Kielmeyer and the Organic World

Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer (1765-1844) was the ‘father of philosophy of nature’ owing to his profound influence on German Idealist and Romantic Naturphilosophie. With the recent growth of interest in Idealist and Romantic philosophy of nature in the UK and abroad, the importance of Kielmeyer’s work is being increasingly recognised and special attention is being paid to his influence on biology’s development as a distinct discipline at the end of the eighteenth century. In this exciting new book, Lydia Azadpour and Daniel Whistler present the first ever English translations of key texts by Kielmeyer, along with contextual and interpretative essays by leading international scholars, who are experts on the philosophy of nature and the formation of the life sciences in the late eighteenth century. The topics they cover include: the laws of nature, the concept of force, the meaning of ‘organism’, the logic of recapitulation, Kielmeyer and ecology, sexual differentiation in animal life and Kielmeyer’s relationship to Kant, Schelling and Hegel. In doing so, they provide a comprehensive English reference to Kielmeyer’s historical and contemporary significance.

For readers interested in the history and philosophy of science this collection is a worthwhile exploration, providing many insights into a complex, innovative, and prescient thinker., It is highly gratifying that at last for English readers the major contribution of Kielmeyer to the development of life science will be accessible and richly interpreted. Excellent translations and commentary by the premier scholars in the field mark this as a landmark contribution., These probing interpretative essays place Kielmeyer’s work in relation to the broader scientific and philosophical concerns of his time and demonstrate Kielmeyer’s significance for the historicity of nature, epistemic questions facing natural inquiry, and understandings of the relationships of inorganic and organic nature. This timely edition marks a resurgence of interest in Kielmeyer and provides critical access to his work for Anglophone scholars.

Lydia Azadpour is a PhD researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her primary research areas are metaphysics, the philosophy of nature, and the history of science in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century German philosophy.Daniel Whistler is Lecturer in Modern European Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. His research interests are the history of philosophy: German Idealism, its origins and aftermath and nineteenth-century French philosophy.