Not too many people have studied Naturphilosophie, but perhaps some of you have and have read the material, and have a good sense of modern physics, biology and chemistry as well to see if its compatible. (Of course such a combination rarely comes.) But I am curious if anyone does understand Naturphilosophie, if they feel any of it is recoverable?

I'm specifically talking about conceiving nature how the German Idealist did from the 19th century. Basically, conceiving nature as a organic, processual, teleological system that's preconditioned from immaterial, dynamic primal forces that were in constant struggle with themselves. The dynamical account of nature saw the normal conception of nature as a composite (present-at-hand) "things" derivative from such dynamic processes, such as expanding and condensing forces in interplay generating matter. For example, Kant refused to see matter as a form of res-extensa, but instead sought to find the preconditions of how matter was explained into existence in the first place. What was matter, and in what way did it occupy space? The project at it's core is a metaphysical deduction of space-time, matter and mechanics — a type of transcendental argument for why these type of things exist at all.

In order to explain such a phenomenon, he did not presuppose matter's extension (or existence) in euclidean space as something given, but saw matter as a product of two primal forces acting on one another to create matter itself; thus, creating a dynamic account of matter. These were immaterial forces (analogical to pure concepts of understanding that are constitutive of our experiences, expect they were constitutive of nature instead). A force like repulsion: that is, matter infinitely expanding outwards, and a attractive force, where matter is infinitely pulled inwards to a point in unoccupied space. Both were necessary to create and differentiate matter. The forces would help differentiate bodies occupied in space because the two forces also operated as force-fields: In virute of one body occupying space, it also resisted (via the repulsive force) other bodies, while pulling its own body to certain points (via the contracting force). To be more precise, we differentiate objects merely where they occupy themselves in space, and the dynamic account of nature seeks to find how matter gets to occupy space itself. [We might point to laws in mechanics, or gravitational pull to explain all this, but the point is that these immaterial forces are the preconditions of those laws and forces (or perhaps the very notion of how gravity arises in the first place.)]

But Kant's account is only the beginning of such a conception of Nature. In other accounts, Schelling too saw, what he called visible nature as a product of the interplay of primal forces in constant struggle which saw in all forms of nature:

Visible Nature, in particular and as a whole, is an allegory of this perpetually advancing and retreating movement. The tree, for example, constantly drives from the root to the fruit, and when it has arrived at the pinnacle, it again sheds everything and retreats to the state of fruitlessness, and makes itself back into a root, only in order again to ascend. The entire activity of plants concerns the production of seed, only in order again to start over from the beginning and through a new developmental process to produce again only seed and to begin again. Yet all of visible nature appears unable to attain settledness and seems to transmute tirelessly in a similar circle. — Schelling

There seem to be some aspects of Schelling's Naturphilosophie that is spot on to me, beginning from the idea that Nature ought to be captured as a type of process and struggle. Conceiving nature as primarily as a combination of this processes generating a product. However, the product is transient and instantaneous combination of invisible forces. Take for example an eddy in a stream:

Think of a stream, which is itself pure identity. Where it meets resistance, it forms an eddy. This eddy has no permanence, but is constantly disappearing and reappearing. Originally nothing in Nature is differentiated; all that she produces is at that point unseen and dissolved in the general productive potential. Only when there are points of resistance are Nature’s products gradually precipitated out, emerging from the general identity. At every such point, the flow is broken up (so that productivity is destroyed), but at each moment a new wave arrives, which fills the sphere afresh. — Schelling

A stream flows in a straight line forward as long as it encounters no resistance. Where there is resistance—a whirlpool forms. Every original product of nature is such a whirlpool, every organism. The whirlpool is not something immobilized, it is rather something constantly transforming—but reproduced anew at each moment. Thus no product in nature is fixed, but it is reproduced at each instant through the force of nature entire. (We do not really see the subsistence of Nature’s products, just their continually being-reproduced.) Nature as a whole co-operates in every product. — Schelling

But such forces aren't typically explained in such a way in modern physics, or perhaps named differently Like how we don't use Aristotelian concepts such as "potency, act, formal-final causes" or, if we feel to use the more Greek terms, words like "entelechy". We might instead use words like "telenomy" (though rarely). However, these concepts do seem to represent something fundamental in nature when we observe biological phenomenon. And people typically attempt to tell us these aren't meant to be "physical" but "metaphysical".

But there are some fundamental difficulties with these. While Aristotle didn't think there were things like "empty space", Kant, Schelling and Hegel did. They specifically differentiated matter from space — something I'm not sure many people in modern physics do anymore. Though, the German idealist do seem to have dependency/interdependent relationships that might be able to overcome that, but I'm just not sure how that'd all work. Physics is a pretty big field. The German Idealists for sure didn't have non-euclidean geometry, didn't know what time-dilation was, didn't know about the curvature of space-time.

Anywho, I hope I'm not talking crazy here and hope someone understands me.