Download or read book Kant and the Transformation of Natural History written by Andrew Cooper and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-09 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew Cooper presents the first systematic study of Kant's account of natural history. Cooper contends that Kant made a decisive contribution to one of the most explosive and understudied revolutions in the history of science: the addition of time to the frame in which explanations are required, sought, and justified in natural science. Through addressing a wide range of Kant's works, Cooper challenges the claim that Kant's theory of science denies a developmental conception of nature and argues instead that it establishes a method by which natural historians can genuinely dispute historical claims and potentially come to consensus. This method, Cooper argues, can be used to expose serious flaws in Kant's own historical reasoning, including the formation and defence of his racist views. The book will be valuable to philosophers seeking to discern both the power and limitations of Kant's theory of science, and to historians of science working on the fractured landscape of eighteenth-century Newtonianism.
Download or read book Kant Natural Science written by Immanuel Kant and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page 821 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings together work by Kant never before available in English, along with new translations of his most important publications in natural science. The volume is rich in material for the student and the scholar, with extensive linguistic and explanatory notes, editorial introductions and a glossary of key terms.
Download or read book Kant Natural Science written by Immanuel Kant and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page 821 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though Kant is best known for his strictly philosophical works in the 1780s, many of his early publications in particular were devoted to what we would call 'natural science'. Kant's Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755) made a significant advance in cosmology, and he was also instrumental in establishing the newly emerging discipline of physical geography, lecturing on it for almost his entire career. In this volume Eric Watkins brings together new English translations of Kant's first publication, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1746–9), the entirety of Physical Geography (1802), a series of shorter essays, along with many of Kant's most important publications in natural science. The volume is rich in material for the student and the scholar, with extensive linguistic and explanatory notes, editorial introductions and a glossary of key terms.
Download or read book How Kant Matters For Biology written by Andrew Jones and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2023-01-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kant denied biology the status of proper science, yet his account of the organism has received much attention from both philosophical and historical perspectives. This book argues that Kant's influence on biology in the British Isles is in part due to misunderstandings of his philosophy. Highlighting these misunderstandings exposes how Kant influenced various aspects of scientific method, despite the underlying incompatibility between transcendental idealism and scientific naturalism. This book raises criticism against scientific naturalism as it demonstrates how some concepts that are central to biology have been historically justified in ways that are incompatible with naturalism. Approaching current issues in philosophy of biology from a Kantian orientation offers new perspectives to debates including our knowledge of laws of nature, the unity of science, and our understanding of organisms. Moreover, new avenues are forged to demonstrate the benefits of adopting Kant-inspired approaches to issues in contemporary philosophy of science.
Download or read book Kant s System of Nature and Freedom written by Paul Guyer and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2005-04-21 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of systematicity is central to Immanuel Kant's conception of scientific knowledge and to his practical philosophy. But Kant also held that we must be able to unite the separate systems of nature and freedom into a single system: on the one hand, morality itself requires that we be able to see its commands and goals as realizable within nature, while on the other hand our experience of nature itself leads us to see it as a system with the goal of human moral development. The essays in this volume, including two published here for the first time, explore various aspects of Kant's conception of the system of nature, the system of freedom, and the system of nature and freedom. The essays in the first part explore the systematicity of concepts and laws as the ultimate goal of natural science, consider the implications of Kant's account of our experience of organisms for the goal of the unity of science, and examine Kant's attempts to prove that the existence of an ether is a necessary condition for a physical system of nature. The essays in the second part explore Kant's view that morality requires a systematic union of persons as ends in themselves and of the ends that persons set for themselves, and examine the system of duties and obligations necessary to realize such a systematic union of persons and their ends. These essays thus examine both the general foundations of Kant's moral philosophy and his final account of the duties of right or justice and of ethics or virtue in his late work, the Metaphysics of Morals. The essays in the third part examine Kant's attempt, in the last of his three great critiques, the Critique of the Power of Judgment., to unify the systems of nature and freedom through a radical transformation of traditional teleology as a theory of the creation of organic nature into an account of our experience of organic nature and of nature as a whole.
Download or read book Natural Science written by Immanuel Kant and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Though Kant is best known for his strictly philosophical works in the 1780s, many of his early publications in particular were devoted to what we would call 'natural science'. Kant's Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755) made a significant advance in cosmology, and he was also instrumental in establishing the newly emerging discipline of physical geography, lecturing on it for almost his entire career. In this volume Eric Watkins brings together new English translations of Kant's first publication, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1746-1749), the entirety of Physical Geography (1802), a series of shorter essays, along with many of Kant's most important publications in natural science. The volume is rich in material for the student and the scholar, with extensive linguistic and explanatory notes, editorial introductions and a glossary of key terms"--
Download or read book Kant on Proper Science written by Hein van den Berg and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a novel treatment of Immanuel Kant’s views on proper natural science and biology. The status of biology in Kant’s system of science is often taken to be problematic. By analyzing Kant’s philosophy of biology in relation to his conception of proper science, the present book determines Kant’s views on the scientific status of biology. Combining a broad ideengeschichtlich approach with a detailed historical reconstruction of philosophical and scientific texts, the book establishes important interconnections between Kant’s philosophy of science, his views on biology, and his reception of late 18th century biological theories. It discusses Kant’s views on science and biology as articulated in his published writings and in the Opus postumum. The book shows that although biology is a non-mathematical science and the relation between biology and other natural sciences is not specified, Kant did allow for the possibility of providing scientific explanations in biology and assigned biology a specific domain of investigation.
Download or read book Kant s Construction of Nature written by Michael Friedman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a new reading of the Metaphysical Foundations and articulates an original perspective of Kant's critical philosophy as a whole.
Download or read book Vital Forces Teleology and Organization written by Andrea Gambarotto and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive account of vitalism and the Romantic philosophy of nature. The author explores the rise of biology as a unified science in Germany by reconstructing the history of the notion of “vital force,” starting from the mid-eighteenth through the early nineteenth century. Further, he argues that Romantic Naturphilosophie played a crucial role in the rise of biology in Germany, especially thanks to its treatment of teleology. In fact, both post-Kantian philosophers and naturalists were guided by teleological principles in defining the object of biological research. The book begins by considering the problem of generation, focusing on the debate over the notion of “formative force.” Readers are invited to engage with the epistemological status of this formative force, i.e. the question of the principle behind organization. The second chapter provides a reconstruction of the physiology of vital forces as it was elaborated in the mid- to late-eighteenth century by the group of physicians and naturalists known as the “Göttingen School.” Readers are shown how these authors developed an understanding of the animal kingdom as a graded series of organisms with increasing functional complexity. Chapter three tracks the development of such framework in Romantic Naturphilosophie. The author introduces the reader to the problem of classification, showing how Romantic philosophers of nature regarded classification as articulated by a unified plan that connects all living forms with one another, relying on the idea of living nature as a universal organism. In the closing chapter, this analysis shows how the three instances of pre-biological discourse on living beings – theory of generation, physiology and natural history – converged to form the consolidated disciplinary matrix of a general biology. The book offers an insightful read for all scholars interested in classical German philosophy, especially those researching the philosophy of nature, as well as the history and philosophy of biology.
Download or read book Kant Science and Human Nature written by Robert Hanna and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2006-10-19 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Hanna argues for the importance of Kant's theories of the epistemological, metaphysical, and practical foundations of the 'exact sciences'—- relegated to the dustbin of the history of philosophy for most of the 20th century. Hanna's earlier book Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (OUP 2001), explores basic conceptual and historical connections between Immanuel Kant's 18th-century Critical Philosophy and the tradition of mainstream analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine. The central topics of the analytic tradition in its early and middle periods were meaning and necessity. But the central theme of mainstream analytic philosophy after 1950 is scientific naturalism, which holds—-to use Wilfrid Sellars's apt phrase—-that 'science is the measure of all things'. This type of naturalism is explicitly reductive. Kant, Science, and Human Nature has two aims, one negative and one positive. Its negative aim is to develop a Kantian critique of scientific naturalism. But its positive and more fundamental aim is to work out the elements of a humane, realistic, and nonreductive Kantian account of the foundations of the exact sciences. According to this account, the essential properties of the natural world are directly knowable through human sense perception (empirical realism), and practical reason is both explanatorily and ontologically prior to theoretical reason (the primacy of the practical).
Download or read book Kant s Theory of Natural Science written by Peter Plaass and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plaass's treatise stood at the beginning of a renewed wave of scholarship regarding Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MF). Plaass argues that the MF represents an integral step in Kant's development between the two editions of the Critique of Pure Reason. The MF repeats the `Copernican turn', using the conditions of subjectivity to derive the metaphysical determinations of `matter' as the object of natural science with the new method called `metaphysical construction', which simultaneously grounds the mathematizability of physics. The translators provide background and analysis of Plaass's work, extend it to include the body of the MF and offer a variation on the analysis of the relationship between mathematics and metaphysics in the MF. They discuss its relevance for contemporary paradigm-dependency approaches to the philosophy of science and for philosophical hermeneutics. The book will be of interest to Kant specialists as well as to students of the philosophy of science in general.
Download or read book Understanding Purpose written by Philippe Huneman and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays investigating key historical and scientific questions relating to the concept of natural purpose in Kant's philosophy of biology. Understanding Purpose is an exploration of the central concept of natural purpose [Naturzweck] in Kant's philosophy of biology. Kant's work in this area is marked by a strong teleological concern: living organisms, in his view, are qualitatively different from mechanistic devices, and as a result they cannot be understood by means of the same principles. At the same time, Kant's own use of the concept of purpose does not presuppose any theological commitments, and is merely "regulative"; that is, it is employed as a heuristic device. The contributors to this volume also investigate the following key historical questions relating to Kant's philosophy of biology: How does it relate to European work in the life sciences that was done before Kant arrived on the scene? How did Kant's unique approach to the philosophy of biology in turn influence later work in this area? The issues explored in this volume are as pertinent to the history of philosophy as they are to the history of science -- it is precisely the blurred boundaries between these two disciplines that allows for new perspectives on Kantianism and early nineteenth-century German biology to emerge. Contributors: Jean-Claude Dupont, Mark Fisher, Philippe Huneman, Robert J. Richards, Phillip R. Sloan, Stéphane Schmitt, and John Zammito. Philippe Huneman is researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Unit of the Université Paris.
Download or read book Kant and the Laws of Nature written by Michela Massimi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of new essays explores Kant's views on the laws of nature.
Download or read book Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven written by Immanuel Kant and published by Newcomb Livraria Press. This book was released on with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new 2024 translation of Kant's famous 1755 Universal Natural History and Theory of Heave (original German title "Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels") from the original German manuscript. This new edition contains an Afterword by the translator, a timeline of Kant's life and works, and a helpful index of Kant's key concepts and intellectual rivals. This translation is designed for readability, rendering Kant's enigmatic German into the simplest equivalent possible, and removing the academic footnotes to make this critically important historical text as accessible as possible to the modern reader. Immanuel Kant's Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven is one of his first Philosophic works and puts on full display his impressive intellect. Even though he was not a scientist, Kant's Cosmogonic theories are strikingly accurate when compared to the theories of his peers. Here he postulates the Nebular Hypothesis on the formation and evolution of planetary systems, which is today the broadly accepted theory of planet formation. He was also correct in his assumption, which was unsubstantiated by observation at the time, that our Milky Way galaxy was only one of countless, which was only confirmed by the Hubble Telescope in the 1920’s. His theories about Exoplanets were likewise only recently confirmed by the Kepler missions. This is the epicenter of the chaos of the Enlightenment, and Kant’s theories are surprisingly rational and accurate. His philosophic commentaries here are a foreshadowing of his later monumental works of Enlightenment Epistemology.
Download or read book The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant written by Robert Doran and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in-depth treatment of the major theories of the sublime from Longinus to Kant.
Download or read book Kant and the Sciences written by Eric Watkins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-02-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kant and the Sciences aims to reveal the deep unity of Kant's conception of science as it bears on the particular sciences of his day and on his conception of philosophy's function with respect to these sciences. It brings together for the first time twelve essays by leading Kant scholars that take into account Kant's conception of a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and anthropology.
Download or read book The Idea of Humanity written by David G. Sussman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2001 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
