QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

harmony, was reminiscent of Christian neo-Platonism. In the manner of Plato, Hegel also
considered ideas to be real. They did not depend on the mind which thought about them.
According to Hegel, the misconception that concepts belonged to the subject or were just the
contents of the mind was a consequence of Cartesian mind-body dualism. He also contested the
generally accepted thinking that anything which was not matter must be mind. Concepts created
a logical process in reality and generated new concepts through contrasts. This process did not
advance in time or in space but as the consequence of a logical necessity, which was God. 338
Hegel attempted to unite the natural science of his time with the concept of reality as a process.
He saw the activities of living beings as a manifestation of a new principle of organisation
which produced qualitative differences, something that dead material did not have the capability
to do. The world was real, but not ’ready’. Even though Hegel presupposed the existence of
space and time in which everything was manifested, it was permeated by a fundamental logical
process which was nature turning into mind. In one way, Hegel thought of nature as a machine,
in another it was an active process of development which advanced as a consequence of logical
necessity. 339 He thought that although until now (i.e. his present) the world-spirit had been busy
with the objective world, in his time the flow of activity had been interrupted, and that alongside
the kingdom of the world the Kingdom of God might be thought again as meaning a sense for a
higher inner life and purer spirituality. 340
Hegel’s philosophy aroused huge interest, but on the other hand, since he was evaluated within
the generally accepted mechanistic-deterministic paradigm, the speculative nature of his
propositions could not be defended. In his analysis, Collingwood stated that even though some
type of synthesis was required to make evolution understandable, Hegel had been in too much of
a hurry. He valued ancient thinking and understood both Plato and Aristotle, but through this
contact he had lost his connection to the practical life of his own time. Dead matter and evolution
were simply not compatible. Hegel’s doctrine did not work in a particle-mechanistic physical
world which was believed to obey deterministic laws. Natural science had to resolve its
problems by employing its own empirical methods. 341
Even though, in his own philosophy, Hegel radically rejected a world-view which was founded
338
Aspelin 1995, 431, 437. Collingwood 1960, 121,122.
339
Collingwood 1960, 128 -130.
340
Hegel 1985, 1.
341
Collingwood 1961, 121,129,132.
128