Topological Ontology and Logic of Qualitative quantity

series of Measure Relations” /b/, and in “Elective Affinity” /c/. The notion of “qualitative
quantity” is the reason for Hegel to quote Carl Linnaeus’s “Nature Does Not Make Leaps”/ §
774/.
Hegel’s emphasis on the leap and nodal line in the relationship of qualitative and
quantitative and the reason to set in brakets the Carl Linnaeus aphorism “Nature Does Not
Make Leaps” /natura non facit saltus/, comes from the point of observeability and
perceptability. This consideration is clear in Hegel:
“In thinking about the gradualness of the coming-to-be of something, it is ordinarily
assumed that what comes to be is already sensibly or actually in existence; it is not yet
perceptible only because of its smallness. Similarly with the gradual disappearance of
something, the non-being or other which takes its place is likewise assumed to be really
there, only not observable, and there, too, not in the sense of being implicitly or ideally
contained in the first something, but really there, only not observable.” /§ 777/.
It looks like Hegel’s emphasis on the leap and quality /that breaks in/per saltum is
considerd with our human ability to percept and observe easy qualitative difference of
something apparent, that lack “smallness” – large enough to be noticed, something visible
and observable. It seems that qualitative quantity is ignored because of its notion of
gradualness and lack of ability to leap as quality per saltum. Emphasizing on the
transformation of quality to quality by leaps “per saltum” in the “nodal Line of Measure
Relations”, in § 777 Hegel defines “the attempt to explain coming-to-be or ceasing-to-be on
the basis of gradualness of the alteration” as “tedious like any tautology”. Hiding the
qualitative quantity behind the curtains of “tautology”, in his liturgy of quality per saltum,
Hegel is “misleading” the philosophers following him, specially the dialectical materialism
of Engels and Marx, who created the clishe of first law of dialectic of transition of quantity
into quality and visa versa.
Hegel’s notion of the “qualitative quantity” became subject of discussion in the very
beginning of the Twenty century by John Grier Hibben in his “Hegel’s Logic: An Essay in
Interpretation” /1902/. 47 Discussing “quantitative relation”, in Chapter VIII: “Quantity”,
John Grier Hibben asserted:
“…the concept of quantity will not explain it /the nature of quantitative relation”- my
note/ satisfactorily, and we fall back again upon the idea of quality in order to account for
it. Thus the idea of quality was found to be partial, and when developed to its utmost limit,
carried our thought over into the sphere of quantity. Then the idea of quantity when fully
developed brought us back again to that of quality. Is the movement of thought only a circle
that merely brings us back to the starting-point According to Hegel’s method, the
incompleteness of thought at this stage is overcome by the dialectic process which combines
these two ideas of quality and of quantity into one complete relation representing an
advanced and higher point of view. This relation Hegel calls that of qualitative quantity,
or of measure (das Maass). This is the third and last stage in the development of the idea of
quantity, and represents, as Hegel insists, both the unity and the truth of quality and of
quantity combined. “ 48
To my knowledge, in contemporary dialectics and philosophical research the significant
notion of Hegel’s category “qualitative quantity” remained inapparent /In Heidegger’s sense
of his “Phenomenology of Inapparent”. 49 Reason for this is probably Hegel’s on warning
47 John Grier Hibben in his “Hegel’s Logic: An Essay in Interpretation”, 1902
48 Ibid
49 Martin Heidegger, “Phenomenology of the inapparent” /“Phänomenologie des Unscheinbaren”/ Seminar in
Zähringen 1973
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