Kant a Newton (z perspektywy Opus postumum)

Abstract

Kant’s attitude towards Newton is ambiguous though he owes much to him. Although Newton’s physics is a paradigm of science for Kant, he is fully aware that few appearances occur accurately according to the way described by mechanics. When he ties the principles of his philosophy with Newton’s mechanics, Kant makes a mistake, for due to the development of knowledge it began losing its absolute position in science in his day. In Opus postumum Kant recognizes the mistake and no longer refers to the rules of Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft as the ultimate ones. Till the beginning of his work on Opus postumum Newtonian mechanics was a paradigm of science for Kant. It ceases to be so in Opus postumum, where Newton is present mainly as the object of Kant’s polemics. The progress of science, new phenomena, new methods, the development of chemistry. In Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft chemistry was not referred to as science (since it was Newton’s mechanics that was the paradigm of science), whereas in Metaphysik der Sitten (1797) Kant defines Lavoisier’s chemistry as the only chemistry [AA VI 207]; in Anthropologie [AA VII 326] (1798) he ranks Lavoisier as high as Archimedes and Newton. New main problems appeared science which had to deal with: combustibility, origin of acids, the change of the state of matter, electricity, magnetism and – first of all – theory of heat. The main notion of the new theory of chemistry developed by Lavoisier (ether, the caloric) takes the central position also in Kant’s theory of transition (Übergang).