Kant's Newtonian Revolution in Philosophy

Kant in the Preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason suggested he wanted to do in metaphysics what Copernicus had done in astronomy. Miles (2006) individuates three motifs in favour of Kant’s Coperncanism: the moving spectator motif, the thought experiment motif and the critical motif. In this essay, I will argue against the critical motif and demonstrate how Copernicus’ thought experiment and Kant’s critique of dogmatism are not legitimately connected. In his attribution of increase in rationality to both the Copernican revolution in astronomy and the Kantian revolution in metaphysics, Schulting (2009) omits the fundamental influence of Enlightenment on Kantian criticism. I argue that the Copernican analogy is not a valid or useful interpretative tool for Kant’s new metaphysical foundations, because of Copernicus’ appeal to Aristotelian authority in physics – and metaphysics (Koyré, 1957).

The Journal of Transcendental Philosophy, 2021

In the controversial Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant claims to "complete the critical work of pure reason" [A670/B698] by providing a transcendental deduction of the ideas of pure reason. In order to analyse the role that this Appendix plays in the first Critique, this paper will read the Appendix alongside Kant's comments in the B-Preface concerning the astronomy of Copernicus. Through an analysis of the nature of Kant and Copernicus' respective use of presuppositions, and by looking at their respective attempts to unify a science around a single systematic conception of the object of that science, this paper will offer a defence of the fundamental role that Kant's transcendental deduction of the ideas of pure reason plays in the text.

Journal of Transcendental Philosophy

In the controversial Appendix to theTranscendental Dialectic, Kant claims to “complete the critical work of pure reason” [A670/B698] by providing a transcendental deduction of the ideas of pure reason. In order to analyse the role that this Appendix plays in the first Critique, this paper will read the Appendix alongside Kant’s comments in the B-Preface concerning the astronomy of Copernicus. Through an analysis of the nature of Kant and Copernicus’ respective use of presuppositions, and by looking at their respective attempts to unify a science around a single systematic conception of the object of that science, this paper will offer a defence of the fundamental role that Kant’s transcendental deduction of the ideas of pure reason plays in the text.

Idealistic Studies, 2020

Kant's Copernican turn has been the subject of intense philosophical debate because of the central role it plays in his transcendental philosophy. The analogy that Kant depicts between his own proposal and Copernicus's has received many and varied interpretations that focus either on Copernicus's heliocentrism and scientific procedure or on the experimental character of Kant's endeavor. In this paper, I gather and review some of these interpretations, especially those that have appeared since the beginning of the twentieth century, to show the many disparate and often contradictory stances that the Copernican turn has elicited. Despite the controversies between the different interpretations, they all are follow ups and reinventions of the single philosophical event named the Copernican turn. This common origin allows me to advance a narrative that portrays that event as an experiment, following Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's philosophy of experimentation. My position does not entail that an experiment such as Kant's conforms to what a scientific experiment is, although their histories could be narrated using a similar conceptual framework. In the end, my argument advances an experimental reading of the history of philosophy.

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant defines genius by distinguishing it from science and offers Newton as his paradigmatic example of a ‘great mind’ who was nevertheless not a genius. Unlike a genius, Kant believes that Newton possesses a rule-governed procedure that fully determines the discoveries he made. In this paper, I will argue that although Newton possesses such a procedure for the central discoveries of the Principia, the procedure he develops in the Principia counts as a second-order discovery that meets all of Kant’s conditions for genius.

Perspectives on Science, 2004

The international journal Cogency dedicates its 16th volume to the uses, misuses, and reappropriations of Kant’s metaphor of the “Copernican revolution” in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. This metaphor, understood as an argumentative strategy, advocates explicitly for the conformity of the object of knowledge to the spatiotemporal forms and logical categories of the subject (Bxvi). It introduces a non-Platonic conception of a priori principles that impose a universal legality to phenomena and a logical structure to the ensuing judicative knowledge. However, in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, the “Copernican revolution” became a much broader rallying cry to justify (i.) a critical revolution in the epistemic point of view, (ii.) a systemic reconfiguration of knowledge (theoretical, practical, aesthetical, etc.) from a limited human standpoint or (iii.) a methodological tool for deconstructing metaphysical and epistemological induced problems. Some historical examples include: - The scientific examination of perceptual and cognitive abilities shared by early neo-Kantian naturalists and American pragmatists. Their empirical concessions made to psychophysiological sciences go hand in hand with the hypostatization of the regulated conditions for the scientific practice (or inquiry), that is the development of investigative methods and the practical enrichment of experimental objects; the openness of the scientific procedure is thus steered by guiding principles for successful inquiry. - The identification of historically verifiable cultural facts of science and its conditions of objective validity that make up the Marburg neo-Kantians “transcendental method”. This methodical accomplishment of the “Copernican Revolution” allows for a progressive analysis of ideal structures that gives unity and relative meaning to things as such according to formal functions or laws. The understanding of this never-exhausted content of possible experience is considered an ideal unity of knowledge that imposes an infinite and asymptotical task on the generations of scientific researchers. - The relativization of the Kantian apriorism by the Viennese logical positivists under the influence of the Einsteinian Revolution in mathematics and physics. The trivially necessary truths by definition that feature in logico-linguistic a priori frameworks acquire meaning through their empirical verification by experience. The meaningless metaphysical pseudo-questions receive a pragmatic answer (based on f. ex. predictive efficiency, simplicity, communicability) which promotes a therapeutic solution to issues implying to choose for instance between different realist and antirealism conceptual frameworks. For each of those (more or less homogenous) schools of thought, their explicit reference to the “Kantian Copernican Revolution” repeatedly serves to legitimize different (even incommensurable) rearrangements of the subject's relationship with the world, of the form taken by the object to be known, and of the epistemic limits that apply to subjectivity. For its 16th volume, Cogency questions the definition and the implications of this argumentative strategy.