[Real process: how logic & chemistry combine in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature]

John W. Burbidge. Real Process: How Logic and Chemistry Combine in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature University of Toronto Press. x, 274. $75.00

This study provides a window on the emerging science of modern chemistry during the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, but - much more - it provides a mirror in which Hegel's entire project is reflected. Indeed, its value is its patient, exacting analysis of the relation between philosophical reflection and the empirical investigations of chemistry, i.e. of how the latter are to be conceived in the context of a philosophy of nature that is itself situated within a philosophy of spirit. The careful progression of thought is traced from the abstract considerations of real measure and chemism in the Science of Logic to the reality of chemical process in the Encyclopedia: Philosophy of Nature, culminating in the concept of organism. It is a progression, however, that does not occur in nature, but rather in thought's own self-development as it comes...