Naturphilosophie

“ But even the domain of the natural itself, as we know it, is by no means simple and capable of a unified interpretation. Nature, especially in the realm of organic life, the animal and plant world, appears to be filled with marvels of purposefulness, with riddles of development and differentiation, in short with all the mysteries of life. ”

“ Such a beginning of naturalistic consciousness may remain quite naïve and go no farther than a silent but persistent protest. It makes free use of such familiar expressions as “everything comes about of itself”; “everything happens by natural means”; “it is all ‘nature’ or ‘evolution.’ ” But from the primitive naturalistic outlook there may arise reconstructions of nature and cosmic speculations on a large scale, expanding into naturalistic systems of the most manifold kinds, beginning with those of the Ionic philosophers and coming down to those of the most recent times. ”

“ This involution of the higher into the lower urges life upwards through the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, until it culminates in spiritually and self consciousness. It is not necessary here to go more into detail, it is enough to say that the elements in nature begin as passive qualities, their ethereal nature becomes gross, then positive and finally spiritual, and this abstract formula holds good for everything in nature. ”

“ Therefore is nature glorious with form, color, and motion, that every globe in the remotest heaven; every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life; every change of vegetation from the first principle of growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and antediluvian coal-mine; every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the Ten Commandments. Therefore is nature always the ally of Religion: lends all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment. ”

“ Nature an enormous system, but in mass and in particle curiously available to the humblest need of the little creature that walks on the earth! The immeasurableness of Nature is not more astounding than his power to gather all her omnipotence into a manageable rod or wedge, bringing it to a hair-point for the eye and hand of the philosopher.
Here stretches out of sight, out of conception even, this vast Nature, daunting, bewildering, but all penetrable, all self-similar,—an unbroken unity,—and the mind of man is a key to the whole. ”

“ But whilst we acquiesce entirely in the permanence of natural laws, the question of the absolute existence of nature, still remains open. It is the uniform effect of culture on the human mind, not to shake our faith in the stability of particular phenomena, as of heat, water, azote; but to lead us to regard nature as a phenomenon, not a substance ”

“ They are tools, not Artists. We never in Nature see the smallest departure from Nature's law. The granite, the grass, keep their law; none go astray from the flock of stars; fire does not refuse to burn, nor water to be wet. We look backwards and forwards, but the same law records everywhere the obedience that is paid it. Our confidence in the uniformity of Nature's law is complete, in other words, in the fact that God is always the same; his modes of action always the same. This is true of the inorganic, the vegetable, the animal world. ”

“ It is only by continually keeping in our minds all the facts of nature which I have endeavored, however imperfectly to set before you, that we can possibly realize and comprehend the great problems presented by the "World of Life"—its persistence in ever-changing but unchecked development throughout the geological ages, the exact adaptations of every species to its actual environment both inorganic and organic, and the exquisite forms of beauty and harmony in flower and fruit, in mammal and bird, in mollusc and in the infinitude of the insect-tribes ”

“ Now, is it not a rational deduction that what is really illimitable is not the power of Nature, but the power which made Nature what it is? Is it not a necessary conclusion that, inasmuch as all Nature acts within certain limits, stupendous and minute and varied as the products or effects may be, there must have been behind Nature a power that could and did prescribe the methods, the limitations, the lines within which Nature was to move and act? ”

“ In the absence of man, we turn to nature, which stands next. In the divine order, intellect is primary; nature, secondary; it is the memory of the mind. That which once existed in intellect as pure law, has now taken body as Nature. It existed already in the mind in solution; now, it has been precipitated, and the bright sediment is the world. We can never be quite strangers or inferiors in nature. It is flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone. ”

“ Is man himself actually a part of what we call nature? We are so accustomed to the distinction between things natural and things artificial that we are liable to overlook this essential question. Is nature the universe outside of us, containing the things that we study and which constitute our environment? Are we elevated on a pedestal, so to speak, above nature? or, on the other hand, does nature include man himself? ”

“ It is the natural constitution of the plant to develope itself, of the animal to move, of man to think,—all after fixed laws. Why should I hesitate to acknowledge the last as an original power of Nature, as well as the first and second? Nothing could hinder me from doing so, but surprise; thought being assuredly a far higher and more subtle operation of Nature, than the formation of a plant or the proper motion of an animal. But how can I accord to such a feeling any influence whatever upon the calm conclusions of reason? I cannot indeed explain how the power of Nature can produce thought ”

“ But how many young men should be permitted to grow up in such close and almost personal proximity to nature! The others must learn another truth betimes: how to subdue nature to themselves. Here is an end of this naive metaphysics; and the physiology of plants and animals, geology, inorganic chemistry, force their devotees to view nature from an altogether different standpoint. ”

“ He will recognise that what is going on in Nature is the same as what goes on in his own heart. He and Nature have a common aspiration. As he aspires but has to concentrate, so does Nature aspire but has to concentrate. As he works, so does Nature work. What he aims at, that also does Nature aim at. And when the Naturalist within him convinces him that, so far as forest life reveals it, this is Nature's manner and this is Nature's end, then his heart goes out to the Heart of Nature, his heart and her heart become one; and from that community of heart Beauty unending springs. ”

“ This general principle of natural affinity, of which all naturalists have seen more or less well-marked evidence in organic nature, and after which they have all been feeling, has sometimes been regarded as natural, but more often as supernatural. Those who regarded it as supernatural took it to consist in a divine ideal of creation according to types, so that the structural affinities of organisms were to them expressions of an archetypal plan, which might be revealed in its entirety when all organisms on the face of the earth should have been examined. ”

“ Nature exhibits a continual progress, starting from the mechanical and chemical activity of the inorganic world, proceeding to the vegetable, with its dull enjoyment of self, from that to the animal world, where intelligence and consciousness begin, at first very weak, and only after many intermediate stages attaining its last great development in man, whose intellect is Nature's crowning point, the goal of all her efforts, the most perfect and difficult of all her works. ”

“ Philosophy is the search for its solution.
Fox example, we can conceive Nature as composed of permanent things — namely, bits of matter, moving about in space which otherwise is empty. This way of thinking about Nature has an obvious consonance with common-sense observation. There are chairs, tables, bits of rock, oceans, animal bodies, vegetable bodies, planets, and suns. The enduring self-identity of a house, of a farm, of an animal body, is a presupposition of social intercourse. ”

“ If the naturalist cared to follow the custom of historians and preachers, and to clothe phenomena, which are in their way unique, with the hollow pomp of ponderous and sounding words, this would be the opportunity for him; for we have now approached one of those great mysteries of animal nature, which encircle the region of animal life as opposed to all the rest of the world of phenomena. ”

“ And thus we have come to the fullness of the nature-mystic's position. Reason, will, feeling, consciousness, below us and above us. As Nägeli, the famous botanist puts it, "the human mind is nothing but the highest development on our earth of the mental processes which universally animate and move nature." To this world-view the child of nature and the philosopher return again and again. ”

“ If we are to get the full enjoyment we should expect out of Natural Beauty we must have a clear and firm conception in our minds of what Nature really is, what is her essential character, whether at heart she is cold and callous or warm and loving. So far as we were justified in drawing conclusions regarding the character of Nature as a whole from what we saw of her manifestations in the life of the forest, we came to the conclusion that she was not so hard and repellent as she assuredly would be to us if her guiding principle of action were the survival of the fittest. ”

“ By postulating a common subject-matter for this group of sciences a unifying philosophy of natural science has been thereby presupposed.
What do we mean by nature? We have to discuss the philosophy of natural science. Natural science is the science of nature. But—What is nature?
Nature is that which we observe in perception through the senses. In this sense-perception we are aware of something which is not thought and which is self-contained for thought. This property of being self-contained for thought lies at the base of natural science. ”

“ If we follow this doctrine of evolution, step by step, it will lead us to perceive that God is in every fact of nature. Watch an acorn as it develops into the sturdy oak. No scientist will say that a material environment is its only condition of growth. ”

“ Darwin’s views aside, the whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world; and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature’s great progression, from the formless to the formed—from the inorganic to the organic—from blind force to conscious intellect and will. ”

“ But is the human form the true culmination of the development of matter? Has Nature really reached in man her acme in this direction? A deductive philosopher would perhaps answer this question in the affirmative, on the theory that Nature would not stop short of the most completely developed physical form, as the starting-point of mental evolution. He might claim that a perfect soul could only arise in a perfect body, and that, as Nature is striving toward perfection, she must lay all her foundations at the highest possible point. ”

“ Further, the purpose of the movement of nature must remain an insoluble enigma in this scheme of blind necessity. 'The inadequateness of the so-called physical view of nature as compared with the teleological is therefore most felt in the domain of organic nature, where special purpose in the phenomena of life appears everywhere in greatest distinctness.' The last remark is indisputable so long as we maintain either the constancy of species or a merely internal law of development ”

“ The fact that we men find Nature here, implies for us, then, that we are so constituted as to find the same sort of natural phenomena. The realm of the physical phenomena, whatever inner Being may be behind it, is, for us, primarily this common realm of human experience. Upon this consideration the very definition of what we call Nature depends. ”

“ In this sense the naturalist was a man who busied himself with 'Nature' as manifested in living creatures, who sought to solve all the problems which life presents. Form, structure, function, habits, history, all and each of these supplied him with facts from which he wrested his conclusions. Observation was his chief tool, and the field his main workshop. To him invidious distinctions between different parts of biologic learning were unknown. ”

“ We have, therefore, ample evidence that Nature is actuated by an intention to enrich perfection and is continually working towards it. So we have confidence that Nature, hard and exacting though she be, is only exacting in order that the Highest may be attained. We know that Nature is aiming at the Highest and nothing short of the Highest. And all the spirit of daring and adventure in us leaps to the call she makes. ”

“ The True Naturalism. But naturalism becomes fundamentally different when it ceases to remain at the level of naïve or fancifully conceived ideas of “nature” and “natural occurrences,” when, instead of poetry or religious sentiments, it incorporates something else, namely, exact natural science and the idea of a mathematical-mechanical calculability in the whole system of nature. “Nature” and “happening naturally”, as used by the naïve intelligence, are half animistic ideas and modes of expression, which import into nature, or leave in it, life and soul, impulse, and a kind of will. ”