Natural philosophy

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The natural philosophy tries to nature to be taken in their entirety, and to describe in their general and particular structures to explain theoretically and interpret. Natural philosophy thematizes the characteristics and conditions of the possibility of today's scientific and lifeworld conceptions of nature and investigates their mutual dependencies ( interdependencies ). According to the traditional structure of philosophy, your field of activity can be divided into three parts: the analysis of nature as the content or object of theoretical, practical and aesthetic judgments. Since the modern age, she has increasingly devoted herself to the relationship between different concepts of nature.

In the European culture, the Ionic natural philosophy is a starting point for ancient philosophy in general. Modern systematic natural philosophy is a sub-area of ontology and overlaps with the philosophy of physics , the philosophy of biology , the philosophy of chemistry and philosophies of other natural sciences or includes these as sub- disciplines. In addition, natural philosophy - if it is not understood in the narrow, 'analytical' sense as the philosophy of science of the natural sciences - also includes the reflection on non-scientific conceptions of nature, in which nature is not a causal structure, but an aesthetic, symbolic, ethical-moral, etc. Object.

Determination of the concept and method of "natural philosophy"

"Nature"

European natural philosophy has its origins in ancient Greece. The Greek term for nature, “ physis ”, has two uses. On the one hand, “ physis ” refers to the totality of all things that have arisen by themselves and are not created by humans, including their later changes (e.g. through plowing or harvesting) as well as humans themselves - but only since the 5th century BC . First of all , the noun " physis " (derived from phyein - to grow, to arise) means the nature of something , the " essence ", the essence of a thing. The dynamic, the inner principle of action, such as movement, is emphasized. It is about principles of development, appearance and change. This particularly affects the phenomenon of life . The determination of the essence of the human being is dealt with in the philosophical discipline of anthropology , which - at least insofar as "essence" means "nature" or "physis" - can also be understood as a sub-area of ​​natural philosophy. Also the foundations of human nature for ethics , e.g. B. the virtues as natural dispositions belong to natural philosophy.

The expression “nature” and its derivatives (“natural”, “naturally grown”, etc.) are always used in contrast to another area of ​​being (e.g. art / artifacts), principle (e.g. freedom) or ability (e.g. B. Reason), often as the opposite of " culture ", insofar as the latter refers to artifacts that are produced by human art or technology ( material culture ). Aristotle (Physics II 192b) had already contrasted the natural and the artificial or physis and techné .

Another frequently encountered formation of opposites is that of “nature” and “supernatural”, which is typical of the Christian Middle Ages (including Bonaventure ): Nature was always seen as externally changeable through God's intervention. While modern natural philosophy, for example, is committed to the objects and methodology of scientific, empirical knowledge, according to a classic distinction, this did not apply to special metaphysics . Rather, it discusses topics such as soul , emanation , deity and the divine. Different classics draw this line differently. Aristotle, for example, differentiates between "physics" and " metaphysics " as two works, disciplines and subject areas , but also treats ontology topics in "physics" and in "metaphysics" also scientific topics - such as cosmology . There is no such thing as supernatural in Greek thought .

"Natural Philosophy" or "Philosophy of Nature"

The German expression "Philosophy of Nature" did not appear until the 18th century and is a translation of the Latin expression philosophia naturalis , which has been used since ancient times and which was traditionally used for the teaching of things that can be perceived by the senses. On the one hand, it is used very widely in German, so that it includes, for example, anthropological and phenomenological speculations on the relationship between man and nature, on the other hand, a narrow use is becoming more and more common, as has long been established in English-speaking countries. Accordingly, "philosophy of nature" denotes the sub-area of ​​theoretical philosophy that deals with the structure of nature including the interpretation of our best scientific theories about it. There is often a difference in the use of the term " philosophy of science " in both usage modes. "Philosophy of Science" then refers to more general epistemological, methodological and specific questions about the structure and nature of scientific knowledge in general. Since in the English " science " is often understood in the narrow sense of purely scientific research and other sciences are called, for example, " humanities ", "philosophy of science" can be used in such a way that topics from the philosophy of nature are also included.

Historical development

Antiquity

The beginnings of natural philosophy lie in ancient Greece. The pre-Socratics looked for general, constant principles of constitution and explanation of the phenomenal world. Usually one or more uniform material principles were adopted, which form a common origin ( arché ). Thales led the water, Anaximenes the air, Empedocles four elements . Leucippus and Democritus postulated the smallest particles: atoms . Anaximander spoke of an apeiron (the indefinite), which can possibly be associated with fire or ether. In particular, the pre-Socratics try to determine the causes of the movement of the heavenly bodies, which led to the development of astronomy in ancient Greece .

Many Greek philosophers, first and foremost Aristotle, wrote a treatise entitled " On Nature " ( perì phýseōs ). According to Aristotle, the task of natural philosophy is to consider the sensually perceptible substances, insofar as they are moved and conceptually comprehensible. From this tradition the term physics developed as the epitome of the later natural sciences, although the ancient thinkers had a broad concept of nature. Zeno of Kition delimits a natural part of philosophy from logic and ethics. This classification can be demonstrated from Cicero to Augustine and Isidore of Seville .

Subject areas of ancient natural philosophy included topics such as mathematics , astronomy and astrology , cosmology , physics , geography , psychology , medicine , botany and zoology .

Chinese natural philosophy

In contrast to Greek-Western natural science, the natural research carried out by the Chinese was shaped less by rational-objective causal considerations than by the search for universal relationships of being in accordance with the teachings of Laozi and Confucius and the concept of the world as a whole ( Dao ). Already around 1000 BC. A five-phase or five-element doctrine was developed ( Wu Xing ), which names the basic terms of Chinese cosmology with water, fire, wood, metal and earth : The sky first created the water, the earth the fire . These are the two purest elements, wood and metal the heaviest and most impure. Initially, only the mixed primordial matter from the resting and moving principle existed in space; this moved and swirled back and forth. The impure substances gathered in the center; this is how the earth came into being (the principle at rest). The purer components of the primordial matter became heaven, sun, moon and stars and move around the earth forever (the moving principle).

With the development of technology at the time of the warring states , this teaching was expanded into a dynamic teaching of the change in nature and the elements. The wood feeds the fire, the fire creates ashes (earth), the earth produces metals, these dissolve in the water and nourish the plants (wood). This cycle is also interpreted as a cycle of the seasons: The element water marks the beginning of the dynamic and corresponds to winter.

Characteristic of the Daoist Waidan (the Chinese form of alchemy ) was the search for the elixir of life that guaranteed immortality, which began in pre-Christian times and was introduced around the 9th century by the Neidan , the so-called "inner alchemy" (an inner enlightenment mysticism , which sets the spirit over the world), which was connected with the five-phase teaching. This practical teaching consisted mainly of mental and visualization techniques, breathing and abstinence exercises; the transition to medicine and other forms of meditation and asceticism is fluid.

Arab-Persian natural philosophy

The aim of Arab natural philosophy was to bring the totality of the cosmos, including all metaphysical questions, into a thoroughly rationalized system and, following the example of the late Hellenistic Alexandrian philosophy, to merge Neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism - always with the aim of "resembling God". In the hot plains of Arabia, the idea of ​​the divine is not associated with the idea of ​​fire or the sun, but with that of light - more precisely: with the clarity of the cool moonlight ( nūr ). Among the early recipients of Aristotelian natural philosophy and critics of Platonism counted Al-Kindi , the light attributed a central role in knowledge acquisition on the basis of its optical studies.

Since the 12th century, the influence of the rationally arguing Arab medical philosophers, who employ doubt as a method, has been noticeable on Latin scholasticism. The Persian doctor, natural scientist and philosopher Avicenna stuck to the metaphysics of Aristotle despite numerous methodologically careful individual studies of natural phenomena, but differentiated more clearly between the essence and existence of things. His rejection of Arab Platonism had a certain influence on the universality controversy of medieval Christian philosophy: matter did not emerge from God, so there was no creation in time, and God showed no interest in individual things and events. Nevertheless, he tried to back up his observations of nature with statements from the Koran.

However, it was primarily through the comments of Averroes , who is often considered the founder of an early Arab or Islamic Enlightenment, that Aristotle's work reached the West via Cordoba in the 12th century . Unlike Avicenna, Averroes made no concessions to orthodox Islamic theology: for him the world was not spiritual and its existence was only a possibility; their existence is necessary, matter is eternal and there is no creation ex nihilo . Averroes thus saves the concept of causality from the religious dogma of absolute contingency, the creation of every single act by God.

However, orthodox and mystics like al-Ghazālī soon supplanted the search for the laws and order of nature - especially "Greek" physics - from the curriculum of Islamic schools, since it implied the denial of the absolute freedom and omnipotence of God. The Persian philosophy of illumination of the 12th century, which was also inspired by al-Ghazālī and which continued into the 20th century, is not actually part of the philosophy of nature, although the terms light and enlightenment play a major role in it; Above all, it questions the epistemology based on Aristotle by emphasizing the importance of spontaneous-intuitive knowledge.

Adelard of Bath was influenced by the Arabic literature he translated with his demand to focus more on the observation of nature than on tradition; and William of Conches and Siger of Brabant asked to take this research-and doubting attitude.

middle Ages

Johannes Scottus Eriugena describes the entire reality, that is, God and the world, the being and the non-being things as "nature". What he describes as being, what is inaccessible to the senses and also to the intellect as non-existent through sensory perception (the natural things that are subject to change in space and time) or that which can be grasped by thought (the ideas). Wilhelm von Conches developed a theory of the elements that was based on Democritus' atomic theory . David von Dinant († after 1215) was the first to develop his own natural philosophical system in the form of pantheistic materialism, according to which “substance” is identical with God and as the origin of all bodies is called “matter”, as the origin of all souls is called “spirit”.

An important point of contention for the development of natural philosophy at the time was the question of the interplay of heart, liver and brain in the human body. David arrives at a physiological theory of dreams, drawing on Aristotle's theory of the paramount function of the heart in the body. Despite a verdict at the Synod of Paris in 1210, through which David's philosophy as well as the recently translated natural philosophy Aristotle was banned from teaching, a few decades later, under the influence of the writings of Averroes , the primacy of natural philosophy was recognized. Roger Bacon was one of the first to comment on Aristotle's libri naturales and demands that the conclusions of natural philosophy should be experimentally verified. Independently of this, Robert Grosseteste advocated a close connection between mathematical and natural philosophical considerations. For Albertus Magnus , natural philosophy, which deals with the natural moving bodies, was one of three important parts of real philosophy alongside metaphysics and mathematics. In natural philosophy he tried to put the unsystematically traditional writings of Aristotle into order. For Thomas Aquinas , natural philosophy and natural science are synonyms ; its object is the mobile being, not the mobile body as in Albertus'.

Wilhelm von Ockham reduced physical reality to individual things, substances and qualities. For him, however, quantity, movement, space and time have no observable physical reference objects; therefore he gets lost in sophistic calculations without attaining a real understanding of nature. Johannes Buridan developed an anti-aristotelian impetus theory that also pioneered the understanding of the movement of heavenly bodies, insofar as it rejects the assumption of an intelligent mover. The insight of Nikolaus Cusanus that the universe has no discoverable limits, even if it is not infinite, dynamizes the entire worldview and leads to the rejection of the assumption of the earth as a stable center of the universe. In such a universe there is no stationary frame of reference, so there is also no absolute movement. At the same time, he describes an empirical methodology that suggests that exact natural science will take the place of natural philosophy.

Especially Nikolaus von Autrecourt tries to refute various aspects of the natural philosophy of Aristotle. He criticizes the idea of ​​matter becoming and disappearing and postulates its indestructibility; he asserts the existence of the vacuum and sees the light as a particle stream.

Jewish natural philosophy

The Jewish view of nature, which was always tied to theology, was permeated by the expectation of the impending end of the world. On the one hand, she criticized “Greek wisdom”, sheer reason, which is already cursed in the Talmud and contrasted with Jewish revelation - a conflict that remained virulent into the 18th century. On the other hand, she received Hellenistic philosophy at an early stage and later also the works of Aristotle.

Philon of Alexandria , a representative of the Alexandria School of Philosophy and mediator between Greek and Jewish philosophy, represented the doctrine of the complete separation of the spiritual world ( kosmos noêtos ) and the sensually perceptible world ( kosmos aisthetos ). God cannot be known through people in the visible world. The spiritual is represented by the light alone. However, for Jewish theology and philosophy, God and (the sacred) space are closely connected, which results from the divine omnipresence ( Shechina ): God is the place of the universe, he is directly present in all of nature - a thought that also shaped the Alexandrian philosophy. After all, space is also equated with light. In the language of Kabbalah, light is the most holy of holies: The infinite holy one, whose light filled the whole universe, withdrew to itself and thereby created the empty space. German mystics like Paracelsus , but also Tommaso Campanella's theory of the five worlds, was significantly influenced by this way of thinking.

Early modern age

Even with a fundamentally empirical orientation, in the early modern period there was repeated recourse to older theorems and criticism of the primacy of the concept of movement in Aristotelian natural philosophy. Bernardino Telesio tried to replace the Aristotelian philosophy of matter and form with a dynamic theory of antithetical forces. He identified these forces in his main work "De natura rerum natura juxta propria pricipia" (1565) with warmth that comes from heaven and coldness that comes from the earth. His philosophy of light becomes a forerunner of the Enlightenment.

Giordano Bruno denied the authority of the Bible in all questions of natural philosophy and opened the field for astronomical research. With the rise of England and Holland to become major trading powers, the focus of philosophizing finally shifted from considering the harmony of the world to the practical construction of new worlds. The leading English philosopher at this time, Francis Bacon, developed a concept of natural philosophy that encompassed theoretical-speculative elements as well as practical-technical aspects. The speculative part of natural philosophy will continue to be investigated with the help of Aristotelian criteria, the experimental natural philosophy tries to identify causal causes from the experiment and to generate new experiments to verify them with the help of causal explanations. The focus is on the practical application of natural philosophy. In Chapter XI of his book The Wisdom of the Ancients , which is entitled Orpheus, or Philosophy. Explained of Natural and Moral Philosophy , he drafts a new Orpheus myth in which Orpheus stands as a metaphor for a philosophy that - overwhelmed by its traditional tasks - turns to human works, teaches people virtue and guides them, houses to build and till their fields.

Thomas Hobbes completely rejects the speculative-metaphysical foundations of natural philosophy. Instead, she should concentrate on the mathematical requirements. These tendencies are reflected in the program of the Royal Society .

However, up to Newton's time, natural philosophy was characterized by the fact that it was supposed to serve higher goals beyond the explanation of nature: according to Colin Maclaurin (1748), its value lay in the fact that it “lays a secure foundation for a natural religion and a moral philosophy. And that it leads us ... to the knowledge of the Creator and Ruler of the universe ”. Even Isaac Newton himself rehabilitated the theological interest in the research and was looking for a not purely mechanical "First Cause," says while George Berkeley turned. Starting from different positions, David Hume , Giambattista Vico and others denied the value of a demonstration in a geometrical way, as postulated by Descartes as the ideal method and which became the guiding paradigm for the Baroque age : it was to understand something that was not man-made and therefore unsuitable for a world that cannot be understood by them.

Enlightenment, classical and romantic

The natural philosophy of the Enlightenment was stimulated on the one hand by the research of electricity and light as well as by new medical knowledge (see Enlightenment and natural philosophy ), on the other hand by the further development of the epistemological apparatus.

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant examines the fundamental designs of the subject that identify a natural phenomenon as an object of possible knowledge. Based on his knowledge of the Newtonian system, Hume's objections to the possibility of deriving scientific laws from past observations and in contrast to rationalistic theories such as that of Christian Wolff , he concludes that Newtonian mechanics, which allowed precise predictions of celestial movements, was neither mathematical can be derived mechanically and confirmed by empirical studies alone. He ruled out a number of theories as a priori inadequate or unsuitable and arrived at the necessity of synthetic a priori judgments as a prerequisite for natural research. These - according to Wolfgang Stegmüller - could be interpreted today as “methodological principles”, which, however, would not be empirically justified either, but would have to be established a priori.

In Kant's Metaphysics of Nature ( Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science ), however, the objectivity of natural objects is presupposed. In it, four perspectives on the concept of matter are outlined : Phoronomy (the theory of the mathematical construction of total movements from partial movements), dynamics (the theory of the limited divisibility and elasticity of matter, the forces of attraction and repulsion acting on it and the resulting forces Density), mechanics (the theory of the relativity of motion) and phenomenology (the theory of matter as an object of experience). With this dynamic theory of matter, Kant breaks away from the mechanistic-mathematical model of explaining its movement by external forces, as it was dominant in the Baroque age: attraction and repulsion are forces originally inherent in matter; which Rugjer Josip Bošković had already postulated on the basis of a mathematically developed monadology . However, Kant turned against Spinoza's attempt to “make an intelligent being” out of nature. According to Kant, living structures are only to be understood “as if” they behaved appropriately; they all self-organizing beings embody a " natural purpose ".

In the age of classicism (around 1770–1830) and romanticism - often from a Spinozist perspective - a speculative unity of nature and spirit was designed. This tendency characterizes the natural philosophy u. a. - in different respective orientations - by Goethe , Schelling and Hegel . Schelling's philosophy of nature represents the attempt to overcome the Kantian position, which from the standpoint of the identity of reason and nature is described as reflective philosophy . He claims to develop a "positive" philosophy based on the substantial posited nature of life, which, in contrast to a purely "negative" transcendental philosophy that persists in the term , makes statements about being about natural phenomena. For him, natural philosophy has the status of a fundamental teaching . The leading motif is the emergence of the whole of a natural phenomenon from the struggle of polar opposites. The magnet is the unit of the force field, which results from the polarity of the opposite magnetic poles. This idea was accepted by the physicist Ørsted , a student of Schelling, and made technically available.

In Hegel's work too , natural philosophy occupies an important position. Like Schelling, he wants to overcome reflection-based thinking. The Hegelian philosophy of nature forms the middle part of his encyclopedic system, the first part of which is logic or category theory and the third part is the philosophy of the mind . The task of natural philosophy, according to Hegel, is the "comprehensively contemplating" nature, which also includes the analysis of the basic categories of the natural sciences (space, time, movement, acceleration, gravity based on Galileo and Newton, furthermore light, life, etc.) “According to the self-determination of the concept”, that is, as concepts in the absolute sense, not as empirical descriptions. Hegel's critics see this as a methodological weakness in his elaboration. Furthermore, he defines nature as the "idea in the form of otherness ". The connection between the natural events occurring side by side and one after the other is determined by “ necessity and chance ”. While the mind has absolute necessity, nature leaves the execution of the particular to outward determinability. None of the products of nature can therefore be completely adequate to its own concept. Hegel develops the dynamic theory of matter in Kant and Schelling with its assumption of a polar tension in Kant and Schelling further to a dialectical theory of the divergent forms of nature and tries to lay a foundation for the positive sciences. On a higher level than that of the formation of the shape of the body, the contraction should be accepted as "heaviness", the expansion as "light". Light as an independent being requires a special science, that of optics, the essence of sound acoustics. Further topics are heat, electricity and the chemical process. In the individuality of the animal organism, the subjectivity emerges, which becomes clear in the coordination of the limbs within the framework of a whole.

For Fichte , nature was not really an object of philosophy .

The romance is characterized in their natural terms by three trends: first outsourcing the observation of nature in the field of aesthetics , the other a materialistic pre-lifting of nature in the concept of productivity (see Schelling's expression of the concept of. Natura naturans that of Averroes or Michael Scotus was minted); finally through a reaction against the prevailing epistemological program of modern natural science. The natural facts should not be constructed according to the rules set by the mind, but from the point of view of casual experience and productive imagination they should be grasped holistically, according to the physiologist Johannes Müller . Alexander von Humboldt orients himself on the idea of ​​the cosmos as a guideline for describing nature: the details can only be interpreted within the framework of a totality. The discovery of the law of conservation of energy by Robert Mayer in the 1840s is also based on his assumption that mechanical energy and heat can be traced back to a common force principle that is quantitatively indestructible but qualitatively changeable.

A forerunner of modern phenomenology and analytical philosophy was the Prague mathematician, philosopher and priest Bernard Bolzano with his four-volume science. In his extensive work he also worked on questions of logic, aesthetics and ethics.

From the middle of the 19th century

In contrast to German idealism , in the emerging materialism with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, a natural philosophy appeared to be dispensable. They were particularly interested in the processes through which humans stand out from their natural surroundings: through the production of their food. Because of the “imperialism of the mighty natural sciences”, the philosophers became increasingly scorned in the second half of the 19th century. This also seized the sciences that examined human nature such as psychology and forced them to break with spiritualistic philosophy in order to save their scientific reputation. Nature was now increasingly grasped in physical, chemical and thermodynamic categories. Since the end of the 19th century, the natural history component of natural philosophy has also been integrated into the theory of evolution .

The representatives of Neo-Kantianism turned against materialism, but at the same time also against the Hegel School and religious interpretations of the world . In addition to Helmholtz, Friedrich Albert Lange should be mentioned here . Neo-Kantianism defused the struggle of world views and broke with idealistic philosophy by presenting the realm of the spirit as separated from the world of natural science.

20th and 21st centuries

In the course of the emergence of new religious and mystical currents at the beginning of the 20th century - a reflex to the decreasing binding force of positive religion with persistent religious needs - monism spread in the form of a pantheistic belief in nature as a counter-position to rigid materialism and Darwinism and led to a renaissance of Natural philosophy. The numerous Schelling studies, a newly awakening interest in Spinoza and Goethe's natural philosophy and the reception of the philosophy of life bear witness to this . But the revival of Parmenides' idea of the unity of being and thought or the idea of ​​an animated universe by Giordano Bruno was mostly combined with a position against modern natural science.

With the mechanization and modernization of German economy and society after the First World War, pragmatic aspects of the control of nature and the question of a reliable justification of the methodology of the natural sciences came to the fore again, even if for political reasons in Germany after 1933 vehemently on the concept of life and this was ideologically linked to the concept of race.

On an international scale, natural philosophy in the second half of the 20th century was mainly shaped by the theory of science and philosophy of science . These include biophilosophy , environmental ethics , evolutionary epistemology , which assumes that the a priori conditions for knowledge of reality have developed in the course of evolutionary adaptation processes, i.e. are part of natural history, but also the philosophy of technology .

In the area of analytical philosophy, current textbooks and individual strands of debate relate to sub-topics of the philosophy of physics as a basic science of the natural sciences and to the reconstructions and interpretations of other natural scientific disciplines, such as within the philosophy of biology .

The social relevance of the concept of nature tended to take a back seat in such forms. A disciplinary refuge of a natural philosophy that also deals with ontologies that are practical in life is still phenomenology .

The German natural philosophers of the second half of the 20th century include Adolf Meyer-Abich , Georg Picht , Hans Jonas , Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker , Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich , Lothar Schäfer , Gernot Böhme and Michael Drieschner .

An unfinished manuscript with the title Natural Philosophy was also found in Paul Feyerabend's estate .

More recently, various authors have turned to Schelling's natural philosophy, as they did 100 years ago. Their topicality is now seen in the fact that the natura naturans and their expression in the natura naturata can be interpreted as a premonition of modern concepts of self-organization. With Schelling, who was the first to understand that nature can only be understood as developing nature, Iain Hamilton Grant asks, for example , how reason came into nature. He can be considered the founder of an anti-scientific metaphysical neovitalism in that he, like Gilles Deleuze, locates the metaphysics of becoming in nature itself. He does not understand this as a collection of physical particles, but as an indeterminate potential of forces, as an expression of an elementary process of becoming, without, like Kant, asking what purpose the deviations from the rigidity of the mechanical processes serve.

See also

literature

Historical representations

Systematic representations

More specific literature

  • Gernot Böhme , Gregor Schiemann : Phenomenology of Nature. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-518-28925-X .
  • Stefan Heiland: Understanding of nature. WBG, Darmstadt 1992, ISBN 3-534-80138-5 .
  • Hans Werner Ingensiep , Richard Hoppe-Sailer (Hrsg.): Natural pieces. On the cultural history of nature. Edition Tertium, Ostfildern near Stuttgart 1996/2002, ISBN 3-930717-29-8 . (Contributions by H. Baranzke, J. Barkhoff, H. Böhme, A. Eusterschulte, F. Fehrenbach, M. Hoffmann, K. Jax, G. König, P. Matussek and others)
  • Max Jammer : The problem of space: the development of space theories. Darmstadt 1960.
  • Kristian Köchy : Perspectives on the Organic. Schöningh, Paderborn 2003.
  • Kristian Köchy, Martin Norwig (Ed.): Environment - Acting. On the connection between natural philosophy and environmental ethics. Karl Alber, Freiburg 2006.
  • Ulrich Krohs , Georg Toepfer (Hrsg.): Philosophy of Biology. An introduction . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2005.
  • Christian Kummer (Ed.): What is natural philosophy and what can it achieve? Karl Alber, Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-495-48323-7 .
  • Marc Lange : An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics. Blackwell, London 2002.
  • Jürgen Miethke : On the social situation of natural philosophy in the later Middle Ages. In: Hartmut Boockmann, Bernd Moeller , Karl Stackmann (eds.): Life lessons and world designs in the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern age. Politics - Education - Natural History - Theology. Report on colloquia of the commission to research the culture of the late Middle Ages 1983 to 1987 (= treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen: philological-historical class. Volume III, No. 179). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1989, ISBN 3-525-82463-7 , pp. 249-266.
  • Lawrence Sklar : Philosophy of Physics. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992.
  • Jan Cornelius Schmidt: The other of nature: new ways to natural philosophy. Hirzel, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-7776-2410-5 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Natural philosophy  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gregor Schiemann: Natural Philosophy. [Version 2.0]. In: Thomas Kirchhoff (editor): Basic concepts of natural philosophy. 2012.
  2. ^ Gregor Schiemann: Natural philosophy as work on the concept of nature. In: Christian Kummer u. a. (Ed.): What is natural philosophy and what can it achieve? Freiburg 2009, p. 151.
  3. ^ Thomas Buchheim : physis. In: Christoph Horn, Christof Rapp (Hrsg.): Dictionary of ancient philosophy. Munich 2002, p. 345 ff.
  4. ↑ Götz Großklaus: Introduction. In: G. Großklaus, E. Oldemeyer (Ed.): Nature as a counter-world. Contributions to the cultural history of nature. von Loeber, Karlsruhe 1983, pp. 8-12.
  5. ↑ Robert Spaemann: The natural and the reasonable. In: O. Schwemmer (Ed.): About nature. Philosophical contributions to the understanding of nature. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 149-164.
  6. ^ Michael Heidelberger, Gregor Schiemann: Natural Philosophy. In: Hans Jörg Sandkühler (Ed.): Encyclopedia Philosophy. Meiner, Hamburg 2000, p. 1129.
  7. ↑ Natural Philosophy. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy. Volume 6, Basel 1984, Sp. 535-560, here: Sp. 535.
  8. ↑ Aihe Wang: Yinyang wuxing. In: Encyclopedia of Religion. Volume 14, pp. 9887-9890.
  9. ↑ Thil Guschas: The lost clarification. Deutschlandradio Kultur, July 26, 2008.
  10. ^ So contribution by Heinrich Schipperges In: Paul Wilpert, Willehad P. Eckert: Antiquity and Orient in the Middle Ages: Lectures of the Cologne Media Event Conference 1956-1959. Berlin 1971, p. 138. (google books)
  11. ↑ Cf. also Franz Vonessen: The heart in natural philosophy. In: Karl Thomae (ed.): The heart. Volume 3: The heart around the mind. Biberach an der Riss 1969, pp. 9-52.
  12. ↑ Natural Philosophy. In: Hist.Wb.Philos. 6, col. 536-539.
  13. ↑ Natural Philosophy. In: Hist.Wb.Philos. 6, col. 540-541.
  14. ^ Günter Mensching: Did Nikolaus von Autrecourt refute Aristotle? In: Jan A. Aertsen, Martin Pickavé: Autumn of the Middle Ages? Questions about evaluating the 14th and 15th centuries. Berlin 2004, p. 57 ff.
  15. ↑ Daniel Krohabennik: What is Jewish philosophy?
  16. ^ Friedrich Niewöhner: Philosophy, Jewish. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy. Volume 7, Basel 1989, Col. 900-904.
  17. ↑ Max Jammer, 1960, pp. 27 ff.
  18. ↑ Jens Brockmeier: Giordano Bruno's theory of nature. Frankfurt am Main 1980.
  19. ↑ Quoted from Max Jammer, 1960, p. 27.
  20. ↑ Natural Philosophy. In: Hist.Wb.Philos. 6, col. 546-547.
  21. ↑ Wolfgang Stegmüller: Thoughts on a possible rational reconstruction of Kant's metaphysics of experience. Part II. In: Ders .: Essays on Kant and Wittgenstein. Darmstadt 1970, p. 58 f.
  22. ↑ Natural Philosophy. In: Hist.Wb.Philos. 6, col. 547-550.
  23. ↑ KdU, § 68, AA 5, 383 ; n. Wolfgang Riedel: The anthropological turn: Schiller's modernity. In: Hans Feger (Ed.): Friedrich Schiller. The reality of the idealist. Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-8253-5269-2 , 157.
  24. ↑ Purpose in nature. In: Hist.Wb.Philos. 6, col. 658.
  25. ↑ Natural Philosophy. In: Hist.Wb.Philos. 6, col. 550 f.
  26. ↑ Hegel: Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. § 246.
  27. ↑ Natural Philosophy. in Hist.Wb.Philos. 6, col. 553.
  28. ↑ Encyclopedia. § 247-250.
  29. ↑ Encyclopedia. § 350.
  30. ↑ On Schelling's natural philosophy and its connection with Romanticism, see z. B. Schelling's natural philosophy: br.de
  31. ^ Brigitte Falkenburg: Nature. In: Thomas Kirchhoff, Nicole C. Karafyllis et al. (Ed.): Naturphilosophie. A text and study book . Mohr Siebeck (UTB), Tübingen 2017, pp. 96-102, here pp. 97, 100.
  32. ↑ Natural Philosophy. In: Hist.Wb.Philos. 6, col. 554 f.
  33. ^ Marx: The German Ideology. MEW Volume 13.
  34. ↑ Michel Bernard: The Psychology. In: François Châtelet (ed.): The philosophy of the social sciences: 1860 to today. (= History of Philosophy. Volume VII). Frankfurt / Berlin / Vienna 1975, p. 18.
  35. ↑ See e.g. BE Schertel: Schelling and the idea of development. In: Zoologische Annalen 1911. and G. Mayer: The relationship of the development theory in 'Schelling's natural philosophy' to Darwinism and the importance of both systems for concentration. Görlitz 1906. Rudolf Steiner was also significantly influenced by Schelling.
  36. ↑ Kristian Köchy: Biophilosophie for an introduction. Junius, Hamburg 2008.
  37. ↑ Konrad Ott: Environmental ethics for an introduction. Junius, Hamburg 2010.
  38. ↑ Gerhard Vollmer : The knowledge of nature. Contributions to modern natural philosophy. 3. Edition. Hirzel, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-7776-1249-9 .
  39. ↑ Nicole C. Karafyllis (Ed.): Biofakte. Experiment about man between artifact and living beings . mentis, Paderborn 2003.
  40. ↑ Nicole C. Karafyllis: Physical nature relationships. In: Thomas Kirchhoff, Nicole C. Karafyllis et al. (Ed.): Naturphilosophie. A text and study book . Mohr Siebeck (UTB), Tübingen 2017, pp. 176–185.
  41. ^ Lothar Schäfer: The Bacon Project. Frankfurt am Main 1995.
  42. ↑ Gernot Böhme: Naturally nature . Frankfurt am Main 1992.
  43. ↑ Michael Drieschner: Modern natural philosophy. Paderborn 2002.
  44. ↑ So z. B. Hans-Dieter Mutschler : Speculative and empirical physics: topicality and limits of the natural philosophy of Schelling . Stuttgart 1990.
  45. ↑ Marie-Luise Heuser -Keßler: The productivity of nature. Schelling's natural philosophy and the new paradigm of self-organization in the natural sciences. Berlin 1986; Marie-Luise Heuser-Keßler, Wilhelm G. Jacobs (Ed.): Schelling and self-organization. New research perspectives. Berlin 1994.
  46. ^ Iain Hamilton Grant: On an Artificial Earth: Philosophies of Nature After Schelling. London / New York 2006.
  47. ↑ Slavoj Žižek: Less than nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism. Frankfurt 2014, chap. 9.