ABSTRACT
In addition to his usual term for thinking (Denken), Hegel also uses the expression ‘meta-thinking’ (Nachdenken). The implication of the prefix is not that meta-thinking is thinking about thought, but that it is thought about things to which our primary and prior access was secured by some other means than thought. Meta-thinking is, as it were, the way in which we transpose some ‘content’ which, though thought-ridden, is not in the ‘form’ of thought into the appropriate form.1 It does not cover only or even primarily philosophical thinking, for which Hegel’s usual word is simply ‘thinking’. It includes, for example, attempts to prove that God exists in contrast to the simple faith which preceded them. But most importantly it includes the thinking involved in the natural sciences. Hegel did not devote a special section of the Encyclopaedia or a course of lectures to the history of the natural sciences as such, as he did to the other ways in which men have attempted to understand the world-art, religion and philosophy. This is no doubt because the second volume of the Encyclopaedia is concerned with the philosophy of nature and this inevitably contains much historical material. For it is clear from references to them throughout his works that Hegel regarded the rise of the natural sciences as a crucial phase of human development and as a necessary precondition of his own philosophy.2 This chapter will be concerned with his view of the natural sciences as such.
