Abstract
Kant is well known for his restrictive conception of proper science. In this chapter I will explain why he adopted this conception. I will identify and analyze three core conditions which Kant thinks a proper science must satisfy: systematicity, objective grounding, and apodictic certainty.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
AA 4: 467–471.
- 2.
See, for example, the collection of essays in Watkins 2001.
- 3.
De Jong and Betti 2010, 186. The historiographical background of the Classical Model of Science, as presented by de Jong and Betti, is provided by the systematizations of Aristotle’s theory of science by Heinrich Scholz 1930 and Evert W. Beth 1965. On the difference between the systematizations of Scholz, Beth and that given by De Jong and Betti, see De Jong and Betti 2010, 197–201.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
KrV, A 645/B 673.
- 7.
KrV, A 298–302/B 355–359. Falkenburg 2000, 376–385.
- 8.
See KrV, A 68–69/B 93–94, in which Kant construes judgments as providing a “mediate cognition of an object”.
- 9.
The Jäsche Logik (1800) is a textbook treating Kant’s logic, edited by Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762–1842). The publication of the Jäsche Logik was authorized by Kant. Nevertheless, it cannot be considered Kant’s own text. See Boswell 1988, 192–203. Despite problems involving the authenticity of the text, the Jäsche Logik provides an important resource for analyzing Kant’s logical concepts. I will frequently employ this work, as well as various student transcripts of Kant’s lectures on logic, when analyzing Kant.
- 10.
AA 9: 139–140.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
- 13.
AA 9: 95.
- 14.
AA 9: 96.
- 15.
Longuenesse 1998, 150–151.
- 16.
AA 9: 141–142.
- 17.
KrV, A 727/B 755. Cf. AA 9: 140.
- 18.
A quite similar account of definitions can be found in Meier 1752b, 74–79. I am grateful to Job Zinkstok for helpful discussion on the topic of definitions.
- 19.
Wolff [1754] 1978, 141.
- 20.
KrV, A 727n/B 755n.
- 21.
AA 9: 141.
- 22.
AA 9: 141; AA 24: 757.
- 23.
KrV, A 729/B 757. Wolff ([1750] 1999, 11–13) and Meier (in his 1752b, 73–74) take construction to prove the possibility of the thing falling under the concept defined through the arbitrary combination of concepts. As Meier puts it: definitions obtained through the arbitrary combination of concepts need to be proven. In mathematics this can be done through construction. Mathematical constructive definitions provide real definitions insofar as they show that a thing is possible.
- 24.
The example is taken from Wolff [1750] 1999, 12–13.
- 25.
AA 2: 279–280.
- 26.
Wolff [1750] 1999, 16.
- 27.
See Shabel 2003, 49–57, for an account of this procedure.
- 28.
AA 9: 96.
- 29.
- 30.
Wallis 1763, 16.
- 31.
Anderson 2005, 47–52, stresses the representational limits of porphyrian trees. Whereas the predicables (i) ‘species’, (ii) ‘genus’, (iii) ‘differentia’, and (iv) ‘analytic propria’ can be represented in such trees, i.e., the relationship between (ii)–(iv) and (i) can be understood as a containment relationship, neither synthetic propria nor accidents are contained in a species. This shows that the truth of judgments predicating synthetic propria or accidents of a species cannot be proven on the basis of concept hierarchies, confirming Kant’s assessment that such judgments are synthetic.
- 32.
De Jong 1995, 625.
- 33.
KrV, A 655/B 683; AA 9: 97.
- 34.
AA 9: 142.
- 35.
AA 9: 146–147.
- 36.
Ibid. See Anderson 2005, 29.
- 37.
KrV, A 645/B 673. Here, the term ‘logical rule’ is again used broadly. It encompasses what we would call methodological rules in science. Kant discusses (a)–(c) in the so-called Allgemeine Methodenlehre of the Logik.
- 38.
AA 9: 147.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
In a Polytomie we specify a concept into more than two members. If we specify two members, we obtain a dichotomy. Polytomies provided in the classification of nature are based on empirical intuition. AA 9: 147–148.
- 41.
AA 9: 147.
- 42.
AA 28: 355–356.
- 43.
AA 8: 161.
- 44.
- 45.
Müller-Wille 2007, 546–547. In the following, I follow Müller-Wille.
- 46.
AA 4: 467–468, 471.
- 47.
AA 4: 469.
- 48.
As noted, Pollok and Watkins interpret this condition as claiming that proper sciences must have a priori principles. Pollok argues that Kant denies that natural description and natural history are proper sciences because they lack a priori principles. However, Kant does not criticize these doctrines in these terms and seems to allow that chemistry, based on empirical principles, provides a rational interconnection of grounds and consequences (AA 4: 468). I take Pollok and Watkins to conflate an epistemic condition that proper sciences must satisfy with the condition of grounding, which I interpret as the condition that proper sciences must provide explanative demonstrations reflecting the order of nature.
- 49.
De Jong and Betti 2010, 186.
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
Ibid, 190; Dear 1998.
- 52.
These two syllogisms are formulated by Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics. My account of them follows Beany 2012.
- 53.
Friedman 1992b. Friedman does not provide a detailed conceptual analysis of the notion of ‘grounding’. However, in reconstructing Kant’s views on Newton’s deduction of the law of gravitation, he brilliantly shows how Kant takes inferences in natural sciences to be based on a priori principles. In my view, this conception of grounding relates to Kant’s views on epistemic justification in natural science. It does not fully capture Kant’s views on scientific explanation. Falkenburg 2000, 367–373, provides an analysis of Kant’s views on what she calls ‘the logical proposition of sufficient ground’, in which she construes the relation between ground and consequence in terms of derivability. This is correct, but, as I argue below, Kant’s ideas on ‘grounding’ cannot be understood fully in terms of derivability.
- 54.
- 55.
AA 1: 391–392.
- 56.
AA 1: 393–394.
- 57.
Many commentators, in discussions of Kant’s views on the foundation of scientific cognition, focus exclusively on relations between judgments. See Guyer 2005, 11–55; Friedman 1992b. This is not incorrect but does not do justice to the fact that conceptual orderings can also satisfy grounding relations.
- 58.
AA 9: 96.
- 59.
AA 1: 391–392.
- 60.
AA 1: 392–393.
- 61.
Ibid. Longuenesse 2001, 69.
- 62.
AA 1: 394.
- 63.
De Jong and Betti 2010, 190–191.
- 64.
Note that the difference between (G1) and (G2) corresponds to the difference between A1 and A2.
- 65.
AA 28: 401–402. For a thorough analysis of the notion of ground in the Metaphysik Volckmann, see again Longuenesse 1998, 354–356.
- 66.
AA 28: 397.
- 67.
AA 28: 402.
- 68.
AA 28: 399. I have argued that objective grounds can also function as a ground of cognition. The cited example is a case in which a ground of cognition is not an objective ground.
- 69.
To give another example: in the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe, Kant notes that the concept of impenetrability is contained in the concept of matter. Thus, ‘matter is impenetrable’ is an analytic judgment, provable logically by means of the principle of identity. However, Kant argues that the objective ground of matter’s impenetrability is given by a repulsive force constitutive of matter. The truth of this claim cannot be established analytically. AA 4: 508–509.
- 70.
KrV, A 303/B 360. See also AA 9: 121.
- 71.
AA 9: 51–52. It is this passage on which Falkenburg 2000, 368–370 bases her reading of grounding as derivability between truths. Note that the construal of grounds in this passage is similar to the construal of grounds given in the Nova dilucidatio.
- 72.
KrV, B 14. This passage has given rise to multiple discussions concerning the nature of mathematical inference in Kant and the associated question of whether Kant’s position is consistent with the invention of non-Euclidian geometries. See Beck 1965, 89–90; Friedman 1992a, 80–83. I will refrain from entering into these complexities.
- 73.
Note, however, that this passage also suggests that Kant allowed for propositions that are grounded by other propositions yet not derivable from other propositions. This is the case for the axioms of mathematics. Axioms do not require proof. Nevertheless, Kant takes mathematics to be grounded in transcendental philosophy, which shows how mathematical propositions (including axioms) can be applied to empirical objects (KrV, A 733–734/B 761–762). For Kant, the application of mathematical propositions to empirical objects is a condition for their truth. Here we see that the notion of grounding, which up to this point has been treated as a relation between propositions pertaining to a single science, shifts meaning when we consider the fundamental propositions of a science and the relations between different sciences.
- 74.
- 75.
I have slightly simplified matters, since in the penultimate ‘mathematical proof’ Wolff additionally specifies two remarks and a corollary (Zusatz). The corollary provides Wolff’s interpretation of the experiment, which supports [4*].
- 76.
Wolff [1754] 1978, 145–146.
- 77.
Wolff [1728] 1963, 17.
- 78.
Wolff [1754] 1978, 169–170.
- 79.
From our modern perspective, we would construe the hypothetical major premise to be a universal quantification over an implication. Our inference can then be construed as follows: (x) (Px → Qx), Pa → Qa, Pa/Qa.
- 80.
The notions of complete and partial grounds do not derive from Kant or Wolff. They are, to the best of my knowledge, first made fully explicit by Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), in his theory of grounding (Abfolge). Sebestik 2008, defines these notions as follows: “if a truth is a consequence of several truths, they constitute its total ground while each true premise is a partial ground”.
- 81.
Wolff [1728] 1963, 5.
- 82.
KrV, A 789–794/B 817–822.
- 83.
KrV, A 791/B 819.
- 84.
KrV, A 712–738/B 740–766. This argument was first developed by Kant in his Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral of 1764.
- 85.
KrV, A 728/B 756. In the Logik, this difficulty is expressed by stating that the synthesis of empirical concepts can never be vollständig, since we can always discover more marks of an (empirical) concept through experience. AA 9: 141–142.
- 86.
Wolff [1754] 1978, 177.
- 87.
KrV, A 732–733/B 760–761.
- 88.
In the dynamics of the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe, Kant provides a causal-mechanical account of the elasticity of air (Wolff’s [7*]), arguing that the expansive force of air rests on the matter of heat, which compels the parts of air to flee from one another through its vibrations. It is only through judgments that try to identify the objective grounds or causes (e.g., heat) of effects (e.g., the elasticity of air) that we can provide demonstrations propter quid. AA: 4: 522. Cf. 4: 530.
- 89.
AA 28: 355. The same conception of scientific demonstration is articulated in the Danziger Physik of 1783. AA 29: 103–104. In the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe (1786), Kant also often adopts a view of proper scientific explanation as proceeding from causes to effects (see the example of the explanation of elasticity in the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe mentioned above). However, it must be emphasized that in his pre-critical work Kant does not always clearly endorse this position. In his Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit (1764) Kant describes the proper (Newtonian) method of natural science as seeking out “the rules in accordance with which certain phenomena of nature occur”. Kant states that even “if one does not discover the fundamental principle of these occurrences in the bodies themselves”, complex natural events are “explained once it has been clearly shown how they are governed by these well-established rules” (AA 2: 286). In this passage, it is not clear whether proper explanations in natural science proceed from cause to effect (the well-established rules may or may not refer to causes).
- 90.
It must be noted that Kant’s views on the scientific merit of natural description and natural history varied throughout his philosophical career. Cf. Sloan 2006, 627–648.
- 91.
AA 4: 467–468.
- 92.
Ibid.
- 93.
AA 8: 161–162.
- 94.
Hence, I cannot subscribe to Sloan’s thesis that Kant, from the 1780s onwards, gave theoretical preference to natural description over natural history. Kant has systematic reasons for preferring natural history over natural description, insofar as the former (at least in principle) allows us to provide objective explanations. Sloan 2006, 629.
- 95.
AA 9: 133.
- 96.
AA 8: 162.
- 97.
AA 4: 468.
- 98.
AA 9: 65–66.
- 99.
De Jong and Betti 2010, 186–187. The fact that Kant’s third condition, stating that the cognitions of a science must be apodictically certain, relates to the ordo cognoscendi, indicates that this condition should be distinguished from Kant’s grounding condition, which relates to the ordo essendi.
- 100.
KrV, A 820–822/B 848–850.
- 101.
KrV, A 829/B 857.
- 102.
Falkenburg 2000, 364–365. Chignell 2007, argues that objective grounds for knowing propositions indicate that propositions have an objective probability of being true. This cannot be true if, as I will argue, objective grounds of cognition must typically be understood as a priori principles on the basis of which we take propositions to be necessarily true.
- 103.
AA 9: 70–71.
- 104.
AA 9: 71.
- 105.
- 106.
Christian Wolff defines mathematics in his Mathematisches Lexicon as “a science that aims to measure everything that can be measured”. Wolff [1716] 1965, 863.
- 107.
AA 4: 470. In the interpretation developed below, we will see how mathematics provides a priori cognition lying at the basis of the empirical part.
- 108.
Falkenburg 2000, 289, and Pollok 2001, 86–87, take Kant to assert that natural science must contain mathematics because the mathematical construction of concepts of natural science secures their objective reality, i.e., their application to objects of nature. It is true that for Kant the construction of concepts guarantees their objective reality. However, I do not think this reading captures Kant’s full intentions. In the following I stress that Kant assigns an a priori foundational function to mathematics.
- 109.
KrV, A 713/B 741.
- 110.
AA 9: 91; KrV, A 68/B 93.
- 111.
KrV, A 240/B 299.
- 112.
AA 4: 287.
- 113.
- 114.
- 115.
- 116.
- 117.
Cohen 1980, 85–96, explicates this quote in relation to the structure of Book III of the Principia in order to explain Newton’s method (termed the ‘Newtonian style’). In the following I give a somewhat simpler account.
- 118.
Newton [1726] 1999, 446.
- 119.
Newton [1726] 1999, 797.
- 120.
Newton [1726] 1999, 802.
- 121.
I use the term ‘mathematics’ in a broad sense. Newton is not dealing with pure mathematical concepts. He describes his mathematical style by noting that he is considering forces such as attraction and impulse “not from a physical but from a mathematical point of view”. He is not defining “a species or mode of action or a physical cause or reason”, or “attributing forces in a true and physical sense to centers”, which are treated as mathematical points. Newton’s mathematical principles can be best described as kinematic principles. Newton [1726] 1999, 408. See Cohen 1980, 68–78; Friedman 1992a, 227–234.
- 122.
- 123.
AA 4: 480.
- 124.
AA 9: 13. Here, it is further argued that an organon, such as mathematics, anticipates the matter of the sciences. This claim is nicely illustrated by the interpretation of mathematics as providing (a priori) constructs of physical objects, providing grounds of cognition for propositions of physics.
- 125.
Newton [1726] 1999, 382.
- 126.
In the Editor’s Preface to the Second Edition, Cotes describes Newton’s method as follows: “[…] they proceed by a twofold method, analytic and synthetic. From certain selected phenomena they deduce by analysis the forces of nature and the simpler laws of those forces, from which they then give the constitution of the rest of the phenomena by synthesis.” Newton [1726] 1999, 386.
- 127.
Newton [1726] 1999, 802.
- 128.
Newton [1726] 1999, 451.
- 129.
- 130.
This, of course, is merely the first step in Newton’s deduction of the law of gravitation. I will not treat the argument in full. For a full account, see Harper 2002.
- 131.
Note that in his Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit (1764), Kant himself describes the proper method of natural science as the combined analytic-synthetic method and ascribes this method to Newton (AA 2: 286).
- 132.
Newton [1726] 1999, 382.
- 133.
Newton [1726] 1999, 817.
- 134.
Ibid.
- 135.
This is a highly simplified rendering of Newton’s argument, who bases his argument on the conditions that the sun is at rest and that the remaining planets do not act upon one another, while also referring to proposition 11 and corollary 1 of proposition 13 of Book I. These propositions relate orbital motion subject to an inverse-square force to motion along an elliptical (conic) orbit, and are thus important for establishing that the orbits of the planets “would be elliptical, having the sun in their common focus”. Newton [1726] 1999, 818. See Cohen 1999, 231–233.
- 136.
Wolff [1728] 1963, 15, 18–21.
- 137.
Lyon and Colyvan 2008, 228–229.
- 138.
Mancosu 2008.
- 139.
Mancosu bases his account on the work of Lyon and Colyvan 2008 and Hales 2001. Hales was the first to provide the actual proof of the (above cited) honeycomb conjecture. Hales also describes the history of the honeycomb conjecture, locating it in the works of Pappus of Alexandria and remarking that it was often discussed in the eighteenth century up until Darwin in the nineteenth century. I have found no mention of Wolff, however.
- 140.
AA 4: 469–470.
- 141.
AA 4: 469.
- 142.
AA 4: 468.
- 143.
AA 4: 469.
- 144.
KrV, A 719/B 747.
- 145.
AA 4: 472.
- 146.
See Pollok 2001.
- 147.
AA 4: 549.
- 148.
Newton [1726] 1999, 424–430.
- 149.
KrV, A 732–733/B 760–761. See Falkenburg 2000, 290.
- 150.
For criticism of ‘the standard view’, see Watkins 1998.
- 151.
The three analogies (following the formulation of the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe) are: (1) in all changes of nature no substance either arises or perishes; (2) every change has a cause; (3) all external action in the world is interaction. On the basis of (1)–(3), i.e., by applying them to the empirical concept of matter, Kant supposedly proves his three laws of mechanics: (1a) in all changes of corporeal nature the total quantity of matter remains the same, neither increased nor diminished; (2a) every change of matter has an external cause (every body persists in its state of rest or motion, in the same direction, and with the same speed, if it is not compelled by an external cause to leave this state); (3a) In all communication of motion, action and reaction are always equal to one another. AA 4: 541–548. The most detailed discussion available of Kant’s mechanics is given by Pollok 2001, 384–472.
- 152.
- 153.
Kant also explicates this law in Newtonian terms as: “every body persists in its state of rest or motion, in the same direction, and with the same speed, if it is not compelled by an external cause to leave this state”. AA 4: 543.
- 154.
AA 4: 482, 543.
- 155.
AA 9: 71.
- 156.
Friedman 1992a, 174–177, 1992b. Mechanical laws and mathematics provide, in Friedman’s terms, a priori grounds of the law of gravitation. This law is taken to be ‘materially necessary’. Kant’s logic supports this view, although there the term ‘apodictic certainty’ is used (not ‘material necessity’). This is not to say, however, that Friedman endorses what is here called the standard view of the proof of the metaphysical principles of natural science. See Friedman 2001.
- 157.
Watkins 1998. On the difficult relation between transcendental and (special) metaphysical principles and possible defects in Kant’s proof of the laws of motion, see further Westphal 1995a, 413–421. Westphal 2004, 137–172, 206–214. On the difficult relation of the third analogy to the third law of mechanics, cf. Watkins 1997, 406–441. On difficulties in relating Kant’s laws of mechanics to Newton’s laws of motion, see Watkins 2001a, 136–159.
- 158.
Watkins 1998. The inspiration of this reading comes in part from Friedman, who argues that for Kant the laws of mechanics and the immediacy and universality of gravitational attraction are necessarily presupposed (and are in this sense a priori) in determining a privileged frame of reference that allows the physicist to distinguish between the true and apparent motion of bodies. As such, they are necessary conditions for the possibility of the experience of matter. Friedman 1992a, 157–158.
- 159.
- 160.
In this sense, the notion of grounding developed in this chapter is stronger than that held by Friedman.
- 161.
AA 4: 497.
- 162.
AA 4: 499.
- 163.
AA 4: 508.
- 164.
AA 4: 534.
- 165.
- 166.
AA 4: 511.
- 167.
AA 4: 518.
- 168.
AA 4: 523–535. For details, see once again Carrier 2001a, 212–215.
- 169.
As Friedman has emphasized, Kant also seems to argue, in Observation 2 to Proposition 7 of Dynamics, that it is necessary to take attraction as an essential, universal property of matter in order to ground the proposition that gravitational attraction is proportional to the mass of the attracting body. Friedman 1992a, 153–159. See Carrier 2001b for a partial critique of Friedman.
- 170.
Okrhulik 1983, 251–268, esp. 256–261.
- 171.
References
Meier, G.F. 1752a. Vernunftlehre. Halle: Gebauer.
Meier, G.F. 1752b. Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre. Halle: Gebauer.
Newton, I. [1726] 1999. The Principia. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (3th ed). Translated by I.B. Cohen and A. Whitmann. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wallis, J. 1763. Institutio logicae: ad communes usus accommodata. Fletcher.
Wolff, C. [1716] 1965. Mathematisches Lexicon, Darinnen die in allen Theilen der Mathematick üblichen Kunst-Wörter erkläret, und Zur Historie der Mathematischen Wissenschaften dienliche Nachrichten ertheilet, Auch die Schrifften, wo iede Materie ausgeführet zu finden, angeführet werden. Hildesheim: Olms.
Wolff, C. [1728] 1963. Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General. Translated by R.J. Blackwell. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril.
Wolff, C. [1750] 1999. Der Anfangs-Gründe aller Mathematischen Wissenschaften. Erster Theil, Welcher Einen Unterricht von der Mathematischen Lehr-Art, die Rechenkunst, Geometrie, Trigonometrie und Bau-Kunst in sich enthält, zu mehrerem Aufnehmen der Mathematick so wohl auf hohen als niedrigen Schulen aufgesetzt worden. Neue, verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage. Hildesheim: Olms.
Wolff, C. [1754] 1978. Vernünfftige Gedancken Von den Kräften des menschlichen Verstandes Und Ihrem richtigen Gebrauche in Erkäntniss der Wahrheit. Hildesheim: Olms.
Anderson, L. 2005. The Wolffian Paradigm and Its Discontents: Kant’s Containment Definition of Analyticity in Historical Context. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 87: 22–74.
Beaney, M. 2012. Analysis. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 edition) Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/analysis/>
Beck, L. 1965. Studies in the Philosophy of Kant. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril.
Beth, E.W. 1965. The Foundations of Mathematics. A Study in the Philosophy of Science (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
Boswell, T. 1988. On the Textual Authenticity of Kant’s Logic. History and Philosophy of Logic 9: 192–203.
Cain, A. J. 1958. Logic and memory in Linnaeus’s system of taxonomy. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London 169: 144–163.
Carrier, M 1990. Kants Theorie der Materie und ihre Wirkung auf die zeitgenössische Chemie. Kant-Studien 81:170–210.
Carrier, M. 2001a. Kant’s Theory of Matter and His Views on Chemistry. In E. Watkins (ed.), Kant and the Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 205–230.
Carrier, M. 2001b. Kant’s Mechanical Determination of Matter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. In E. Watkins (ed.), Kant and the Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 117–135.
Chignell, A. 2007. Kant’s Concepts of Justification. Noûs 41: 33–63.
Cohen, I.B. 1980. The Newtonian Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cohen, I.B. 1999. A Guide to Newton’s Principia. In Newton, Isaac, The Principia. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Translated by I.B. Cohen and A. Whitman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 3–370.
Cramer, K. 1985. Nicht-reine synthetische Urteile a priori. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Dear, P. 1998. Method and the Study of Nature. In D. Garber and M. Ayers (eds.), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (vol. I). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 147–177.
De Jong, W.R. 1995. Kant’s Analytic Judgments and the Traditional Theory of Concepts. Journal of the History of Philosophy 33: 613–641.
De Jong, W. R. and Betti, A. 2010. The Classical Model of Science – A Millennia-Old Model of Scientific Rationality. Synthese 174: 185–203.
Falkenburg, B. 2000. Kants Kosmologie. Die wissenschaftliche Revolution der Naturphilosophie im 18. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann
Friedman, M. 1992a. Kant and the Exact Sciences. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Friedman, M. 1992b. Causal Laws and the Foundations of Natural Science. In P. Guyer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 161–199.
Friedman, M. 2001. Matter and Motion in the Metaphysical Foundations and the First Critique: The Empirical Concept of Matter and the Categories. In E. Watkins (ed.), Kant and the Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 53–69.
Fulda, H.F. & Stolzenberg, J. (eds.) (2001). Architektonik und System in der Philosophie Kants. Hamburg: Meiner.
Guyer, P. 2005. Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom. Selected Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hales, T. 2001. The Honeycomb Conjecture. Discrete and Computational Geometry 25: 1–22.
Harper, W. 2002. Newton’s Argument for Universal Gravitation. In I.B. Cohen and G.E. Smith, (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 174–201.
Longuenesse, B. 1998. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by C.T. Wolfe, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Longuenesse, B. 2001. Kant’s Deconstruction of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. The Harvard Review of Philosophy 9: 67–87.
Lyon, A. and Colyvan, M. 2008. The Explanatory Power of Phase Spaces. Philosophia Mathematica 16: 227–243.
Mancosu, P. 2008. Explanation in Mathematics. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/mathematics-explanation/>.
Müller-Wille, S. 2007. Collection and Collation: theory and practice of Linnaean botany. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38:541–562
Nayak, A.C. and Sotnak, E. 1995. Kant on the Impossibility of the Soft Sciences. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55: 133–151
Oittinen, V. 2009. Linné zwischen Wolff und Kant. Zu einigen Kantischen Motiven in Linnés biologischer Klassifikation. In E-O. Onnasch (ed.), Kants Philosophie der Natur. Berlin: de Gruyter, 51–77.
Okruhlik, K. 1983. Kant on the Foundations of Science. In W.R. Shea (ed.), Nature Mathematized. Historical and Philosophical Case Studies in Classical Modern Natural Philosophy (Vol. I). Dordrecht: Reidel, 251–268.
Okruhlik, K. 1986. Kant on Realism and Methodology. In R.E. Butts (ed.), Kant’s Philosophy of the Physical Sciences. Dordrecht: Reidel, 307–329.
Parsons, C. 1992a. Kant’s Philosophy of Arithmetic. In C.J. Posy, (ed.), Kant’s Philosophy of Mathematics. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 43-79.
Pollok, K. 2001. Kants Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft. Ein kritischer Kommentar. Hamburg: Meiner.
Pozzo, R. 2005. Prejudices and Horizons: G.F. Meier’s Vernunftlehre and Its Relation to Kant. Journal of the History of Philosophy 43: 185–202.
Scholz, H. 1930. Die Axiomatik der Alten. Blatter für Deutsche Philosophie 4: 259–278.
Sebestik, J. 2008. Bolzano’s Logic. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008 Edition). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/winn2008/entries/bolzano-logic/>.
Shabel, L. 2003. Mathematics in Kant’s Critical Philosophy: Reflections on Mathematical Practice. New York: Routledge.
Sloan, P. 2006. Kant on the History of Nature: The Ambiguous Heritage of the Critical Philosophy for Natural History. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37: 627–648.
Thompson, M. 1992. Singular Terms and Intuitions in Kant’s Epistemology. In C.J. Posy (ed.), Kant’s Philosophy of Mathematics. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 81–107.
Watkins, E. 1997. Kant’s Third Analogy of Experience. Kant-Studien 88: 406–441.
Watkins, E. 1998. The Argumentative Structure of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Journal of the History of Philosophy 36: 567–593.
Watkins, E. (ed.) 2001. Kant and the Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Watkins, E. 2001a. Kant’s Justification of the Laws of Mechanics. In E. Watkins (ed.), Kant and the Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 136–159.
Watkins, E. 2007. Kant’s Philosophy of Science. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2007 edition). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fal l2007/entries/kant-science/>
Westphal, K.R. 1995a. Kant’s Proof of the Law of Inertia. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress Volume 2,1. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 413–421.
Westphal, K.R. 2004. Kant’s Transcendental Proof of Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
van den Berg, H. (2014). Kant’s Conception of Proper Science. In: Kant on Proper Science. Studies in German Idealism, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7140-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7140-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7139-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7140-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)