Cosmos, Vol. 5

make the task of a theoretical philosophy of nature German: Naturphilosophie; a branch of philosophy that sought to understand the fundamental laws of the universe before modern specialized science somewhat indefinite.

Description of nature currently leads to an explanation of nature only in individual groups of phenomena.² The most diligent effort of research (I repeat it here) must be directed toward the conditions under which the real processes occur in the great and complex community which we call nature and the world; toward the laws that one recognizes with certainty in individual groups. However, it is not always possible to ascend from the laws to the causes themselves. The investigation of a partial causal connection and the gradual increase of generalizations in our physical knowledge are, for now, the highest goals of cosmic labors.

Already in the Hellenic world of ideas, specific material diversity and metabolism German: Stoffwechsel; here used in the broader sense of the transformation or exchange of matter (the transition of elements into one another) presented insurmountable problems to the ingenuity of the powerful Heraclitus of Ephesus³, Empedocles⁴, and the Clazomenian⁵ Referring to Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, a Pre-Socratic philosopher who argued that all things are composed of infinitely divisible particles: just as in our time, the material diversity of the numerous so-called simple bodies of the chemists and the allotropies The property of some chemical elements to exist in two or more different forms, such as carbon appearing as both diamond and graphite of carbon (with diamond and graphite), phosphorus, and sulfur do. Although I have vividly described the uncertainty and difficulty of the task of a theoretical philosophy of nature, I am nevertheless far from advising against the attempt at eventual success in this noble and important part of the world of thought. The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science by the immortal philosopher of Königsberg Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) certainly belong among the most remarkable products of this great mind. He seemed to want to limit his plan himself,