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Hegel is often represented as scornful and contemptuous of the natural sciences. He seems often to ridicule their methods and their achievements and to subordinate them, as forms of knowledge to the speculative "sciences" which, for him, constitute the body of philosophy. This is, at the very best, a half-truth, and is scarcely even true by half; for what Hegel certainly does very frequently ridicule is what he regards as pseudo-science and charlatanry rather than the genuine article, and his taunts are, more often than not, aimed at philosophers with whom he disagrees, and philosophical doctrines about nature which he considers superficial and trivial, than at the practising scientists and their recognized disciplines. Certainly, he did believe and teach, that the empirical sciences belonged to a lower phase of self-conscious reason than philosophy, but such a view is inescapable for any thinker who sees philosophy as the reflective study of human experience, including empirical science; and any philosopher who seeks to deny that his subject includes this reflective task is apt to renounce his own birthright as philosopher. To affirm the reflective (second-degree, or "meta-") character of philosophy, on the other hand, is not to belittle or to despise the natural sciences; for it is only by paying them due respect that any philosophy of science, whether of its method and the concepts it uses (logic) or of its subject-matter (philosophy of nature), is able to attain its goal.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-2016-9_5

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