I. Hegel and the methodology of the life sciences

Recent scholarship has pointed out that in his relationship to the Naturforschung of his time, Hegel did not ‘confine […] himself to observing and judging it, demonstrating his ability to grasp its main features’, but, on the contrary, actually ‘took active part in such debates by publicly siding with some strands of contemporaneous natural science against others’ (Ferrini Reference Ferrini and Westphal2009a: 93).Footnote ¹ Additionally, it is a commonly accepted fact that Hegel's philosophy and the construction of his system is—at least partly—strongly influenced by certain developments in Naturforschung. This holds especially true when it comes to his concepts of life and organism (Illetterati Reference Illetterati1995: 6–10; Sell Reference Sell2013: 92, 168–75). Concerning the latter, Hegel was reflecting on the methodologies used to investigate organic or living beings within the life sciences of his time.Footnote ² In order to discover his relation to these endeavours and their methodologies, I will turn to those passages in his works where he explicitly refers to them—even though he does not always name the authors he is referring to. This is particularly the case in the section on Observing Reason, more precisely the chapter on Observing Nature, found in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Beyond that, we can find references in the Philosophy of Nature.

The first part of my essay will be dedicated to Observing Reason and the second part will deal with the Philosophy of Nature. I thus set myself a very narrow remit, confining myself to the specific discussion regarding the methodology of the life sciences, namely zoology and comparative anatomy. For Hegel, this methodology clearly involves the application of external teleological explanations.

While scholars mainly focus on the destructive reading of external teleological explanations (e.g., Chiereghin Reference Chiereghin1990: 176–81; Illetterati Reference Illetterati1995: 206–9; Stern Reference Stern2002: 108; Pierini Reference Pierini, Vieweg and Welsch2008: 316– 17), i.e., Hegel's criticism of their application, I want to highlight a line of thought in his texts which represents a productive reading.Footnote ³ The final aim of this essay is to show that this productive form of external teleological explanation is a general kind of functionalism that was commonly applied in the life sciences and therefore deliberately taken up by Hegel. With this a different understanding of external teleology in Hegel, contrasted to that commonly associated with it, would be discovered that has so far not been considered in scholarly debate.Footnote ⁴

The following text will be divided into three sections. The second section will investigate the way in which Hegel discussed external teleological explanations as a kind of functionalism, in Observing Reason, and that the discipline of the life sciences he particularly referred to is zoology. By looking at the Philosophy of Nature in the third section (of my text) we will confirm the impression evoked by the Phenomenology, since in the former Hegel again relates the same themes with functional explanations but with an additional focus on comparative anatomy. In a short fourth and final section I will ask if the results of this study ought to change our conception of (external) teleology in Hegel and give an outlook on how my thesis has to be developed further.Footnote ⁵

II. Observing reason and teleology

In the chapter on Observing Reason Hegel attends to different strands of the Naturforschung of his time (Illetterati Reference Illetterati1995: 191–204; Siep Reference Siep2000: 124; Ferrini Reference Ferrini and Westphal2009a: 39–40). Observing consciousness no longer approaches objects in a purely negative fashion, as do desiring consciousness, scepticism or the unhappy consciousness. Instead, it now tries to explore persisting determinations in the flux of the world, which in their permanence hold ‘an interest for it’ (PhG: ¶232/133).Footnote ⁶ It tries to unveil those persisting determinations as ‘the essence of things qua things’ (PhG: ¶242/138) by systematically making ‘its own observations and experiments’ (PhG: ¶240/137).Footnote ⁷ This reference to experiments should, in my view, be understood as evidence that Hegel is concentrating on those research endeavours that can be ascribed to a certain line of experimental Newtonianism in contrast to mathematical Newtonianism.Footnote ⁸

The observing consciousness, when turning to organic beings, tries to identify their persisting aspects by distinguishing between ‘what is essential and what is unessential’, whereby the former is understood as specific ‘differentiae’ (PhG: ¶246/140) or characteristics. It makes this distinction by considering only ‘what enables things to be intelligently apprehended’ (PhG: ¶246/140). The distinguished differentiae then, however, should not only be differentiae for cognition, but should rather ‘accord with the essential characteristics of things’ (PhG: ¶246/140). It is only then that a cognition of the considered living being is given and only then can it be assigned to a certain class, species or kind, i.e., classified. Or as Hegel puts it, the thereby generated ‘artificial system is supposed to accord with Nature's own system’ (PhG: ¶246/140). As a felicitous case of a systematization, which expresses the system of nature adequately, Hegel mentions the differentiation of animals by means of their ‘claws and teeth’ (PhG: ¶246/140). It is successful because through the reference to those ‘distinguishing marks’ (PhG: ¶246/140), the respective animals are not merely distinguished through cognition itself. On the contrary, ‘by means of these weapons’ (PhG: ¶246/140) they actually distinguish themselves, since these weapons are used e.g., for the defence against predators or for hunting prey.Footnote ⁹

According to the editors of volume 9 of the Gesammelte Werke, Hegel probably received his knowledge on classification and zoology mainly through Blumenbach's Naturgeschichte, in which the latter also refers to Aristotle and Linnaeus, who developed the methods of differentiation by claws and teeth (GW 9: 498).Footnote ¹⁰ Blumenbach also discusses the problem of artificial and natural systems:

Blumenbach, thereupon, contends that he instead aims to build a ‘natural system of mammals’ by considering ‘all external characteristics, the whole habitus’ (HdN: 49, my translation).Footnote ¹¹

Hegel tells us another way of distinguishing specific characteristics of animals for classification, which is to relate them to their respective environments. Reason considers ‘organic Nature and inorganic Nature in their relation to one another’ (PhG: ¶255/145). This inorganic environment, Hegel elucidates, is comprised of ‘loosely connected determinatenesses’, which he also calls ‘universal elements’ and specifies them as ‘[a]ir, water, earth, zones, and climate’ (PhG: ¶255/145):

The observing consciousness is trying to express the relationship between the organic and the inorganic in terms of a law—or better, a regularity—according to which the habitus or form of the former mirrors the influence of the latter. Therewith, consciousness receives regularities like ‘animals belonging to the air have the nature of birds, those belonging to water have the nature of fish, animals in northern latitudes have thick, hairy pelts’ (PhG: ¶255/145). Hegel, however, attests that this kind of law is a ‘poverty which does not do justice to the manifold variety of organic Nature’ (PhG: ¶255/145). This is because nature comprises many exemptions from such laws—consider e.g., ostriches—and even the cases which seem to be governed by this regularity do not exhibit a strict necessity—consider e.g., bichirs, which due to their anatomy can walk on land and breathe air due to a simple lung. One can actually just speak of a ‘great influence’ (PhG: ¶255/145) of the environment on the individual. Hegel infers, therefore, that this relationship cannot be expressed by a regularity in the sense of a conceptual necessity. The ‘Notion of north’ does not imply ‘the Notion of a thick, hairy pelt’ and neither does the notion of the sea imply the form of a fish, independently of how often ‘we may find’ (PhG: ¶255/146) thick, hairy pelts in northern areas or the structure of a fish in the water. The ‘necessity’ (PhG: ¶255/146) of this relation is not something that can be observed:

Hegel calls a connection of two elements that is actually external to those elements a ‘teleological relation’. The relationship between the form of an animal and its environment is for Hegel, as we see, a case of such a teleological relation. This connection he concludes does not, however, express the essence of the organic, whereas ‘the notion of End’ (PhG: ¶256/146) does.

It is noteworthy, in my view, that here Hegel is not talking about ‘classical’ examples of ‘bad’ external teleological explanations, such as those Kant is invoking in the Critique of Judgement—e.g., the sediment of sand at the beach has the purpose of providing fertile soil for the growth of spruces (CJ: 245–46/B281–82) or other examples normally associated with and criticized as ‘bad’ external teleology, e.g., cork oaks exist in order to serve us for the production of stops or god created bedbugs in order to prevent us from sleeping too long.

Instead, he is talking about the aptness of animals to their environment or their teeth and claws being functional for hunting and eating. Even Blumenbach, in his Naturgeschichte, at the end of each elaboration on a specific class, lists the usefulness (Brauchbarkeit) and the harm (Schaden) of the respective class for humanity and the rest of nature.Footnote ¹² Consider e.g., how comprehensively he writes about the usefulness of the class of birds:

Considering that the GW 9 editors’ contention that Hegel got his knowledge of zoology and the classification of animals from the reading of Blumenbach's book is correct, why did he not stick to the obvious and cited passages like the one just quoted to criticize the application of ‘bad’ external teleological explanations in those research endeavours? And, if he did not want to criticize those examples, what kind of explanation is the named teleological relation? I want to suggest that he actually was referring to functional explanations. An example would be: carnivores must have sharp claws and teeth in order to be able to hunt their prey or animals in cold regions have thick, hairy pelts by means of which they protect themselves from cold.Footnote ¹⁴ These functional characteristics can then be used to assign animals to certain classes. Formulations of this type are present in the writings of Blumenbach, such as when he talks about apes: ‘Mammals with four hands, as it is required by their way of life and their inhabitation of the trees’ (HdN: 57, my translation); or the sloth: ‘Generally they have few toes at the forefoot, which, however, are furnished with long and crooked claws, which serve to climb trees’ (HdN: 63, my translation).

The same is true for Treviranus, to whom, according to the editors (GW 9: 500), Hegel is referring when enumerating the regularities governing the relation of organic beings and their inorganic environment:

Animals living in trees must have certain hands or claws in order to be able to climb, and fish, who move by swimming through water, must have external limbs which are apt for this purpose. I want to suggest that, when Hegel is talking about ‘teleological relations’ in the sense of external teleological explanations, he is actually referring to a general kind of functionalism. This naïve understanding of function, in the sense of aptness to environmental conditions or circumstances, was used in the zoology—and anatomy, as we will see in the next section—of Hegel's time. To use a formulation Ferrini uses concerning a different theme, these kinds of functional discourse were ‘the issue at stake in the scientific debate of the time’ (Ferrini Reference Ferrini and Westphal2009a: 99). Even though life scientists like Treviranus or Blumenbach were aware of the problematic status of the results those approaches delivered,Footnote ¹⁵ they applied them anyway.Footnote ¹⁶ Hegel, most likely, referred to those discourses by the term ‘external teleology’ because he was missing the elaborated functional terminology available to us today.

Hegel's critical remarks on the methodology of zoology are therefore not to be confused with a critique of the application of functional or external teleological explanations as such. Rather they concern the inadequacy of the method of induction applied by the observing consciousness for the purpose of finding reason in the world. That is why Hegel writes that the necessity cannot be observed. The observing consciousness as reason is searching for itself in the world and therefore is in fact searching for something conceptual (PhG: ¶242/138). In order to grasp this conceptuality further steps are required. This happens, for example, when reason purifies the laws or regularities step by step into a conceptual necessity (PhG: ¶¶248–53/142–45; Ferrini Reference Ferrini and Westphal2009a: 100–4; Quante Reference Quante and Moyar2008: 97). There the truth of ‘experimenting consciousness’ (PhG: ¶253/144), which proceeds ‘to refine the law and its moments into a Notion’ (PhG: ¶251/143), is the ‘pure law’ or ‘a Notion’ (PhG: ¶253/144).

But then reason is no longer merely observing. When Hegel then tells us that the result of the experimenting consciousness presents itself to the observing consciousness ‘as a particular kind of object’ (PhG: ¶253/145), i.e., the organic, he is more or less stating that observing reason is confronted with an object for which its manner of inductive observation is useless. It cannot observe the essence—i.e., the inner purposiveness, or ‘the real End itself’—of the organic as such (PhG: ¶256/146). This is in fact the process of self-preservation of the individual and its genus (PhG: ¶256, ¶¶259–60/146, 148–49). Since the method of pure observation only ‘seeks the moments in the form […] of enduring being’ it cannot grasp the true unity of the organic as such, which ‘is essentially the inner movement […] and can only be grasped as Notion’ (PhG: ¶261/149). Inner purposiveness, for Hegel, has the sense of self- preservation, which is something processual (PhG: ¶256/146). Observing reason with its fixed determinations cannot cope with this processuality. This does not mean however, that the form of functional explanations described above is in any way useless. In the Philosophy of Nature the assumption that Hegel is actually discussing a kind of functionalism can be confirmed. We will also see in which way these functional explanations are of use and why they are yet closely related to the method of observation.

III. Zoology and comparative anatomy in the Philosophy of Nature

In §368 of the 1830 Encyclopaedia,Footnote ¹⁷ which is located in the Organic Physics section and has the title Die Gattung und die Arten in the German original, but significantly was translated by Petry to Zoology (The Genus and the species), Hegel discusses the classification of animals as it is conducted in zoology. Or, in Hegel's words, it considers how ‘the genus in its implicit universality simply particularizes itself into species’ (PN: §370, 177 footnote one/§368, 367). Animals, he states, are distinguished by means of their ‘forms’, i.e., their habitus or external appearance, into different ‘orders of animals’ (PN: §370, 177/§368, 367). The basis of these forms and orders is the ‘universal type of the animal’ (PN: §370, 177/§368, 367),Footnote ¹⁸ which in turn is determined by the concept. The type of the animal expresses itself in ‘the various stages of its development’, which are different degrees of complexity, and ‘in the various circumstances and conditions of elemental nature’ (PN: §370, 177/ §368, 367). Different genera and various species are therefore different modes of how the type of the animal manifests itself in differing degrees of complexity and in its relation to its environment. In the remark to this paragraph Hegel praises a new ‘science’, which in recent times made greater progress than nearly any other:

In earlier times, we are told, zoology distinguished the animal's characteristics for classification for subjective cognition only. It, therefore, just established ‘artificial systems’ (PN: §370R, 178/§368R, 367). This changed, however, because it took the ‘wider prospect’ of focusing on ‘the objective nature of the forms themselves’ (PN: §370R, 177/§368R, 367).

Zoology achieved this change in perspective by the means of comparative anatomy. The latter proceeded in the manner of grasping ‘the significance of the interrelated organs and functions’ and thereby inferred the universal type of the animal. The ‘illustrious founder’ of this discipline, Cuvier, could, thus, take pride in the boast ‘that from a single bone, he could make out the essential nature of the entire animal’ (PN: §370R, 178/§368R, 368). Hegel further specifies the procedure of comparative anatomy by two aspects: The main feature of its approach, he tells us, ‘is the recognition of the way in which nature shapes and adapts this organism to the particular element in which it places it, to climate, to a range of nutrition, and in general, to the environment which it finds about it’ (PN: §370R, 178/§368R, 368).

Furthermore, it was ‘a happy intuition’ for the determination of the species to take ‘the animal's weapons, i.e., its teeth and claws etc.’ as its distinguishing characteristics, since by the means of these it distinguishes itself from others and ‘establishes and preserves itself as a being-for-self’ (PN: §370R, 178/§368R, 368).Footnote ¹⁹

We can see that Hegel is obviously again talking about the same endeavours of the life sciences as he did in the Phenomenology. He is once more describing a procedure of determining animals by the means of the function of their body parts and their aptness to their respective environment. While the elaborations on functionality and aptness to environmental conditions are repeated, Hegel admittedly is not talking about external teleology in the main text or the remark of the paragraph. This, however, changes in the additions, where it is apparent that the functionalism is applied in comparative anatomy.Footnote ²⁰

In the additions we can find several citations from the writings of Cuvier. He, we are told, was led to the idea that all limbs of an organism are particularities directed against a distinct inorganic nature which in the end exhibit a certain harmony. He, therefore, was prompted, especially because of his occupation with fossil bones, to study the specific form of limbs and bones and ‘to consider the purposiveness of the way in which the individual limbs are related to one another’ (PN: §370A, 182/§368A, 1583). I want to suggest that the term purposiveness here is the same external purposiveness that is discussed in the Phenomenology and has to be read as functionality. The reason for this will become clear if we take a look at the exemplary passages of Cuvier that are cited in the additions:

Cuvier tells us that the prerequisite of being carnivorous is that one is furnished with certain functional body parts to hunt one's prey and to be able to tear them apart. Furthermore, he states:

Similar considerations are cited concerning herbivores:

I think the application of a general kind of functionalism in these citations is obvious. Animals are related to their environment, represented e.g., by their source of nourishment i.e., grass or other animals. A herbivorous cow has to have certain teeth to be able to grind the grass it is eating and the neck of carnivorous lions has to have a certain strength by means of which it is able to pull away its prey. One could argue, now, that what Cuvier is describing here is actually the interrelation of inner purposiveness—where every part has to be understood from the whole and the whole from its parts—especially because he judges the body parts to exhibit a certain ‘harmony of the organization’ (PN: §370A, 182/§368A, 1582). But there are two aspects that Hegel discerns. There are, according to the addition, two ways of determining the differences of animal genera. The first is according to the type, ‘which is closer to the Idea’, the second that the development of the organic type ‘is essentially connected with the elements into which animal life is cast’ (PN: §370A, 181/§368A, 1581–82).Footnote ²¹ While the type, as the objective nature of all animals can only be conceived conceptually, its particularization falls under the external conditions of nature. As the remark states, it is submitted ‘to the manifold conditions and circumstances of external nature’ (PN: §370R, 179/§368R, 368), which also make ‘the genera themselves completely subservient to changes of the external universal life of nature’ (PN: §370R, 179/§368R, 369). Or as it is put in the addition, the animal as a part of nature is bound ‘to the infinitely numerous particularizations of inorganic and vegetable nature, animation always exists as limited species’ (PN: §370A, 179/§368A, 1580). The conceptual ‘universal type’ is in fact the basis of every animal, but as it exists, ‘it does so in a particularity’ (PN: §370A, 182/§368A, 1582–83). While, on the one hand, the organism's ‘viscera are determined by the Notion’ (PN: §370A, 182/§368A, 1583), the mentioned harmony is actually grounded in the ‘particular determinations’ and ‘is mainly present in the limbs, not in the viscera, for the particularity is precisely outward orientation towards a determinate inorganic nature’ (PN: §370A, 182/§368A, 1583). And Hegel tells us, ‘[i]t is Cuvier who has developed this [latter] aspect of the science’ (PN: §370A, 182/§368A, 1583). I therefore contend that the harmony invoked here is not the internal interrelation of inner purposiveness, but to the contrary the external purposive or functional aptness of animals to the circumstances they are placed in, which is exhibited by their external characteristics.

The particularities the Addition mentions are, it seems to me, the various species as well as the individual animals or, to be precise, their appearance or habitus. This habitus can only be observed. These observations take the animal's aptness to its specific context into consideration: ‘Particular conditions such as the size, the species and the haunt of the prey, also result from the particular circumstances within the general forms however’ (PN: §370A, 183/§368A, 1583–84). The general development of species etc. is, so to speak, predefined by the type, which can only be grasped conceptually. How it will be particularized, however, is, in Hegel's eyes, dependent from external conditions. The neck musculature of a lion and a lynx, e.g., in its general functionality and form is similar, since both are carnivores, but the concrete moulding of it depends whether their possible prey is e.g., gnu or roe deer. But additionally, the existence of carnivores, and therefore muscular necks apt for pulling prey is nothing which can be predicted from the concept of a type. This is why Hegel writes that for the ‘specific determination’—specielle Bestimmung, which Petry translates as ‘determination of the species’ (PN: §370R, 178/§368R, 368)—it was a happy intuition to choose e.g., the weapons of the animals. And that is also the reason why the method of zoology and anatomy is indeed closely related to observation. Independently of all problems of inductive observation, those particularities, which are used to classify animals, can only be discovered by observing them. There is no way of deducing or predicting mathematically or theoretically the specific form and functionality of the limbs of an animal.Footnote ²² In fact, asking about the functionality of the lion's neck musculature only makes sense after seeing a lion pulling an animal.

Of course, there would be more to say, but we must confine ourselves to this. All in all, we could see that also in the Philosophy of Nature Hegel is referring to functional explanations applied by life scientists of his time, such as Cuvier.

IV. A new aspect of external teleology

The scope and extent of this essay only allows the groundwork to be set for what I want to show. I claimed that there can be traced a positive and productive reading of Hegel's treatment of external teleological considerations and suggested that this can be shown by investigating Hegel's relationship to the life sciences of his time. I therefore turned to those parts of his oeuvre where he—more or less—explicitly deals with the methodology of representatives of those life sciences, namely zoology and comparative anatomy. In section two of this essay we could see that Hegel discussed in Observing Reason the application of external teleological explanations in zoology. I pointed out that with the use of the term ‘teleological relation’ Hegel referred to explanations in which animals are viewed according to their aptness to their respective environment and not, as one might expect, to ‘classical’ examples of ‘bad’ external teleology such as cork exists so that we have something to make bottle stops out of or god created bedbugs in order to prevent us from sleeping too long. I furthermore suggested that when using external teleology Hegel referred to something like a general kind of functional explanation such as in order to hunt a prey a lion has to have sharp claws and teeth or animals in colder areas have thick, hairy pelts by means of which they are protected from the cold. By citing chosen passages from Blumenbach and Treviranus, I tried to show that these kinds of functional explanation were generally applied in zoology and that Hegel was deliberately discussing this kind of methodology in the Phenomenology. In the third section, I showed that the discussion of the same themes can also be found in the Philosophy of Nature. In particular by referring to Cuvier and comparative anatomy, cited in the additions of §368, I tried to show that also there functional considerations occupied an important role.

If it is true that the passages I invoked exemplify cases of the application of a general kind of functionalism, then this would detect an aspect of Hegel's relationship to the life sciences which thus far has not been considered in scholarship. Furthermore, if it is correct that Hegel took up this specific debate when discussing the methodology of the investigation of living or organic beings, this might also lead us to question our understanding of aspects of Hegel's conception of (external) teleology as such. Hegel's discussion of teleology, then, was not only influenced by the philosophical considerations, such as those delivered by Kant in the Critique of Judgement, but also by functional explanations used in the life sciences.Footnote ²³ The fact that Hegel associated these kinds of explanations with external teleology might also lead us to reconsider our view on the chapter on teleology in the Science of Logic, which explicitly only deals with external purposiveness as a form of objectivity (WL: 653/156).

Before ending, I want to point out some additional aspects that put my elaborations into a larger context and to give an outlook on how they can be developed further. First, one should consider that similar external teleological explanations were used also in geological debates of that time. Hegel, therefore, did not have to turn exclusively to zoology and anatomy to be aware of such considerations.Footnote ²⁴ This is of particular relevance since Hegel's view on geology changed distinctively in the Nuremberg period, a point which could be used to question the continuity I posit between the Phenomenology with the later Philosophy of Nature. This change can be understood as a shift to a more ‘environmental’ or ‘biophysical’ view of the earth as setting the conditions for life and geology describing this relationship—a point convincingly stressed by Ferrini (Reference Ferrini, Breidbach and Neuser2010: 124–26) proceeding from Kisner's claims on Hegel's allegedly species-based environmental ethic (Kisner Reference Kisner2008–9: 12–17, 28–43).

However, I consider this re-evaluation as a deepening of the insight in the importance of the external relation of the organic with its inorganic environment and, therefore, as setting in accordance the reception of geology with the insights on the functional external relation of the organic expressed in the Phenomenology.Footnote ²⁵ The external teleological perspective in Hegel's eyes will certainly have to be considered in its relationship to the internal teleological perspective since they both are actually two aspects of the same thing (Ferrini Reference Ferrini2009b: 72, 76; Reference Ferrini, Breidbach and Neuser2010: 130). It is especially the task of the philosopher to grasp this connection in its conceptual necessity.Footnote ²⁶ However, I wanted to carve out foremost this productive and informative side of external teleology and to distinguish it from applications of external teleology which were criticized by Hegel.Footnote ²⁷ The external relation remains an independent aspect of the organic. It is precisely the discovery of those kinds of external relations as essential characteristics of concrete organic beings made e.g., by zoology—through observation—which is of philosophical interest. They help to grasp the organic and the inorganic in their systematic unity and will be fully comprehended when related to the internal purposive process of self-preservation and realization of the universal type of the animal. But that is another story.Footnote ²⁸