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A disenchanted nature cannot provide us with such orientation. Nonetheless, even though nature as a whole is without purpose, there are purposes in nature. To understand something as the organ of a living thing is to understand it in light of the function it serves in the organism (such as pumping blood). Since a diseased, nonfunctioning organ obeys all the same causal laws as a healthy organ, to classify something as a disease is to see it in light of such functions. Each organ functions to make the whole (the individual organism) possible, and this organism also acts in terms of purposes. Although there are purposes in nature, nature is not capable of organizing these conflicting purposes within itself into a greater whole. Moreover, although animals may have purposes, only human animals are aware of their purposes as purposes, as reasons for action.

This chapter examines the works of Paracelsus on alchemy and German Naturphilosophie and its relation to the history of Western esotericism. It suggests that alchemy played a large part in Renaissance esotericism and its rapid diffusion during the period 1550–1650 is directly related to its combination with Neo-Platonic and Hermetic approaches to nature, and especially to the controversy surrounding Paracelsus. It discusses Paracelsus' esoteric ideas concerning the cosmic all-life, the spiritualization of matter and the divine nature of virtue and energy, which are now integral elements in the new philosophies of science of vitalism and holism and in the archetypes of Jungian psychoanalysis.

This brief reiteration of Schelling’s development suggests that in Schelling one finds a vivid presentation of key romantic ideas and questions. Thus, instead of interpreting Schelling as the culmination of romanticism, this chapter proposes that Schelling’s philosophical development clearly evidences the many challenges of thinking the absolute critically.

The final section of the book elaborates the connections between the three thinkers examined, and maintains that, in spite of their differences, they agreed on the most fundamental level. It points to the distinctive interpretation of The Romantic Absolute, and argues that in the work of the romantics, we find a formidable attempt to grasp and present the relation between mind and nature and in a coherent, but non-reductive way, that continues to be relevant today.

In addition to the few more practical travelogues analysed in the previous chapter, four ambitious works show the genre aiming to substantially enrich readers’ understanding of the world, works that echo something of Romantic natural history and ethnography, the heritage of Montesquieu and the political science of Tocqueville, as well as the vision of German Naturphilosophie. On analysis, Chateaubriand's both forward‐ and backward‐looking Voyage en Amérique (1827), Quinet's Germanic experiment in historical geography De la Grèce moderne et de ses rapports avec l'antiquityé (1830), and Custine's apocalyptic diatribe La Russie en 1839 (1843) all prove to have shortcomings (such as the racial prejudices of Custine). But they remind us again that Romantic travelogues also tried at times to communicate more substantial knowledge of the world, beyond all their notorious self‐indulgence.

Those who followed Leonhard Euler’s wave theory of light often re-engaged its relation to sound. The study of electricity and magnetism resonated with ongoing initiatives in light and sound, reflecting also wider philosophical ideas about the unity of nature epitomized by Naturphilosophie. This chapter examines the intertwined study of electricity and acoustics by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Johann Ritter, and Ernst Chladni. The search to unify the forces of nature often relied on analogies with sound, which in turn looked to electricity for new tools. Félix Savart studied the vibration patterns of violins; after reviewing this work, Jean-Baptiste Biot joined Savart in working on electromagnetism. In the aftermath of Thomas Young’s work, waves became a newly attractive explanatory approach to the problems of electricity. Building directly on Chladni’s sound figures, Hans Christian Ørsted discovered the synthesis of “electromagnetism” that brought a new unity to these two formerly separate forces, realizing the unitive hopes of Naturphilosophie. Ørsted’s discovery involved realizing the dynamic, transverse action of electromagnetism, qualities he had previously studied in vibrating plates. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

The Soviet regime asked of its citizens transparency of motivation in the drive towards socialist consciousness. In the cycle ‘Octaves’, Mandelstam reprised the process of internal inspection previously broached in the ‘Slate Ode’. Whereas the ode configured subjectivity as in Freudian terms still acceptable to Soviet psychology, by the early 1930s, more scientific, rationalist models of the mind dominated. In exploring whether the mind of the poet is its own internal world, and what laws determine how thought develops, Mandelstam drew on Goethe’s description of plant morphology, supplemented by the theories of speech by his own contemporary, the pioneering neuropsychologist Lev Vygotsky. What is in nature, what is in us, what is accidental and what can be controlled? The chapter ends with poems that wonder whether it would solve the problem of uncontrollable thought (and subversiveness) if the poet’s mind were like the Aeolian harp and poems like music.

This chapter explores Schelling’s turn to nature, and engages with the debates concerning the origins of his transformed understanding of nature. While in his early writings on nature, Schelling had insisted that nature must be grasped as a product of the mind, in his 1799 Einleitung to the Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie, he maintains that nature is independent of mind. The chapter argues that his transformed understanding of nature is based on his appropriation of Goethe’s notion of natural metamorphosis. It offers an elaboration of Goethe’s conception of metamorphosis and illustrates Schelling’s debt to Goethe through biographical evidence and a detailed analysis of the Einleitung. The chapter concludes with an examination of Schelling’s notion of experimentation and its role in the philosophical construction of nature.

Chapter One traces the 19^th century development of a new way of thinking about language structure, and about systematicity more generally, in the work of German linguists like Jacob Grimm, Franz Bopp, and their successors. It argues that this new perspective grows out of a widespread backlash, prepared and supported by Friedrich Schelling’s “nature-philosophy,” against the Kantian understanding of system. The most significant German scientists of the period presuppose, as Kant does not, the extra-human reality of the orders they analyze, and thus also the extra-human reality of analyzable structure per se. In the realm of Idealist philosophy, the result is a new theory of History, writ cosmically large. In the realm of language science, the result is a newly rigorous etymological methodology, designed to render writeable the laws of empirical language change, and by doing so, to articulate the essence of a teleologically-unfolding “language spirit” or Sprachgeist.

This chapter offers a discussion of Novalis’ philosophy of nature, and his parallel concern with education and moral development. It argues that in both instances, Novalis is concerned with “romanticizing” the world— whether it be through discerning the ideal in the real (nature), or instantiating the ideal through moral action— and argues that, for Novalis, understanding nature and undertaking moral action are interdependent activities. The chapter offers a detailed account of Novalis’ turn to the study of nature in 1797-98, demonstrates the significance and influence of Goethe on Novalis’ scientific practice, in particular, Goethe’s use of imagination in his study of nature. It then moves to explore Novalis’ notion of moral harmony, and shows that for Novalis, the activity of nature remains incomplete without moral activity.

This chapter explores the meaning and implication of this claim, and elaborates Novalis’ conception of an “encyclopedia” of knowledge. It argues that for Novalis the artistic or creative mind is most able to grasp nature, precisely because the artist, through the creation of works of art or “living thoughts,” partakes in the activity or productivity of nature. The chapter illustrates that, although the work of the creative mind transforms nature, this transformation does not imply falsification, but a higher manifestation of nature— a manifestation that discerns the fundamental characteristics of the natural phenomena and articulates them with intention and clarity. It also shows that for Novalis, the encyclopedia of knowledge is not a closed and static system, but a dynamic open system, constructed to mirror the growth and development of the natural organism.

This chapter explores Schlegel’s understanding of the relationship between the infinite and the finite, and shows how Schlegel seeks to conceive the relation in decisively different terms from the relation between the unconditioned and conditioned. It argues that the infinite and finite are not two separate or distinct entities, such that the infinite precedes and predetermines the finite. Rather, the infinite and finite are reciprocally conditioning and conditioned grounds— the infinite is only in and through the finite, and vice versa. The chapter also illustrates that, according to Schlegel, being or reality is necessarily historical because it is always in a state of transition— the infinite becoming finite, and the finite becoming infinite. The chapter concludes with an exploration of Schlegel’s notion of “infinite becoming” and his view that nature is historical.

Chapter 2 discusses Lotze’s early years in Zittau and Leipzig, especially the important influences upon him (Fechner and Weisse) and his general intellectual context. It analyzes Lotze’s early unpublished writings and his early published reviews. Special emphasis is laid on Lotze’s debts to the romantic age and to idealism. His early scientific work is also placed in the context of the scientific currents of the 1830s.

This chapter describes the process of scientific disciplinarization in the different uses of “organ” among the Naturphilosophen and in the works of Franz Joseph Gall. Even as functional morphology and comparative anatomy shifted the focus of developmental biologists away from organs as such, the proto-positivist discourse of phrenology clashed on the European stage with the organological programs of Schelling’s students, resulting in the splintering of research programs in the opposed projects of “new mythology” (Friedrich Schlegel, Schelling, Joseph Görres, Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert) and “mere science” (Gall). Hegel’s only contribution to the history of organology (in the Phenomenology of Spirit) was a reaction to Gall, and the chapter argues that Schelling’s famous Essay on Freedom belongs to Romantic organology, and not to Schelling’s later turn to theological positivism.

There is need for history of eighteenth-century biology, especially concerning German developments in that era. German approaches to the life sciences have suffered continual disparagement by association with Romantic Naturphilosophie, and this needs to be contested. In fact, Naturphilosophie contributed constructively to the gestation of German biology. The introduction sets the frame for this in terms of general developments in eighteenth-century natural inquiry. Learned medicine entered theoretical crisis by 1700, demanding theoretical reconstruction. At the same time, experimental Newtonianism created new resources for natural inquiry. Herman Boerhaave proved crucial in bringing these impulses together in the Leiden medical school. In Germany, developments in life science concentrated within the medical faculties of the universities and a few research-oriented Academies of Science. The tension between Pietism and Enlightenment had a major impact on early-eighteenth-century medical faculties, especially the new faculty at Halle. In addition, French dominance posed a challenge to German cultural self-assertion. In particular, the “radical Enlightenment” embodied in French “vital materialism,” with its evocation of the médecin philosophe as protagonist, had a profound impact on the German Enlightenment affirmation of Freigeisterei, with consequences for German naturalists.

To establish life science on a systematic basis required an integrating principle for the specific conception of organic form and its integration further into a general system of nature. The key ideas found their fullest articulation respectively in Goethe’s conception of developmental morphology as the principle of a science of life forms and in Schelling’s conception of Naturphilosophie, that is, nature as a whole conceived as a developmental, living organism. Both Goethe and Schelling self-consciously embarked on the “daring adventure of reason” against which Kant had warned. This chapter explores their respective theoretical constructions in terms of the intellectual development of their progenitors. Goethe conceived his ideas of developmental morphology in the mid-1790s. His encounter and collaboration with Schelling in 1798 brought about a dramatic fusion of their two trajectories in a conception of Polarität [polarity] and Steigerung [intensification] constituting the self-organization of nature. That energized the synthesis of life science under the new rubric of “biology” in the first years of the nineteenth century.

Schelling’s Naturphilosophie provided a powerful theoretical support system for the innovations in physiology that established biology as a special science in the early nineteenth century. He clearly undertook – and was taken to be undertaking – a supercession of Kant’s philosophy of science in order to open the way for the “daring adventure of reason” necessary to create an empirical science of biology as a historical-developmental understanding of life forms. This chapter demonstrates the problematic relation of Kant to empirical physiology and medicine in this period and why the latter community of inquiry turned from him to Schelling. The crucial advocacy of Henrik Steffens marks this transition. Then the chapter explores Schelling’s engagement with Brownian medicine at the Bamberg General Hospital and then the University of Würzburg, culminating in the key journal Jahrbücher der Medizin als Wissenschaft. It concludes with a consideration of Ignaz Döllinger as a key mediator between the eighteenth-century gestation of biology, culminating in its embrace of Naturphilosophie, and the early nineteenth-century figures recognized as eminently engaged in a special science of biology, like Karl Ernst von Baer.