3 SYMMETRY IN EXPRESSION: BEAUTY

Now, because Kant defined categories as cognitive strategies previous to („a priori“) any experience, they were frequently (mis-)interpreted as (innate) qualities of the human mind itself, instead as laws of nature (i.e. as empirical cognitions). This (mis-) understanding was further improved by the feeling of the evident beauty and mental satisfaction which symmetrical objects usually provide, with beauty being widely understood as both, a mental reactive (emotional) answer on environmental impacts, as also an active spontaneous (internally motivated and freely disposed) expression of intimate (quasi-mental) self-identity (Portmann).

4 UNIFICATION BY SCIENCE:

   ROMANTIC  NATURAL  PHILOSOPHY

The complicated balanced system of understanding the world by receptive cognition, and of the constitution of the self by active expression is not yet elaborated satisfyingly. Yet, the problem by itself generated its own philosophical elaboration in what is called  „Romantische Naturphilosophie“ (Romantic natural philosophy, RNP), and its philosophical counterpart, idealistic „Identitätsphilosophie“ - both ill-famed by scientists and critical philosophers soon and up to now, a condemnation in fact well founded, but superficial and too hasty, for RNP immediately had a deep and stimulating, yet long overlooked influence on modern scientific thought!

Schellings Identitätsphilosophie, and its theological surplus, „Pan(en-)theismus“, comprizes God, Nature and Man in a complex unity of interdependent relations: not only is God the creator of the universe and (en-suite or independently, resp.) of Man, but His spirit is continuosly present in both of them. The universe is not at all finished by the single act of divine creation, but it is still an active entity, that sets itself into being by a continuous stream of creative acts guided by the natural laws, i.e. by selforganisation.

These indeed are esoteric ideas, often expressed in a strange style; yet those scientists working under the auspicies of RNP succeeded in deriving or postulating a wealth of basic general guiding principles which, however, needed 100 years to prove their effectivity and fruitfulness for contemporary science: principles of conservation, of interaction, of symmetry, all these now common framework e.g in quantum mechanics, particle physics, crystallography, theoretical chemistry and biology.