The thing is, Hegel himself abandoned the idea that there was a single essence underlying appearances--and that was back in the 1820s. It constantly amazes me that scientists in the 21st century continue to labour under what Blake referred to as 'the tyranny of single-vision'.

Look at the history of this idea in Western thought:

• The Eleatics thought that the diversity of the world could be reduced to some single principle, i.e. the principle of Water, or Fire, or, for Pythagoras and his followers, Number. In other words, you have an apparent world of rocks, trees, dogs etc. and a real world that is one thing and one thing alone.
• Western religions reinforced this idea with the concept of the Creation, a half-real realm where people lead their lives, and a real world where God and the angels dwell.
• The magicians (like Bruno and Dee) and the idealist philosophers (excluding Hegel, who's too subtle to be lumped into this category) believed that Mind was real, and the physical world illusory.
• Now, today, we're being asked to believe that electrons and protons are real, and things like trees and grandmothers are illusions. Einstein said that the world we see around us is an illusion ("albeit a particularly persistent one").
• The faith of many physicists is that we wil soon uncover a theory of everything that proves somehow that we are living in an illusory world (perhaps like the Matrix) and that something fundamental, like strings, is the "true reality".
• Stephen Wolfram has a new variant on this old idea, namely that the universe is the emergent behavior of a sub-sub-sub-atomic level cellular automaton or its equivalent. Others contend that the universe is "really" a computer, and we're just programs (the Matrix idea again).

Of course, the idea that what's real isn't what's real is bullshit. As Nietzsche pointed out, theories like this are popular with the guys who got beaten up in the schoolyard, or in earlier ages were forced to join seminaries by their fathers. The idea that the real world is not the real world is popular with people who hate the real world--and particularly with people whose only strength lies in their minds, who therefore would like to believe that the mind or something related to it is the ultimate reality. By denying the very existence of the physical world around them, they feel some measure of control--of power.

But if they step in front of a bus, they'll get killed by it even if it's just a scrim of illusion on top of a deep sea of superstrings.

Especially since Nietzsche, no modern philosopher could get away with suggesting that the classical split of essence vs. appearance makes much sense. The general project we know as Science, however, was invented during a period when people did believe such things--and its successes generally derive from separating essential from accidental features in phenomena. It's a procedure that works stunningly well, for most things--geology, planetary mechanics, Newtonian physics. (It also appeals to the guys who got beaten up in the schoolyard.) The trouble begins when you hit the hard (as in difficult) sciences such as biology and subatomic physics. Here the usefulness of the simple appearance/essence split starts to fail, and concepts such as complementarity begin to be more useful.

Reductionist thinking naturally leads to metaphysical nonsense like the "theory of everything". After all, if you keep asking (like a two-year old) "what makes up X" (where X is people, cells, molecules, atoms etc.) you either hit an infinite regress, or you start longing for a final answer. But, two observations:

1. Hegel realized that you could argue any point forever; there is no way to "prove" anything in philosophy. For this reason, he invented a system whose stability depended on the very instability of logical argument. Within such a system, the infinite (and infantile) regress of "what makes up X" doesn't occur: you get a massive circularity, where all roads ultimately lead back to your starting point.
2. Niels Bohr formulated his understanding of Quantum Mechanics around the realization that the observer, his concepts and tools are part of the phenomenon being studied--not, as most people mistakenly interpret it, in some metaphysical sense, but in the sense that at some point the ratio of physically real entities to ideas and interpretations in answering "what makes up X", starts to heel over. The answers involve less and less physically real entities, and more and more mathematical, theoretical and, yes, metaphysical entities. At some point, when you are no longer dealing with objects you can physically observe, you find you've circled all the way around, and that the content of your theories is entirely mathematical, philosophical and psychological. And, since (as Lakoff points out in Philosophy in the Flesh) the content of philosophy and mathematics is conceptual metaphors grounded in the human body and environment, you find that your explanation lands you right back at the level of "illusory" macro reality. Yes, it's a circular process. And this isn't such a bad thing, in this case.

Rather than looking for a "final theory" that continues to proclaim the absurd doctrine that the world I see and live in isn't the real world, but that some mathematical abstraction is the "true world", I prefer to believe that every level of reality is equally real. Hegel's system was, as Harry Rosen puts it, an attempt to describe "the structure of the absence of essence", and whether successful or not, it's a good model to look at. Lacking an essential or real world to place against the world of appearances, what are we left with? Something like the following:

• People are made up of organs, cells, etc.
• The world is made up of chemical compounds and minerals. etc.
• These component parts are made out of molecules; the molecules are made out of atoms.
• Atoms and subatomic particles are made up of Planck-scale entities, perhaps strings.
• These fundamental-appearing objects can only be perceived, studied and modelled using the apparatus of the macro-level world (for instance, the results of quantum mechanics are unintelligible until translated into the terms of classical mechanics).
• As we pass the realm of the observable we enter a realm whose constituents are mathematical and conceptual metaphors. Such metaphors are ultimately grounded in the human body and its relationship to its immediate environment.
• We arrive back at the top level of the analysis--not naively suggesting that this level of Mind and perception is the real one, but rather abandoning the idea that any of the levels we've passed through is the fundamental level. "Neither a materialist nor an idealist be."

There's hints of this in the new science of emergent systems. For instance, emergence calls into question the roles and identities of parts and wholes in nature. Are atoms (the parts) real, and human beings (the whole they make up) illusory? Are cells real, and organisms illusions? Are strings real, and atoms illusions? This relationship, of parts and wholes, is the real question where fundamental reality is concerned.

So what do I believe? I'm a believer in something called dialectical monism, which has had many expressions throughout history. Perhaps a quote would be in order: in my forthcoming novel Lady of Mazes, Qiingi of Raven's People at one point converses with a Sleek Blue Being while paddling his canoe on a lake. Part of the exchange goes as follows:

No theory of everything, no tyranny of single vision--but an infinite regress of delightful masks. That's my universe.

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