Schelling, Hegel, and Evolutionary Progress

J. M. Fritzman Lewis & Clark College

Molly Gibson Independent scholar

This article presents Schelling’s claim that nature has an evolutionary process and Hegel’s response that nature is the development of the concept. It then examines whether evolution is progressive. This article argues that, insofar as a notion of progress is conceptually ineliminatable from evolutionary biology or required to articulate the shape of life’s history, progress should be viewed as constitutive.

Preview This article presents Schelling’s claim that nature has an evolutionary process and Hegel’s response that nature is the development of the concept. It then examines whether evolution is progressive. While many evolutionary biologists explicitly repudiate the suggestion that there is progress in evolution, they often implicitly presuppose this. Moreover, such a notion seems required insofar as the shape of life’s history consists in a directional trend. This article argues that, insofar as a notion of progress is indeed conceptually ineliminatable from evolutionary biology or needed to articulate the shape of life’s history, progress should be viewed as constitutive. The section on “Why Schelling and Hegel?” articulates the motivation for investigating their views about evolution and progress. The “Back Story” brieºy discusses the philosophies of Kant and Fichte, since these Three anonymous reviewers for Perspectives on Science are thanked for suggestions that led to useful revisions; all authors should be blessed with such readers. Earlier versions were pre- sented to the Northwest Philosophy Conference at the University of Oregon on 6 Decem- ber 2008 (David Kolb is thanked for his commentary) and to a joint Department of Philos- ophy & Summer Research Colloquium at Lewis & Clark College on 19 September 2008. Claire Kodachi and William A. Rottschaefer are thanked for their comments. Gordon P. Kelly is thanked for modifying Terentius’ Latin. Lewis & Clark College provided support through a Collaborative Research Grant.

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are the points of departure for Schelling and Hegel. These two sections also indicate how scientiªc developments inºuence them. The section on “Schelling, According to Richards and Grant” compares divergent interpretations of Schelling’s philosophy. These interpretations have distinc- tively important results when considering Schelling’s claim that nature has an evolutionary process and when that claim is compared to contemporary evolutionary biology. “Evolution, Emanation, Development, Ac- cording to Hegel” presents Hegel’s reasons for denying that nature evolves or emanates and for instead maintaining that it is the development of the concept. “Schelling and Hegel after Darwin: A Brief Comparison” consid- ers Schelling’s acceptance, and Hegel’s rejection, of evolution and progress in nature. “Progress as Complexity, Autonomy, or Convergence” indicates the limitations of three ways of articulating progress. “Is Progress Like Pornography?” argues that, sadly, it is not. Whereas pornography can still be recognized even if it cannot be deªned, this is not so for progress. “Progress as constitutive” notes that, while many evolutionary biologists explicitly repudiate the suggestion that there is progress in evolution, they often seem to implicitly presuppose this. It is argued that, insofar as notions of progress are indeed conceptually ineliminatable from evolutionary biology or required insofar as the shape of life’s history consists in a directional trend, progress should be viewed as constitutive, rather than only regulative or merely a façon de parler. Humanity should be the standard by which progress is measured. Recognizing the inherent dangers of deªning “progress” and “humanity” in reference to “us,” the article concludes by urging that “we” be expanded.

Why Schelling and Hegel? Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) accepts the inertia principle of Isaac New- ton (1643–1727), according to which objects only move—or, if already in motion, cease moving—as a result of the application of an external force. Billiard balls are a useful example of this. Kant thinks that the principle of inertia is constitutive, describing nature as it actually is. Thus, he concludes that matter is “lifeless.”1 Because Kant accepts the principle of iner- 1. Kant 1985, 105–106: “The inertia of matter is and signiªes nothing but its lifelessness, as matter in itself. Life means the capacity of a substance to determine itself to act from an internal principle, of a ªnite substance to determine itself to change, and of a material substance to determine itself to motion or to rest as change of its state. Now, we know of no other internal principle of a substance to change its state but desire and no other activity whatsoever but thought, along with what depends upon such desire, namely feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and appetite or will. But these determining grounds and actions do not at all belong to the representations of the external senses and hence also do not to the determinations of matter as matter. Therefore all matter as such is lifeless. The

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tia, he argues that biological organisms are not able to move themselves but instead are moved only by external forces, that they do not develop themselves, that they do not act because they have no goals, and that nature itself is without purpose. He argues that humans can never comprehend how it is possible that, although actually lifeless, biological organisms nevertheless appear to be alive. This is Kant’s point when he claims that “it is quite certain that we can never adequately come to know the organized beings and their internal possibility in accordance with merely mechanical principles of nature, let alone explain them; and indeed this is so certain that we can boldly say that it would be absurd for human beings even to make such an attempt or to hope that there may yet arise a New- ton who could make comprehensible even the generation of a blade of grass according to natural laws that no intention has ordered; rather, we must absolutely deny this insight to human beings” (Kant 2000, section 75, 270–271, Ak. 5:400). In order to study biological organisms, then, it is necessary to make the false assumptions that biological organisms can move themselves, that they contain within themselves principles for self- development and self-replication, and that they have goals.2 It is not merely that these assumptions are psychologically ineliminatable because individuals have an unavoidable tendency to presuppose them, moreover. They are conceptually ineliminatable because humans are incapable of ever comprehending biological organisms without them. These false assumptions are regulative, according to Kant. They are heuristic devices that guide research. Nevertheless, they are still false. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) and Georg Wil- helm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) respond that since such assumptions are necessary to understand biological organisms, as Kant concedes, this is sufªcient reason to regard these assumptions as constitutive.3 Schelling ac-

proposition of inertia says so much and no more.” Compare Westphal 1998. Westphal shows that Hegel correctly perceives that Kant’s a priori argument for matter’s inertness and lifelessness is fallacious and so Kant should have regarded matter’s inertness as an empirical question. 2. The leaves of a plant turn toward the sunlight, for example, in order for photosynthe- sis to occur. 3. More precisely: Kant claims that matter is inert and so lifeless. As a consequence, he argues that all attempts to understand nature, either in part or as a whole, as purposeful are not constitutive but only regulative. Schelling urges, however, that form is inseparable from content, Hegel agrees with this, and so there is no reason for Kant to nevertheless maintain that the form of organisms is something added by humans. “While the Kantians are right to insist that the idea of purpose involves that of some guiding intelligence,” as Frederick C. Beiser explicates Schelling’s conclusion, “they must also admit that, in the case of an organism, this intelligence is within the object itself” (Beiser 2002, 521). Also see Friedman 2006, 26–43. Like Schelling, “Hegel adopts Kant’s idea of an intuitive un-

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cepts panpsychism, according to which all matter is enminded. That is to say, matter always has some aspect of mind, however rudimentary, and he seems to identify the level of complexity of a matter’s structure with mind. He further maintains that consciousness results when matter has a sufªciently complex organization. Although Hegel apparently rejects panpsychism, he agrees with Schelling that the proper model for conceptual- izing nature is the organism, not the machine, and that biological organisms really are alive.4 Robert J. Richards argues that Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882) believes that evolution is progressive and teleological, with humans on the highest rung (Richards 1987; Richards 1992). He further maintains that Darwin’s theory of evolution is inºuenced by Schelling’s Naturphilosophie (Richards 2002).5 Richards argues that Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834–1919), who is primarily responsible for introducing Dar- win’s theory in Germany, also believes that evolution is progressive.6 Al- though Kant believes that there can never be a Newton of a blade of grass, Haeckel claims that Darwin is this Newton. Haeckel can believe this, however, only because he rejects Kant’s views on inertia (see Haeckel 1889, 95; Cornell 1986). Whereas Kant maintains that matter can move only insofar as it is moved by an external force, Haeckel is in the tradition

derstanding as a description of the very way we observe and comprehend organic entities,” as Daniel O. Dahlstrom observes, and so it is not merely psychologically ineliminatable and regulative but also conceptually ineliminatable and constitutive. “For Hegel an intuitive understanding is not a mere thought, a corollary to the use of the principle of inner purposiveness,” as Dahlstrom further perceives, “but the very way we know natural pur- poses” (Dahlstrom 1998, 175). 4. Whether Hegel actually rejects panpsychism is discussed in the next section. 5. Darwin is inºuenced by Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) as well, who is also in the tradition of Naturphilosophie. A discussion of Humboldt is beyond the scope of this paper, but compare: von Humboldt 1849, vol. 1: “‘Nature,’ as Schelling remarks in his po- etic discourse on art, ‘is not an inert mass; and to him, who can comprehend her vast sub- limity, she reveals herself as the creative force of the universe—before all time, eternal, ever active, she calls to life all things, whether perishable or imperishable’” (36). “As intelligence and forms of speech, thought and its verbal symbols, are united by secret and indis- soluble links, so does the external world blend almost unconsciously to ourselves with our ideas and feelings. ‘External phenomena,’ says Hegel in his Philosophy of History, ‘are in some degree translated in our inner representations.’ The objective world, conceived and reºected within us by thought, is subjected to the eternal and necessary conditions of our intellectual being” (59). For further discussions, see: Helferich 2004. Lack 2009. Lowen- berg, Avé-Lallemant, and Dove 2009. Richards 2002, 522–526. Rupke 2008. Walls 2009. 6. Richards 2009, 148: “There can be little doubt, I think, that Haeckel and Darwin were in accord concerning the progressive features of evolution by natural selection. To read Darwin otherwise is to make him into a neo-Darwinian, which, needless to say, he was not.” Also see Gliboff 2008.

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of Naturphilosophie in accepting a panpsychism that claims that all matter is enminded and contains within itself the ability to organize, and so move, itself.7 While Darwin and Haeckel believe that evolution is progressive, many contemporary evolutionary biologist would deny this. In their actual descriptions of evolution, however, they frequently write as though it is progressive. The question is then whether progress is actually constitutive or instead only regulative. This motivates a consideration of the views of Schelling and Hegel regarding evolutionary progress. This article argues that, since notions of progress indeed seem to be ineliminatable from evolutionary biology, progress should be viewed as constitutive.

Back Story Inºuenced by Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) argues that nature is correctly understood as the result of the mechanistic interaction of forces. He further maintains that consciousness must always be presup- posed in any account of nature. From this, he concludes that nature must be seen as the product of consciousness and that consciousness cannot be derived from nature. While Fichte’s considered view seems to be that consciousness and nature are equals and coeval—since he believed that consciousness is only made possible through the constraints, the “check,” imposed by nature on consciousness—he frequently overlooks this, and instead argues for the priority of consciousness. Initially a disciple of Fichte, Schelling eventually rejects Fichte’s tendency to give precedence to consciousness and develops a philosophy of nature—a Naturphilosophie. Schelling urges that there is a unity of nature and mind. He claims that the difference between matter and mind is that the latter is a more complexly organized development of the former. Im- pressed by the discovery that electricity has a positive and negative charge, and that magnetism has a positive and negative pole, Schelling further maintains that nature develops because of “polarity,” an antagonism be- 7. Richards 2009, 124–125: “These forces led Haeckel to the ultimate conviction that the living and non-living could not be distinguished, that one was simply a phase of the other. Such a conception does not denigrate the wonders of life but ennobles the properties of matter. When he focused directly on the metaphysical question ...heendorsed not ster- ile materialism but a kind of monism that was rooted ªrmly in Romantic Jena at the beginning of the nineteenth century and that branched out into many intellectual areas by the end of the century. Not only Haeckel but philosophers and scientists of quite different stripes—such individuals as William James and John Dewey, Bertrand Russell and Ernst Mach—would advance the doctrine of neutral monism. That doctrine held that mind and matter were properties of a more fundamental substrate that was not to be identiªed with its salient traits. Haeckel adopted this metaphysical position earlier on, in the Generelle Morphologie; and it would become the foundation for his ‘monistic religion’.”

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tween pairs of opposed fundamental forces. He believes that polarity could explain evolution within nature and that this evolution could then explain the emergence of consciousness. Schelling claims that the best model for understanding nature is that of the organism, rather than a machine. Al- though he does not deny that much of inorganic nature can be understood in mechanistic terms, he thinks that living organisms cannot be explained mechanically, and that mechanism itself presupposes a situatedness within the organic. The inorganic is explained, according to Schelling, from the perspective of the organic (see Friedman 2006). Schelling advocates a panpsychism, as noted above, according to which even inorganic matter is enminded and alive.8 Schelling is greatly inºu- enced by studies of electricity and magnetism and so believes that inorganic matter contains within itself a principle of motion. This allows him to view the principle of inertia as a limit condition of matter, rather than as a universal law holding for all things. He also maintains that the transition from matter to mind is on a continuum, the systematic complexity of the organization of the material. He believes that there is an inarticulate drive within inorganic matter to organize itself into biological organisms, and within organisms to produce human consciousness whereby nature can know itself. Schelling’s Naturphilosophie inºuenced leading contemporary scientists. In The Romantic Conception of Life, moreover, Richards argues that Schelling’s Naturphilosophie was a crucial inºuence on Darwin’s theory of evolution (Richards 2002). Hegel rejects several of Schelling’s views, although his own philosophy is deeply indebted to that of Schelling. Since Hegel claims that nature is Geist externalized and he employs proto-mental categories to describe Geist, it might be thought that he too accepts panpsychism. However, he frequently distances his own views from those of Schelling, exhibiting an anxiety of inºuence, and he seems to believe that Geist nonreductively emerges from nature (Bloom 1997). Hegel agrees that nature must be understood as an organism rather than as mechanical or mechanistic. How- ever, he rejects the claim that mind is no more than a complexiªcation of nature. Although Hegel grants that nature is the precondition for consciousness, he believes that the approach that is appropriate for understanding nature cannot be applied without further ado to consciousness (see Hegel 1970, sections 245–252, 191–220). Perhaps an analogy is useful. Schelling’s panpsychism would be like ra- dioactivity. A sample of uranium-235 in radioactive but so are its atoms. When there is a sufªcient amount of uranium-235, a chain reaction can occur. Schelling maintains that all matter in enminded, analogously, and

8. For a recent defense, see Skrbina, 2005.

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consciousness obtains when the matter’s structure becomes sufªciently complex. The analogy is limited, of course, as an atom’s constituent parts are not radioactive, although Schelling would presumably say that they are enminded. Insofar as Geist nonreductively emerges from nature, by contrast, Hegel’s view may be compared to a compound, which results when two or more elements are chemically combined. Here, Geist would be similar to a compound and nature to an element. This difference is largely the result of Hegel’s emphasis on culture and history. Hegel maintains that the research tools of the biological sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities are required to understand humans, whereas Schelling asserts that the resources of physics, chemistry, and the biological sciences are sufªcient. Hegel also rejects Schelling’s claim that nature develops because of polarity. Hegel argues that, rather than explaining things, polarity merely describes things in arcane language. As a consequence, he also rejects the view that nature is an evolutionary process that results from polarity. In particular, he thinks that such a process is insufªcient for explaining the emergence of consciousness from nature. Hegel instead proposes that changes within nature, as well as the transition from nature to consciousness, be seen as the development of a concept. Whereas it is generally supposed that there are many concepts, Hegel claims that those so-called concepts are really only chapters within a single narrative. Understanding the transition from nature to consciousness as a conceptual development involves a retrospective stance, from which Hegel can provide a narrative according to which the move from inorganic matter to organic consciousness is itself a conceptual development.

Schelling, according to Richards and Grant This section discusses two contrasting interpretations of Schelling’s account of evolution, those of Richards’ Romantic Conception of Life and Iain Hamilton Grant’s Philosophies of Nature after Schelling (Richards 2002; Grant 2007). Richards and Grant agree that Schelling has a theory of biological evolution and that he denies that one species can evolve into another. These two points seem to be the only ones on which they agree. According to Richards’ Schelling, there are archetypes that are similar to Plato’s forms. An archetype of a species represents its ideal and a species is the species that it is insofar as it approximates its archetype. Evolution marks the progressive realization of a species’ archetype, and so evolution involves an increasing approximation of the archetype. Because a species more closely approximates its archetype as it evolves, evolution is not only develop- mental but also progressive.

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In his otherwise appreciative review of Grant’s Philosophies of Nature after Schelling, Joseph P. Lawrence observes that “clarity is not Grant’s great strength” (Lawrence 2007). Indeed, describing Grant’s interpretation of Schelling’s views on evolution itself is an act of interpretation, and so apol- ogies are made in advance for any misreading. As noted above, Grant agrees with Richards that evolution, for Schelling, does not involve change of species. Grant claims that Schelling rejects an Aristotelian reading of Plato’s philosophy. The forms are not external to the objects which participate in them, according to this strong interpretation, but rather internal. This would initially seem to place Plato’s philosophy closer to Aris- totle’s own understanding of the way in which a universal is instantiated in a particular. However, Grant’s Schelling wants to reject this whole problematic. The form is no longer regulative but instead only descrip- tive. That is to say, Schelling believes that a species manifests itself, over time, in all possible ways in which this species can exist. It would seem that these ways are (well-nigh) inªnite. Grant’s reading sounds similar to Richards’ interpretation when the latter writes that “only in inªnite time and in full freedom would the possibilities of the species be realized” (Richards 2002, 302–303). The difference is that Richards holds that, for Schelling, a species’ archetype provides the pattern that the species asymptotically approximates, whereas Grant believes that the archetype of a species only describes how the species has evolved. For Grant’s Schelling, the archetype can be partially discerned retrospectively by the way in which the species has evolved. An understanding of the pattern that has emerged, however, does not allow prediction of how that pattern will continue in the future. In Plato’s Timaeus, the demiurge uses the forms as the patterns into which it shapes matter. Grant’s Schelling believes that matter has the ability to shape itself according to patterns which it also generates. The demiurge and patterns become internal, as it were, to matter itself. Rich- ards’ Schelling would likely agree with this. It needs to be emphasized, however, that on Grant’s reading the patterns do not guide matter as it shapes itself but instead are only descriptions of the shapes it has assumed. Whereas Richards’ Schelling believes that evolution involves the con- tinued approximation of a species to its archetype, Grant’s Schelling holds that evolution is the increasing manifestation of the ways in which the species can exist. Evolution is progressive on both readings, but in ways which are radically distinct. On Richards’ interpretation, there is progress in evolution because a species increasingly approximates its archetype. The archetype is thus regulative and teleological, and the course of evolution is asymptotic. For Grant, however, the species continually strives to manifest itself in all the possible ways in which it can occur. There is no

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algorithm for a species’ development, however, and so there is no way to predict how it can develop. That it was possible for a species to develop in a certain way can only be known as a consequence of it having actually developed that way. The archetype, then, would be the never-to-be-realized complete description of these possible ways. Evolution is not aiming at an archetype which itself remains ªxed, as in Richards’ reading, but rather the archetype itself develops over time. Richards’ interpretation would be similar to travelers who want to arrive at a speciªc destination, to risk an analogy, while Grant’s reading would resemble tourists who want to visit as many different places as possible. Travelers progress insofar as they journey nearer to their destination, but tourists progress inasmuch as they so- journ in more places. In reading Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, Grant frequently turns to the interpretation of Baruch de Spinoza (1632–1677) proposed by Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995). This paragraph and the next speculate on the signiªcance of this. Deleuze believes that Spinoza’s substance is the sum total of its manifestations through its attributes. That is to say, substance is not something that manifests itself through its attributes, but instead substance is those manifestations. The former alternative would have substance existing even if, perhaps per impossible, its attributes did not. Sub- stance would not exist, on the second alternative, if its attributes did not, as substance is identical to the manifestation of its attributes. Importing Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza to Schelling would suggest, as discussed above, that a species’ archetype is the ways in which that species has and will appear. This Deleuzean reading of Schelling’s archetype suggests an alternative interpretation of Schelling’s absolute. As Frederick C. Beiser notes, “what Kant claimed reason could not know—the absolute or unconditioned— Schelling wrote volumes about” (Beiser 2002, 466). Schelling describes the absolute as that which is neither subject nor object and as prior to that distinction. Schelling’s absolute seems to be that from which all things emanate and it could be compared to Spinoza’s substance. There are a number of difªculties that can be raised regarding Schelling’s absolute. Why would anything emerge out of it? What is its relation to the phenomena which do appear? Although Schelling rejects Kant’s distinction between objects of appearance and things in themselves, it seems that his own distinction between subjects and objects on the one hand and the absolute on the other recapitulates Kant’s distinction. Importing Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza’s substance into Schelling’s absolute dissolves these difªculties. On this view, the absolute just is the totality of its appearance and so there is no prior unity from which differentiation emerges. The question of why there exist a plurality of things then reduces

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to the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Not an easy question to answer, no doubt, but seemingly more tractable than why an absolute of which nothing can be predicated would manifest itself as subjects and objects. It is beyond this article’s scope to provide the detailed textual analysis required to decide between the readings of Richards and Grant. In any event, such analysis would have to make a number of contestable hermen- eutical assumptions which would subsequently determine the results ob- tained. This is also true, of course, in deciding which interpretation is preferable as an understanding of nature. Perhaps this reduces to the question of whether it is better to be, in the senses discussed above, travelers or tourists.9

Evolution, Emanation, Development, According to Hegel Hegel believes that there is no progress in nature, only circular change as in the seasons following each other or the cycle of birth, reproduction, and death. “Nature is to be regarded as a system of stages, the one proceeding of necessity out of the other, and being the proximate truth of that from which it results,” Hegel maintains, and he explains that the relation of these stages “is not to be thought of as a natural engendering of one out of the other however, but as an engendering within the inner Idea which constitutes the ground of nature” (Hegel 1970, section 249, 212). (Only at the level of spirit is there actual progress. Although Hegel would vehe- mently reject the popular saying that “history is one damn thing after another,” as he believes that history is the progressive realization of human freedom, he might grudgingly accept it if applied to nature.) Hegel be- 9. Compare Wilde 1979, 216: “The more mechanical people, to whom life is a shrewd speculation dependent on a careful calculation of ways and means, always know where they are going, and go there. They start with the desire of being the Parish Beadle, and, in whatever sphere they are placed, they succeed in being the Parish Beadle and no more. A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a Member of Parlia- ment, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally te- dious, invariable succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it. But with the dynamic forces of life, and those in whom those dynamic forces become incarnate, it is different. People whose desire is solely for self- realisation never know where they are going. They can’t know. In one sense of the word it is, of course, necessary, as the Greek oracle said, to know oneself. That is the ªrst achievement of knowledge. But to recognize that the soul of a man is unknowable is the ultimate achievement of Wisdom. The ªnal mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in a balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? When the son of Kish went out to look for his father’s asses, he did not know that a man of God was wait- ing for him with the very chrism of coronation, and that his own soul was already the Soul of a King.”

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lieves that the nature’s conceptual forms can be arranged in a rational hierarchy such that they more closely approximate spirit, and it is the burden of much of his Philosophy of Nature to provide this hierarchy. However, he denies that any form is itself transformed, or transforms itself, into any other form. Although nature provides spirit’s material context, Hegel sees spirit as emergent from nature, and so he denies that a reduction of spirit to nature would be possible. Hegel rejects both evolution and emanation because they lack explana- tory power. Evolution does not explain how and why higher forms could evolve from lower ones, and emanation cannot explain how and why lower forms would emanate from higher ones. He sees emanation as less incor- rect than evolution, though, because emanation understands that the lower must be explained in terms of the higher.10 Hegel’s own view could be regarded as a synthesis of evolution and emanation. Higher forms do not evolve from lower ones, but rather there is a development of the concept in nature which allows these forms to be arranged hierarchically. This way of expressing things is inexact, however, in that it risks missing Hegel’s view that nature’s forms actually exist in a hierarchical arrangement, such that this arrangement is discerned rather than imposed. As Hegel translucently explains: “Philosophical thinking knows that nature is idealized not simply by us, that nature or rather its Notion is not com- pletely incapable of overcoming its extrinsicality, but that it is the eternal idea dwelling within nature, or rather the implicit spirit working within

10. Hegel 1970, section 249, 213–214: “Evolution and emanation are the two forms in which progressive stages of nature have been grasped. The course of evolution begins with what is imperfect and formless, such as humidity and aquatic formations, leads on to what emerged from water, such as plants, polyps, mollusca, and ªshes, progresses to land animals, and ªnally arrives at man, as he emerges out of animals. The doctrine is derived from the philosophy of nature, and is still widely prevalent. Although quantitative difference is easy enough to understand however, it explains nothing. The course of emanation is pecu- liar to the oriental world, where it is regarded as a series of degradations, beginning with the perfection and absolute totality of God, God has created, and fulgurations, ºashes, and likenesses have proceeded from Him, so that the ªrst likeness most resembles Him. The ªrst production is supposed in its turn, to have given birth to something less perfect that itself, and so on down the scale, so that each thing begotten is in its turn procreative down as far as the negative, which is matter, or the acme of evil. In this way emanation ends in the complete absence of form. Both these progressions are onesided and superªcial, and postulate an indeterminate goal, but the progress from the more to the less perfect has the advantage of holding up the prototype of a perfect organism, which is the picture that must be in our mind’s eye if we are to understand stunted organizations. That which appears to be subordinate to them, such as organs with no functions may only be clearly understood by means of the higher organizations in which one recognizes the functions they perform. If that which is perfect is to have the advantage over that which is imperfect it must exist in reality, and not only in the imagination.”

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it, which brings about the idealizing or sublation of extrinsicality, and that it does so because this form of spirit’s determinate being stands in contradiction to the inwardness of the essence of spirit” (Hegel 1978, section 381 addition, 45). As David G. Ritchie recognizes in his 1893 Darwin and Hegel: “Hegel’s ‘development’ (Entwickelung) is not a time-process, but a thought-process; yet Hegel’s method of exposition is such that the thought-process is apt to be read as if it were meant to be a time-process. To avoid misunderstand- inghimwemust...‘read Hegel backwards’” (Ritchie 1893, 47). This last point relates to what Hegel takes from emanation, namely, the idea that the lower forms are explained from the perspective of the higher, in that lower forms can be understood only in reference to the whole of which they are parts. “We only understand a part of anything when we can look at it as a part of a whole, and we only understand the elementary stages when we know them as the elementary stages of something more highly developed,” Ritchie writes, adding that “this is true in each special branch of knowledge, and it is true in the attempt to think the universe as a whole” (47). (Marx is eminently Hegelian when he observes: “Human anatomy contains the key to the anatomy of the ape. The intimations of higher development among the subordinate animal species, however, can be understood only after the higher development is already known” (Marx 1973, 106)). Because Hegel sees nature’s forms arranged so as to progress from the lower to those higher—rather than emanation’s degeneration from the higher to the lower—Martin Drees describes Hegel’s Naturphilo- sophie as “an inverted emanation.”11 As discussed above, Schelling believes that there is a continuum from the most basic level of matter to humans. To use Hegel’s language, Schelling would maintain that the difference between nature and spirit is merely that the latter is more complex than the former, but he also would claim that there is no break or rupture between them. By contrast, Hegel holds that while spirit emerges from nature, there is a qualitative difference between them. There is progress in spirit but not in nature. Spirit re-

11. Drees 1992, 58: “Since Hegel repeatedly emphasizes that what is more complex and more perfect is not only a clue but an actual and ontological presupposition of what is more simple, the progress taking place in the Philosophy of Nature cannot be structuralized by means of an ‘evolutionary’ presentation. It would make sense, however, to say that the notional development and progression that takes place in the Philosophy of Nature presents the results of an inverted emanation. Since the Philosophy of Nature does not explicate “a natural proceeding forth, but...adevelopment of the Notion,” the Notion’s development being exposed here is exposed retrospectively from the point of view of a Notion that is aware of itself, i.e. Spirit.”

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members its past and imagines a future, unlike nature, and so it progresses.

Schelling and Hegel after Darwin: A Brief Comparison What remains of Schelling and Hegel’s views of evolution, after Darwin’s revolution? To begin with Hegel, he denies that there is progress in nature. Many evolutionary biologists would agree. If that is correct, then Hegel’s Naturphilosophie is not really challenged and would remain intact even after Darwin. It must be conceded that Hegel rejects the evolution of the species, although he does not reject natural selection, as this is introduced only later by Darwin. Many evolutionary biologists would agree with Hegel’s denial that there is progress in nature. If there is evolutionary progress, however, this would mean that Hegel was mistaken in thinking that there is no progress in nature. This would suggest that the distinction between nature and spirit would need to become more of a continuum and less of a sharp line than Hegel allows. This need not mean that there is still not some qualitative rupture, but its parameters would have to be conªgured differently. Whereas Hegel rejects evolution and progress in nature, Schelling accepts both. Turning to Richards’ Schelling, most contemporary evolutionary biologists would reject his view that a species evolves so as to approximate its archetype.12 Grant’s Schelling might have a better reception, as some biologists would be receptive to the idea that, given time and perhaps life on other planets, evolution will tend to generate all possible forms of life. All biologists would reject Schelling’s denial that a species can evolve into another and many would repudiate his view that evolution is progressive. To return to the distinction between travelers and tourists introduced above: Although biologists are tourists in explicitly denying that evolution is progressive, they are travelers if they nevertheless implicitly presuppose a notion of progress. As argued below, many are tourists who travel a lot.

Progress as Complexity, Autonomy, or Convergence Many evolutionary biologists argue that the notion of progress has no place in evolutionary theory. For example, Stephen Jay Gould maintains that “progress is a noxious, culturally embedded, untestable, nonopera- tional, intractable idea that must be replaced if we wish to understand the patterns of history” (Gould 1988, 319). However, he also recognizes that “claims and metaphors about evolution as progress continue to dominate 12. However, see below the comparison of the views of Richards’ Schelling and Simon Conway Morris.

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all of our literature” (Gould 1996, 21).13 This is no accident. Evolutionary biology seeks to discover the shape of life’s history, as Brett Calcottt and Kim Sterelny explain, and one proposal is that this shape consists in a directional trend, wherein one or more crucial parameters increase over time.14 Some biologist suggest that progress is the key parameter. Others, regarding progress as too anthropocentrism, have proposed alternative candidates. However, these recapitulate similar difªculties as are found with progress. This section discusses several of these candidates and their problems. Progress in evolution is often understood as increasing complexity, although “complexity” has proven no easier to deªne than “progress.” Daniel W. McShea writes: “Even narrowly deªned, complexity is still a compound term: it is composed of four distinct types, based on two di- chotomies: object versus process, and hierarchical versus nonhierarchical structure....Thefour possible combinations of these terms generate four types: (1) nonhierarchical object complexity; (2) nonhierarchical process complexity; and (3) hierarchical object complexity; and (4) hierarchical process complexity.” “Object complexity refers to the number of different physical parts in a system,” as McShea deªnes these terms, “and process complexity to the number of different interactions between them” (McShea 1996, 479). By contrast, “hierarchical object complexity is the number of levels of nestedness of parts within wholes” (480). Although these distinctions are useful for conceptual analysis of “complexity,” they are conceptually independent and so cannot be combined or summed. As a consequence, it is impossible in principle, McShea believes, to determine whether a “human is more complex than a trilobite overall” (480). It is not clear that there is a consistent trend towards increased complexity since

13. He also believes that the notion of progress is “Darwin’s greatest failure of resolu- tion,” Gould 2002, 467. 14. See Calcottt and Sterelny 2011, 1–2: “Evolutionary biology is, in part, a historical science. One of its aims is to examine the shape of life’s history—its major episodes and developments. Such a project presupposes we know the features of life’s history most in need of explanation. To suggest the shape, we ªrst need to decide what that shape is. A recurring and controversial suggestion is that life’s history is marked by a directional trend. As a whole, the average value of some key parameter (diversity, complexity, adaptedness) increases over time....Much of this work has grown out of the idea that the history of life is progressive. From simple origins, more advanced, better adapted, better designed forms have emerged, replacing their inferior predecessors. This idea has been at once inºuential and deeply problematic....Making the idea of progressive change empirically tractable, and purging it of anthropocentrism, has proven extraordinarily difªcult. The problem of detoxifying the concept of progress has motivated attempts to decouple the work on large- scale trends from directional and progressivist ideas of history. Instead, we have seen for- mulations of directionality focused on complexity, diversity, or some similar surrogate for progress, though each of these has its own problems....”

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the metazoan, even if attention is restricted to any particular type, as there are also cases of decreased complexity, and so McShea argues that “the evidence so far supports only agnosticism, indeed it supports an emphatic agnosticism” (489). Recognizing that there remains a general sense that “something” is increasing, McShea concludes with these pessimistic words: “Given the historical background and the power of culture to penetrate perception, it is reasonable to wonder whether this impression of large- scale directionality is anything more than a mass illusion. Still, the point here is not to deny that directionality exist. Something may be increasing. But is it complexity?” (489). Further complicating matters, Derek D. Turner builds on McShea’s ar- guments to endorse a modest skepticism, arguing that “one cannot simply look at a pattern and read off changes in the strength of the directional bias in the underlying process that produced it” and that “a trend produced by a constant bias and a moving upper boundary is empirically in- distinguishable from a tread produced by a bias whose strength changes over time” (Turner 2009, 355). Bernd Rosslenbroich seeks a third way between using “progress” in an indiscriminate way and ignoring general trends. He suggests that “one of the most promising patterns is the ‘increased autonomy’ of organisms in the sense of an ‘emancipation from the environment’” (Rosslenbroich 2006, 60). Although Rosslenbroich’s “research program intends ªrst to deªne, recognize, and describe autonomy and then attempt to operational- ize it scientiªcally,” he also is pessimistic, writing that “after identifying many examples it is currently an open question whether it will be possible to make the pattern testable” (64). In The Dialectical Biologist, Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin wholly reject complexity as a useful concept in evolutionary biology. They write:

The supposed increase in complexity...during evolution does not stand on any objective ground....Howarewetomeasure the complexity of an organism? In what sense is a mammal more complex than a bacterium? Mammals have many types of cells, tissues, and organ systems and in this respect are more complex, but bacteria can carry out many bio-synthetic reactions, such as the synthesis of certain amino acids, that have been lost during the evolution of the vertebrates, so in that sense bacteria are more complex. There is no indication that vertebrates in general enter into more direct interactions with other organisms than do bacteria, which have their own parasites, predators, competitors, and symbionts. And even if we are to accept sheer structural variation as an indication of com-

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plexity, we do not know how to order it, not to speak of assigning a metric to it. Is a mammal more complex structurally than a ªsh? Yet 370 million years passed between the origin of the ªshes at the end of the Cambrian and the ªrst mammals at the beginning of the Cretaceous. If one starts with the assertion that structural complexity has increased, it is possible to rationalize the assertion a posteri- ori by enumerating those features, for example, a very large hindbrain, that appears later in evolution and declaring them to be more complex. The evident circularity of this procedure has not prevented its widespread practice. (Levins and Lewontin 1985, 17.)

It might be thought that evolutionary progress could be deªned via the increased quantity of genetic information over time: It is a beautiful curi- osity of paleontology and paleobotony that, as the ages and eons go by, DNA chains lengthen and genomes grow. If that is not progress, it might be asked, what can it be? But why should lengthening rather than shortening—to answer a question with a question—be regarded as progress? Advocates for bacteria could argue that the mere fact that genetic information increases over time cannot itself be evidence for progress. It is considered progress that a single integrated circuit can now do what it for- merly would have taken hundreds of transistors or thousands of vacuum tube to accomplish, bacteria’s advocates might analogize, and it should be regarded as regress, not progress, that mammals require long DNA chains to accomplish what bacteria do with their short ones. The increase in genetic information can only be deemed progress if has been already been decided that mammals represent progress vis-à-vis bacteria. To then cite an increase in genetic information itself as proof of progress, however, would be to engage in the evident circularity to which Levins and Lewon- tin object.15 Not only is this practice widespread, as Levins and Lewontin observe, it may be that notions of progress are ineliminatable. In Monad to Man, Mi- chael Ruse shows that the notion of progress is frequently implicitly present even in those scientists who explicitly repudiate it (Ruse 1996).16 For example, biologists typically distinguish higher from lower animals. In 15. The advocates of bacteria could further charge that Kant implicitly engages in such circularity when he advances his seminal theory of evolution, articulated in Kant 2008. Kant suggests that evolution occurs by maximizing two properties: Ordnung (order or organization) and Mannigfaltigkeit (diversity or multiplicity). Bacteria’s advocates would deny, however, that “organization,” “order,” or “diversity” can deªned in a way that does not rep- licate the problems with “progress.” 16. See these reviews: Depew 1998; Van Der Beer 2000. For a survey of the debates, see Nitecki 1998; Greene 1991.

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cases other than when discussing habitat niches in mountainous terrain, such a distinction presupposes some notion of progress. In Life’s Solution, Simon Conway Morris argues that there is convergence in evolution (2003). An example is the camera lens eye, which has inde- pendently evolved several times. Conway Morris argues that convergence is the rule in evolution. He rejects Gould’s notion of the tape recorder of life (see Gould 1989). Gould claims that evolution is primarily a result of contingent circumstances, such that if life’s tape recorder could be re- wound and replayed, the results would be almost entirely different. Con- way Morris maintains that the result would be almost entirely the same. This is not to say that the particular species that currently exist would be the same after the rewind-and-replay, but that the basic features would be similar. This is why Conway Morris thinks that humans are inevitable: Not necessarily homo sapiens, but a creature with human-like intelligence. Even if that asteroid had missed the Earth sixty-ªve million years ago, or whatever caused the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event of the dinosaurs, a creature with human-like intelligence would have evolved. (Many pale- ontologists now believe that dinosaurs were social creatures who lived in groups and reared their young, that they were highly active, and perhaps warm blooded; these traits suggest that the evolution of an intelligent di- nosaur would have been possible). Conway Morris believes that this convergence represents progress.17 If Conway Morris is correct about convergence, then there would be progress in evolution. The structure of an organism’s eye could be stud- ied to reveal its level of development. This view of progress would be similar to the view of Richards’ Schelling that evolution is a species’ progressive realization of its archetype. The question, though, would be whether the levels of development of an organism’s various capacities and organs

17. Conway Morris 2003, 307: “What about evolutionary progress, that term that S. J. Gould gently refers to as ‘noxious.’ Simply because evolution has delivered us to a point where only now can the word ‘progress’ make any sense, need not mean that it either has no relevance to the human condition or that it lacks an evolutionary reality. That the bacteria are still with us, and that without them the planet would soon grind to a halt in the absence of their recycling abilities, misses the point. Neither is progress a question of the sheer number of species, nor the supposed number of body plans. What we do see through geological time is the emergence of more complex worlds. Nor is this a limiting view. It might be premature to suppose that even the bacteria of today are some sort of ‘honorary fossils,’ unchanged relics from the Archaean pond-scum. Nor need we imagine that the appearance of humans is the culmination of all evolutionary history. Yet, when within the animals we see the emergence of larger and more complex brains, sophisticated vocalizations, echolocation, electrical perception, advanced social systems including eusociality, vivipar- ity, warm-bloodedness, and agriculture—all of which are convergent—then to me that sounds like progress.”

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could be compared with those of another. One animal may have a more highly developed eye than another, for example, but the second may have a more highly developed brain. Would the latter animal be higher than the former? “I see intelligence as just one of a variety of adaptations among tetrapods for survival,” J. John Sepkoski Jr. (1948–1999) says, adding that “running fast in a herd while being dumb as shit, I think, is a very good adaptation for survival” (quoted in Ruse 1996, 486). It is not only the capacities and organs which progress, according to Richards’ Schelling, but also the organism as a whole: Humans are the highest creatures because they are the most complex. Even if Conway Morris is correct that there is an inevitable evolutionary convergence towards human-like intelligence, he seems unable to explain why this particular trajectory of evolutionary convergence would be superior to that of others.

Is Progress Like Pornography? In the 1964 obscenity case, Jacobellis v. Ohio, Justice Potter Stewart (1915– 1985) writes: “Under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to deªne the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”18 Just as Stewart claims to be able to recognize pornography without being unable to deªne it, so it is tempting to propose that persons can recognize progress in evolution even though they cannot deªne it. This would have the advantage of explaining why evolutionary biologists presuppose progressive notions even when they explicitly denounce them. They denounce them because they cannot deªne them, but they nevertheless can recognize them. It would have the even more considerable advantage of allowing persons to claim that there is progress in evolution while declining to explain precisely what they are talking about, as they could rely on everyone knowing that. Temptation must be resisted, sadly, in this instance. Followers of Schelling and Hegel should reject such appeals as insufªciently dialectical, even if Schelling makes them when discussing the absolute and Hegel uses them when denouncing phrenology and physiognomy. Appeals to what everyone supposedly knows are actually appeals to unreºective com- mon sense and intuitions, and so must be abandoned. Marxists would un- mask such appeals, moreover, as crass instances of ideology. They would 18. The motion picture was The Lovers (Les Amants), a 1958 French ªlm directed by Louis Malle.

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point to the ways such appeals have been employed to legitimate imperialism, racism, and sexism. While such bad manners can be expected from capitalists, philosophers should behave better.

Progress as Constitutive There seems to be an impasse regarding progress in evolution. Many evolutionary biologists explicitly reject it, while implicitly presupposing it. It appears that some such notion is required insofar as the shape of life’s history consists in a directional trend, moreover, but “detoxifying” progress of its anthropocentrism, to employ Calcottt and Sterelny’s term, has not been successful and surrogate notions seem no more viable (Calcottt and Sterelny 2011, 2). Although it is tempting to claim that progress can be recognized even if it cannot be deªned, this temptation must be re- jected. Fortunately, there is an alternative. The alternative is to explicitly deªne biological progress in terms of humanity, such that humanity becomes the crown of creation. Rather than purging anthropocentrism from the idea of progressive change, anthropocentrism should be vigorously endorsed. This view is obviously indebted to Conway Morris’ notion of evolutionary convergence. What is added is the explicit claim that those trajectories of convergence which would result in human-like intelligence and moral sensibilities are superior to other trajectories. This would allow the articulation of a Naturphilosophie with a teleological notion of evolution according to which nature desires to know itself. Insofar as the notion of progress is either conceptually ineliminatable from evolutionary biology or else necessary to articulate the idea that the shape of life’s history consists in a directional trend, moreover, it should be regarded is constitutive. Such a Naturphilosophie would be closer to that of Schelling than Hegel’s, in that it would agree with the former that there actually is progress in nature. This would still leave open the possibility that spirit emerges nonreducibly from nature, constituting a rupture, and this aspect would be more Hegelian.19 19. Compare Ritchie 1893, 57: “What, then, is the effect of the theory of natural selection on Hegel’s philosophy? Hegel’s method of philosophising Nature could adjust itself quite easily to the new scientiªc theory. The factors which Darwin assumes for his theory are—Variation, Heredity, Struggle for Existence. Now are not Heredity and Variation just particular forms of the categories of Identity and Difference, whose union and interaction produce the actually existing kinds of living beings, i.e., those determinate similarities and dissimilarities which constitute ‘species’? But this result—deªnite, clearly marked kinds—comes about through struggle, i.e., through negation, the constant elimination of the less ªt. Survival of the ªttest, on Darwin’s theory, comes about only through the negative process of destruction. In the stage of mere Nature this negativity is mechanical and external. In the higher stage of consciousness (spirit) this negativity is self-determined, free.”

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Richards’ Schelling believes that the archetype of a species provides the pattern that the species asymptotically approximates. Contemporary biologists would resist any notion of archetypes as already existing patterns, but they could readily accept such an account if it were rephrased in eco- systemic terms, as progressive sequences of collective interplays maturing to climax communities such as rainforests. There would be one remaining disagreement, however. Schelling would maintain that such archetypal, climactic steady state occurs at the level of individuals (species), whereas the biologists would claim it occurs at the level of groups (biomes).20 It might be objected that there is no need to anthropocentrically con- ceptualize progressive evolution, with humanity as the crown of creation. If there is progress, it could be asked, why should it suddenly stop with humanity? Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) speculates that there are extraterrestrial intelligences and that these stand on a ladder as- cending to wisdom, for example, and Kant further suggests that humans stand on a “middle rung” of that ladder (Fontenelle 1990, 37–47; Kant 2008, 151–152). Moreover, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) advances an evolutionary notion of humans as way stations to superior de- scendants, the Übermensch (overman) (Nietzsche 2006). The ªrst point to be made in response is that it seems that evolutionary biologists already implicitly take humanity as the standard by which progress is measured. The proposed alternative would only make this explicit. Second, attempts to imagine some standard higher than humanity nevertheless would still regard, albeit surreptitiously, humanity as creation’s crown. This is so because sufªciently articulating a standard higher than humanity so that it can actually function as a standard would be only an extrapolation from humanity’s traits. After all, even Nietzsche’s overman is human, all too human. That is, the overman is humanity with what Nietzsche regards as its positive qualities accentuated and its negative features eliminated. Fredric Jameson has shown that, although science ªction provides little insight into the future, it does disclose the present (compare Jameson 2005). Similarly, little green men and the overman are not alternatives to humanity but rather expressions of humanity’s aspirations (or fears). Does this mean that “we” are stuck with “us” and that “we” are “our” own ultimate horizon? Not exactly. Since “progress” and “humanity” can be deªned only through reference to “us”—where “us” and “we” will be whoever has the ability to deªne and the political power to impose that deªnition—there is the considerable danger that this notion of progress will legitimate a multitude of evils, including ethnocentrism, imperialism, racism, sexism, and xeno-

20. For a discussion of Schelling’s notion of species, see Richards 2002, 298–306.

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phobia. Having successfully resisted the temptation to deªne progress analogously to Stewart’s pornography, it is gratifying to indulge the irre- sistible temptation to quote the observation of Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900) that “all great ideas are dangerous” (1979, 215). The danger of understanding progress as that which approximates “us” cannot be overcome but only negotiated. There is hope that it may be successful negotiated insofar as “we” renounce, in thought, word, and deed, the evils mentioned above. Of course, “we” must expand the sphere of “we” to incorporate all people and perhaps some animals. “We” may eventually expand “we,” peradventure, to include the entire cosmos, thereby becoming truly cosmopolitan and so ªnally human. To paraphrase Publius Terentius Afer (195/185–159 BCE), homines sumus: nil a nobis alienum putamus.

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