Henrik SteffensDied 13 Feb 1845 at age 71 (born 2 May 1773).Philosopher and physicist, who combined scientific ideas with German Idealist metaphysics. He was a professor of mineralogy at Halle in 1804 and professor of physics at Breslau in 1811. Though Steffens did much sound scientific work as a physicist, he had the fondness ofs a philosopher for using scientific fact as a basis for the construction of fanciful analogies and quite arbitrary metaphysical conclusions. His exposition of a philosophy of nature in Grundzüge der philosophischen Naturwissenschaft (1806; "Philosophical Characteristics of Natural Science") showed a typical combination of profound scientific knowledge and Schellingian speculation. |
