Measure and measureless in modern science: calculus and atomism within Hegels Doctrine of Being

Abstract

The image of Hegel as an enemy of the sciences is today unsustainable. From the earliest documented age until the very last efforts Hegel attempted to take notice, to understand, to reconstruct historically the scientific fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, botany and zoology, and in such a manner that one will find a hard time searching for a comparison among philosophers. But this became a fact only after the recent philological-critical edition of the entire transcripts of the courses taught by Hegel in Jena, Nürnberg, Heidelberg and Berlin. Therefore, the question of Hegel's relation to science is "open field". In my case, after a thesis concerning Hegel's historical reconstruction of derivative and integral calculus, I am now focused on exploring Hegel's relation to the chemical revolution performed by Lavoisier, Dalton and Berthollet, the first grounders of modern atomic theories. This thematic is central to understanding Hegel's conclusion of the first part of his Logic and the question of the passage from being to essence as well as. I believe this is a key-element to evaluating Hegel's relationship with his contemporaries, and forerunners when it comes to philosophical approach to science: Kant, Goethe and Schelling.