Abstract
In his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant presents the “pure part” of natural science – that is, the a priori principles holding of matter. This special metaphysics of matter is, Kant claims, grounded on the general metaphysics of nature described in the System of Principles of his first Critique. This chapter develops a comprehensive account of Kant’s framework for natural science that touches on interpretive issues that arise in the transition from general to special metaphysics and that outlines his dynamics and its limitations.
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Notes
- 1.
Isaac Newton, “Unpublished Preface to the Principia,” in The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 53–54.
- 2.
Moreover, Kant believes that the attempt to avoid metaphysics can leave one tacitly endorsing improper opinions. For more on the specific, improper metaphysical assumptions of Kant’s natural philosophic predecessors, see Konstantin Pollok, Kants “Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft”: Ein kritischer Kommentar (Hamburg: Meiner, 2001), 113–22.
- 3.
For an in-depth discussion of the technical notion of nature in Kant’s theory (albeit one that differs from our own on a few interpretive details), see Peter Plaaß, Kant’s Theory of Natural Science, trans. Alfred E. Miller and Maria G. Miller (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 216–28.
- 4.
This distinction regularly appears in the critical corpus: see also B163–65, A418–19n/B446n. In the Prolegomena, Kant distinguishes formal and material nature somewhat differently (see Pro 4:294–96, 318). Their material nature is understood more literally as the matter of nature – that is, intuitions – which are made possible by the Transcendental Aesthetic. Conversely, formal nature is described as the form of nature – the principles that make possible dynamic connection.
- 5.
In a footnote to the preceding passage, Kant distinguishes between formal natures and essences (MFS 4:467n). As we understand this distinction, formal natures refer to the dynamical (causal) qualities of a kind, whereas essences are non-causal. Hence, Kant claims that geometrical figures have an essence, but not a nature.
- 6.
As Pollok explains, this investigation of the specific diversity of matters – the variety of formal natures – does not fall under the purview of the physics and the metaphysical foundations of natural science, according to Kant (Kants “Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft,” 46). See the General Remark to Dynamics (MFS 4:523–35).
- 7.
Quantities, for Kant, are syntheses of homogeneous units (A242/B300).
- 8.
Such a concept, however, transcends the possibility of experience (it is an idea of the unconditioned), and it therefore gives rise to intractable paradoxes, as Kant explains in the Antinomies of the first Critique.
- 9.
The A-edition formulation of the First Analogy emphasizes this point. That which changes – ceases to exist – is a “mere determination, i.e., a way in which the object exists” (A182).
- 10.
See also the A-edition version of the general principle of the Analogies of Experience, which sums up many of our points nicely: “As regards their existence, all appearances stand a priori under rules of the determination of their relation to each other in one time” (A176).
- 11.
For more on the position of natural science in the Kant’s architectonic, see Plaaß, Kant’s Theory of Natural Science, 207–10.
- 12.
Transcendent rational physiology examines objects beyond the possibility of experience – the world-whole and God – though these doctrines are ultimately dialectical.
- 13.
Indeed, Kant explicitly calls the principles of the understanding “physiological” (Pro 4:303).
- 14.
Empirical psychology and physics inhabit a very different branch of the hierarchy of doctrines. They are types of applied philosophy (A848/B876), which concern rational cognition from empirical principles (A840/B868).
- 15.
In contrast, Plaaß (Kant’s Theory of Natural Science, 218) claims that the formal sense of nature is primary for natural science, while Pollok (Kants “Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft,” 46–47) argues that the material sense is the most fundamental.
- 16.
Chemistry is such an improper science, for Kant (MFS 4:468, 470–71). For varying views on the status of this claim, see Martin Carrier, “Kant’s Theory of Matter and His Views on Chemistry,” in Kant and the Sciences, ed. Eric Watkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 205–30; Michael Friedman, Kant’s Construction of Nature: A Reading of the “Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 234–58; and Michael Bennett McNulty, “Kant on Chemistry and the Application of Mathematics in Natural Science,” Kantian Review 19, no. 3 (Nov. 2014), 393–418.
- 17.
Determination is a technical notion that refers to the application of a concept to an object (A261/B317, A571/B599).
- 18.
For varying readings of this argument, see Friedman, Kant’s Construction of Nature, 26–33; and Michael Bennett McNulty, “Chemistry in Kant’s Opus Postumum,” HOPOS: The Journal of the Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 6, no. 1 (May 2016): 79–81.
- 19.
For interpretations of this claim, see Eric Watkins, “The Argumentative Structure of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 36, no. 4 (Oct. 1998): 578–82; Friedman, Kant’s Construction of Nature, 34–46; and Henny Blomme, “Kant’s Conception of Chemistry in the Danziger Physik,” in Reading Kant’s Lectures, ed. Robert Clewis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 495–97. Watkins analyzes Kant’s assertion that all matter is movable, whereas Friedman and Blomme focus on his appeal to empirical affection.
- 20.
Eckart Förster, Kant’s Final Synthesis: An Essay on the “Opus postumum” (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 53–61.
- 21.
Friedman also sees a connection with the Refutation of Idealism, though he denies the above-described conception of apriority (Kant’s Construction of Nature, 3–11).
- 22.
Friedman, Kant’s Construction of Nature, 569. For an elaboration of this point, see Jeremy Heis, review of Kant’s Construction of Nature, by Michael Friedman, Philosophical Review 123, no. 3 (July 2014): 342–54.
- 23.
Plaaß, Kant’s Theory of Natural Science, 285.
- 24.
Philip Kitcher, “Kant’s Philosophy of Science,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 8, no. 1 (Sept. 1983): 387–407.
- 25.
In Kant’s Theory of Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), Gordon G. Brittan, Jr. conceptualizes the situation according to the semantics of modal logic. The principles of the understanding are necessary for the class of worlds that includes beings with spatiotemporal intuitions and discursive intellects. The propositions of the Metaphysical Foundations hold in a subset of such worlds – those in which the concept of matter obtains. Although this understanding is anachronistic, it shares an insight of Kitcher’s interpretation: once one fixes the empirical concept of matter, the propositions of the Foundations hold necessarily.
- 26.
Kitcher, “Kant’s Philosophy of Science,” 394. Kitcher calls the principles that result from a priori procedures applied to an empirical concept “quasi a priori.” However, as we show below, it is natural to think of these principles as thoroughly a priori, albeit not pure.
- 27.
Charles Parsons draws this connection and compares the positions (“Remarks on Pure Natural Science,” in Self and Nature in Kant’s Philosophy, ed. Allen W. Wood [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984], 218–20).
- 28.
Pollok’s view is similar to ours. He argues that there are analytic and synthetic projects in the Metaphysical Foundations: first Kant analyzes the concept of matter, then synthetically develops its determinations according to the categories (Kants “Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft,” 111–13).
- 29.
That said, there are some complications to our picture: namely, Kant refers to the pure doctrine of motion (cf. MFS 4:477, 496) and claims that a proper natural science requires a pure core (MFS 4:468–70). We suggest the following interpretation of these claims. As Kant explains, the pure part of proper natural science contains its mathematical principles. However, motion, in virtue of being an empirical concept, cannot be mathematically constructible. So, we contend that the pure part of natural science consists of the mathematical principles for constructing line segments at the basis of Kant’s kinematics developed in Proposition 1 of the Phoronomy (MFS 4:490–93). The construction of such line segments makes use of no empirical concepts and is hence pure. To say, however, that these line segments represent motions, and that the constructed line segment represents a composite motion, introduces an empirical concept. The doctrine of motion, as a whole, is not pure, although its basis – the mathematical construction of line segments – is. Friedman helpfully distinguishes mathematical and empirical motion (Kant’s Construction of Nature, 83–90). Mathematical motion, the motion of a mere mathematical point, is the topic of the pure doctrine of motion at the basis of the proper natural science of physics.
- 30.
Watkins, “Argumentative Structure,” 571–77.
- 31.
Ibid., 577–87.
- 32.
To show that motion is a quantity (according to Kant’s conception of quantities), he must demonstrate that we can combine motions into greater motions. So, the construction procedure he develops in the Phoronomic proposition is necessary and sufficient for showing that motion is the quantity of matter.
- 33.
See G. W. Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, Correspondence, ed. Roger Ariew (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), 17–18, 27.
- 34.
For extended argument, see Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 136–64; and also his Kant’s Construction of Nature.
- 35.
See Friedman, Kant’s Construction of Nature.
- 36.
In our terms: fundamental kinematics, or degrees of freedom; material constitution; causally-efficient mechanical agency; and true motion, namely observer-independent kinematic behavior.
- 37.
This reading of Kant’s metaphysics of nature as closely related to a determinate mechanical theory is not unanimous, though it is the mainstream. Gerd Buchdahl (Kant and the Dynamics of Reason: Essays on the Structure of Kant’s Philosophy [Oxford: Blackwell, 1992]) and others have advocated for a much looser link between the two.
- 38.
By “matter” he means any rigid body, and by “motion” the accelerations impressed to, actually acquired by a mechanical system, or “lost,” that is, suppressed by constraints. See Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert, Traité de dynamique (Paris: David L’aîné, 1743).
- 39.
For an attempt to show that, see Marius Stan, “Metaphysical Foundations of Neoclassical Mechanics,” in Kant and the Laws of Nature, ed. Michela Massimi and Angela Breitenbach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 214–34.
- 40.
For example, see Michael Stöltzner, “Can the Principle of Least Action Be Considered a Relativized A Priori?” in Constituting Objectivity: Transcendental Perspectives on Modern Physics, ed. Michel Bitbol, Pierre Kerszberg, and Jean Petitot (Berlin: Springer, 2009), 215–27.
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McNulty, M.B., Stan, M. (2017). From General to Special Metaphysics of Nature. In: Altman, M. (eds) The Palgrave Kant Handbook. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54656-2_22
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