No, at first glance, Hegel and Mary Baker Eddy have absolutely nothing in common. Hegel, perhaps the last and greatest idealist in the history of German philosophy, and Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, a controversial free church movement that set out to conquer the world in the 19th and 20th centuries but has largely disappeared from public consciousness today.
However, a closer look at both major works reveals astonishing "overlaps," I'd say—though I wouldn't call them "commonalities." From the perspective of their respective horizons of understanding, both are completely independent of each other, pursuing a mysterious natural or existential phenomenon that could lead adherents of the materialistic worldview to reconsider their views if they were to follow it to its logical conclusion: the undeniable fact that the Fibonacci numbers, a purely mathematical construct, operate as a generative principle of form in nature. The nautilus shell is perhaps the most beautiful example of this.
The organic growth of the nautilus shell follows the exact geometry of the Fibonacci numbers. Mathematically, the geometric pattern is based on the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…), where each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. This simple principle creates a logarithmic spiral, which recurs in numerous natural forms—from the nautilus shell to sunflowers to galaxies. But what could this possibly have to do with Hegel and Mary Baker Eddy? To explore this connection, I need to go a little further.
First, let's look at Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel is considered one of the last great systematic philosophers and the pinnacle of German Idealism. He began as a theologian but later became a philosopher of the unity of being. His thought revolves around the question of how spirit, history, the world, and nature unfold in a way guided by reason or spirit. For Hegel, reality is not a static being, but the generative becoming of a universal spirit that recognizes itself through a dialectical process that fulfills itself in four instances:
- Thesis. A particular concept, point of view or state of consciousness is taken as a starting point.
- Antithesis. The opposite occurs and reveals a contradiction that calls the thesis into question.
- Synthesis. In thought, both poles are reflected, but elevated to a higher level, or, according to Hegel, “sublated”.
- return (Reflection / self-reference). Thinking perceives the result of the synthesis as a new starting point. The synthesis (3) becomes a new thesis, with which the process begins anew.
The fourth stage makes Hegel's dialectic hermeneutic: knowledge is not a linear progress, but a circular process of self-exploration or discovery of the spirit. One could therefore say: Hegel's dialectic is not a circle that closes, but a ascending spiralin which the spirit recognizes itself ever more deeply – a constant remembering of the Absolute of itself. The Fibonacci spiral (or the so-called Golden Ratio) shows precisely the movement that Hegel describes in conceptual form: a self-similar, growth-oriented unfolding in which each new stage emerges from the previous one, includes it, and at the same time transcends it.
Now to Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910). She too grew up in a theological environment (I am working on a short biography), but then wrote her major work “Science and Health” no longer from a religious perspective, but as she herself called it at the time, as a “science of being” or “science of mind”.
As far as we know, Mary Baker Eddy never read Hegel. However, there are notable structural analogies to his work, but also differences that I cannot discuss in detail in this informal blog format. The theme of her work, like Hegel's, is being itself, which she traces back to four basic categories. This being, however, must be understood spiritually and scientifically and not simply believed, a paradigm shift that few of her followers at the time would have recognized. And how can it be understood? Precisely through a fourfold process of understanding (the reference to Hegel is in parentheses here):
- Starting point (Thesis): Being must be understood as it has presented itself or revealed itself: namely, as purely spiritual.
- Implementation: Overcoming the antithesis: What being is not must be seen through internally as unreal so that it can no longer have a negative effect on consciousness and body.
- Result (Synthesis): Then spiritual being in the here and now is experienced as an ever-evolving spiritual life: “Infinite progression is concrete being”.
- Understanding reflection (Reference feedback): The new life experience (3.) leads to a new starting point.
Unlike Hegel, she bases her model of being on the basic categories of the Bible (e.g., the 4×4 symbolism of the “Holy City”) and does not claim to have created her own doctrine, although many of her followers may see it differently.
A note: Sources on this topic will follow shortly (I always write this blog in the moment), as will further posts on the subject.
