Immanuel Kant

1.Background
2. The Critical Philosophy
 Germany before the French
Revolution
 From early Renaissance, southern Germany had
been mining center of the continent.
 Central Germany the early center of Printing
industry and watch and fine instrument
manufacture.
 In spite of commerce along some of the rivers
and sea coast – Germany –especially northern
and eastern Germany primarily a food producing
region –predominantly rural.
 German Higher education in 18th
century
 Decentralized –significant fraction of the ~300
different political units (governed by “princes”)
have higher educational institutions –but except
for a very few –underfunded, small, dominated
by Cameral sciences -- i.e. political economy,
law –to train government officials
 Small # including Goettingen, Konigsberg, Jena,
& later, Berlin, are larger and become dominated
by more traditional philosophy faculties
 Immanuel Kant (1724-1803)
 There is a tradition of education interested in
technological issues in Germany during the 18th C; but In
their mature works neither Kant nor Goethe show any
interest in it –they initiate a purely “academic” tradition.
I will be concentrating on this tradition because of long
term significance –may not have been numerically
dominant at any time –in fact probably was not.

 Into 21st century Germany still has 2 tier educational

system –Technishe hochschulen & Universities –students
“Tracked” as early as our middle schools.
 Kant’s Early Career
 Studies Newtonian Natural philosophy
 In 1740’s & 50’s publishes primarily in mechanics
and cosmology – A General Natural History of
the Heavens (1755) first evolutionary theory in
cosmology --sees development over time.
 Also interested in broad issues in philosophy of
science & mathematics
 “Rationalist” notion of science taken from Leibniz
and others
 Kantian notion of science
 From older tradition comes notion that scientific
knowledge should possess apodictic – i.e.
absolute – certainty.
 In a way a reversion to obsolete vision –except
still held by some French advocates of “rational
mechanics.” i.e. Lagrange
 Works with Leibnizian logical dichotomies
 Analytic vs Synthetic
 A-priori vs A-posteriori
 Kantian science -2
 Kant admits Hume’s claim that a-posteriori
claims can never be certain (the problem of
induction).
 At the same time he admits that analytic
statements cannot add to our knowledge.
 So –if scientific statements exist they must be
both a-priori and synthetic. Kant says that he
can produce at least 2– from geometry and the
universal law of gravitation.
 Kant-Science-3
 In The Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and The Prolegomena to any
Future Metaphysics (1783) Kant seeks to understand the conditions
under which a-priori, synthetic knowledge might exist.
 He concludes that the necessary conditions are that are minds must
contribute something in the construction of natural knowledge that
adds to the pure existence of things-in-themselves.
 First, our faculty of sensibility or intuition, which provides the raw
materials for scientific knowledge, structures our experiences or
perceptions in certain ways –in particular it organizes external
appearances spatially and internal experiences sequentially –we say
“temporally.” Space and time might not be features of the world
which exist independent of our experiences of it –indeed relativity
theory says that space & time are not independent of one another –
but Kantians, probably correctly, would argue that we cannot
experience space and time except as separately.
 Use Gunther Stent Frog vision analogy
 Kant Science -4
 The faculty of cognition or understanding
stipulates both the logical forms of relationships
among concepts and the categories.
 i.e. relationships must be non-contradictory –if true,
they cannot also be false.
 12 categories of experience include existence,
substance, cause, etc.
 Because the mind structures experience “The
understanding does not extract its laws from,
but prescribes them to, nature.”
 Kantian (largely unintended)
encouragement of subjective
element in science
 Note –Kant does not argue for a role for individual
variation in experience or for cultural concerns –his
notion of subjectivity limited to what is common to all
humans.
 Others extend the warrant to impose our thoughts on
nature in a variety of ways –i.e. William Rowan Hamilton
-- Kantian influence very strong “Algebra as the science
of pure time”, geometry as the science of pure space,”
attempt to integrate them through 4 dimensional
Quaternion system combining spatial and temporal
elements.
 Kant –relation between
phenomenal and noumenal worlds
 Because phenomena must be experienced as
causal
and
Because our internal experience (which involves
morality and religion) includes freedom
It must be true that moral and religious experience
is independent of phenomena
So science and religion can neither support one
another nor contradict one another.
 Kant on the dynamical nature of
matter
 Metaphysical foundations of natural philosophy
(1785)
 Matter defined by resistance to penetration (i.e.
repulsive force)
 Attractive forces must also exist or matter would
disburse to infinity
 No other kinds of force can be demonstrated
 So all forces are manifestations of attraction and
repulsion
A related dynamical theory of
matter
Back to the problems of unification

 Discomfort over separation of phenomenal

and noumenal worlds –leads to varieties
of German Idealist (first) and Materialist
(later) philosophies.
 Discomfort over separation between
natural science (dynamics) and empirical
forms of natural knowledge – Discussed in
Critique of Judgment (1790)
 Purposiveness --Teleology
 No a-priori way to unify experiences (George
Berkeley’s problem)
 Faculty of judgment imposes a subjective unity –
not needed to make experience possible, as
faculties of sensation and cognition are – but
necessary to integrate experience into a unified
whole (cosmos, not chaos) – so has a regulative
function.
 Uses notion of purposiveness or design so all
things work together.
 Kant & life sciences
 Two kinds of purposiveness –external (how
machines come about & the way elements of an
artistic whole are integrated by the artist) --&
internal, which is how Kant insists living entities
must be understood.
 One formulation –organisms must be understood
as both ends and means, or any organism is
“both cause and effect of itself.” (4-15)
 The “Bildungstrieb” and persistence (not origin)
of vitalism in German Life Sciences