Kant on the Systematicity of Physics and the Opus postumum

Berg, Hein van den

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-7140-6_6

Cited by 7 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…In his Deutsche Experimentalphysik , Wolff described an experiment that shows that air has an expansive force. The experiment consists of placing a bladder filled with air under a glass jar and removing the air surrounding the bladder through an air pump (van den Berg 2014 , p. 31; Anderson 2005 , pp. 39–40).…”

Section: Christian Wolff’s Axiomatic Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the Deutsche Logik , Wolff explains how the experimental finding that air has an expansive force can be proved in accordance with the mathematical method (C. Wolff [ 1754 ] 1978, pp. 176–178; for reconstructions, see van den Berg 2014 , pp. 31–33; Anderson 2005 , pp.…”

Section: Christian Wolff’s Axiomatic Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to de Jong and Betti ( 2010 , p. 187), paradigmatic expositions of the classical model are in Aristotle’s Analytica posteriora, book 1; the so-called Logic of Port Royal (1662) written by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole; and Bernard Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre (1837). The classical model has been historically validated in a number of historical studies and applied as a fruitful historical tool to study axiomatic ideals of science, among others, those of Immanuel Kant (see, for example, Betti 2010 ; de Jong 2001 , 2010 ; van den Berg 2011 , 2014 ). We will use the classical model as an interpretative tool to interpret the works of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century German philosophers and biologists.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Axiomatic Natural Philosophy and the Emergence of Biology as a Science

Berg

Demarest

2020

J Hist Biol

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Ernst Mayr argued that the emergence of biology as a special science in the early nineteenth century was possible due to the demise of the mathematical model of science and its insistence on demonstrative knowledge. More recently, John Zammito has claimed that the rise of biology as a special science was due to a distinctive experimental, anti-metaphysical, anti-mathematical, and anti-rationalist strand of thought coming from outside of Germany. In this paper we argue that this narrative neglects the important role played by the mathematical and axiomatic model of science in the emergence of biology as a special science. We show that several major actors involved in the emergence of biology as a science in Germany were working with an axiomatic conception of science that goes back at least to Aristotle and was popular in mid-eighteenth-century German academic circles due to its endorsement by Christian Wolff. More specifically, we show that at least two major contributors to the emergence of biology in Germany—Caspar Friedrich Wolff and Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus—sought to provide a conception of the new science of life that satisfies the criteria of a traditional axiomatic ideal of science. Both C.F. Wolff and Treviranus took over strong commitments to the axiomatic model of science from major philosophers of their time, Christian Wolff and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, respectively. The ideal of biology as an axiomatic science with specific biological fundamental concepts and principles thus played a role in the emergence of biology as a special science.

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Section: Christian Wolff’s Axiomatic Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Christian Wolff’s Axiomatic Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Axiomatic Natural Philosophy and the Emergence of Biology as a Science

Berg

Demarest

2020

J Hist Biol

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“…The ideas on the role of experience and experiment in physics that we have analyzed above are also articulated in eighteenth-century textbooks on physics, such as Johann Peter Eberhard’s (1727–1779) Erste Gründe der Naturlehre (1753) (see van den Berg and Demarest forthcoming). These methodological rules were not taken to only apply to physics, but they concerned natural science as a whole, including the life sciences, the latter being discussed by Wolff in his physics and by Eberhard in his textbook on physics (van den Berg 2014 , pp. 66–69, 160–163) We can thus conclude that in natural science Wolff and the Wolffians, including Eberhard and Reimarus, adhered to methodological ideas that are similar to the theoretical virtue of evidential accuracy, which means that “a theory (T) fits the empirical evidence well” (Keas 2018 , p. 2762).…”

Section: Theoretical Virtues Then and Nowmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For it is important to understand that the concepts of mechanism and mechanical explanation shifted in the eighteenth-century to accommodate, among others, the findings of Newton. See McLaughlin ( 1990 ); van den Berg ( 2014 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Theoretical virtues in eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition

Berg

2020

HPLS

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Within eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition we can distinguish at least three main theoretical positions: (i) Buffon’s mechanism, (ii) Reimarus’ theory of instincts, and (iii) the sensationalism of Condillac and Leroy. In this paper, I adopt a philosophical perspective on this debate and argue that in order to fully understand the justification Buffon, Reimarus, Condillac, and Leroy gave for their respective theories, we must pay special attention to the theoretical virtues these naturalists alluded to while justifying their position. These theoretical virtues have received little to no attention in the literature on eighteenth-century animal cognition, but figure prominently in the justification of the mechanist, instinctive, and sensationalist theories of animal behavior. Through my philosophical study of the role of theoretical virtues in eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition, we obtain a deeper understanding of how theoretical virtues were conceptualized in eighteenth-century science and how they influenced the justification of theories of animal cognition.

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The Kantian account of mechanical explanation of natural ends in eighteenth and nineteenth century biology

Beekman

Jochemsen

2022

HPLS

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The rise of the mechanistic worldview in the seventeenth century had a major impact on views of biological generation. Many seventeenth century naturalists rejected the old animist thesis. However, the alternative view of gradual mechanistic formation in embryology didn’t convince either. How to articulate the peculiarity of life? Researchers in the seventeenth century proposed both “animist” and mechanistic theories of life. In the eighteenth century again a controversy in biology arose regarding the explanation of generation. Some adhered to the view that life is a physical property of matter (e.g. Buffon), others saw living entities as the result of the development of pre-existing germs (e.g. Bonnet). Naturalists, lacked a convincing account that could guide their research. In interaction with leading naturalists of his time Immanuel Kant articulated an approach to explaining generation. Kant’s account, delineated in his Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of the power of judgment) (1790), is a combination of Newtonian non-reductionist mechanism in explanation, and a concept of natural end comparable to Stahl’s formal conception of organic bodies. It consists of two claims: a) in biology only mechanical explanation is explanatory, and b) living entities contain some original organisation, which is mechanically unexplainable. In the nineteenth century this approach influenced naturalists as Müller, Virchow, and Von Baer, in their physiological research. Dissatisfied with a sheer mechanistic or, on the other hand, a sheer teleological approach, they appreciated the Kantian account of mechanical explanation of natural ends. In Germany, in the second halve of the nineteenth century, Ernst Haeckel reopened the debate about abiogenesis, which still continuous.

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Kant on the Systematicity of Physics and the Opus postumum

Cited by 7 publications

References 18 publications

Axiomatic Natural Philosophy and the Emergence of Biology as a Science

Axiomatic Natural Philosophy and the Emergence of Biology as a Science

Theoretical virtues in eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition

The Kantian account of mechanical explanation of natural ends in eighteenth and nineteenth century biology

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