Naturphilosophie

Physicians were especially drawn to Schelling's focus on nature as an organic whole. Many of them found his emphasis on the organic especially appealing because they felt that healing was impossible without seeing the body in intimate connection to the soul that inhabited it. Of forty readily identifiable sympathizers of Schelling's system, for example, more than 70 percent held medical degrees. Given the development of what has been called an ideology of Wissenschaft that accompanied the upsurge of German culture during the latter half of the eighteenth century, scholars have also pointed to the promise some physicians felt that organic Naturphilosophie held for medicine. Because in these years medicine suffered from criticism that it lacked the systematic structure enjoyed by other Wissenschaften, physicians hoped that the rigorously reasoned program Schelling had outlined in his many works would supply the kind of intellectual foundation medicine needed.

Other natural philosophers were also attracted to Schelling's attempt, as he once said, to give wings to physics, that is, to give the natural philosopher the responsibility to move from particular empirical results to the larger meaning of the entire enterprise of natural science. Regarding nature as a living whole, for example, entailed the assumption that all of nature's forces were interrelated. A number of experimenters from the physical sciences persisted in exploiting this assumption, including Hans Christian Ørsted, whose commitment to the philosophical unity of nature's forces played a direct role in his discovery of electromagnetism in 1820.

While Schelling himself always retained great appreciation of and respect for empirical research, eventually the charge arose, in some cases justifiably, that his followers dealt primarily with the play of speculative ideas and had little interest in the empirical side of natural science. In addition, those still devoted to a Kantian position on nature and natural science, like the philosopher-physicist Jakob Fries (1773–1843), composed informed critiques of Schelling's work.

After the first decade of the century, Schelling turned in his writing to other matters, and his influence as the founder of Naturphilosophie waned. By the 1820s there were only a few who were willing to identify themselves as Naturphilosophen. Among those who were, however, was Lorenz Oken (1779–1851), who was the motive force behind the emergence of a German scientific community in the modern sense of the term. His founding of the journal Isis and his leading role in establishing the Society of German Natural Investigators and Physicians in 1822 were accomplished in spite of his reputation as an unrepentant Naturphilosoph.