Hegel and The Sidera Medicea

Why Hegel did not read the Works of Laplace1

Preface

In the life of the movement the bodies have no

relationship yet, hence there is no quality.2
Hegel

Whole, half and quarter errors are very difficult

and tedious to set up, to sift through and to place
the truth where it belongs.
Goethe

If you want to show, portray and heal an old and open wound in Hegel's philosophy of nature it is
worth starting from two insights on the subject that span the gap between possibility and facticity in
his mechanics. On the one hand, the possibility, Slavoy Žižek shows in Einstein's theory of
relativity a basic figure of Hegelian thinking, the transition from subject and substance through the
predicate:
“A perfect example of this Hegelian inversion–passage of subject into predicate–is offered by the
theory of relativity. As is well known, Einstein's revolution in the conception of the relationship
between space and matter occured in two steps. First, he refuted the Newtonian idea of a
homogeneous, “uniform” space by demonstrating that matter “curves” space. It is because of
matter, that the shortest way between two points is not necessarily a straight line–if the space is
“bent” by matter, the shortest way is a curve. This, however, is only the first of Einstein's steps; it
still implies the notion of matter as a substantial entity, as an agent independent of space which acts
upon it: bends it. The crucial breakthrough is brought about Einstein's next step, his thesis
according to which “matter is nothing but curved space”. Already on the level of style, this
inversion (of matter qua cause curving space into matter qua the very curvature of space) is deeply
Hegelian. It repeats the figure that occurs again and again in Hegel, the general form of which is
best exemplified by the dialectic of essence and appearance.”3
On the other hand, from an essay entitled The Spirit Of Gravity by David Kolb, a text on Hegel's
aesthetics from 1996, one gains the insight that Hegel excludes the curvature of space in his (point-)
mechanics that Žižek uses as an example of Hegelian thinking:
“Roche´s Limit is that distance from a planet at which a moon will be pulled apart by tidal forces.
Closer than the limit, the resultant force due to the difference between the attractive force felt by the
near side and felt by the far side will be greater then the strength of a rock to resist being torn
apart. The rings around the outer planets may have been caused by older moons being destroyed in
this way, or by the inability of a stable moon to accrete from material located inside the limit.”4
1 To sketch the problem of the topic of this essay briefly I would like to point out that Hegel had a German-language
edition of Laplace's Exposition du Système du Monde from 1797 by J.K.F. Hauff, entitled Darstellung des
Weltsystems.
2 “In dem Leben der Bewegung haben die Körper noch keine Beziehung, kommt es demnach zu keiner Qualität.”
Hegel, GW 10.2, p. 812. This quote, far from being a peculiarity to be discussed in Hegel's works, rather
summarizes briefly and concisely why the natural philosophy of German Idealism in mechanics still failed
substantially. The reason for this failure is initially of the same philosophical interest as the redesign of a speculative
mechanics that results dialectically and with Hegel's own logic in the further text. Ironically it is Kepler's first law,
the elliptical orbit, a law, according to Hegel, “everything depends on,” from which the transition from quantity to
quality, inherent in mechanics, takes place.
3 Slavoy Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do, 2. Edition 2002, first published 1991, p.58, FN 28. How far what
is presented here corresponds to the facts and in this way can be attributed to Einstein in a shortened manner and in
the face of the flood of theories and unsolved problems, is not further examined here. The idea, however, that things,
humans are not just “stardust” but also “curvature of space” is not new in physics. Curvature of space corresponds to
mass energy, which defines the concept of matter here. Matter and mass must be differentiated and mediated.
4 David Kolb, The Spirit of Gravity: Architecture and Externality, in Hegel and Aesthetics, edited by William Maker
If the speculative concept at Žižek is too unexplained to connect directly to Hegel´s philosophy of
nature, no one was found who would have remedied Hegel's shortcomings in a point mechanics,
excluding tidal forces, illustrated and explained by David Kolb at the Roche limit, who probably
became aware of this through the event of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1993 and 1994, and in
aesthetics. If Žižek lacks the full Idea, the concrete concept, as the solar system and the concrete
objects (sun, moon, comet and planet) and their orbits, David Kolb still lacks depth from here to
take the opportunity to redefine Hegel's speculative approach based on the curvature of space.5
The middle between the two insights, in which they are identical and meet, together with a further
discussion about a concrete form of a speculative philosophical mechanics, is the tidal gravity, and
ebb and flow as their first sensual appearance to us, which is the subject of this text and the short
following philosophical and historical introduction.

In 1754 Kant wrote a small scientific script with the very long title Untersuchung der Frage, ob die
Erde in ihrer Umdrehung um die Achse, wodurch sie die Abwechselung des Tages und der Nacht
hervorbringt, einige Veränderung seit den ersten Zeiten ihres Ursprungs erlitten habe und woraus
man sich ihrer versichern könne, welche von der Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin
zum Preise für das jetztlaufende Jahr aufgegeben worden. (Examination of the question whether the
earth in its rotation around the axis, which brings about the alternation of day and night, has
undergone some changes since the earliest times of its origin and from which one can be assured,
which of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin has been asked for the award for the current
year.) Kant strangely withheld the writing and did not submit it, so that during Kant's lifetime it was
only published in a Königsberger newspaper and was therefore unknown for a long time. Only
Friedrich Engels, who was certainly not interrested in a speculative mechanics any more,
recognized in his Dialectics of Nature (unfinished, written 1873 to 1886) the relevance of Kant's
early work, which anticipates the later discovery of the Roche limit in 1850:
“Kant, in 1754, was the first to put forward the view that the rotation of the earth is retarded by
tidal friction and that this effect will only reach its conclusion “when its (the earth's) surface will be
at relative rest in relation to the moon, i.e. when it will rotate on its axis in the same period that the
moon takes to revolve around the earth, and consequently will always turn the same side to the
latter.” He held the view that this retardation had its origin in tidal friction alone, arising,
therefore, from the presence of fluid masses on the earth: “If the earth were a quite solid mass
without any fluid, neither the attraction of the sun nor of the moon would do anything to alter its
free axial rotation; for it draws with equal force both the eastern and western parts of the terrestrial
sphere and so does not cause any inclination either to the one or to the other side; consequently it
allows the earth full freedom to continue this rotation unhindered as if there were no external
influence on it.” Kant could rest content with this result. All scientific pre-requisites were lacking at
that time for penetrating deeper into the effect of the moon on the rotation of the earth. Indeed, it
required almost a hundred years before Kant's theory obtained general recognition, and still longer
before it was discovered that the ebb and flow of the tides are only the visible aspect.”6
But Engels' text was not published until 1925 and was therefore largely ignored. By the time the
theory of relativity had opened up a completely new approach to mechanics anyway, and Einstein,
to whom the manuscript was finally handed over for an examination, said: “Mr. Eduard Bernstein
handed me a manuscript of Engels, scientific content, with the order to say whether this manuscript
should be printed or not. My view is this: if this manuscript came from an author who is not
interesting as a historical person, I would not recommend printing; because the content is of no
particular interest from the point of view of today's physics or for the history of physics.”7

N.Y. 1996, pp. 83-95. Andrew Cutrofello draw my attention to this in 2019.
5 “Accordingly, Hegel's natural philosophy would have to be rewritten today, according to his program, especially the
outlook on nature outlined therein, but only with a few of his results.” Ludwig Siep, Hegel Studien, Vol. 38,
Hamburg 2003, p. 147. In retrospect, in analogy to the Greek sculpture, one could actually claim that Hegel's
mechanics, with an additive structure of the masses, is more like an archaic sculpture.
6 Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Werke, Berlin 1962, Vol. 20, Dialektik der Natur, pp. 370-386.
7 The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 14, The Berlin Years: Writings & Correspondence, April 1923-May
However, this does not mean anything about a philosophical relevance of either Engels' manuscript
or Kant's early work. Philosophically and for the history of mechanics Engels nevertheless had the
right reflection on Kant by elevating him to the rank of the first, before Laplace, who had real
understanding of the principle of tidal gravity.8 And in addition, the natural philosophies of
Schelling and Hegel have also been included in the period of almost a hundred years since Kant. 9
This actually alone raises the question for these philosophers how they understood the tides after
Kant within their own theory of nature and how this is reflected in the research literature. Kant
himself called the tides “a force like gravity” and thus seems to have separated the tidal force from
gravity, which refers to masses in general:
“The attraction of the moon is just as old as the moon itself and a force like gravity, so it penetrates
to the center. As a result, the movement of the water at low and high tide extends to the bottom of
the sea and thus produces effects which the waves are unable to effect. It is the first cause of the
greatest changes on earth and some currents and whirls, as already mentioned, are the effects of
ebb and flow. So the Euripus, which can be seen from Euboea, is an effect of it by constantly
adjusting to the position of the moon. He gets restless at certain times, and his waves move strongly,
roar and strike back without the slightest wind. The great dissimilarity of this phenomenon with the
ebb and flow prevented from discovering the true cause of it for some time, yes, according to a well-
known fable, Aristotle should have plunged into the Euripus because he considered the cause of
that movement10 to be unfathomable.”
Kant was justifiably proud of his own knowledge, as the above quotation from Engels shows. And
following Holly Wilson “Kant says in an early logic lecture “with philosophical cognition, now,
one seeks from the character of things, to have insight into the connection of their grounds to
consequences.” Kant uses the example of the ebb and flow of the tide to illustrate what he means.
Active engagement in a way that make them look beyond the surface. It is instructive to note that
Kant calls the learned cognitions which do not look beyond the surface, cyclopic, or one-eyed. It is
hard to have depth perception without stereo vision and I think this metaphor captures nicely the
fact that looking for causes and ends ensures that students look behind the surface and look at
reality from two points of view.”11 The present text wants to follow the example of Kant by depth of
knowledge from another, unexpected side and to give the phenomena of the tides a contemporary
philosophical recognition within a speculative mechanics, since this has remained both a necessary
and as yet unresolved task of a speculative philosophy of nature. If the linguistic use of the terms
“Vernunft” and “Verstand” was still not definite before Kant, according to Hegel, then such a
conceptual separation shows itself in mechanics today, which, if possible, still has to be recognized
by the Concept.

As a student I had always understood and read Hegel's mechanics as the clearest part of his natural
philosophy. Hegel's distinction between absolute and finite mechanics, his criticism of Newton, his
adherence to Kepler and Galilei, elliptical orbits (t^2:a^3) and the law of free fall (a=t^2) in their
1925, Document 277.
8 “A Frenchman who arrives in London, will find philosophy, like everything else, very much changed there. He had
left the world a plenum, and he now finds it a vacuum. At Paris the universe is seen composed of vortices of subtile
matter; but nothing like it is seen in London. In France, it is the pressure of the moon that causes the tides; but in
England it is the sea that gravitates towards the moon (...) You will observe farther, that the sun, which in France is
said to have nothing to do in the affair, comes in here for very near a quarter of its assistance. According to your
Cartesians, everything is performed by an impulsion, of which we have very little notion; and according to Sir Isaac
Newton, it is by an attraction, the cause of which is as much unknown to us.” Voltaire, Letters On England, 1734,
XIV. Letter.
9 A generalization of the Kantian approach can be seen in E. Roche's discovery of the Roche limit in 1850, shortly
before Schelling's death in 1854. Riemann's idea of dynamizing geometry, which was later taken up by Einstein,
came up 1854.
10 The Euripos is a natural sea channel between the Greek island of Evia and the mainland. This narrowest strait in the
world is only 40 meters wide at its narrowest point. A feature of the strait is its unusual, changing tidal currents: the
regular currents change four times, the irregular currents up to twelve times a day.
11 Holly L. Wilson, Is Kant's Worldly Concept of Philosophy really „Regional Philosophy“, in: Kant und die
Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht: Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, Vol. 1, Berlin 2013, 767.
difference and conceptual transition fascinated me, next to my main interests in Greek sculpture,
temple architecture, universal history and philosophy. At that time, in 1990, I was all the more
disappointed with the scientific literature on Hegel's mechanics. Therefore I promised myself at the
end of my studies at university, if the opportunity may be offered by circumstances, to continue my
research in this sphere and to let time work for me until then. In 2012 the opportunity had come by
becoming acquainted with a German astronomer and astrophysicist at the university of Guanajuato,
Mexico. In 2013 I then noticed the untenability of a point mechanics in Hegel's natural philosophy,
which, as undisputed up to now, is even touted in a well-known dissertation as an extraordinary
research focus12 (“The possibility of a kinematic basis of a To Be Built Point Mechanics”).
But criticism offers no solution; it took another year until I, alerted by various phenomena in
different spheres, exposed the tidal gravity as the missing part in Hegel's mechanics instead or in
addition to Hegel's own distinction into four types of celestial bodies (sun, moon, comet, planet)
and their orbits within the solar system. The intention of my now ongoing research on Hegel's
mechanics is well expressed in a quote by Olivier Dupré: “The principle of a self-differentiated
unity (...). For Hegel, there is neither one universal force nor two simultaneous forces, but two
unified forces in their absolute identity.”13–and this is indeed the fact with general and tidal gravity
in terms of extensions and masses of celestial bodies rather than mass points within a system of two
or more bodies. It turned out that a new philosophical concept of gravitation is necessary, a
distinction, apparently without distinction. The Kantian distinction had to be retained in principle,
but removed from the element water. Kant is highly inconsistent on this. In the chapter “On
Water”14 in his Physical Geography Kant already deals with liquids in general, otherwise he would
not have been able to apply flood friction to the moon, which he actually did. - He must, however,
assume a younger age of the moon for this:
“When the earth approaches the standstill of its revolution with steady steps, the period of this
change will be completed when its surface is in relative rest with respect to the moon; i. if it turns
around the axis at the same time as the moon revolves around it, consequently it will always turn
the same side. This condition is caused to it by the movement of liquid matter, which covers part of
its surface only to a very shallow depth. If it were fluid through and through up to the center, the
attraction of the moon would in a very short time bring its axis movement to this measured remnant.
This suddenly shows us clearly the cause that has compelled the moon to always turn the same side
in its orbit around the earth. Not a preponderance of the facing parts over the averted, but a really
uniform turning of the moon around its axis just at the time when it is walking around the earth,
brings about this perpetual performance of the same half. From this it can be concluded with
certainty: that the attraction which the earth exerts on the moon at the time of its original
formation, when its mass was still liquid, the axis rotation, which this secondary planet may have

12 Tidal gravity, caused by the extension of celestrial bodies and masses, is impossible with a mechanics of points. To
make clear that this is indeed the case with Hegel, throughout his system, we give some undiscussed quotations:
1. “The bodies are in motion only as points; what determines gravity is only a spatial relationship of points to each
other.” Hegel, Werke, Volume 9, Frankfurt a. M. 1970, p. 107.
2. “Relative independence and the relative indifference of those bodies is expressed in the scientific description in
that the celestial mechanics perceive them as mass points–that is, one can abstract from their surface condition,
etc.” Thomas Posch, Die Mechanik der Wärme, Aachen 2005, p. 15. The same author notes in A Companion to
Hegel, edited by Stephen Houlgate 2011:
3. “This infinity (of the solar system) is, according to Hegel, more than a result of the boundary condition “absence
of friction,” since it is also connected with forms of motions that are entirely different from terrestrial ones, that is,
from ones in which friction generally plays a dominant role.”
4. “Insofar as Hegel conceives of mechanics as a pure theory of motion, in which the individual masses or bodies
are regarded only as points, he must justify why extended masses can be considered as points (or places) before
turning to a concrete system of gravitating bodies to illuminate it from the perspective of his concept of gravity. ” K.-
N. Ihmig, Hegels Deutung der Gravitation, Frankfurt a. M. 1989, p. 15, or again Hegel in
5. the added supplement to § 293: “Every part of this physical matter has this specific determinacy in itself, while in
gravity this centrality belongs to a single point only.” Hegel, Werke, Volume 9, p. 161.
13 Olivier Dupré; The Ontological Foundations of Hegel's Dissertation, 3. The Solar System: A Living System, in
Hegel and the Philosophy of Nature, edited by S. Houlgate, 1998 N.Y., p. 273.
14 Kant: Logik–Physische Geographie–Pädagogik, AA IX p. 216
had at that time with greater speed, on the one mentioned way up to this measured remains must
have been brought. From which it can also be seen that the moon was a later celestial body that
was added to the earth after it had already deposited its liquid and acquired a solid state; otherwise
the attraction of the moon would inevitably have subjected them in a short time to the same fate that
the moon suffered from our earth. The latter remark can be viewed as a sample of a natural history
of heaven, in which the first state of nature, the creation of the celestial bodies, and the causes of
their systematic relationships, had to be determined from the characteristics which show the
relationships of the world structure in itself.”
So I have decided on an essay on this topic and first worked through all of Hegel’s writings again.
Through numerous passages and analogies in the published texts, the system drafts and the lecture
scripts I finally felt ex negativo more and more confirmed in recognizing tidal gravity as the active
principle of distinction (Besonderung), the dividing, disjunctive principle of gravity, that is required
by the system and Hegel's own method. I could now probably prove Hegel's theory to be completely
wrong, as Popper's mockery unjustifiably did (and also would have done in this case, he already
speaks of “The High Tide of Prophecy” in relation to Hegel), claiming that substance is not subject
(that the philosopher is not at the height of his own time, his potency), or to look for my own theory
of mechanics in accordance with Hegel's logic and while maintaining the original quality of his
mechanics, his theory of space-time, his critique of the principle of equivalence and the idea of
gravity, “the abstract life of the movement.” I finally published my research results in 2017, starting
with Jupiter´s moon Io. Philosophy no longer gave any thought to the moons of Jupiter, despite
better instruments and scientific research.15 With the moons of Jupiter philosophy had once again, or
still, bad luck in thinking. Galileo's accusation against the philosophers (“That kind of people
believe that philosophy is some book like the Aeneid or the Odyssey; The truth is not to be sought in
the world or in nature, but in the confrontation of texts.”) in his letter to Kepler of August 18. in
1610 seems to be up for debate again, formally confirmed by Peter Sloterdijk. “On a broad front
reflective authors have assumed the habit of not speaking and writing about an object in their own
right, but of speaking and writing about other authors who have spoken or written about the object.
This observing of observations and describing of descriptions marks an epoch that has made the
virtue of second-order observation out of the plight of being late in everything.”16
In this second text on the topic I would like to mention the theories of the astronomer and
mathematician Laplace, in contrast to my earlier study about Jupiter's moon Io, since Laplace offers
an early solution to a question that Hegel occupied until his late days, the planet's orbits and their
distances. Laplace also offers a dynamic theory of tidal gravity, which Hegel unfortunately excludes
from his system through his own point mechanics, and thus only consistently misinterprets the
phenomena of tidal gravity, tidal locking, tidal friction, resistance (Roche limit), and so on.17
15 “When Galilei looked at the night sky through a telescope in 1610, he discovered that the planet Jupiter is orbited
by several moons. These moons of Jupiter are usually invisible to the eye. However, if you have previously seen them
through a telescope, they can then, under favorable circumstances, also be seen with the naked eye. The same
applies to the relationship between faith and reason. Without faith, which the Letter to the Hebrews understands as
not doubting the invisible (Hebr. 11,1), much remains in the dark for reason. However, if reason has previously
looked through the telescope of faith, it can sometimes see with its own eyes what was hidden from it. In any case,
true faith confidently believes this to be possible and therefore spares no effort to translate what it believes into
reasonable insight. Whether this also succeeds in the case of belief in the creation of the cosmos and the existence of
its creator is a controversial question that has been and is discussed in the context of the debate about the success
or failure of a cosmological proof of God.” F. Hermanni, Metaphysik, Versuch über die letzten Fragen, Tübingen
2011, p. 15.
16 Peter Sloterdijk, Derrida, an Egyptian, Cambridge 2009, p. 51.
17 “Therefore, the ideas of impact, pressure, pulling, and the like, should not be applied to celestial bodies; they apply
only to another existence of matter; the commonality of both is, of course, matter; (...) but they are the very
existence of matter, not yet having separated its concept and its being.–Therefore, the form of movement, fall,
throwing motion and the like do not come to them–no resistance, nor friction, what has been asked for.” Hegel, GW
8, p. 24. This quotation is taken from the system draft of the years 1805/06 and contains two critical bugs. Hegel's
later position is already sketched here along with its own problematic and is found almost word for word in the
added supplement to § 269 of the Encyclopedia. Hegel seems to answer, the text implies it (“no resistance, nor
friction, what has been asked for”), the question of one of his students.
 1. Hegel and the Bode Law

The fact that Hegel's admirers again print this

“famous” doctoral thesis in his works shows
little piety.18

The newly discovered planets are invisible to the

whole world, except for the few astronomers
whom we have to believe on word and account.
Goethe

In the research literature on Hegel's dissertation it is controversial today that Hegel seriously
considered his series derived from Plato's Timaios for the distances of the planets of the solar
system.19 On the other hand, Hegel certainly sought and developed his own solutions to the question
for reason of the planetary distances. This is confirmed by the addition of the lecture notes in the
appendix to § 270 of the Encyclopaedia: “Then one would have to look at the distances of the
planets while we only dealt with the planet here; but for the series of them in proportion to their
distances one would like to have a law, which, however, is still not found. Overall, astronomers
despise such a law and do not want to have anything to do with it; but it is a necessary question.
Kepler, e.g. took the numbers in Plato's Timaios.”20
Hegel does not tell us here that around 1800/01 he also took this path to determine the planetary
distances (and rejected it again later: “still not found”). The reference to Kepler could therefore also
be a hidden clue to justify his early thesis. That may be true, but anachronistic is that Hegel, in favor
of his early thesis in De Orbitis Planetarum, as Cinzia Ferrini points out21, uses Jupiter's moons as
an analogy for his own thesis 22 without ever knowing that Laplace was already researching the
moons of Jupiter. Their orbital periods were recognized and published being in a 4-2-1 resonance,
the so-called Laplace resonance. This knowledge of a prevailing resonance would otherwise have
had a considerable influence on Hegel, since due to the Laplace resonance and taking into account

18 “Dass Hegel´s Verehrer die famöse Doctor Dissertation in seinen Werken wieder haben abdrucken lassen zeigt
wenig Pietät. Unter Noahs Söhnen war doch einer der die Schaam seines Vaters bedeckte, aber die Hegelianer
rissen den Mantel noch weg, den Zeit und Vergessenheit schon mitleidig über die Schande ihres Meister geworfen
hatten.” The quote comes from a letter to the mathematician Gauss, from the editor of the Monatliche
Korrespondenz. He saw in Hegel's dissertation the decay of the sciences, since Hegel claimed to be able to state a
law that refutes the existence of a planet between Mars and Jupiter, the saying goes. Hegel had made a lot of
opponents through his thesis. See also Theodor G. Bucher, Wissenschaftstheoretische Überlegungen zu Hegels
Planetenschrift, Hegel Studien Vol. 18, Bonn 1983, p. 65ff.
19 E. Craig/M. Hoskin, Hegel and the Seven Planets, in: Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol.23, 1992, p. 208ff.
20 Hegel's later solution begins with the distance of Mercury from the Sun as starting point for a series (similar to
Bode), and this only as an evidence of the unity of the first four planets: “Mercury, the first planet's, distance is a,
then the orbit of Venus is a+b, the orbit of the earth a+2b, that of Mars a+3b. You can see, however, that these four
first planets form a whole, if you will, a system together, like the four bodies of the Solar system. (...) Jupiter with its
many satellites is a+5b, and so on, but this is only approximately, reason can not be recognized in this. (...) It is easy
to see that the law will be found in this way.” Hegel, Werke, Volume 9, p. 105. Conflicting views are close to each
other here, maybe due to the edition of the text.
21 “Cassini had found that the analogy, discovered by Kepler, between the periodic times and the distances from the
center, takes place in the lesser systems of Jupiter and Saturn, as well as in the great solar system. Given this
background, this seems to be the right place for Hegel actually to try to prove, without irony, what he had promised
to demonstrate at the beginning of The Planet Orbits.” Cinzia Ferrini, Features of Irony and Alleged Errors in
Hegel's “De Orbitis Planetarum”, in Hegel-Jahrbuch, Fernwald 1991 p. 468.
22 “Jovis autem satellites in ratione, qua quatuor priores planetae progeduntur, distare videas, nisi quod quartus
satelles numerum suum aliquantum excedat.” Hegel, Dissertatio Philosophica De Orbitis Planetarum, Weinheim
1986, p. 138. One might answer with Hegel himself: “Yet analogy not only gives no perfect right, but its very nature
refutes itself so often that the inference to be drawn from analogy itself is instead that analogy does not permit an
inference to be drawn.” Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by Terry Pinkard, Cambridge 2018, p. 148.
Kepler's 3rd law (a^3:t^2), the distances of the moons are set by their particular resonant orbital
times, and thus highly favorable by Hegel and his own theory of space-time. 23 Hegel could also
easily have been aware of this, he had a German-language translation in which on page 246 the
Laplace resonance is presented in detail. This orbital resonance could have been recognized since
1610, when Galilei first discovered the Galilean moons, especially since they should have been used
for accurate time measurement in the following epochs, which Ole Rømer finally ended with the
discovery of the speed of light, an unpredictable complication. Even the young Kant still gave them
the task of indicating the time to the inhabitants of Jupiter. But determining the distances of the
moons to Jupiter and the planets to the sun, to seek reason, regardless of times, in pure distances of
the planets, simply does not work. For astronomers there is very good reason for them “to have
nothing to do with it.” And the possibility of drawing an analogy between the Galilean moons and
the first four planets of the solar system is immediately24 gone, the planets not in a resonance.
Looking back on the Bode Law, which is as useless as Hegel's approach to the orbits of the planets:
Hegel really enjoyed pointing out all the new objects, planetoids found in the same orbit with Ceres.
Of course, Ceres is no longer a planet in this regard. But actually he did not know the reason for
this. In fact, Hegel's mechanics actually rejects this reason, since the discovery of Ceres by Piazzi
and other planetoids of the same orbit could easily have been understood due to tidal gravitation,
the Roche limit of Jupiter, since it makes the existence of a real and extended planet between Mars
and Jupiter impossible (even if there is a lot of matter), as well as any kind of mathematical law of
distances, which does not take into account the masses, expansions or orbital periods of the objects.
Thomas Sören Hoffmann25 saw this in connection with Hegel when he wrote “The enormous
Jupiter gravity–the planet Jupiter has a mass that is about 318 times that of the Earth–in fact, there
is no existence of a real planet at this point.” That it is this simple truth in the search for another
planet between Mars and Jupiter, which leads to the exclusion of any possibility, could actually
make astonishment in retrospect and leads as well to the next chapter.

2. The Moon's Thirst for Water

– for extension is a simplicity more equal to pure

thought than is light –
Hegel26

The existence of another planet within the orbit of Mercury was postulated in 1859 by the French
mathematician and astronomer Urbain Le Verrier (1811-1877) to explain the deviation of Mercury
from the calculated orbit. After Le Verrier had already calculated the trajectory of the then
undiscovered planet Neptune by observations of the orbit of Uranus in 1846, the existence of
another planet appeared obvious to him and a large number of astronomers around the world tried to
find this unknown planet. Einstein finally put an end to the search by fully explaining the peri-turn
of Mercury by his theory of relativity. But the name Le Verrier, who believed until his death in the
23 In his lectures on Philosophy of the Subjective Spirit Hegel gives definite expression of the demand for reason for
the planetary distances: “The specific distances must also be recognized by the laws of their movement.–That would
be reason.” Hegel, GW 25,2, p. 880. Laplace already had this reason for the Galilean moons and together with
Kepler's laws Hegel easily could have found reason “by the laws of their movement” for moons. The retrograde
rotation of Venus, as a planet, presumably makes a resonance impossible. Resonances with moons do not have this
specific “problem”.
24 Hegel treads into the trap of analogy, which he himself later describes in his logic and vehemently criticizes. For the
orbital period of the first three moons is 1.76 to 3.55 to 7.15 days, which corresponds to a 4-2-1 orbital resonance.
For the first three planets, however, the orbital period is 88 days to 224 and 365, which, with 4 to 2.5 to 1, just does
not produce an integer resonance.
25 Thomas Sören Hoffmann: Hegel–Eine Propädeutik, Wiesbaden 2004, p. 147.
26 Harald Lesch gives a remarkable refutation of quantum mechanics. –If the space itself were grainy and not smooth,
the images from distant Galaxies should not be as sharp as the information we get. There is space-time, gravity, and
particle physics (and life). This seems important for Hegel´s fundamental concept of nature.
existence of the planet already called Volcano, today is synonymous with this alternative between a
new object/mass or a new theory. In today's cosmology there is a similar problem with the so-called
dark matter („dark mass“ would be better, being initially more abstract), which is explained by the
MOND theory (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics) on a modified theoretical base as not necessarily
existing (whereby this theory loses the equivalence principle of gravitation), whereas the standard
model of cosmology tends to the assumption of dark matter. As the Lambda-CDM model it
basically receives two unknowns, in addition to dark matter, as synonyme for unknown mass,
comes dark energy.
But what about Hegel's speculative mechanics within his philosophy of nature, which in turn is held
in an overall system, when confronted with inexplicable phenomena in mechanics? Will you reject
the whole system when you have lost your bearings in one sphere of the system? Of course, one can
help oneself with ignorance by referring to today's division in humanities and natural sciences,
specialize in particular problems, practice hermeneutics, but ultimately it is procrastination of the
mind and without certainty for the spirit. If the unjustified mockery of Popper fails to harm Hegel's
mechanics, then can a moon as the most active body in the solar system next to the Sun (Io), or
moons of liquid, salty water (Europa, Enceladus), the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which crashed at
the Roche limit of Jupiter, or solar systems out of planets without rotation around their own axis
(Trappist-1), do? In the latter case one could still claim that the concept is not fully realized in a
system with several moons on planet orbits or moon-like planets under tidal locking, similar to the
smaller systems of Jupiter and Saturn. But the problem becomes, if one penetrates deeper, more
confusing as Hegel cites the astronomer in the discussion who in turn offers again a first solution to
the problems ahead: Laplace.
The Postscript Pinder therefore provides an important source for more specific distinctions on tidal
gravity in Hegel's philosophy: “The shape of the earth, which assumes the character of brittleness
without the process of rivers and floods, such as the surface of the moon. The moon has no water. A
waterless crystal. He thirsts for water as this brittle, and stands in this relationship to the earth to
be integrated with the sea.27 A powerful connection of ebb and flow with the moon. Long
observations were made in the French ports, Laplace. The tide of the moon is three times as strong
as the tide of the sun. The tide is strongest when both coincide.”28 Hegel takes empirical data and
quantitative ratios (3:1, strong-strongest) from Laplace for this relationship to his lecture. He also
rightly sees a “powerful”–substantial–“connection” without, however, explaining this as a ratio of
potencies, analogous to Kepler's third law (next chapter). Instead, Hegel establishes an ill-founded
connection by determining the state of life, “thirst,” and particular qualities of matter, “brittle,
dry”29 and “wet,” and relates tidal gravity only to the element of water, as Kant did, finally about 80
years before Hegel. More than that, he forgets in this picture at the same time the antipodal tide, the
“escape” of the water, so to speak, the fact that there is ebb and flow twice a day, i.e. during a single
revolution of the earth, but knows the riptides with moon and sun on opposite sides of the earth, as
Kant did. Here too Hegel would have had to find in Laplace what he was or should have been
looking for. Laplace recognized the relationship between ebb and flow, beyond its daily two-time
occurrence, as being beyond the square of attraction in relation to the changing distance to the
moon. For Hegel's theory normally a great hint and all together good reasons for another position of
tidal gravity inside the system. But consequently, these gravitational relationships and phenomena
are not included in the sections on Absolute Mechanics, due to the presupposed relation to the

27 Today the Roche lobe overflow shows that this is not entirely wrong. Earth already used to drink from the moon, so
to speak, although there is still frozen water on the moon today. In binary systems material that passes beyond the
Roche-lobe will flow onto the planet, often by the way of an accretion disk.
28 Hegel, GW 24,2, p. 841.
29 In the addition to paragraph 279 of the Encyclopedia it says “The moon is the waterless crystal that seeks to
integrate itself into the sea, to quench the thirst of its rigidity and therefore(!) causes ebb and flow.”–The driest
moon in the solar system is Io. On this moon one can see objective dialectics as well as a dialectics of Hegel's
natural philosophy. Io with its seas of sulfur is certainly a confirmation of Hegel: “The rigid, however, is only that
which is the ability in itself, not the fire as actuality, but the possibility of fire. ” (“Das Starre aber ist nur das ansich
Brennliche, noch nicht das Feuer als Wirksamkeit, sondern die Möglichkeit des Feuers.”)
element and thus only appear later in Hegel's natural philosophy. Hegel's tangible urge for
concretion turned too early here. The term tidal friction, as in Kant, is not mentioned by Hegel in
his works published. In De Orbitis Planetarum Hegel notes that Kepler attributes the tides to
gravity.30 In a treatise on natural philosophy of 1802, a text by Schelling from the Kritische Journal,
the term appears as “low tide” (Hegel, GW 4, p. 271), but only in connection with philosophy,
insofar as philosophical systems also have their ebb and flow and not within the framework of
mechanics. Schelling's natural philosophy also knows only a point mechanics. 31 But how can Hegel
at this point refer to Laplace, whom he seems to ignore in considering the planetary distances and
even refers to Laplace, those in detail described years of empirical experience, but his dynamic
theory of tidal gravity, which is still in use today, is more or less not even mentioned? 32 Considering
the fact that Laplace's theory of tides was developed later than Kant's but still before Hegel's birth,
first published in 1775 and generally describes tidal gravity, it is far from the thirst of the moon for
the waters of the earth.–We can not really believe that Hegel has done such a disservice to his own
theory of nature and has not thought about what he is doing here (or could have done) in his
mechanics, and thus freely gives arguments to his opponents, as Kant remarks: “The totality of
physics as a science depends on the lifelessness of matter, and the opposite view, hylozoism, would
be the death of all natural philosophy–i.e. of physics.”33

3. Hegel and Tidal Gravity

But I exclude from this the inclination which is

attached to high intellectual insights, and the
charm of which a Kepler was capable.
Kant, Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des
Schönen und Erhabenen

So far we have only spoken about tidal gravity or some of its phenomena, but without specifying
the ratio and the relationship and wondering if, where, and how tidal gravity is important for
Hegel's mechanics and for a path between the lifelessness of matter and hylozoism.
Laplace describes empirically that the tide of the moon is three times stronger than the tide of the
sun, as Hegel takes it to his lectures. And tidal gravity is indeed a ratio of closeness, since tidal
gravity, unlike Newton's general gravity, does not decrease or increase with the squares, but with the
cubes, as Laplace somehow points to. The tidal force, as we know, is inversely proportional to the

30 Hegel, De Orbitis Planetarum, Weinheim 1986, p. 87.

31 Schelling drew the connection between gravity and melancholy in his philosophy: “The darkest and thus deepest of
human nature is longing (...), the inner gravity of the mind, therefore in its deepest manifestation–melancholy.”
(Schelling, Werke, Münchner Jubiläumsdruck. 4. Hauptband, Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen. 1810, p. 357/58) The
concept of gravity as a point mechanics may therefore be considered as a reason for himself and his philosophy.
Schelling probably suffered more from a point mechanics than Hegel did. Peter Sloterdijk gives some appreciable
considerations on Antispheres in Spheres II, From Depression as a Crisis of Expansion. Schelling was unable to
escape the principle of equivalence and the Kant-Newtonian haze. His definition of uniform movement from
1799/1800 as “most original measure” fundamentally contradicts Hegel's own insights. Schelling writes: “Hence the
most original measure of time, the space which a uniformly moving body passes through, the most original measure
of space, the time which a uniformly moving body needs to pass through it.” Schelling, System des Transcendentalen
Idealismus, Hamburg 1957, p. 135. Hegel saw a similar relation only in Kepler's 2 nd law: A line joining a planet and
the sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time. Both problems, a point mechanics and a then
following lack of “desire” (Ergänzungstrieb) of gravity in Schelling's mechanics, are confirmed in the book
Sygkepleriazein by Paul Ziche / Petr Rezvykh, Stuttgart 2013, pp. 77-82.
32 Hegel mentions Laplace again in the supplement to § 270 (Hegel, Werke, Volume 9, p. 99). Here Hegel quotes
Laplace from his Exposition du Système du Monde. Hegel, however, seems to have wanted only a confirmation of
his Newton criticism, but in the ratio of general and tidal gravity precisely is the possibility of a conciliation of both
theories.
33 Kenneth R. Westphal, On Hegel's Early Critique of Kant's “Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science”, in
Hegel and The Philosophy of Nature, edited by S. Houlgate, N.Y. 1998, p. 145.
distance cubed. For Hegel this relationship of a “square-cube law” (which Kant has also sought in
his “Construction of Matter”34) is simply reason with respect to Kepler's 3rd law: “This is Kepler's
third law, the relation of the cubes of distances to the squares of times,–a law so great because it so
immideately represents reason.” (Hegel, Encyclopedia, § 270, supplement).–Francis Cornford
points out the importance of the relationship of the squares and the cubes for Plato in his Timaios:
“The interpretation of the ambiguous words ogkoi and dynamis as cubes and squares seems to be
better supported than any others.”35 Hegel follows this path, for him the cube is the potency of the
Concept36, and the solar system is thus a system of closeness and theory in this sense away from
empirical quantities and data, as well as Galilei's law and Kepler's laws.
It can therefore be assumed that in the relation of general to tidal gravity an inherently necessary
reason must be hidden, which is of importance for a new philosophical concept in mechanics. The
notion of a saddle surface (following graph) within the representation of the two different (and unit)
potencies of gravitation, general and tidal gravitation, and fall, divine, trinitarian 37, and only as such
the concept is realized, can describe this fact. 38 The following graph distinguishes general gravity,
the inclined plane (where Galilei demonstrated free fall), and the tidal potential. In fact, the added
text already contains all the moments of the movement of the concept.

34 Kant, MAN, Theorem 8, 1. Annotation: “This construction requires a law governing how basic attraction and basic
repulsion relate to one another at various distances. So the basic attraction of matter would act in inverse
proportion to the square of the distance—any distance—while the basic repulsion would act in inverse proportion to
the cube. The point is that as parts move closer together the repulsion between them increases faster than the
attraction does.”
35 Francis M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, London 1937, p. 47.
36 “... the in itself dimensionless time comes in its production only to the formal identity, the squares; space, on the
other hand, is the positive extension with the dimension of the concept, the cube.” Hegel, Werke, Volume 9, § 270, p.
93. Similar is Hegel's interpretation of Kepler's 2 nd law: “In the abstract motion of fall, the squares, the arealike
determinations of time, are numbers only. The square is not to be taken in the spatial sense, because in fall only a
straight line is traversed. That is the formality of the fall. (...) But as time rises to corresponding squares here (in
Kepler's 2nd law, set under provisions of the 1st and 3rd law), the self-production of time becomes reality.” Hegel,
Werke, Volume 9, p. 95. The Laplace resonance is as well a self-production of time.
37 Our topic could therefore lead to contributions in a seemingly completely different area, the interpretation of
Shakespeare`s Hamlet: “Furthermore, there are enough evidences to sustain the conclusion that the ultimate
reference of this narrative does not concern family traumas, but the celestial events: the ultimate “meaning” of the
Hamlet myth is the movement of stars in precession, i.e. the Hamlet myth clads into the family narrative highly
articulated astronomical observations (...) However, this solution, convincing as it may appear, also gets
immediately entangled in its own impasse: the movement of stars is in itself meaningless, just a fact of nature with
no libidinal resonance, so why did people translate-metaphorize it in the guise of precisely such a family narrative
which generates a tremendous libidinal involvement? In other words, the question of “what means what?” is in no
way decided by this reading: does the Hamlet narrative“mean”stars, or do stars “mean” Hamlet's narrative, i.e.
did the Ancients use their astronomical knowledge in order to encode insights into fundamental libidinal deadlocks
of the human race?” Slavoy Žižek, Hamlet before Oedipus, https://www.lacan.com/zizek-love.htm.
38 Ludwig Siep sees the same conceptual connection between the constitution of a state and the consciousness of the
religious conscience in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: “And without the knowledge of the conformity of this
social order with the idea of the Divine Trinity it would not be reconciled with the religious conscience.” L. Siep,
Moralischer und Sittlicher Geist in Hegels Phänomenologie, in: Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes, Ein
kooperativer Kommentar, Frankfurt a.M. 2008, p. 430. In the register of this cooperative comment there is no
concept of mass.
The black saddle surface represents the tidal potential. The blue marked saddle point lies in
the center of gravity of the considered body. The simplest specimen to explore this potential is
an idealized dumbbell, two rigidly connected masses. The dumbbell gets under tension when
it is radially oriented. On the other hand, it comes under pressure when it is oriented
transversely. In oblique orientation, it gets torque that turns it in the radial orientation.

Three scientists, Stan Peale, Patrick Cassen and R.T. Reynolds, published in 1979 on phenomena of
tidal gravity, based on first images and data from Jupiter´s moon Io. The analysis of the pictures
showed that Io is volcanically active. Shortly before the Voyager missions began the authors
predicted a volcanically shaped surface and pronounced rocks, not a homogeneous mixture. They
substanciated this by incorporating the enormous heat generated by the frictional force of the tides.
They calculated that the intensity of Io with a homogeneous interior is three times as high as that of
a radioactive nucleus, and that tidal gravity is a thousand times higher than on earth (in a planetary
rotation it would be six thousand times, that is inconceivable). Here, what Hegel in the context of
the geological organism understands as “Thirst of the Moon”39 for “The Waters of the Earth”
actually creates movement, heat and magma in and on Io (but still no flame or open fire, as
recurrence of “being for itself,” mediated by matter, time in and as volume, to which “mass” does
not come in Kepler's 3rd law), radiation40 as well as volcanic41 activity, miles high tide mountains
and even color (seas of sulfur). It is therefore necessary to speak of a dissolution, of a liquefaction
and simultaneous condensation of the “crystal of the moon” in the context of Hegelian terminology,
but all this objectively set by gravity and against Hegel's intention: “Fall, throwing motion, and the
like do not occur to them–no resistance, nor friction.”
In addition, tidal gravity is generally the cause of the bound rotation of moons 42, in change and in
orbit extension and thus of particular importance to Hegel.43 The author confesses here, based on the
39 In the moon, his bound rotation but also in the orbit, Hegel treats tidal gravity with the same disinterest as the
question of the matter of the Sun, only here to the substantial damage of his own system, since it is the concept
itself, no material or matter. If one says to a windmill that it is a machine for grinding grain, or a car a machine for
transport, without mentioning that one machine is running on air, the other on fuel, this may be called negligence, or
with the sun in Hegel a helpless excuse (e.g. similar to fluorescence). But no one would ever ask if it would be
necessary for a windmill or any machine being extended and not in an ideal point only. This is what happens to the
tidal gravity, the whole engine is taken away, and with no reason.
40 Tesla had probably been seduced by Io's strong radiation with experiments in free energy.
41 Peter Sloterdijk has found a parallel language regarding the fragment of an archaic torso of the god Apollo, in the
interpretation of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke entitled Archaic Torso of Apollo: “What appears in the former
Apollo statue, but is not with the Olympian of the same name which in the days of his completeness had to provide
light, contour, foreknowledge and form safety. Rather, it is (...) for something much older that rises from premature
sources. It symbolizes a divine magma in which something of the first order power, old as the world itself, appears.”
Peter Sloterdijk, Über Anthrophotechnik, Frankfurt a.M. 2016, p.45.
42 Mercury, with its great eccentricity and resonant self-rotation, as the sun's nascent moon, will at some point increase
its eccentricity into the orbit of Venus, which is likely to result in a reorganization of the solar system, with
catastrophic consequences for life on earth .
43 “(...) that the laws and general formulas exactly correspond to the phenomena closely observed, and if this was not
relationship between mass (as curvature of space) and matter, and their properties, that an analogous
relationship can also be thought of for the moment of creation, and is also being considered. Finding
clarification here is presumably the condition of the possibility of speculative physics based on
empiricism (in the broadest sense). An example: “Due to heuristic considerations tidal gravitation
in the very early universe (0 ≦ t <10^-21sec.) is even strong enough to materialize virtual particles
over the photon frequency by blueshift–to the astonishment of confident reductionist artists, that
space can develop such activities.” Even the Hawking radiation44 and the recently discovered
gravitational waves are tidal phenomenons: “Mechanically, the wave represents an impulse of tidal
gravity.”45

4. Hegel and The Principle of Equivalence

So I would call gravity the queen of forces in the

universe. She is the boss. According to the motto:
“Everything comes to those who can wait,” the
wise man sits down at the river and waits for the
body of his enemy to swim past.
Harald Lesch

Mediocrity lasts and rules the world in the end;

it also has thoughts: They flatten the existing
world, wiping out the spiritual vitality, making it
a mere habit and so it lasts.46
Hegel

“What is left of Hegel's original mechanics?” one might ask at the end, only to return to tidal
gravity. In fact, the conceptual critique of Einstein's theory of relativity also focuses on tidal
gravitation, insofar as it is used to criticize the principle of equivalence. Hegel's statement on the
principle of equivalence and the law of free fall is irrefutable. “Gravity contradicts the law of free
fall.”47 And it is always noteworthy that Hegel was last in mechanics for his method of presenting
truth as an, in his sense, understandable result. The beginning of the fourth system fragment of
System draft I, the second System draft, as well as the third draft can be cited here as proof against
the later approach of the Encyclopaedia, which deals with finite mechanics before absolute
mechanics: “1. Mechanics actually begin with what has brought about the transition from the

so punctual in a general proposition (as, for example, in the Keplerian law of the elliptical form of the planetary
orbits likewise is not the case), at the same time a theory, a certain principle for the deviations, disturbances of the
general law would be given.” Hegel, Berliner Schriften, Hamburg 1954 (quoted from Norbert Ihmig, Hegels
Deutung der Gravitation). Within Hegel's theory such a sentence, taken from an examination, creates space for
Einstein's theory on the peri-turn of Mercury and the theory of relativity, and for this philosophical text.
44 Massive black holes exert tidal forces on its surroundings. Since the vacuum fluctuations are favored by a strong
curvature of space-time, this effect is particularly important for black holes of low mass. Low mass black holes are
small in size; i.e., they have a smaller Schwarzschild radius. The spacetime surrounding the event horizon is
correspondingly more curved. The larger and therefore more massive a black hole, the less it radiates. The smaller a
black hole, the higher its temperature and, due to the stronger Hawking radiation, the faster it evaporates.
45 Bernulf Kanitscheider, Kosmologie, Stuttgart 1984, p. 176.
46 In passing, I would like to highlight a separately published lecture by Richard Feynman with the title The Movement
of the Planets around the Sun, which already in the title cannot deny the similarity to Hegel´s early writing The
Planet Orbits. We cannot give a more detailed analysis of the geometric proof, rejected by Hegel. Instead, here are
two quotes from the book translated back from German:
1. “Because a circle is also an ellipse, Kepler's law allows planetary orbits to be circles, but does not require it.”
2. “Heavier bodies have more weight, for example when they fall to the earth, but they resist the acceleration more
strongly. Less weight acts on lighter bodies, but they are accelerated more easily. All in all, therefore, all bodies fall
with exactly the same acceleration.”
47 Hegel, Werke, Volume 9, p. 83. Without tidal gravity Hegel would have no further arguments against the principle of
equivalence under conditions of a curved space.
heavenly to the earthly system, namely the reduction of movement to rest and the falling apart of
both.”48 If one compares this, the separation of rest and movement as a reduction to finite
mechanics, with a well-known passage from a letter from Newton, at least once again the main
opposition between Hegel and Newton becomes clearly visible, as well as the importance of tidal
gravity for matter, being not only “brute and inanimate.”49 Newton writes: “It is unconceivable that
inanimate brute matter should (without the mediation of something else which is not material)
operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact; as it must if gravitation in the sense
of Epicurus be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason why I desired you would not
ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate inherent and essential to matter so that
one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of any thing
else by and through which their action or force may be conveyed from one to another is to me so
great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters any competent faculty of
thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to
certain laws, but whether this agent be material or immaterial is a question I have left to the
consideration of my readers.”50
The German philosopher Bernulf Kanitscheider 51 in his book Kosmologie, in which he deals mainly
with Einstein and the following theories, unconscious with the problems Hegel has in his
mechanics, he knows only the story with Bode, ironically arguments for Hegelian and Aristotelian
distinctions: “Due to the equivalence principle, no gravitational effect can be localized in a system
in free fall. The force is transformed away in this sense. The situation is different for free falling
systems. In such permanently inhomogeneous fields, mass points that move freely relative to one
another do not fall along parallel geodesics, but converge trajectories. As a result, an elastic figure
is stretched in length and compressed in width. This differential tidal gravity can not be
transformed away. (...) With some justification it can be argued that tidal gravity is the objectively
real element of the theory of relativity.”
Even more concrete in his critique of the principle of equivalence is the following quote:
“It has an effect here that the principle of relativistic equivalence (...) is valid only in infinitesimal
fields, whereas permanent fields like that of the solar system can not be transformed away globally.
Therefore, the justification of dynamic equivalency can not be considered successful from the point
of view of relativity.”
Considering this for Hegel, the reduction of gravity to inertia in any equivalence principle and tidal
gravity conceptually and in the sense of Hegel as a conceptual part of “The Living Repulsion.” Here
can be said that attraction itself is repulsion, and gravity again systematically and conceptually
differentiated from inertia and fall. And the idea of gravity is, in turn, a result of objective dialectics
and results directly together with the critique of the principle of equivalence, which is very
Hegelian, as well as the possibility of this idea to be reflected throughout the system. Not least
Hegel's analogy of freedom and gravity as the substance of will on the one hand and matter (we take
this uncommented at this point) on the other gives rise to this. But even, among other reflections,
the sparse mention of the idea of gravity, in contrast to the idea of life, leaves room for reflection
that Hegel himself was not quite satisfied with his mechanics. This is shown by the fact that in his
Logic the solar system plays no role as a reference point, as an idea, in contrast to The Planet

48 Hegel, GW 6, p. 19. The same problem occurs in a different way around 1917. “In 1917 one was in possession of
two cosmological models. One that showed matter, but no movement, another without matter, but with movement.
This prompted Eddington to comment on the approach to the real universe, which has both, matter and motion:
“Shall we put a little motion into Einstein's world of inert matter or shall we put a little matter into de Sitter's
primum mobile?” B. Kanitscheider, Kosmologie, p.160. The citation is taken from A.S. Eddington, The Expanding
Universe, Cambridge 1952, p. 46.
49 Interestingly the activity, not the existence, of tidal gravity depends on Kepler's 1st law, an elliptical orbit, unlike
planets with their rotation around their axis. Tidal gravity works only in proportion to itself through changing
distances on an elliptical orbit. Here, too, the contrast between Hegel and Newton comes into play, since tidal
gravity on a circle-like orbit of moons would have no tidal effects at all.
50 The correspondence of Isaac Newton, von Herbert Westren Turnbull, Cambridge 1961, Vol. III, 253-254.
51 Bernulf Kanitscheider, Kosmologie, Stuttgart 1984, p. 176.
Orbits52. The section in the Hegelian logic considered as the idea of gravity, speaks, but does not
come to “self-ignition,” endless movement not to finite motion (“no mediation” inbetween the
spheres, as Renate Wahsner notes), the whole system not to development, evolution and ends but
remains rather in the context of a point mechanics. The expression “imperishable source of self-
igniting movement” contains more as Hegel himself thought. The following quote from the chapter
Mechanism in his Logic does not yet refer to the formation of volcanism and magma on Io, warm
and salty water on Europa and Enceladus, to the bound rotation of moons, a clock-like evolution
between moon and earth, based on distance and tidal gravity, but only to the orbital: “Only the free
mechanism has a law, its own definition of pure individuality or the concept for itself. It is in itself
an imperishable source of self-igniting motion; by referring only to himself in the ideality of his
difference, free necessity.”53
With tidal gravity, however, Hegel's current system of nature would be extended (by extension)
beyond its former limits, but with Hegel's own method. For this purpose, the chapter on absolute
mechanics54 first requires a differentiating extension into:
A. General Gravitation
B. Tidal Gravity
C. The Solar System.

In the realm of natural philosophy there is only the idea of life and the idea of gravity, which Hegel
calls illo animali in his transition from Frankfurt to Jena, and which deserves special attention from
philosophy. If one looks at the tendency of the contradictory insights both at Hegel and at Schelling,
one unfortunately has to deny that both natural philosophies meet their own requirements. The
recent Schelling research has found out that Schelling in his mechanics was dependent on Hegel
and later he discussed Hegel's De Orbitis Planetarum in his writings and lectures broadly and
proudly (initiated in Hegel's mistakes). I have already commented on Schelling in a footnote.
Through Hegel's lectures and writings on mechanics Hegel offers more space for legitimate
criticism. I do not want to be unfair and spare Schelling in the protection of indeterminacy, so to
speak under the radar of criticism. Rather, thanks to his Logic, Hegel will continue, while there is no
future for the philosophy of identity without an explicit own logic. Therefore, I only show the
general problem in Schelling's Philosophy of Identity, as I did at the beginning with Hegel, with
undiscussed quotes:55

1. Schelling uses his criticism of Newton for the elaboration of a counter-model in which the
purest, simplest claims of nature itself (SW IV, 164 / AA I, 10, 163) can be heard and are
thus closely connected to Schelling's approach to his identity system. (...) Here Schelling
uses the criticism of Newton to realize to understand the original demand of his philosophy
of identity, the absolute reason as complete indifference of the subjective and objective (SW
IV, 114 / AA) 10,116) in which none of both sides and neither of the two possible types of
access, neither from the philosophical point of view of the subject nor from a natural-
philosophical point of view, can assert a priority. In illustration, gravity is a structure that is
removed from the differences of the finite and can not form quantitative differences (§ 72).
It is a point of unity, a force beyond the regressive search for ever new individuals (SW IV,
155f./AA I, 10, 154f.).
2. The fact that gravity can not necessarily be quantified arises when it is a placeholder of
absolute identity: Gravity, which is the essence of absolute identity itself, is based on pure

52 “Nothing is a more sublime expression of reason, and nothing more worthy of philosophical contemplation than that
organism which we call the solar system.” Hegel, The Planet Orbits, translated by David Healan.
53 Hegel, GW 12, p. 146.
54 Gilles Deleuze notes that the Germans are still working off the concept of the Absolute. How the differentiation and
dissolution of the absolute, which is only abstract in Hegel's mechanics, against his own intuition, can be done,
could be shown.
55 The excerpts are taken from P. Ziche/P. Rezvykh: Sygkepleriazein–Schelling und die Kepler-Rezeption im 19.
Jahrhundert, Stuttgart 2013.
 Absolute Being. (SW IV, 155, AA I, 10, 155) It must, however, specify itself in order to enter
the realm of the recognizable, whereby Schelling formulates this drastically as compulsion
and struggle: (...) The struggle is essentially due to the the fact that gravity, in contrast to the
distributed cohesion that is necessary over an extended body, is here understood to be
focused on one point.
3. Schelling defines the power of cohesion as being in others (§ 7, SW IV, 433). However, such
a drive (Ergänzungstrieb) does not yet exist on the level of the heavenly bodies, the
cohesion plays no role for them, since they are self-sufficient, freely mobile, free in itself.

Finally, I would like to point out that, in addition to the treatment of tidal gravity and a new
speculative mechanics, Cartesianism has reached its final destination at the same time. This may
still sound surprising to some readers. To support this assertion, I would like to explain it with
Descartes himself, using an example taken from Hegel's History of Philosophy. Hegel writes about
the principle of expansion in Descartes: “A principal idea of Descartes is now matter, he
understands the essence of the body only as extension.” According to Descartes, the nature of the
body is fully understood by its extension. That, the proof of what Hegel quotes from Descartes, is
very naive, common sense. To prove that the body is understood only by its extension, but not by its
resistance, results for Descartes that a body, a stone, wood, anything, can be ground. Friction from
another body destroys resistance: Determinatio est negatio56, then presented at Spinoza as a short
cut and short circuit as an attribute of the substance called God.–But particles stay, Hegel points to
the dust. Dust, even as the remaining resistant extended mass and expansion, less resistance, still is
a danger to man and his own extensions into space. However, to eliminate the resistance of a body
with a veritable Roche limit (Jupiter, Saturn), an unimaginable grater is required that exceeds all
boundaries and does not help in any case in the dire need of an even bigger grater for the former
grater until the grater grates and rubs itself.–A Trinitarian theory of gravitation can correct vague
ideas. It is strange that Cartesianism in all the long time since Cartesius did not understand its own
principle, extension. Perhaps it is because Continental philosophy (in addition to the fact that it has
not given enough thought to tides), as Sloterdijk put it in terms of Heidegger, was a founding and
frictional57 act, “But dust forms so easily in space, that only a professional cleaner would not be
surprised.” (Peter Eggleton)58

56 “Cartesius goes to the individual; At extension there are again two determinations, matter and motion. He follows
the extended, comes to matter, rest, movement.–A main idea of Descartes is now about matter; He grasps the
essence of the body only as extension. According to Descartes, the nature of the body is perfectly described by its
expansiveness; Body is he, inasmuch as he is extended not insofar as he has other qualities. Everything else that we
consider to be the qualities of the bodies are only secondary qualities, modes, and so on. They can be taken away
and thought away. We say: The body also provides resistance, has smell, taste, color; without such is no body. The
further determinations of the extended hold within this sphere: quantum of expansion, rest, motion, inertia. These
other qualities of the body are something merely sensuous, and Cartesius proves that, as has long been shown by the
skeptics. That, however, is the abstract concept or the pure essence; but just to the body or into the pure being
necessarily belongs negativity, difference. That this is the essence of the body is shown by the fact that all
determinations of it are extinguished, that they can not be absolutely predicated (except expansion): color,
transparency, hardness, and so on; Matter and extent are identical.–He supported this by the following reason. We
conclude on the solidity, hardness (self-assurance) of matter through the resistance which a body opposes to our
touch and by means of which it seeks to assert its place. Now suppose that matter, as we touch it, always receded,
like space, we have no reason to attribute its solidity. Smell, color, taste are only sensual properties; true is only
what we clearly see. If a body is crushed into small pieces, it also gives way and yet does not lose its nature.
Resistance is not essential. This non-sufficiency is but only quantitatively, less resistance; this one always stays.”
Hegel could only contradict Descartes here formally. In itself, however, the principle of grinding lies in extension
itself; sometimes even as a pure self-relation. A “Grater” for the planet Jupiter would be the mass of our sun, as in a
system with a sun and a brown dwarf, a regular phenomenon. Stars with less than 0.08 solar masses never reach the
stage of hydrogen fusion–they are called brown dwarfs. Jupiter, collecting all other masses of the planets within the
solar system could possibly become a brown dwarf.
57 „Many realize sooner or later that the final chapter of intellectual history is devoted to the friction between the
absolutism of the human and the indifference of biospheric processes to human interests.“ Peter Sloterdijk, Spheres
III, Plural Spherology, translated by W. Hoban, L.A. 2016, p. 435.
58 For reasons of political correctness I have allowed myself to change Peter Eggleton's quotation and to adapt it to the
time that instead of housewife, which was certainly not meant to be evil, I would have to make it a professional
cleaner. I hope Mr Eggleton will forgive me for that, as well as the cleaner. A former colleague of Peter Eggleton,
from whom I have this quotation, answered: “Yes, Peter Eggleton, that's a very British character with subtle humor,
he refers to the fact that all scientists are amazed how dust in space so easily generates in impossible environments. ”
–“Impossible Enviroments,” same with the intellectual world: “Theoretical as well as moral perfection are reserved
for darkness. In an remarkable reversal of the light metaphors, nature gives her best far away from the sun, and
pours pseudo-ethereal beings out of her cornucopia.” Axel Beelmann