Sketching Nature and Naturphilosophie

Carus was an active participant in the German philosophical movement of philosophy of nature. The first half of the nineteenth century was the time where psychology—having been established in the eighteenth century—was rapidly becoming an object of inquiries, especially in the German language room. This was due to the prevailing philosophical context—uniting different sciences of nature (Naturwissenschaften) and the soul (Geisteswissenschaften). Or better, that distinction between these two categories had not yet been made, and the acts of knowing freely traversed between art, science, and music. This prevailing philosophical perspective upon studying nature at the time of Carus was Naturphilosophie—a wholistic perspective that moved away from theological dominance of the look at nature to the secular-romantic view of the 1800–1820s. This chapter will outline Carus’ elaborations of the natural philosophy ideas in relation to those of his contemporaries Lorenz Oken, Karl Friedrich Burdach, and Johann Heinroth.