Real Process: How Logic and Chemistry Combine in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature

Patrick Colgan is the executive director of the Canadian Museum of
Nature in Ottawa.

Real Process analyzes two portions of Hegel’s work in which chemical
phenomena are “interpreted” within his overall framework—one in
which logic and experience lie within an ultimate reality of
“Spirit.” Burbidge begins with an overview of Hegel’s philosophy
and his historical setting. From the Science of Logic, Real Measure (a
“metaphysics” of quantification) and Chemism (an “application”
of Hegel’s approach to chemistry) are discussed, as are 11 paragraphs
(presented in German and English) from the Philosophy of Nature. In
sharp contrast to the numbing obscurity of his subject, Burbidge writes
clearly and directly, but the fundamental problem remains: no one,
including professionals like Popper and Russell, can understand Hegel,
with his confusion of logic and observation, his meaningless or false
apriorisms, and his unresolved “dialectical” complications.

This book demonstrates that Hegel had much greater affinity with
Aristotle, alchemy, and (anachronistically) Teilhard de Chardin than to
philosophers of science or to theoretical chemists such as Pauling.
Although Burbidge carefully sets Hegel’s writing in the context of his
contemporary philosophers and chemists, there is no mention of his
influence on future theoreticians (presumably because there was none).
Indeed, when comprehensible, Hegel curls the hair of current
theoreticians of such topics as infinity and measurement.

In the final analysis, Real Process is little more than an irrelevant
exercise in the history of ideas.