Schelling, Hegel and Evolutionary Progress

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Schelling, Hegel, andEvolutionary Progress

J. M. FritzmanLewis & Clark College

Molly GibsonIndependent scholar

This article presents Schellings claim that nature has an evolutionary processand Hegels response that nature is the development of the concept. It then ex-amines whether evolution is progressive. This article argues that, insofar as anotion of progress is conceptually ineliminatable from evolutionary biology orrequired to articulate the shape of lifes history, progress should be viewed asconstitutive.

PreviewThis article presents Schellings claim that nature has an evolutionary pro-cess and Hegels response that nature is the development of the concept. Itthen examines whether evolution is progressive. While many evolutionarybiologists explicitly repudiate the suggestion that there is progress in evo-lution, they often implicitly presuppose this. Moreover, such a notionseems required insofar as the shape of lifes history consists in a directionaltrend. This article argues that, insofar as a notion of progress is indeedconceptually ineliminatable from evolutionary biology or needed to artic-ulate the shape of lifes history, progress should be viewed as constitutive.

The section on Why Schelling and Hegel? articulates the motivationfor investigating their views about evolution and progress. The BackStory briey discusses the philosophies of Kant and Fichte, since these

Three anonymous reviewers for Perspectives on Science are thanked for suggestions that led touseful revisions; all authors should be blessed with such readers. Earlier versions were pre-sented to the Northwest Philosophy Conference at the University of Oregon on 6 Decem-ber 2008 (David Kolb is thanked for his commentary) and to a joint Department of Philos-ophy & Summer Research Colloquium at Lewis & Clark College on 19 September 2008.Claire Kodachi and William A. Rottschaefer are thanked for their comments. Gordon P.Kelly is thanked for modifying Terentius Latin. Lewis & Clark College provided supportthrough a Collaborative Research Grant.

Perspectives on Science 2012, vol. 20, no. 12012 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

are the points of departure for Schelling and Hegel. These two sectionsalso indicate how scientic developments inuence them. The section onSchelling, According to Richards and Grant compares divergent inter-pretations of Schellings philosophy. These interpretations have distinc-tively important results when considering Schellings claim that naturehas an evolutionary process and when that claim is compared to contem-porary evolutionary biology. Evolution, Emanation, Development, Ac-cording to Hegel presents Hegels reasons for denying that nature evolvesor emanates and for instead maintaining that it is the development of theconcept. Schelling and Hegel after Darwin: A Brief Comparison consid-ers Schellings acceptance, and Hegels rejection, of evolution and progressin nature. Progress as Complexity, Autonomy, or Convergence indicatesthe limitations of three ways of articulating progress. Is Progress LikePornography? argues that, sadly, it is not. Whereas pornography can stillbe recognized even if it cannot be dened, this is not so for progress.Progress as constitutive notes that, while many evolutionary biologistsexplicitly repudiate the suggestion that there is progress in evolution,they often seem to implicitly presuppose this. It is argued that, insofar asnotions of progress are indeed conceptually ineliminatable from evolu-tionary biology or required insofar as the shape of lifes history consists ina directional trend, progress should be viewed as constitutive, rather thanonly regulative or merely a faon de parler. Humanity should be the stan-dard by which progress is measured. Recognizing the inherent dangers ofdening progress and humanity in reference to us, the article con-cludes by urging that we be expanded.

Why Schelling and Hegel?Immanuel Kant (17241804) accepts the inertia principle of Isaac New-ton (16431727), according to which objects only moveor, if already inmotion, cease movingas a result of the application of an external force.Billiard balls are a useful example of this. Kant thinks that the principle ofinertia is constitutive, describing nature as it actually is. Thus, he con-cludes that matter is lifeless.1 Because Kant accepts the principle of iner-

106 Schelling, Hegel, and Evolutionary Progress

1. Kant 1985, 105106: The inertia of matter is and signies nothing but its lifeless-ness, as matter in itself. Life means the capacity of a substance to determine itself to actfrom an internal principle, of a nite substance to determine itself to change, and of a ma-terial substance to determine itself to motion or to rest as change of its state. Now, weknow of no other internal principle of a substance to change its state but desire and noother activity whatsoever but thought, along with what depends upon such desire, namelyfeeling of pleasure or displeasure, and appetite or will. But these determining grounds andactions do not at all belong to the representations of the external senses and hence also donot to the determinations of matter as matter. Therefore all matter as such is lifeless. The

tia, he argues that biological organisms are not able to move themselvesbut instead are moved only by external forces, that they do not developthemselves, that they do not act because they have no goals, and that na-ture itself is without purpose. He argues that humans can never compre-hend how it is possible that, although actually lifeless, biological organ-isms nevertheless appear to be alive. This is Kants point when he claimsthat it is quite certain that we can never adequately come to know the or-ganized beings and their internal possibility in accordance with merelymechanical principles of nature, let alone explain them; and indeed this isso certain that we can boldly say that it would be absurd for human beingseven to make such an attempt or to hope that there may yet arise a New-ton who could make comprehensible even the generation of a blade ofgrass according to natural laws that no intention has ordered; rather, wemust absolutely deny this insight to human beings (Kant 2000, section75, 270271, Ak. 5:400). In order to study biological organisms, then, itis necessary to make the false assumptions that biological organisms canmove themselves, that they contain within themselves principles for self-development and self-replication, and that they have goals.2 It is notmerely that these assumptions are psychologically ineliminatable becauseindividuals have an unavoidable tendency to presuppose them, moreover.They are conceptually ineliminatable because humans are incapable ofever comprehending biological organisms without them. These false as-sumptions are regulative, according to Kant. They are heuristic devicesthat guide research. Nevertheless, they are still false.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (17751854) and Georg Wil-helm Friedrich Hegel (17701831) respond that since such assumptionsare necessary to understand biological organisms, as Kant concedes, this issufcient reason to regard these assumptions as constitutive.3 Schelling ac-

Perspectives on Science 107

proposition of inertia says so much and no more. Compare Westphal 1998. Westphalshows that Hegel correctly perceives that Kants a priori argument for matters inertnessand lifelessness is fallacious and so Kant should have regarded matters inertness as an em-pirical question.

2. The leaves of a plant turn toward the sunlight, for example, in order for photosynthe-sis to occur.

3. More precisely: Kant claims that matter is inert and so lifeless. As a consequence, heargues that all attempts to understand nature, either in part or as a whole, as purposeful arenot constitutive but only regulative. Schelling urges, however, that form is inseparablefrom content, Hegel agrees with this, and so there is no reason for Kant to neverthelessmaintain that the form of organisms is something added by humans. While the Kantiansare right to insist that the idea of purpose involves that of some guiding intelligence, asFrederick C. Beiser explicates Schellings conclusion, they must also admit that, in thecase of an organism, this intelligence is within the object itself (Beiser 2002, 521). Alsosee Friedman 2006, 2643. Like Schelling, Hegel adopts Kants idea of an intuitive un-

cepts panpsychism, according to which all matter is enminded. That is tosay, matter always has some aspect of mind, however rudimentary, and heseems to identify the level of complexity of a matters structure withmind. He further maintains that consciousness results when matter has asufciently complex organization. Although Hegel apparently rejects pan-psychism, he agrees with Schelling that the proper model for conceptual-izing nature is the organism, not the machine, and that biological organ-isms really are alive.4

Robert J. Richards argues that Charles Robert Darwin (18091882)believes that evolution is progressive and teleological, with humans on thehighest rung (Richards 1987; Richards 1992). He further maintains thatDarwins theory of evolution is inuenced by Schellings Naturphilosophie(Richards 2002).5 Richards argues that Ernst Heinrich Philipp AugustHaeckel (18341919), who is primarily responsible for introducing Dar-wins theory in Germany, also believes that evolution is progressive.6 Al-though Kant believes that there can never be a Newton of a blade of grass,Haeckel claims that Darwin is this Newton. Haeckel can believe this,however, only because he rejects Kants views on inertia (see Haeckel1889, 95; Cornell 1986). Whereas Kant maintains that matter can moveonly insofar as it is moved by an external force, Haeckel is in the tradition


derstanding as a description of the very way we observe and comprehend organic entities,as Daniel O. Dahlstrom observes, and so it is not merely psychologically ineliminatableand regulative but also conceptually ineliminatable and constitutive. For Hegel an intu-itive understanding is not a mere thought, a corollary to the use of the principle of innerpurposiveness, as Dahlstrom further perceives, but the very way we know natural pur-poses (Dahlstrom 1998, 175).

4. Whether Hegel actually rejects panpsychism is discussed in the next section.5. Darwin is inuenced by Alexander von Humboldt (17691859) as well, who is also

in the tradition of Naturphilosophie. A discussion of Humboldt is beyond the scope of thispaper, but compare: von Humboldt 1849, vol. 1: Nature, as Schelling remarks in his po-etic discourse on art, is not an inert mass; and to him, who can comprehend her vast sub-limity, she reveals herself as the creative force of the universebefore all time, eternal, everactive, she calls to life all things, whether perishable or imperishable (36). As intelli-gence and forms of speech, thought and its verbal symbols, are united by secret and indis-soluble links, so does the external world blend almost unconsciously to ourselves with ourideas and feelings. External phenomena, says Hegel in his Philosophy of History, are insome degree translated in our inner representations. The objective world, conceived andreected within us by thought, is subjected to the eternal and necessary conditions of ourintellectual being (59). For further discussions, see: Helferich 2004. Lack 2009. Lowen-berg, Av-Lallemant, and Dove 2009. Richards 2002, 522526. Rupke 2008. Walls 2009.

6. Richards 2009, 148: There can be little doubt, I think, that Haeckel and Darwinwere in accord concerning the progressive features of evolution by natural selection. Toread Darwin otherwise is to make him into a neo-Darwinian, which, needless to say, he wasnot. Also see Gliboff 2008.

of Naturphilosophie in accepting a panpsychism that claims that all matteris enminded and contains within itself the ability to organize, and somove, itself.7

While Darwin and Haeckel believe that evolution is progressive, manycontemporary evolutionary biologist would deny this. In their actual de-scriptions of evolution, however, they frequently write as though it is pro-gressive. The question is then whether progress is actually constitutive orinstead only regulative. This motivates a consideration of the views ofSchelling and Hegel regarding evolutionary progress. This article arguesthat, since notions of progress indeed seem to be ineliminatable from evo-lutionary biology, progress should be viewed as constitutive.

Back StoryInuenced by Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (17621814) argues that na-ture is correctly understood as the result of the mechanistic interaction offorces. He further maintains that consciousness must always be presup-posed in any account of nature. From this, he concludes that nature mustbe seen as the product of consciousness and that consciousness cannot bederived from nature. While Fichtes considered view seems to be that con-sciousness and nature are equals and coevalsince he believed thatconsciousness is only made possible through the constraints, the check,imposed by nature on consciousnesshe frequently overlooks this, andinstead argues for the priority of consciousness.

Initially a disciple of Fichte, Schelling eventually rejects Fichtes ten-dency to give precedence to consciousness and develops a philosophy ofnaturea Naturphilosophie. Schelling urges that there is a unity of natureand mind. He claims that the difference between matter and mind is thatthe latter is a more complexly organized development of the former. Im-pressed by the discovery that electricity has a positive and negative charge,and that magnetism has a positive and negative pole, Schelling furthermaintains that nature develops because of polarity, an antagonism be-


7. Richards 2009, 124125: These forces led Haeckel to the ultimate conviction thatthe living and non-living could not be distinguished, that one was simply a phase of theother. Such a conception does not denigrate the wonders of life but ennobles the propertiesof matter. When he focused directly on the metaphysical question . . . he endorsed not ster-ile materialism but a kind of monism that was rooted rmly in Romantic Jena at the be-ginning of the nineteenth century and that branched out into many intellectual areas bythe end of the century. Not only Haeckel but philosophers and scientists of quite differentstripessuch individuals as William James and John Dewey, Bertrand Russell and ErnstMachwould advance the doctrine of neutral monism. That doctrine held that mind andmatter were properties of a more fundamental substrate that was not to be identied withits salient traits. Haeckel adopted this metaphysical position earlier on, in the GenerelleMorphologie; and it would become the foundation for his monistic religion.

tween pairs of opposed fundamental forces. He believes that polarity couldexplain evolution within nature and that this evolution could then explainthe emergence of consciousness. Schelling claims that the best model forunderstanding nature is that of the organism, rather than a machine. Al-though he does not deny that much of inorganic nature can be understoodin mechanistic terms, he thinks that living organisms cannot be explainedmechanically, and that mechanism itself presupposes a situatedness withinthe organic. The inorganic is explained, according to Schelling, from theperspective of the organic (see Friedman 2006).

Schelling advocates a panpsychism, as noted above, according to whicheven inorganic matter is enminded and alive.8 Schelling is greatly inu-enced by studies of electricity and magnetism and so believes that inor-ganic matter contains within itself a principle of motion. This allows himto view the principle of inertia as a limit condition of matter, rather thanas a universal law holding for all things. He also maintains that the transi-tion from matter to mind is on a continuum, the systematic complexity ofthe organization of the material. He believes that there is an inarticulatedrive within inorganic matter to organize itself into biological organisms,and within organisms to produce human consciousness whereby naturecan know itself. Schellings Naturphilosophie inuenced leading contempo-rary scientists. In The Romantic Conception of Life, moreover, Richards ar-gues that Schellings Naturphilosophie was a crucial inuence on Darwinstheory of evolution (Richards 2002).

Hegel rejects several of Schellings views, although his own philosophyis deeply indebted to that of Schelling. Since Hegel claims that natureis Geist externalized and he employs proto-mental categories to describeGeist, it might be thought that he too accepts panpsychism. However, hefrequently distances his own views from those of Schelling, exhibiting ananxiety of inuence, and he seems to believe that Geist nonreductivelyemerges from nature (Bloom 1997). Hegel agrees that nature must be un-derstood as an organism rather than as mechanical or mechanistic. How-ever, he rejects the claim that mind is no more than a complexication ofnature. Although Hegel grants that nature is the precondition for con-sciousness, he believes that the approach that is appropriate for under-standing nature cannot be applied without further ado to consciousness(see Hegel 1970, sections 245252, 191220).

Perhaps an analogy is useful. Schellings panpsychism would be like ra-dioactivity. A sample of uranium-235 in radioactive but so are its atoms.When there is a sufcient amount of uranium-235, a chain reaction canoccur. Schelling maintains that all matter in enminded, analogously, and


8. For a recent defense, see Skrbina, 2005.

consciousness obtains when the matters structure becomes sufcientlycomplex. The analogy is limited, of course, as an atoms constituent partsare not radioactive, although Schelling would presumably say that theyare enminded. Insofar as Geist nonreductively emerges from nature, bycontrast, Hegels view may be compared to a compound, which resultswhen two or more elements are chemically combined. Here, Geist wouldbe similar to a compound and nature to an element. This difference islargely the result of Hegels emphasis on culture and history. Hegel main-tains that the research tools of the biological sciences, the social sciences,and the humanities are required to understand humans, whereas Schellingasserts that the resources of physics, chemistry, and the biological sciencesare sufcient.

Hegel also rejects Schellings claim that nature develops because of po-larity. Hegel argues that, rather than explaining things, polarity merelydescribes things in arcane language. As a consequence, he also rejects theview that nature is an evolutionary process that results from polarity. Inparticular, he thinks that such a process is insufcient for explaining theemergence of consciousness from nature. Hegel instead proposes thatchanges within nature, as well as the transition from nature to conscious-ness, be seen as the development of a concept. Whereas it is generally sup-posed that there are many concepts, Hegel claims that those so-called con-cepts are really only chapters within a single narrative. Understanding thetransition from nature to consciousness as a conceptual development in-volves a retrospective stance, from which Hegel can provide a narrative ac-cording to which the move from inorganic matter to organic consciousnessis itself a conceptual development.

Schelling, according to Richards and GrantThis section discusses two contrasting interpretations of Schellings ac-count of evolution, those of Richards Romantic Conception of Life and IainHamilton Grants Philosophies of Nature after Schelling (Richards 2002;Grant 2007).

Richards and Grant agree that Schelling has a theory of biological evo-lution and that he denies that one species can evolve into another. Thesetwo points seem to be the only ones on which they agree. According toRichards Schelling, there are archetypes that are similar to Platos forms.An archetype of a species represents its ideal and a species is the speciesthat it is insofar as it approximates its archetype. Evolution marks the pro-gressive realization of a species archetype, and so evolution involves an in-creasing approximation of the archetype. Because a species more closelyapproximates its archetype as it evolves, evolution is not only develop-mental but also progressive.


In his otherwise appreciative review of Grants Philosophies of Nature af-ter Schelling, Joseph P. Lawrence observes that clarity is not Grants greatstrength (Lawrence 2007). Indeed, describing Grants interpretation ofSchellings views on evolution itself is an act of interpretation, and so apol-ogies are made in advance for any misreading. As noted above, Grantagrees with Richards that evolution, for Schelling, does not involvechange of species. Grant claims that Schelling rejects an Aristotelian read-ing of Platos philosophy. The forms are not external to the objects whichparticipate in them, according to this strong interpretation, but rather in-ternal. This would initially seem to place Platos philosophy closer to Aris-totles own understanding of the way in which a universal is instantiatedin a particular. However, Grants Schelling wants to reject this wholeproblematic. The form is no longer regulative but instead only descrip-tive. That is to say, Schelling believes that a species manifests itself, overtime, in all possible ways in which this species can exist. It would seemthat these ways are (well-nigh) innite. Grants reading sounds similar toRichards interpretation when the latter writes that only in innite timeand in full freedom would the possibilities of the species be realized(Richards 2002, 302303). The difference is that Richards holds that, forSchelling, a species archetype provides the pattern that the species asymp-totically approximates, whereas Grant believes that the archetype of a spe-cies only describes how the species has evolved. For Grants Schelling,the archetype can be partially discerned retrospectively by the way inwhich the species has evolved. An understanding of the pattern that hasemerged, however, does not allow prediction of how that pattern will con-tinue in the future.

In Platos Timaeus, the demiurge uses the forms as the patterns intowhich it shapes matter. Grants Schelling believes that matter has the abil-ity to shape itself according to patterns which it also generates. Thedemiurge and patterns become internal, as it were, to matter itself. Rich-ards Schelling would likely agree with this. It needs to be emphasized,however, that on Grants reading the patterns do not guide matter as itshapes itself but instead are only descriptions of the shapes it has assumed.

Whereas Richards Schelling believes that evolution involves the con-tinued approximation of a species to its archetype, Grants Schelling holdsthat evolution is the increasing manifestation of the ways in which thespecies can exist. Evolution is progressive on both readings, but in wayswhich are radically distinct. On Richards interpretation, there is progressin evolution because a species increasingly approximates its archetype.The archetype is thus regulative and teleological, and the course of evolu-tion is asymptotic. For Grant, however, the species continually strives tomanifest itself in all the possible ways in which it can occur. There is no


algorithm for a species development, however, and so there is no way topredict how it can develop. That it was possible for a species to develop ina certain way can only be known as a consequence of it having actually de-veloped that way. The archetype, then, would be the never-to-be-realizedcomplete description of these possible ways. Evolution is not aiming at anarchetype which itself remains xed, as in Richards reading, but ratherthe archetype itself develops over time. Richards interpretation would besimilar to travelers who want to arrive at a specic destination, to risk ananalogy, while Grants reading would resemble tourists who want to visitas many different places as possible. Travelers progress insofar as they jour-ney nearer to their destination, but tourists progress inasmuch as they so-journ in more places.

In reading Schellings Naturphilosophie, Grant frequently turns to theinterpretation of Baruch de Spinoza (16321677) proposed by GillesDeleuze (19251995). This paragraph and the next speculate on thesignicance of this. Deleuze believes that Spinozas substance is the sumtotal of its manifestations through its attributes. That is to say, substanceis not something that manifests itself through its attributes, but insteadsubstance is those manifestations. The former alternative would have sub-stance existing even if, perhaps per impossible, its attributes did not. Sub-stance would not exist, on the second alternative, if its attributes did not,as substance is identical to the manifestation of its attributes. ImportingDeleuzes interpretation of Spinoza to Schelling would suggest, as dis-cussed above, that a species archetype is the ways in which that specieshas and will appear.

This Deleuzean reading of Schellings archetype suggests an alternativeinterpretation of Schellings absolute. As Frederick C. Beiser notes, whatKant claimed reason could not knowthe absolute or unconditionedSchelling wrote volumes about (Beiser 2002, 466). Schelling describesthe absolute as that which is neither subject nor object and as prior to thatdistinction. Schellings absolute seems to be that from which all thingsemanate and it could be compared to Spinozas substance. There are anumber of difculties that can be raised regarding Schellings absolute.Why would anything emerge out of it? What is its relation to the phe-nomena which do appear? Although Schelling rejects Kants distinctionbetween objects of appearance and things in themselves, it seems that hisown distinction between subjects and objects on the one hand and the ab-solute on the other recapitulates Kants distinction. Importing Deleuzesinterpretation of Spinozas substance into Schellings absolute dissolvesthese difculties. On this view, the absolute just is the totality of its ap-pearance and so there is no prior unity from which differentiationemerges. The question of why there exist a plurality of things then reduces


to the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Not aneasy question to answer, no doubt, but seemingly more tractable than whyan absolute of which nothing can be predicated would manifest itself assubjects and objects.

It is beyond this articles scope to provide the detailed textual analysisrequired to decide between the readings of Richards and Grant. In anyevent, such analysis would have to make a number of contestable hermen-eutical assumptions which would subsequently determine the results ob-tained. This is also true, of course, in deciding which interpretation ispreferable as an understanding of nature. Perhaps this reduces to the ques-tion of whether it is better to be, in the senses discussed above, travelers ortourists.9

Evolution, Emanation, Development, According to HegelHegel believes that there is no progress in nature, only circular change asin the seasons following each other or the cycle of birth, reproduction, anddeath. Nature is to be regarded as a system of stages, the one proceedingof necessity out of the other, and being the proximate truth of that fromwhich it results, Hegel maintains, and he explains that the relation ofthese stages is not to be thought of as a natural engendering of one out ofthe other however, but as an engendering within the inner Idea whichconstitutes the ground of nature (Hegel 1970, section 249, 212). (Onlyat the level of spirit is there actual progress. Although Hegel would vehe-mently reject the popular saying that history is one damn thing after an-other, as he believes that history is the progressive realization of humanfreedom, he might grudgingly accept it if applied to nature.) Hegel be-


9. Compare Wilde 1979, 216: The more mechanical people, to whom life is a shrewdspeculation dependent on a careful calculation of ways and means, always know where theyare going, and go there. They start with the desire of being the Parish Beadle, and, inwhatever sphere they are placed, they succeed in being the Parish Beadle and no more.A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a Member of Parlia-ment, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally te-dious, invariable succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Thosewho want a mask have to wear it. But with the dynamic forces of life, and those in whomthose dynamic forces become incarnate, it is different. People whose desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they are going. They cant know. In one sense of the word itis, of course, necessary, as the Greek oracle said, to know oneself. That is the rst achieve-ment of knowledge. But to recognize that the soul of a man is unknowable is the ultimateachievement of Wisdom. The nal mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in abalance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star bystar, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? When the sonof Kish went out to look for his fathers asses, he did not know that a man of God was wait-ing for him with the very chrism of coronation, and that his own soul was already the Soulof a King.

lieves that the natures conceptual forms can be arranged in a rational hier-archy such that they more closely approximate spirit, and it is the burdenof much of his Philosophy of Nature to provide this hierarchy. However, hedenies that any form is itself transformed, or transforms itself, into anyother form. Although nature provides spirits material context, Hegel seesspirit as emergent from nature, and so he denies that a reduction of spiritto nature would be possible.

Hegel rejects both evolution and emanation because they lack explana-tory power. Evolution does not explain how and why higher forms couldevolve from lower ones, and emanation cannot explain how and why lowerforms would emanate from higher ones. He sees emanation as less incor-rect than evolution, though, because emanation understands that thelower must be explained in terms of the higher.10 Hegels own view couldbe regarded as a synthesis of evolution and emanation. Higher forms donot evolve from lower ones, but rather there is a development of the con-cept in nature which allows these forms to be arranged hierarchically. Thisway of expressing things is inexact, however, in that it risks missingHegels view that natures forms actually exist in a hierarchical arrange-ment, such that this arrangement is discerned rather than imposed. AsHegel translucently explains: Philosophical thinking knows that natureis idealized not simply by us, that nature or rather its Notion is not com-pletely incapable of overcoming its extrinsicality, but that it is the eternalidea dwelling within nature, or rather the implicit spirit working within


10. Hegel 1970, section 249, 213214: Evolution and emanation are the two forms inwhich progressive stages of nature have been grasped. The course of evolution begins withwhat is imperfect and formless, such as humidity and aquatic formations, leads on to whatemerged from water, such as plants, polyps, mollusca, and shes, progresses to land ani-mals, and nally arrives at man, as he emerges out of animals. The doctrine is derived fromthe philosophy of nature, and is still widely prevalent. Although quantitative difference iseasy enough to understand however, it explains nothing. The course of emanation is pecu-liar to the oriental world, where it is regarded as a series of degradations, beginning withthe perfection and absolute totality of God, God has created, and fulgurations, ashes, andlikenesses have proceeded from Him, so that the rst likeness most resembles Him. Therst production is supposed in its turn, to have given birth to something less perfect thatitself, and so on down the scale, so that each thing begotten is in its turn procreative downas far as the negative, which is matter, or the acme of evil. In this way emanation ends inthe complete absence of form. Both these progressions are onesided and supercial, andpostulate an indeterminate goal, but the progress from the more to the less perfect has theadvantage of holding up the prototype of a perfect organism, which is the picture thatmust be in our minds eye if we are to understand stunted organizations. That which ap-pears to be subordinate to them, such as organs with no functions may only be clearly un-derstood by means of the higher organizations in which one recognizes the functions theyperform. If that which is perfect is to have the advantage over that which is imperfect itmust exist in reality, and not only in the imagination.

it, which brings about the idealizing or sublation of extrinsicality, andthat it does so because this form of spirits determinate being stands incontradiction to the inwardness of the essence of spirit (Hegel 1978, sec-tion 381 addition, 45).

As David G. Ritchie recognizes in his 1893 Darwin and Hegel: Hegelsdevelopment (Entwickelung) is not a time-process, but a thought-process;yet Hegels method of exposition is such that the thought-process is apt tobe read as if it were meant to be a time-process. To avoid misunderstand-ing him we must . . . read Hegel backwards (Ritchie 1893, 47). Thislast point relates to what Hegel takes from emanation, namely, the ideathat the lower forms are explained from the perspective of the higher, inthat lower forms can be understood only in reference to the whole ofwhich they are parts. We only understand a part of anything when we canlook at it as a part of a whole, and we only understand the elementarystages when we know them as the elementary stages of something morehighly developed, Ritchie writes, adding that this is true in each specialbranch of knowledge, and it is true in the attempt to think the universe asa whole (47). (Marx is eminently Hegelian when he observes: Humananatomy contains the key to the anatomy of the ape. The intimations ofhigher development among the subordinate animal species, however, canbe understood only after the higher development is already known (Marx1973, 106)). Because Hegel sees natures forms arranged so as to prog-ress from the lower to those higherrather than emanations degenerationfrom the higher to the lowerMartin Drees describes Hegels Naturphilo-sophie as an inverted emanation.11

As discussed above, Schelling believes that there is a continuum fromthe most basic level of matter to humans. To use Hegels language,Schelling would maintain that the difference between nature and spirit ismerely that the latter is more complex than the former, but he also wouldclaim that there is no break or rupture between them. By contrast, Hegelholds that while spirit emerges from nature, there is a qualitative differ-ence between them. There is progress in spirit but not in nature. Spirit re-


11. Drees 1992, 58: Since Hegel repeatedly emphasizes that what is more complexand more perfect is not only a clue but an actual and ontological presupposition of what ismore simple, the progress taking place in the Philosophy of Nature cannot be structuralizedby means of an evolutionary presentation. It would make sense, however, to say that thenotional development and progression that takes place in the Philosophy of Nature presentsthe results of an inverted emanation. Since the Philosophy of Nature does not explicate a natu-ral proceeding forth, but . . . a development of the Notion, the Notions development be-ing exposed here is exposed retrospectively from the point of view of a Notion that is awareof itself, i.e. Spirit.

members its past and imagines a future, unlike nature, and so it pro-gresses.

Schelling and Hegel after Darwin: A Brief ComparisonWhat remains of Schelling and Hegels views of evolution, after Darwinsrevolution? To begin with Hegel, he denies that there is progress in na-ture. Many evolutionary biologists would agree. If that is correct, thenHegels Naturphilosophie is not really challenged and would remain intacteven after Darwin. It must be conceded that Hegel rejects the evolution ofthe species, although he does not reject natural selection, as this is intro-duced only later by Darwin. Many evolutionary biologists would agreewith Hegels denial that there is progress in nature. If there is evolutionaryprogress, however, this would mean that Hegel was mistaken in thinkingthat there is no progress in nature. This would suggest that the distinctionbetween nature and spirit would need to become more of a continuum andless of a sharp line than Hegel allows. This need not mean that there isstill not some qualitative rupture, but its parameters would have to becongured differently.

Whereas Hegel rejects evolution and progress in nature, Schelling ac-cepts both. Turning to Richards Schelling, most contemporary evolution-ary biologists would reject his view that a species evolves so as to approxi-mate its archetype.12 Grants Schelling might have a better reception, assome biologists would be receptive to the idea that, given time and per-haps life on other planets, evolution will tend to generate all possibleforms of life. All biologists would reject Schellings denial that a speciescan evolve into another and many would repudiate his view that evolutionis progressive. To return to the distinction between travelers and touristsintroduced above: Although biologists are tourists in explicitly denyingthat evolution is progressive, they are travelers if they nevertheless implic-itly presuppose a notion of progress. As argued below, many are touristswho travel a lot.

Progress as Complexity, Autonomy, or ConvergenceMany evolutionary biologists argue that the notion of progress has noplace in evolutionary theory. For example, Stephen Jay Gould maintainsthat progress is a noxious, culturally embedded, untestable, nonopera-tional, intractable idea that must be replaced if we wish to understand thepatterns of history (Gould 1988, 319). However, he also recognizes thatclaims and metaphors about evolution as progress continue to dominate


12. However, see below the comparison of the views of Richards Schelling and SimonConway Morris.

all of our literature (Gould 1996, 21).13 This is no accident. Evolutionarybiology seeks to discover the shape of lifes history, as Brett Calcottt andKim Sterelny explain, and one proposal is that this shape consists in a di-rectional trend, wherein one or more crucial parameters increase overtime.14 Some biologist suggest that progress is the key parameter. Others,regarding progress as too anthropocentrism, have proposed alternativecandidates. However, these recapitulate similar difculties as are foundwith progress. This section discusses several of these candidates and theirproblems.

Progress in evolution is often understood as increasing complexity,although complexity has proven no easier to dene than progress.Daniel W. McShea writes: Even narrowly dened, complexity is still acompound term: it is composed of four distinct types, based on two di-chotomies: object versus process, and hierarchical versus nonhierarchicalstructure. . . . The four possible combinations of these terms generate fourtypes: (1) nonhierarchical object complexity; (2) nonhierarchical processcomplexity; and (3) hierarchical object complexity; and (4) hierarchicalprocess complexity. Object complexity refers to the number of differ-ent physical parts in a system, as McShea denes these terms, and pro-cess complexity to the number of different interactions between them(McShea 1996, 479). By contrast, hierarchical object complexity is thenumber of levels of nestedness of parts within wholes (480). Althoughthese distinctions are useful for conceptual analysis of complexity, theyare conceptually independent and so cannot be combined or summed. As aconsequence, it is impossible in principle, McShea believes, to determinewhether a human is more complex than a trilobite overall (480). It is notclear that there is a consistent trend towards increased complexity since


13. He also believes that the notion of progress is Darwins greatest failure of resolu-tion, Gould 2002, 467.

14. See Calcottt and Sterelny 2011, 12: Evolutionary biology is, in part, a historicalscience. One of its aims is to examine the shape of lifes historyits major episodes and de-velopments. Such a project presupposes we know the features of lifes history most in needof explanation. To suggest the shape, we rst need to decide what that shape is. A recurringand controversial suggestion is that lifes history is marked by a directional trend. As awhole, the average value of some key parameter (diversity, complexity, adaptedness) in-creases over time. . . . Much of this work has grown out of the idea that the history of life isprogressive. From simple origins, more advanced, better adapted, better designed formshave emerged, replacing their inferior predecessors. This idea has been at once inuentialand deeply problematic. . . . Making the idea of progressive change empirically tractable,and purging it of anthropocentrism, has proven extraordinarily difcult. The problem ofdetoxifying the concept of progress has motivated attempts to decouple the work on large-scale trends from directional and progressivist ideas of history. Instead, we have seen for-mulations of directionality focused on complexity, diversity, or some similar surrogate forprogress, though each of these has its own problems. . . .

the metazoan, even if attention is restricted to any particular type, as thereare also cases of decreased complexity, and so McShea argues that the evi-dence so far supports only agnosticism, indeed it supports an emphaticagnosticism (489). Recognizing that there remains a general sense thatsomething is increasing, McShea concludes with these pessimistic words:Given the historical background and the power of culture to penetrateperception, it is reasonable to wonder whether this impression of large-scale directionality is anything more than a mass illusion. Still, the pointhere is not to deny that directionality exist. Something may be increasing.But is it complexity? (489).

Further complicating matters, Derek D. Turner builds on McSheas ar-guments to endorse a modest skepticism, arguing that one cannot simplylook at a pattern and read off changes in the strength of the directionalbias in the underlying process that produced it and that a trend pro-duced by a constant bias and a moving upper boundary is empirically in-distinguishable from a tread produced by a bias whose strength changesover time (Turner 2009, 355).

Bernd Rosslenbroich seeks a third way between using progress in anindiscriminate way and ignoring general trends. He suggests that oneof the most promising patterns is the increased autonomy of organismsin the sense of an emancipation from the environment (Rosslenbroich2006, 60). Although Rosslenbroichs research program intends rst todene, recognize, and describe autonomy and then attempt to operational-ize it scientically, he also is pessimistic, writing that after identifyingmany examples it is currently an open question whether it will be possibleto make the pattern testable (64).

In The Dialectical Biologist, Richard Levins and Richard Lewontinwholly reject complexity as a useful concept in evolutionary biology. Theywrite:

The supposed increase in complexity . . . during evolution does notstand on any objective ground. . . . How are we to measure thecomplexity of an organism? In what sense is a mammal more com-plex than a bacterium? Mammals have many types of cells, tissues,and organ systems and in this respect are more complex, but bacte-ria can carry out many bio-synthetic reactions, such as the synthesisof certain amino acids, that have been lost during the evolution ofthe vertebrates, so in that sense bacteria are more complex. There isno indication that vertebrates in general enter into more direct in-teractions with other organisms than do bacteria, which have theirown parasites, predators, competitors, and symbionts. And even ifwe are to accept sheer structural variation as an indication of com-


plexity, we do not know how to order it, not to speak of assigning ametric to it. Is a mammal more complex structurally than a sh?Yet 370 million years passed between the origin of the shes at theend of the Cambrian and the rst mammals at the beginning of theCretaceous. If one starts with the assertion that structural complex-ity has increased, it is possible to rationalize the assertion a posteri-ori by enumerating those features, for example, a very largehindbrain, that appears later in evolution and declaring them to bemore complex. The evident circularity of this procedure has notprevented its widespread practice. (Levins and Lewontin 1985, 17.)

It might be thought that evolutionary progress could be dened via theincreased quantity of genetic information over time: It is a beautiful curi-osity of paleontology and paleobotony that, as the ages and eons go by,DNA chains lengthen and genomes grow. If that is not progress, itmight be asked, what can it be? But why should lengthening rather thanshorteningto answer a question with a questionbe regarded as prog-ress? Advocates for bacteria could argue that the mere fact that genetic in-formation increases over time cannot itself be evidence for progress. It isconsidered progress that a single integrated circuit can now do what it for-merly would have taken hundreds of transistors or thousands of vacuumtube to accomplish, bacterias advocates might analogize, and it should beregarded as regress, not progress, that mammals require long DNA chainsto accomplish what bacteria do with their short ones. The increase in ge-netic information can only be deemed progress if has been already beendecided that mammals represent progress vis--vis bacteria. To then citean increase in genetic information itself as proof of progress, however,would be to engage in the evident circularity to which Levins and Lewon-tin object.15

Not only is this practice widespread, as Levins and Lewontin observe, itmay be that notions of progress are ineliminatable. In Monad to Man, Mi-chael Ruse shows that the notion of progress is frequently implicitly pres-ent even in those scientists who explicitly repudiate it (Ruse 1996).16 Forexample, biologists typically distinguish higher from lower animals. In


15. The advocates of bacteria could further charge that Kant implicitly engages in suchcircularity when he advances his seminal theory of evolution, articulated in Kant 2008.Kant suggests that evolution occurs by maximizing two properties: Ordnung (order or orga-nization) and Mannigfaltigkeit (diversity or multiplicity). Bacterias advocates would deny,however, that organization, order, or diversity can dened in a way that does not rep-licate the problems with progress.

16. See these reviews: Depew 1998; Van Der Beer 2000. For a survey of the debates, seeNitecki 1998; Greene 1991.

cases other than when discussing habitat niches in mountainous terrain,such a distinction presupposes some notion of progress.

In Lifes Solution, Simon Conway Morris argues that there is convergencein evolution (2003). An example is the camera lens eye, which has inde-pendently evolved several times. Conway Morris argues that convergenceis the rule in evolution. He rejects Goulds notion of the tape recorder oflife (see Gould 1989). Gould claims that evolution is primarily a result ofcontingent circumstances, such that if lifes tape recorder could be re-wound and replayed, the results would be almost entirely different. Con-way Morris maintains that the result would be almost entirely the same.This is not to say that the particular species that currently exist would bethe same after the rewind-and-replay, but that the basic features would besimilar. This is why Conway Morris thinks that humans are inevitable:Not necessarily homo sapiens, but a creature with human-like intelligence.Even if that asteroid had missed the Earth sixty-ve million years ago, orwhatever caused the CretaceousTertiary extinction event of the dinosaurs,a creature with human-like intelligence would have evolved. (Many pale-ontologists now believe that dinosaurs were social creatures who lived ingroups and reared their young, that they were highly active, and perhapswarm blooded; these traits suggest that the evolution of an intelligent di-nosaur would have been possible). Conway Morris believes that this con-vergence represents progress.17

If Conway Morris is correct about convergence, then there wouldbe progress in evolution. The structure of an organisms eye could be stud-ied to reveal its level of development. This view of progress would be sim-ilar to the view of Richards Schelling that evolution is a species progres-sive realization of its archetype. The question, though, would be whetherthe levels of development of an organisms various capacities and organs


17. Conway Morris 2003, 307: What about evolutionary progress, that term that S. J.Gould gently refers to as noxious. Simply because evolution has delivered us to a pointwhere only now can the word progress make any sense, need not mean that it either hasno relevance to the human condition or that it lacks an evolutionary reality. That the bacte-ria are still with us, and that without them the planet would soon grind to a halt in the ab-sence of their recycling abilities, misses the point. Neither is progress a question of thesheer number of species, nor the supposed number of body plans. What we do see throughgeological time is the emergence of more complex worlds. Nor is this a limiting view. Itmight be premature to suppose that even the bacteria of today are some sort of honoraryfossils, unchanged relics from the Archaean pond-scum. Nor need we imagine that the ap-pearance of humans is the culmination of all evolutionary history. Yet, when within the an-imals we see the emergence of larger and more complex brains, sophisticated vocalizations,echolocation, electrical perception, advanced social systems including eusociality, vivipar-ity, warm-bloodedness, and agricultureall of which are convergentthen to me thatsounds like progress.

could be compared with those of another. One animal may have a morehighly developed eye than another, for example, but the second may havea more highly developed brain. Would the latter animal be higher thanthe former? I see intelligence as just one of a variety of adaptationsamong tetrapods for survival, J. John Sepkoski Jr. (19481999) says,adding that running fast in a herd while being dumb as shit, I think, is avery good adaptation for survival (quoted in Ruse 1996, 486). It is notonly the capacities and organs which progress, according to RichardsSchelling, but also the organism as a whole: Humans are the highest crea-tures because they are the most complex. Even if Conway Morris is correctthat there is an inevitable evolutionary convergence towards human-likeintelligence, he seems unable to explain why this particular trajectory ofevolutionary convergence would be superior to that of others.

Is Progress Like Pornography?In the 1964 obscenity case, Jacobellis v. Ohio, Justice Potter Stewart (19151985) writes: Under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminallaws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. Ishall not today attempt further to dene the kinds of material I under-stand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps Icould never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it,and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.18 Just as Stewartclaims to be able to recognize pornography without being unable to deneit, so it is tempting to propose that persons can recognize progress in evo-lution even though they cannot dene it. This would have the advantageof explaining why evolutionary biologists presuppose progressive notionseven when they explicitly denounce them. They denounce them becausethey cannot dene them, but they nevertheless can recognize them. Itwould have the even more considerable advantage of allowing persons toclaim that there is progress in evolution while declining to explain pre-cisely what they are talking about, as they could rely on everyone knowingthat.

Temptation must be resisted, sadly, in this instance. Followers ofSchelling and Hegel should reject such appeals as insufciently dialectical,even if Schelling makes them when discussing the absolute and Hegeluses them when denouncing phrenology and physiognomy. Appeals towhat everyone supposedly knows are actually appeals to unreective com-mon sense and intuitions, and so must be abandoned. Marxists would un-mask such appeals, moreover, as crass instances of ideology. They would


18. The motion picture was The Lovers (Les Amants), a 1958 French lm directed byLouis Malle.

point to the ways such appeals have been employed to legitimate imperi-alism, racism, and sexism. While such bad manners can be expected fromcapitalists, philosophers should behave better.

Progress as ConstitutiveThere seems to be an impasse regarding progress in evolution. Many evo-lutionary biologists explicitly reject it, while implicitly presupposing it.It appears that some such notion is required insofar as the shape of lifeshistory consists in a directional trend, moreover, but detoxifying prog-ress of its anthropocentrism, to employ Calcottt and Sterelnys term, hasnot been successful and surrogate notions seem no more viable (Calcotttand Sterelny 2011, 2). Although it is tempting to claim that progress canbe recognized even if it cannot be dened, this temptation must be re-jected. Fortunately, there is an alternative.

The alternative is to explicitly dene biological progress in terms of hu-manity, such that humanity becomes the crown of creation. Rather thanpurging anthropocentrism from the idea of progressive change, anthropo-centrism should be vigorously endorsed. This view is obviously indebtedto Conway Morris notion of evolutionary convergence. What is added isthe explicit claim that those trajectories of convergence which would re-sult in human-like intelligence and moral sensibilities are superior toother trajectories. This would allow the articulation of a Naturphilosophiewith a teleological notion of evolution according to which nature desiresto know itself. Insofar as the notion of progress is either conceptuallyineliminatable from evolutionary biology or else necessary to articulatethe idea that the shape of lifes history consists in a directional trend,moreover, it should be regarded is constitutive. Such a Naturphilosophiewould be closer to that of Schelling than Hegels, in that it would agreewith the former that there actually is progress in nature. This would stillleave open the possibility that spirit emerges nonreducibly from nature,constituting a rupture, and this aspect would be more Hegelian.19


19. Compare Ritchie 1893, 57: What, then, is the effect of the theory of natural selec-tion on Hegels philosophy? Hegels method of philosophising Nature could adjust itselfquite easily to the new scientic theory. The factors which Darwin assumes for his theoryareVariation, Heredity, Struggle for Existence. Now are not Heredity and Variation justparticular forms of the categories of Identity and Difference, whose union and interactionproduce the actually existing kinds of living beings, i.e., those determinate similaritiesand dissimilarities which constitute species? But this resultdenite, clearly markedkindscomes about through struggle, i.e., through negation, the constant elimination ofthe less t. Survival of the ttest, on Darwins theory, comes about only through the nega-tive process of destruction. In the stage of mere Nature this negativity is mechanical andexternal. In the higher stage of consciousness (spirit) this negativity is self-determined,free.

Richards Schelling believes that the archetype of a species provides thepattern that the species asymptotically approximates. Contemporary biol-ogists would resist any notion of archetypes as already existing patterns,but they could readily accept such an account if it were rephrased in eco-systemic terms, as progressive sequences of collective interplays maturingto climax communities such as rainforests. There would be one remainingdisagreement, however. Schelling would maintain that such archetypal,climactic steady state occurs at the level of individuals (species), whereasthe biologists would claim it occurs at the level of groups (biomes).20

It might be objected that there is no need to anthropocentrically con-ceptualize progressive evolution, with humanity as the crown of creation.If there is progress, it could be asked, why should it suddenly stop withhumanity? Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (16571757) speculates thatthere are extraterrestrial intelligences and that these stand on a ladder as-cending to wisdom, for example, and Kant further suggests that humansstand on a middle rung of that ladder (Fontenelle 1990, 3747; Kant2008, 151152). Moreover, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (18441900)advances an evolutionary notion of humans as way stations to superior de-scendants, the bermensch (overman) (Nietzsche 2006). The rst point tobe made in response is that it seems that evolutionary biologists alreadyimplicitly take humanity as the standard by which progress is measured.The proposed alternative would only make this explicit. Second, attemptsto imagine some standard higher than humanity nevertheless would stillregard, albeit surreptitiously, humanity as creations crown. This is so be-cause sufciently articulating a standard higher than humanity so that itcan actually function as a standard would be only an extrapolation fromhumanitys traits. After all, even Nietzsches overman is human, all toohuman. That is, the overman is humanity with what Nietzsche regards asits positive qualities accentuated and its negative features eliminated.Fredric Jameson has shown that, although science ction provides littleinsight into the future, it does disclose the present (compare Jameson2005). Similarly, little green men and the overman are not alternatives tohumanity but rather expressions of humanitys aspirations (or fears).

Does this mean that we are stuck with us and that we are ourown ultimate horizon? Not exactly.

Since progress and humanity can be dened only through referenceto uswhere us and we will be whoever has the ability to deneand the political power to impose that denitionthere is the consider-able danger that this notion of progress will legitimate a multitude ofevils, including ethnocentrism, imperialism, racism, sexism, and xeno-


20. For a discussion of Schellings notion of species, see Richards 2002, 298306.

phobia. Having successfully resisted the temptation to dene progressanalogously to Stewarts pornography, it is gratifying to indulge the irre-sistible temptation to quote the observation of Oscar Fingal OFlahertieWills Wilde (18541900) that all great ideas are dangerous (1979,215). The danger of understanding progress as that which approximatesus cannot be overcome but only negotiated. There is hope that it may besuccessful negotiated insofar as we renounce, in thought, word, anddeed, the evils mentioned above. Of course, we must expand the sphereof we to incorporate all people and perhaps some animals. We mayeventually expand we, peradventure, to include the entire cosmos,thereby becoming truly cosmopolitan and so nally human. To paraphrasePublius Terentius Afer (195/185159 BCE), homines sumus: nil a nobisalienum putamus.

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