding. The unity of our self-consciousness, the synthetic apperception, as the ‘highest point’ of philosophy is responsible for our sense impressions being synthesized into genuine knowledge. Thus every philosophy has to start with an inquiry into the transcendental condi- tions of the mind itself which make knowledge possible.   Before he became acquainted with Kant’s writings, Johann Gottlieb Fichte believed determinism to be unavoidable. His view changed dramatically, however, when he realized that Kant’s transcendental idealism can be radicalized so as to make room for absolute human freedom. Nature is a system of necessity only because it is conceived by us that way. In Kant, the unity of self-consciousness was only the formal condition of our knowledge; some material must be given to our senses which ultimately stems from the thing-in-itself. For Kant, the process of being affected by objects does not depend on the self. Fichte, however, came to reject the idea of the thing-in-itself and claimed that the unity of self-consciousness is also the material condition of our knowledge. The self with its capacity for synthesizing knowledge is not reacting to something given, it is autonomously producing its reality, including itself. Knowledge of objects is derived from an initial act of self-positing; objects are the result of a law-governed production of the ego. The ‘I’, the self, is in this case not to be thought of as the consciousness of an individual person, but as a general structure independent of individual realization.

2 Schelling and the Naturphilosophen

Schelling originally started in complete harmony with Fichte’s viewpoint, but later gradu- ally shifted away from it. Whereas Fichte stressed the certainty of which the I disposes in positing itself, Schelling tried to uncover the origin of the I, the kind of being from which it stems. ‘I am! My I comprizes a being which precedes all thinking and conceiving’ (Schelling [1795] 1856-61, vol. 1: 167). This being is now seen as more comprehensive than the ego: namely nature. The I is not its own product, as Fichte would have it, but the I and the material objects are produced by nature as a ground deeper than the I. ‘Nature’s reality stems from herself – she is her own product – a whole which is organized out of itself and organized by itself’ (Schelling [1799] 1856-61, vol. 3: 17). With this move, Schelling could ascribe to nature the structure which Fichte had claimed for the I. Schelling also thought that this would make it possible to overcome the limitations which Kant thought were necessary in our grasp of nature. Nature can now be seen as a reality which is a self-determining system for which purpose is a constitutive idea and not a regulative one as Kant had it.   From 1797 to 1806 Schelling made various attempts to formulate his philosophy of nature. This necessarily brought him into conflict with Fichte’s soulless mechanical conception of nature. For Fichte nature was just the ‘system of necessity’, the inanimate realm of the ‘not-I’ or ‘non-ego’, posited by the I itself. Schelling, however, envisaged nature as a vital process from whose activity the consciousness of the ego and the mind emerges. Whereas Fichte asked how the self gets at nature, Schelling had the problem of how nature finally arrives at the I.   At the beginning of his development away from Fichte, Schelling envisaged Natur- philosophie as being of equal status with transcendental philosophy; from 1801 onwards, however, Naturphilosophie became primary for Schelling and independent from it. He claimed that we cannot grasp nature by merely investigating her products as they present themselves to our experience. This would be to see nature merely as an inanimate object, as natura naturata. Nature as ‘productivity’, or ‘absolute activity’, in its ‘infinite becoming’ requires studying her as natura naturans, as a subject, a productive process which eventually gives rise to mind and crystallizes in its products (Schelling [1799] 1856-61, vol. 3: 284). This view eventually flowed into a critique of Newtonian mechanical physics taken as the paradigm of modern science. Mechanism starts from material bodies which are supposed to have the property of attracting and/or repulsing each other. Yet, in order to conceive nature as an entity that is able to produce the self and the objects in like manner, it is necessary to give attraction and repulsion a more basic status and to take them as defining properties from which material objects and also consciousness are derived. Schelling did not attack the experimental and empirical side of science but its premature objectivism which leaves out the subjective element in nature and its developmental aspect.   In carrying out his programme Schelling was influenced by the experimental physicist and founder of electrochemistry, Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776–1810), and influenced him in turn. Ritter pleaded for a strong connection of galvanism and chemistry and saw the living organism as a system of nested galvanic chains. When he found that the galvanic process is not necessarily bound to organic material, he considered galvanic action to be the key to the activity of the whole universe.   HEGEL was the other post-Kantian idealist who occupied himself with Naturphiloso- phie. He was decisively stimulated by Schelling before he came to work out a fundamentally different system. For Hegel, nature as the realm of the idea in its otherness is not to be grasped as an evolutionary process but as a conceptual development of the idea on the way to self-knowledge.

3 Major doctrines of Naturphilosophie Schelling’s Naturphilosophie set the tone for many similar undertakings. Although these attempts sometimes differ very much in detail from each other, we can distinguish several recurrent tenets. First, and foremost, there is the view of the ‘unity of mind and matter’. Schelling and many Naturphilosophen argued that nature is animated, that there is an original unity or ‘identity’ of nature and mind which allows us to infer nature’s laws from the laws of the mind and vice versa: ‘The system of nature is at the same time the system of our mind’ and ‘Nature must be visible spirit, and mind invisible nature’ (Schelling 1797: 39, 56). This view was primarily directed against both Cartesian dualism and eighteenth-century materialism. It had a great impact on the Romantic movement, both in literature and science. Hans Christian Ørsted, for example, who discovered electromagnetism in 1820, claimed that all objects are materialized ideas. And according to the biologist Lorenz OKEN, it was the task of Naturphilosophie ‘to show that the laws of the mind are not different from the laws of nature but that both represent each other. Philosophy of nature and philosophy of mind range, therefore, parallel to each other’ (Oken 1843: §13). Later, one of the sharpest critics of Natur- philosophie, Hermann von HELMHOLTZ saw the principal error of this movement precisely in the mingling of the necessary laws of nature with the spontaneous activity of mind. A last remnant of the identity view of nature and mind can be found in the dual aspect view of mind and body as it was embraced by a large number of physiologists, psychologists and many philosophers up to and including Rudolf Carnap’s Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logi- cal Construction of the World) (1928).   A second doctrine is the prevalence of the organism as an explanatory model. For Schelling (as for Kant), mechanical explanations of nature have to be supplemented by organic ones. It is not possible, Schelling claimed, for the universe to be simply a causal mechanism as its organic structure is logically prior to its mechanical one. ‘One and the same principle’ is at work in both organic and inorganic nature which binds all of it ‘into a general organism’ (Schelling [1798] 1856-61, vol. 2: 350). Organisms are causally self-contained, they are their own cause and effect and they are self-movable, whereas causal mechanisms can only be moved from the outside and are therefore essentially passive. Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer, who decisively influenced Schelling in his organic thought, explained the organism in terms of three organic forces: irritability, reproduction and sensibility (Kielmeyer 1793). Irritability is organic activity or movement, sensibility is organic receptivity or sensa- tion, and reproduction refers to the metabolism, to growth and procreation.   A third related doctrine of Naturphilosophie is the unity of nature and its forces, and thereby also of science. There was a strong tendency to exhibit nature in all its different aspects as a development from a small number of fundamental forces. Ørsted, whose disserta- tion had examined Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, had claimed that there is a ‘unity of all the forces’ of heat, chemistry, electricity and magnetism and that ‘the former physical results [Kenntnisse] thus combine into a physics of one piece’ (Ørsted 1803: 209). Similar claims have been made by scientists such as Faraday, Mohr, Grove, J. R. Mayer and others, which eventually led to the establishment of the energy conservation principle. The inorganic as well as the organic realms were seen as directed by the same principles, so that there is no essential difference between them. This does not mean that nature reduces to mechanism, but that the inorganic world has to be conceived as the product of an inherent organic natural process. Naturphilosophie developed the tendency to impose the organic categories found in the study of nature even on culture, society and the state. In this sense, it also helped to prepare the ground both for the later materialist and naturalist movement as well as for organic conceptions of the state and society.   In viewing nature as a unity, the movement of Naturphilosophie was also influenced by Goethe’s search for an underlying idea of the organic and inorganic realms of nature. In morphology, he argued that all plants are modifications of one primordial plant, the Urpflanze, and that all plant organs were variations of a single fundamental organ, the leaf (see GOETHE, J.W. §3).   Another doctrine of Naturphilosophie concerns the developmental aspect of nature. Instead of viewing nature and its parts in static terms, Naturphilosophie tried to conceive of it as the outcome of an evolutionary graduated succession. Very often this process was seen as being initiated and maintained by a polar antagonism of forces. Models for conceiving this process were either taken by way of analogical reasoning from some philosophical source (Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations, Fichte’s idea of the self determining itself by positing the I and the not-I at the same time) or some scientific theory of the time (magnetism, galvanism, electricity, chemistry, physiology). Other sources included Goethe and HERDER who also held influential theories of development. In all this, the concept of polarity played a prominent role and was seen as the continuous principle for every development and activity. Oken, for example, viewed living organisms as governed by two opposing processes: an individualizing one which increases the organism’s vitality, and a universalizing one that leads to death and is a drive to the absolute (see ABSOLUTE, THE).  See also: ROMANTICISM, GERMAN, §6; GERMAN IDEALISM

References and further reading

Amrine, F. (ed.) (1986) Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal, Dordrecht: Kluwer. (Goethe in the history of science and his relevance to philosophical treatment of nature today. Anno- tated bibliography.)

Bonsiepen, W. (1997) Die Begründung einer Naturphilosophie bei Kant, Schelling, Fries und Hegel. Mathematische versus spekulative Naturphilosophie (Foundations of the philosophy of nature in Kant, Schelling, Fries and Hegel: mathematical versus speculative philosophy of nature), Frankfurt: Klostermann. (Detailed and thorough account of German idealism’s different philosophies of nature and of the opposing mathematical philosophy of nature of J.F. Fries and his school. Much philosophical and historical context.)

Böhme, G. (ed.) (1989) Klassiker der Naturphilosophie. Von den Vorsokratikern bis zur Ko- penhagener Schule (Classics of the philosophy of nature: from the Presocratics to the Copen- hagen School), Munich: Beck. (Essays on the leading philosophers of nature and philosophical cosmologists, from the Presocratics to Einstein and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Includes entries on Kant, Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel.)

Caneva, K.L. (1997) ‘Physics and Naturphilosophie: A Reconnaissance’, History of Science 35: 35–107. (Critical and thorough review of claims for the influence of Naturphilosophie on early nineteenth-century physics. Valuable and extensive bibliography.)

*Carnap, R. (1928) Der logische Aufbau der Welt, Berlin-Schlachtensee: Weltkreis-Verlag; trans. R. George as The Logical Structure of the World, Berkeley, CA: University of Califor- nia Press, 1967. (Attempt to carry out the programme of early Logical Empiricism to reduce all concepts to elementary experiences. Gives a solution to the mind-body problem in terms of a double-aspect theory that is reminiscent of the Spinozism of Naturphilosophie.)

Cohen, R.S. and Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) (1984) Hegel and the Sciences, Dordrecht: Reidel. (Essays on Hegel’s philosophy of nature, its relation to logic and on his treatment of various sciences.)

Cunningham, A. and Jardine, N. (eds) (1990) Romanticism and the Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Essays on Romanticism in general and on its relation to the sciences of the organic and inorganic, as well as on Romantic literature and the sciences.)

Engelhardt, D. von (1978) ‘Bibliographie der Sekundärliteratur zur romantischen Naturfor- schung und Medizin 1950–1975’ (Bibliography of secondary literature on Romantic science and medicine, 1950–1975), in R. Brinkmann (ed.) Romantik in Deutschland. Ein inter- disziplinäres Symposion (Romanticism in Germany: An interdisciplinary symposium), Stutt- gart: Metzler, 307–30. (Comprehensive bibliography for the given period. The volume con- tains other relevant material.)

------(1988) ‘Romanticism in Germany’, in R. Porter and M. Teich (eds) Romanticism in Na- tional Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 109–33. (Places Naturphilosophie in the wider context of the German Romantic movement.)

Engelhardt, D. von and Musto, R. (eds) (1993) Annali. Sezione Germanica NS 3: 1–3. (A collection of nineteen essays, in Italian, on a wide range of topics concerning science and philosophy in the age of Romanticism; the collection has no special title.)

Esposito, J.L. (1977) Schelling’s Idealism and Philosophy of Nature, Lewisburg, PA and London: Associated University Presses. (Short account of Schelling’s philosophy of nature. Useful chapter on Schelling’s contemporary critics and on his influence on nineteenth-century America.)

Fichte, J.G. (1794) Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, Jena/ Leipzig: Gabler; repr. in Sämmtliche Werke, ed. I.H. Fichte, Berlin: Veit, 1845–6, vol. 1, 83–328; trans. P. Heath and J. Lachs as The Science of Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. (Theoretical foundation of Fichte’s philosophical system.)

Fischer, K. (1902) Schelling’s Leben, Werke und Lehre (Schelling’s life, work, and doctrine), Heidelberg: Winter, 3rd edn. (Elaborate and vivid account of Schelling’s life and work. Sometimes dated but still valuable, with a wealth of information.)

Frank, M. (1985) Eine Einführung in Schellings Philosophie (An introduction to Schelling’s philosophy), Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. (Short but useful introduction to Schelling’s work which puts stress on his Naturphilosophie.)

Giovanni, G. di (1979) ‘Kant’s Metaphysics of Nature and Schelling’s Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 17: 197–215. (Argues for the closeness of Schelling’s Ideen to Kant.) Gloy, K. and Burger, P. (eds) (1993) Die Naturphilosophie im Deutschen Idealismus (The philosophy of nature in German idealism), Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog. (Collection of essays on German idealism’s concept of nature: on Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and the Romantics.)

Gode-von Aesch, A. (1941) Natural Science in German Romanticism New York: Columbia University Press; repr. New York: AMS Press, 1966. (Deals with science and literature as two intertwined aspects of the German Romantic movement.)

Gower, B. (1973) ‘Speculation in Physics: The History and Practice of Naturphilosophie’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 3 (4): 301–56. (Authoritative and influential survey which includes treatment of Ritter and Ørsted.)

Hasler, L. (ed.) (1981) Schelling. Seine Bedeutung für eine Philosophie der Natur und der Geschichte (Schelling: his significance for a philosophy of nature and history), Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog. (Includes essays on Schelling’s relation to the sciences of his day and on his philosophy of history.)

Heckmann, R., Krings, H. and Meyer, R.W. (eds) (1985) Natur und Subjektivität. Zur Ausei- nandersetzung mit der Naturphilosophie des jungen Schelling (Nature and subjectivity: a dis- cussion of the young Schelling’s Naturphilosophie), Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog. (Essays on the place of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie in German idealism, its reception by its contem- poraries and an assessment from a present-day point of view.)

Hegel, G.W.F. (1817) ‘Naturphilosophie’, part 2 of Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wis- senschaften im Grundrisse, Heidelberg: Oßwald; 2nd edn repr. in Gesammelte Werke, Ham- burg: Meiner, 1989, vol. 19, 183–283; trans. M.J. Petry as Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, London: Allen & Unwin, 1970, 3 vols. (Hegel’s major work on his own specific version of Naturphilosophie.)

Helmholtz, H. (1855) Ueber das Sehen des Menschen (On human vision), Leipzig: Voss; repr. in Vorträge und Reden, 5th edn, 2 vols, Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1903, vol. 1: 85–117. (One of the first documents of rising Neo-Kantianism. Kant’s epistemology, interpreted in terms of sensory physiology, is proposed as a remedy for the extravagances of Naturphiloso- phie.)

Heuser-Keßler, M.-L. (1986) Die Produktivität der Natur. Schellings Naturphilosophie und das neue Paradigma der Selbstorganisation in den Naturwissenschaften (Nature’s productivity: Schelling’s philosophy of nature and the paradigm of self-organization in the natural sciences), Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. (Account of Schelling’s conception of (especially organic) nature and its autogeneric ordering processes. Schelling’s work is related to conceptions of self-organization in present-day science, in the work of I. Prigogine and H. Haken.)

Heuser-Keßler, M.-L. and Jacobs, W.G. (eds) (1994) Schelling und die Selbstorganisation. Neue Forschungsperspektiven (Schelling and self-organization: new research perspectives), Selbstorganisation, vol. 5, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. (Deals with Schelling’s concept of self-organization, its contemporary and present-day reception.) Horstmann, R.-P. and Petry, M.J. (eds) (1986) Hegels Philosophie der Natur. Beziehungen zwischen empirischer und spekulativer Naturerkenntnis (Hegel’s philosophy of nature: rela- tions of empirical and speculative natural science), Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. (Essays on Hegel’s Naturphilosophie.)

*Kant, I. (1781/1787) Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Riga: Hartknoch; trans. N.K. Smith as The Critique of Pure Reason, New York: St Martin’s Press, London: Macmillan, 1964. (Explana- tion and justification of the a priori forms of reason that constitute the basis of any theoretical knowledge. Kant’s doctrine of the spontaneity of the subject and the autonomy of reason was especially relevant for Naturphilosophie.)

*------(1786) Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, Riga: Hartknoch; trans. J. Ellington as Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs- Merrill, 1970. (In his metaphysics of nature, Kant formulates the principles that specify the transition from the critique of pure reason to actual empirical science. His dynamic definition of matter from attractive and repulsive forces was important for Naturphilosophie.)

*------(1790) Kritik der Urteilskraft, Berlin: Lagarde; trans. J.C. Meredith as Kant’s Critique of Judgement, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952. (In a way, the cornerstone of Kant’s philosophy. Tries to show that the realms of nature and freedom, of causality and teleology are com- patible. The second part, ‘Critique of teleological reason’, became especially relevant for Naturphilosophie.)

Kanz, K.T. (ed.) (1994) Philosophie des Organischen in der Goethezeit. Studien zu Werk und Wirkung des Naturforschers Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer (1765–1844) (Philosophy of the organic during the time of Goethe: studies in the work and influence of the naturalist Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer), Stuttgart: Steiner. (Essays on Kielmeyer’s vision of the organism and biology in general, its context and influence.)

*Kielmeyer, C.F. (1793) Ueber die Verhältnisse der organischen Kräfte unter einander in der Reihe der verschiedenen Organisationen, die Geseze und Folgen dieser Verhältnisse (On the relation of the organic forces to each other in the series of the different organisms, the laws and the successions of this relation), Stuttgart and Tübingen: Heerbrand; repr., intro. K.T. Kanz, Marburg: Basilisken-Presse, 1993. (Living systems fulfil three main functions: sensa- tion, motion and self-preservation. Organic forms differ from each other by the different amount in which these functions are fulfilled. A concise statement of the problem situation at the end of the eighteenth century.)

Knittermeyer, H. (1928) Schelling und die romantische Schule (Schelling and the Romantic movement), Munich: Ernst Reinhardt. (Lengthy account of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie and of the ideas of many of his followers, especially from philosophy.)

Kuhn, Th. S. (1959) ‘Energy Conservation as an Example of Simultaneous Discovery’, in M. Clagett (ed.) Critical Problems in the History of Science, Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 321–56; repr. in The Essential Tension. Selected Studies in Scientific Tradi- tion and Change, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977, 66–104. (In this influential piece, Kuhn shows how Naturphilosophie served as a philosophical background for the simultaneous discovery of energy conservation by many different scientists. Compare the comments by Caneva 1997.) Mutschler, H.-D. (1990) Spekulative und empirische Physik. Aktualität und Grenzen der Naturphilosophie Schellings (Speculative and empirical physics: actuality and limits of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie), Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. (A critique of Schelling’s Naturphi- losophie from a present-day point of view.)

*Oken, L. (1843) Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie, Zurich: Schultheß, 3rd. edn; repr. Hilde- sheim: Olms, 1991; trans. A. Tulk as Elements of Physiophilosophy, London: Ray Society, 1847. (Exposition of a naturphilosophisches system of the life sciences; a mixture of an un- scrupulous usage of polarity principles and of an effusive naturalism.)

*Ørsted, H.Ch. (1803) Materialien zu einer Chemie des Neunzehenten Jahrhunderts (Materi- als for a chemistry of the nineteenth century), Erstes Stück, Regensburg: Montag & Weiß; repr. in Naturvidenskabelige Skrifter, ed. K. Meyer, Copenhagen: Høst 1920, vol. 1, 133–210. (Enthusiastic exposition of the chemical system of J.J. Winterl, which claimed the principles of electricity as fundamental for acids, bases, heat, light and magnetism.)

*------(1849) Aanden i naturen; trans. K.L. Kannegiesser as Der Geist in der Natur, Leipzig: Lorck, 1850; trans. L. Horner and J.B. Horner as The Soul in Nature, London: Bohn, 1852, repr. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1966. (Series of articles exhibiting physical nature as permeated and dominated by the mind.)

Petry, M.J. (ed.) (1987) Hegel und die Naturwissenschaften (Hegel and the natural sciences), Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. (Collection of essays expounding Hegel’s relation to the sciences.)

Poggi, S. (1996) ‘La “Naturphilosophie” dell’idealismo e del romanticismo: lo stato della ricerca’, (The Naturphilosophie of idealism and of Romanticism: The state of research), Rivista di Filosofia 87 (1): 111-128. (Concise overview of contemporary research on Natur- philosophie.)

Poggi, S. and Bossi, M. (eds) (1994) Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 1790–1840, Dordrecht: Kluwer. (Essays on Romanticism and Naturphilosophie in biology, chemistry, psychology, philosophy and mathematics.)

Sandkühler, H.J. (ed.) (1984) Natur und geschichtlicher Prozeß. Studien zur Naturphilosophie F.W.J. Schellings (Nature and historical development: studies in Schelling’s Naturphiloso- phie), Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. (Collection of essays on Schelling’s Naturphilosophie and its relation to history.)

*Schelling, F.W.J. (1795) Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie oder über das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wißen, Tübingen: Herrbrandt; repr. in Sämmtliche Werke, ed. K.F.A. Schelling, Stuttgart, 1856–61, vol. 1, 149–244; trans. F. Marti as The Unconditional in Human Knowl- edge: Four Early Essays 1794–6, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1980. (On the absolute ego as the foundation of philosophy. A confrontation of Fichte’s philosophy with that of Spinoza.)

*------(1797) Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur als Einleitung in das System dieser Wis- senschaft, Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel; repr. in Sämmtliche Werke, ed. K.F.A. Schelling, Stuttgart 1856–61, vol. 2, 1–343; trans. E.E. Harris and P. Heath, intro. R. Stern, Ideas for a 0

Philosophy of Nature as Introduction to the Study of that Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. (Schelling’s major work on Naturphilosophie aiming to overcome the split of mind and nature, of subject and object. Follows Kant in constructing matter from ex- pansive and contractive forces.)

*------(1798) Von der Weltseele, eine Hypothese der höheren Physik zur Erklärung des all- gemeinen Organismus (On the world-soul: a hypothesis of higher physics in order to explain the general organism), Hamburg: Perthes; repr. in Sämmtliche Werke, ed. K.F.A. Schelling, Stuttgart 1856–61, vol. 2, 345–583. (Explanation of organic nature in terms of a general dualism of opposing forces.)

*------(1799) Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (Outline of a system of the philosophy of nature), Jena/ Leipzig: Gabler; repr. in Sämmtliche Werke, ed. K.F.A. Schel- ling, Stuttgart 1856–61, vol. 3, 1–268. (Elaboration of a developmental theory of life as proposed in the Weltseele. Influenced by Kielmeyer and Herder.)

------(1994) Ergänzungsband zu Werke Band 5 bis 9. Wissenschaftshistorischer Bericht zu Schellings Naturphilosophischen Schriften 1797–1800 (Supplementary volume of vols 5 to 9 of the works: The scientific background of Schelling’s works on Naturphilosophie 1797– 1800), Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog. (Supplement to the critical edition of the Bavarian academy of the sciences (1976–) ed. H.M. Baumgartner et al. Essays on chemistry, magnetism, electricity, galvanism and physiology in Schelling’s day aiming to recover the contemporary scientific context of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie.)

Schmied-Kowarzik, W. (1993) ‘Selbst und Existenz. Grundanliegen und Herausforderung der Naturphilosophie Schellings’ (Self and existence: the challenge of Schelling’s Naturphiloso- phie), in H.M. Baumgartner and W.G. Jacobs (eds) Philosophie der Subjektivität? Zur Bes- timmung des neuzeitlichen Philosophierens (Philosophy of subjectivity? on the characteristics of modern philosophy), Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, vol. 1, 111–30. (Thoughtful defence of Schelling’s approach and an appreciation of its relation to modern science.)

Snelders, H.A.M. (1970) ‘Romanticism and Naturphilosophie and the Inorganic Natural Sci- ences 1797–1840: An Introductory Survey’, Studies in Romanticism 9 (3): 193–215. (A clear presentation of the influence of Romantic thinking and Naturphilosophie on the inorganic sciences in Germany. Claims that the influence was positive and fruitful.)

------(1994) Wetenschap en intuitie: Het Duitse romantisch-speculatief natuuronderzoek rond 1800 (Science and intuition: German Romantic and speculative natural science around 1800), Baarn: Ambo. (Balanced and authoritative account of the impact of Naturphilosophie on science and vice versa from about 1790 to 1830. Includes vivid and expressive accounts of central and marginal figures of the time. Helpful annotated bibliography.)

Strack, F. (1994) Evolution des Geistes: Jena um 1800. Natur und Kunst, Philosophie und Wissenschaft im Spannungsfeld der Geschichte (Evolution of the spirit: Jena around 1800. Nature and art, philosophy and science under the tension of history), Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. (Essays on the most brilliant period of the University of Jena as the origin of the German Ro- mantic movement in philosophy, art, literature and the sciences. Includes essays on philosophical ideas about nature in Goethe, Hölderlin, Novalis, Schelling and Ritter.) 1

Wilson, A.D. (1997) ‘Die romantischen Naturphilosophen’ (The romantic Naturphilosophen), in K. von Meÿenn, Die grossen Physiker: Erster Band: Von Aristoteles bis Kelvin (Great Physicists. Vol. 1: From Aristotle to Kelvin), Munich: Beck, 319-35. (The role of Naturphi- losophie in the physics of Ritter, Ørsted and Faraday.)

MICHAEL HEIDELBERGER