Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831), Germanphilosopher, who held that what was truly real in the world was mind or spirit, not material things. Hegel argued that history showed a gradual unfolding of this mind. In 1801 he wrote a dissertation in which h e asserted some numerological accounts of the distances and number of the planets. —SHSBC Binder 4 Approved Glossary