ABSTRACT
The transition from the Logic to the Philosophy of Nature has generally been regarded as a major difficulty in Hegel's system. The actual world, it is felt, and empirical scientific knowledge about it are irreducibly non-logical and cannot be derived from pure thought alone. Thought and extension are two of the attributes of God, the only two to which we have access, but each of them is infinite in the sense that each is, as it were, co-extensive with substance as a whole and neither limits or depends on the other. Thought, Hegel repeatedly tells us, is infinite. The target of Hegel's criticism in the second sentence is not entirely clear, but the passage to which he refers suggests that it is Schelling's Naturphilosophie. When Hegel speaks about the infinity of thought or thoughts, more than one sense of infinity' is generally in play.
