"From the Physical World to the Habitat: Biocentrism in Hegel's Interrelation of Animal Subjectivity with its Environment"

My point of departure is the relation between Hegel and the stance of contemporary theoretical biology in relation to biota and their habitat, Umwelt as life world of living being. I then address the issue of geology as first part of the Organic Physics in Hegel's Philosophy of nature, the subjectivity of organic life, the 'idealism' of animal life in relation to its environment. I conclude highlighting Hegel's biophysical approach to geology and his view that what is living is able purposively to transform and place what comes from without within its own sphere and warmth, its special 'self-world'.