The Emergence of Life from Mechanico-Chemical Processes

Abstract

In the Science of Logic Hegel undertakes a critical examination of the category of mechanism, carefully developing every nuance of implicit determinacy suggested in it. For reasons we will see, this development leads us through the demise of mechanism to “chemism,” in which a conceptual determinacy that can more properly be characterized as “chemical” supplants the purely mechanistic level of determinacy. Chemism in turn reveals inherent contradictions of its own that make necessary a concept of purposiveness or “teleology.” Finally, to the degree that the latter is conceived as “external” purposiveness — that is, as a purposive activity which makes use of a material external and indifferent to it — it still retains a residual mechanistic determinacy and thereby fails to adequately express purposiveness. When such purposiveness is fully expressed, it is life.