t 4 The Gottingen School and the Development of Transcendental Naturphilosophie in the Romantic Era 'f Tim0 thy L en0 ir * A problem, tantalizing in its possible implications, that has persistently thwarted the efforts of historians is the relationship between empirical science and the speculative movement in philosophy and literature at the beginning of the nineteenth century, known as Naturphilosophie. While some scholars have regarded Naturphilosophie as a skeleton in the closet of nineteenth-century science,' others have indicated that it may have had a positive influence on several major discoveries.' There have been severe difficulties in interpreting the substantive contribution of Naturphilosophie to the development of science, however. One central difficulty in explaining how naturphilosophic systems were able to reign supreme in the German scientific community from 1800 to 1830 lies, of course, in deciphering the actual scientific content of the philosophies of nature proposed by the likes of Schelling, Oken, Hegel, and Carus, and the extent to which they incorpor- ated a careful consideration of the contemporary scientific literature. The verdict on this issue has by no means been unambiguous: Some investigators have argued that in their disdain for empirical research the Naturphilosophen I owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor William Coleman for extended discussion of the problems treated in this paper and to Professor Reinhard Low of the Ludwig- Maximilians-Universitat Munchen for many hours of patient discussion of Kant's theory of teleology and its significance for the life sciences in the Romantic era. Research support from the National Science Foundation is also gratefully acknowledged. *Department of History, University of Arizona. Copyright 0 1981 by The Johns Hop- kins University Press. 111 112 Timothy Lenoir were attempting to return science to a simpler age.3 Others have argued that the heart and soul of Naturphilosophie lay in empirical research. Those who defend this latter interpretation-an interpretation that is in rapid ascendance in the literature-point out that while Romantics such as Novalis, who had been trained in the sciences at the Bergakademie in Frieberg under Werner, demonstrated a strong scientific bent, other Naturphilosophen such as Goethe, Ritter, Oken, and Carus conducted extensive empirical researches themselves." The potential sources of confusion in assessing this issue emerge clearly in the work of Hegel; for while he defended a conception of matter based on the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, it is clear that he was deeply immersed in the chemical literature of the day and that he understood it Another problem in assessing the relationship of Naturphilosophie to science is rooted in the fact that no single system of natural philosophy is characteristic of the entire Romantic period. From its first appearance and throughout its stormy career, for instance, the Naturphilosophie of Schelling and his school was severely criticized.6 When we turn to the writings of these critics, however, we discover many of the same conceptual elements and almost invariably refer to the same empirical data.7 Concern is quite naturally generated about identifying the real substance of the issues being debated. Rather than a single systematic approach to nature, it seems more appropriate to regard the science of this era as having been formed from a common fund of scientific concepts and methods, metaphysical predispositions and episte- mological concerns which received differing emphases in the various approaches to natural philosophy of the period. In order to assess the bases for these different styles of Naturphilosophie consideration will have to be given to the role not only of substantive philosophical and scientific issues but of personal factors as well. But a full understanding of these complex issues may ultimately await the exploration of broadly based trends in the popular culture of the period as well as the roles of social and political movements in shaping preferences for organizing and interpreting this common fund of concepts. A better understanding of this period has resulted from recent progress in dispelling the myth of a monolithic Romantic science, and in laying bare the outlines of different traditions of natural philosophy practiced in Germany between 1790 and 1830. This has been achieved chiefly through the efforts of Reinhard Low, H. A. M. Snelders, and Dietrich von Englehardt. Von Englehardt has argued that three different traditions characterize the science of the Romantic era. One tradition, which he identifies as Kantian, is transcendental Naturphil- osophie. In the spirit of Kant's critical writings this tradition views the role of philosophy as examining the logical and epistemological foundations of Development uf Transcendental Naturphilosophie 113 science by establishing the subjective contribution to experience, the a priori forms in terms of which empirical judgments are constituted, and the constraints on reason in constructing an interpretation of nature. The object of transcendental Naturphilosophie was not to explicate the proper method for abstracting lawlike generalizations from nature as given in experience. Rather, it aimed at “determining the a priori conditions for the possibility of experience, which is to provide the source from which general laws of nature are to be deduced.”8 Characteristic of this program is Kant’s deter- mination of the concept of matter in his Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Natunvissenschaft. There, applying the categorical theory of his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant argued that the concept of matter that must underlie mechanics cannot employ irreducible atoms but rather must invoke a dynam- ic interaction of attractive and repulsive forces emanating from nonmaterial points. This dynamic theory of matter, which had been proposed by Boscovich, became one of the central organizing concepts representative of the Kantian tradition of Naturphilosophie, and it was especially significant for the view of organic nature. A second tradition of Naturphilosophie removed the boundaries of possible a priori knowledge of nature considered legitimate by transcendental Natur- philosophie. This second tradition is linked most closely with Schelling and is termed speculative or romantic Naturphilosophie by von Engelhardt. Accord- ing to the speculative Romantics nature is a fundamental unity of matter, process, and spirit. The object of the philosophy of nature, according to this approach, is to construct the entire material system of nature from a single all-embracing unity, to establish the unfolding of the inorganic, organic, and finally the social and moral realms as the final objectification of potencies present in this original unity, which Schelling characterized alternately as the Weltseele, Gott or the Absolut. Characteristic of speculative thought is its claim that the dichotomy between empirical knowledge claims and the world of things in themselves crucial to Kantian or transcendental Natur- philosophie can be overcome in the act of “intellectual intuition,” an empiri- cal intuition in which the logical structure of appearances is also manifest. Also characteristic of this approach is its reliance upon polarity as the motive agent in the process of differentiating and objectifying the primitive unity at the basis of nature. Equally characteristic is the notion that the plant and animal kingdoms are each constituted from the metamorphosis of a funda- mental unitary type, or Urtyp, and accordingly that organic nature can be perceived as a chain of beings. Perhaps most characteristic of speculative Naturphilosophie is the view that since nature is the manifestation of spirit, man must stand at the top of the chain of being. Although it was not always clearly distinguished during the Romantic era, there was a third tradition of Naturphilosophie. This type, which von 114 Timothy Lenoir Engelhardt calls metaphysical Naturphilosophie, was closely allied to the romantic or speculative tradition. Hegel, who was the main theoreticiaa of this line of thought, in fact regarded the position developed by the young Schelling in his Ideen zu einer Naturphilosophie (1797) and in his Von der Weltseele (1798) as in fundamental agreement with the main lines of meta- physical Naturphilosophie; but there were certain tendencies in Schelling’s thought that had been developed in an absurdly unphilosophical manner, with little knowledge of or concern for the empirical content of the sciences, by some of Schelling’s most ardent followers, particularly Windischmann, Gorres, and Steffens. In 1806 the differences in their outlooks led to a split between Hegel and Schelling. Principally, Hegel objected to the presence of mystical and irrational elements in Schelling’s system, the so-called philoso- phy of identity. Moreover Schelling’s attempt to deduce the material world completely from the self-activity of the Ego in terms of purely formal princi- ples such as polarity, potential, and analogy, was objectionable in Hegel’s view. Naturphilosophie could not possibly deduce the genesis of natural forms; its sole task consisted in bringing to the fore the logical structure of the system of nature and for that Naturphilosophie had to begin with the material provided by the sciences: “not only must philosophy be in accord with experience, the origin and development of scientific philosophy neces- sarily presupposes and is conditioned by empirical