Reading the First Outline for a System of the Philosophy of Nature, with an eye to the possibility of the positive philosophy intimated in the Berlin Lectures, comes with much disappointment. This is not to say that the Outline fails completely in giving any hint of where the positive philosophy might find its concrete subject matter and development.
To begin with, one ought to recognize just how much ahead of his time Schelling really was. Already in the Outline Schelling criticizes not only a facile "direct realist" account of nature (which only focuses on visible or tangible phenomena) but also all other forms of science which tries to ground itself empirically in observations. Schelling claims that the essential constituents of nature are not beings but rather actants. These are not "forces" in the sense of something which can be inferred out of a repeated perception of the "constant conjunction" of sensations. If we take the term "force" to express the as it were "horizontal" connection of appearances, then the term "actant" rather describes a vertical causality which immanently underlies all natural processes. Actants are necessary for the explanation of natural phenomena, since forces, while they do explain the conjunction of this object with that and the other, cannot account for why precisely these objects appeared in the first place. Instead of taking these objects as "given," Schelling aims to explain their very appearance as objects by means of these "actants."
A popular introduction to quantum physics already suggests that "particles" posited at the sub-atomic or quantum level are exactly what Schelling calls "actants." These sub-atomic particles have an essentially unobservable side which are only posited due to their explanatory value. Kenneth Ford's The Quantum World, among many other such introductory textbooks on quantum physics, provide us with many such examples. Ford emphasizes again and again that certain ionic processes are only postulated without every being directly observed. Yet, due to their explanatory value and mathematical elegance, these processes are assumed to be real. These processes are precisely what Schelling envisioned in his outline of a "speculative physics" which deals with "actants." And Schelling's still all-too-sketchy claim that all natural beings presuppose an "original duality" seems to find confirmation with the postulate of quantum physics that all "particles" have their negative counterpart, an "anti-particle."
Not only on the level of physics, but also on the level of biology Schelling is farsighted. Again, Schelling stresses an "original duality" in an organism which drives the organic process. Unlike inorganic matter, the way in which an organism acts is determined by the mode in which the organism is receptive towards its external environment. For Schelling, the act of receiving stimuli is the essential activity of life. That is to say, it is not what organisms spontaneously do at random that constitutes the autonomy of life, but rather the stable structure which allows the organism to distinguish the relevant stimuli from the irrelevant that really gives it life. This duality between activity and receptivity is unified under the concept of "sensibility," and this is what Schelling takes to be the fundamental determination of all organic beings.
Each organism is an expression of a particular stage of development in the original actants of nature. Stages are distinguished by virtue of the complexity, diversity, and ultimately the plasticity with which these organisms become receptive to actants. The lower organisms thus are constituted by their receptivity to a very limited range of actants and forces, while the higher organisms, such as mammals, are able to sense a considerably larger range of stimuli, forces, and actants. Humans are the "highest" - although this is also a highly biased claim conditioned by the prejudices of Schelling's time - in that only the human - according to Schelling - is able to relate to (by receiving) all actants in nature. Anthropocentric though this may seem, it is also consistent with Schelling's later claim that the human soul is born with the purpose of revealing the ground (i.e. nature) of God for God.
The limit of each organism is given by the moment of reproduction or sex. The telos of organic being as such is its sexuality, and sexuality is moreover the highest expression of the aforementioned fundamental duality inherent in all natural beings. Again, lower organic beings quickly move from birth to sex, and thus they perish relatively quickly. Schelling claims that since every natural being is the product of a duality which has not yet resolved itself into a unity, natural beings who do achieve this resolution in unity cease to exist in nature. Thus, natural beings "fulfill" their purpose with the sexual act, and thus henceforth terminate their growth and soon after perish. Again, and although the following is not exactly how Schelling puts it, since human beings are able to engage in non-reproductive sex, they alone are capable of growing without limit, since they alone are able to bypass and overcome the destiny (i.e. natural telos) of all other organic beings.
Moreover, Schelling claims that the higher organisms already have the actants of the lower organisms inscribed into their very being. This speculative claim, again, marks the fact that Schelling's Outline really is ahead of its time. It is only after the establishment of techniques for analyzing DNA that scientists were able to confirm that so-called "higher" creatures have many DNA sequences for traits which they do not make use of at all in their course of life. The human being, for example, possesses many DNA sequences, perhaps even more than half of the entire human DNA, which are of absolute uselessness in the development and preservation of the human body. Neil Shubin's popular book Your Inner Fish is one of the many accessible accounts of why this is the case. Organic beings thus really do preserve the traces of their ancestors.
Despite these insights, which are moreover expressed in a powerfully abstract and formal language, why is it "disappointing" to read Schelling's Outline? One source of disappointment is that the Outline is too coherent. What Schelling called the "ground" in his Investigations, which is also the object of the positive philosophy envisioned in his Berlin Lectures, seems to be something which eludes any easy systematization according to categories such as finitude, infinity, causality, etc. If the ground can be understood as "actants," then this already seems to go contrary to the spirit of the Investigations which places such concepts and thoughts on the side of the "light" of the understanding. The difference between the "being" constituted by the imbalance of actants and the "absolute prius" of the positive philosophy is clarified by Schelling in the following passage:
The prius will be known from its consequences, but not in a way such that the consequences had preceded it. The preposition ‘a’ in ‘a posteriori’ does not in this instance signify the terminus a quo; in this context ‘a posteriori’ means ‘per posterius’: through its consequence the prius is known. To be known a priori means just this: to be known from and out of the prius; what is known a priori is, thus, that which a prius possesses and from which it is known. The absolute prius, however, is what has no prius from which it can be known. To be the absolute prius means, therefore, not to be known a priori (SUNY edition, p.193)
Whereas the natural beings in the Outline are seen as products of actants posultaed a priori, the being of the positive philosophy must itself be the source of the "absolute prius" which, since it is originally derived from an actual, already existent being, and since it cannot thus be a consequence of an a priori process of synthesis or deduction, is in an absolute sense "original" and thus free. While such an account resonates deeply with Schelling's claim that all organic activity is really the receptivity of the organism, the Outline does not develop this insight further in a direction that would make the positive philosophy truly take shape.
In this sense, the anachronism of trying to find the germ of the positive philosophy in the Outline becomes evident, its limitations revealed. The Outline is clearly premature in this regard. Nonetheless, its account of organic nature highlights several insights pertaining to organic development, sexuality, and receptivity / activity which all seem to hint at a possible natural philosophy fit for the demands placed by the positive philosophy. However, before pursuing this direction any further, I would like to once again shift my focus onto another domain, that of art, and thus consider next Schelling's Philosophy of Art.
