Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), born in Stuttgart on August 27 andeducated at the University of Tübingen, gained intellectual renown while teaching at the University of Berlin. A thoroughly systematic thinker, Hegel viewed philosophy, natural science, history, ethics, and religion as inherently connected in a whole that included difference while simultaneously transcending it. As a result, he presents the kind of comprehensive interpretation of science, technology, and ethics that is often implicit but seldom articulated in contemporary discussions, which, in light of Hegel, are challenged to move beyond particular case studies. Perhaps most famous for his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel died suddenly on November 14 during a cholera epidemic.
Science and Technology in Hegel's System
For Hegel, the truths of the empirical (or special) sciences are justified only by the thinking at work in philosophy. Put another way, natural science occupies a middle point between sensation and philosophy. Just as sense experience needs science to grasp its deepest truths, so science requires philosophy.
The relationship between natural science and philosophy is best understood in terms of four modes of consciousness: sense-certainty, perception, understanding, and reason. The empirical sciences build on sense-certainty and perception to establish laws and theories.
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