KANT'S THEORY OF NATURAL SCIENCE BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editor ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University Editorial Advisory Board THOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University ADOLF GRONBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SAHOTRA SARKAR, Dibner Institute M.l. T. SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN 1. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY, Baruch College of the City University of New York VOLUME 159 PETER PLAASS KANT'S THEORY OF NATURAL SCIENCE Translation, Analytic Introduction and Commentary by Alfred E. and Maria G. Miller With an Introductory Essay by CarI Friedrich von Weizsăcker WKAP ARCHIEF SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plaass, Peter. Kant's theory of natural science by Peter Plaass ; translation, introduction, and commentary by Alfred E. and Maria G. Mi ller ; with an introductory analytic essay by Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker. p. cm. -- (Boston studies in the phi losophy of science v. 159) Inc 1u des index. ISBN 978-94-010-4492-9 ISBN 978-94-011-1126-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-1126-3 1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804. Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Naturwissenschaft. 2. Science--Phi losophy. I. Mi 1 ler, Alfred E. II. Miller, Maria G. III. Weizsacker, Carl Friedrich, Freiherr von, 1912- IV. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804. Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Naturwissenschaft. V. Title. VI. Serles. B2786.Z7P513 1994 113--dc20 94-5203 ISBN 978-94-010-4492-9 Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1994 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. This Introduction and Translation is Dedicated to CARL FRIEDRICH von WEIZsAcKER Mentor and Friend In Honor of his 80th Birthday TABLE OF CONTENTS TRANSLATORS' PREFACE IX TRANSLATORS' INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTARY 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS TO INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTARY 3 Section 1. Aims and Structure of this Introduction 7 Section 2. Central Themes of Kant's Philosophy of Science: Metaphysics and Mathematics as the a priori Basis for Natural Science 10 Section 3. Kant's Assumptions and Questions as the Background for Interpreting his Philosophy 16 Section 4. Overall Goal, Structure and Content of the MF 22 Section 5. Metaphysical Construction: The Central Method of the MF 61 Section 6. Plaass' s Interpretation of "Metaphysical Construction" and the Issue of "Objective Reality" in the MF 97 Section 7. The Relation of the Empirical Part of Physics to the Pure Part 131 Section 8. The Relevance of Kant's Philosophy of Natural Science Today 141 KANT'S THEORY OF NATURAL SCIENCE ACCORDING TO P. PLAASS: An Introductory Analytic Essay by C. F. von Weizsacker (1965) 167 KANT'S THEORY OF NATURAL SCIENCE - Peter Plaass PREFACE - C. F. von Weizsacker 193 FOREWORD - P. Plaass 195 TABLE OF CONTENTS 197 Chapter O. Introduction 203 Chapter 1. The Object of Natural Science: Nature 216 Chapter 2. Doctrine and Science Proper 229 Chapter 3. The Pure Part of Natural Science 239 Chapter 4. The Empirical Concept of Matter 282 Chapter 5. Pure Natural Science as Pure Doctrine of Motion 291 Chapter 6. Th.e Function of the Pure Part 313 BIBLIOGRAPHY 333 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY SINCE PLAASS 339 GLOSSARY 341 INDEX 344 PETER PLAASS 1934-1965 TRANSLATORS' PREFACE The translation of Plaass's treatise, Kant's Theory of Natural Science, that is presented here was first begun in Hamburg in 1964 in close collaboration with its author but had to be set aside because of his illness. A more detailed personal account of Peter Plaass's life and work is given by C. F. von Weizsacker in the opening section of his essay, "Kant's Theory of Natural Science according to P. Plaass, " republished in this volume, pp. 167-87. Discussions with Prof. von Weizsacker in the summer of 1990 led us to the conclusion that the translation was still worth pursuing since Plaass's contribution to Kant scholarship and the philosophy of science remained valuable despite the passage of 25 years. Plaass opened up a new approach to the interpreta tion of Kant's theory of natural science, which until then had largely been understood from a Neokantian perspective. The questions that he raised about the relation of the mathematical to the empirical elements of physics and about the metaphysical assumptions implicitly underly ing the foundations of mathematical physics are still pertinent today. Plaass began with the question of what Kant meant by the assertion that a metaphysics of nature is necessary to provide an a priori basis for empirical natural science, in particular physics. Being trained as a physicist, his ultimate intent was to use Kant's analysis to help clarify the foundations of contemporary physics rather than-as has often been done-using the particular results of contemporary mathematics and physics to show the shortcomings of Kant's philosophy of natural science by comparison. This intent permeates his overall approach and his manner of interpretation so that the work remains a valuable con tribution to the contemporary philosophy of science even though he did not have the chance to pursue the modem ramifications of the problem. The path-breaking nature of Plaass's approach lies in his careful analysis of how Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science [henceforth abbreviated as MF] relates to the Critique of Pure Reason [CPuR] structurally, methodologically and in terms of the respective goals and accomplishments of each. Plaass began his investigation with the assumption that the MF somehow had to deal with the same prob lems in regard to the objects of natural science that the Critique deals x TRANSLATORS' PREFACE with in regard to experience in general. This starting point led him to make a careful study of Kant's own statements about presuppositions and method in the Preface of the MF in comparison with the CPuR. By delineating the core problems that had to be solved in the Critique in order to explain the apodeictic basis for knowledge in general, he developed an approach for recognizing the equivalent problems and proposed solutions in the MF. In this way he realized that the special goal and subject .matter of the MF, the characterization of "matter" in such a way that it could be the subject matter of mathematical physics, required a method quite different from that of the Critique. Neverthe less, he also saw that the analysis in the MF had to contain steps and proofs similar to those in the CPuR in order to provide the kind of apodeictic foundation for the knowledge of its objects that the Critique does for experience in general. "Metaphysical construction," Kant's declared new method in the MF, makes it possible to extend the analy sis of the CPuR to the more specific case of natural objects (those of the external senses) and thereby to arrive at an a priori foundation for the fundamental laws of mathematical physics regarding the motion of mat ter in space under the influence of causal forces. Plaass's key contribution to Kant scholarship, therefore, was his recognition that the MF constitutes a true extension of the CPuR that goes beyond it both methodologically and in terms of content-not merely an application of the CPuR in the sense of a subsumption of the concept of matter under the already established principles of the earlier work. This extension is accomplished by applying the transcendental principles of objects of any possible experience (as developed in the Critique) to the objects of the external senses, which comprise the sub ject matter of natural science proper (physics). The transcendental prin ciples are the a priori synthetic judgments that constitute the necessary determinations of any object of experience. These principles are derived from the categories and their temporal determinations (schemata) as the necessary conditions of experience, on the basis of the argument that these very conditions likewise constitute the objective conditions (and hence necessary determinations) of any object of experience. As the necessary determinations of objects in general, these principles also provide the basis for the general metaphysics of nature, which Plaass argues is therefore implicitly contained in the Transcendental Analytic of the CPuR. When this general metaphysics is "applied" to the concept of "matter" (defined as objects of the external senses), the result is the TRANSLATORS' PREFACE Xl special metaphysics of nature, which is to say, the metaphysical founda tions for the "pure" (i.e., a priori and hence apodeictic) part of physics, on which any empirical physics must be based. The difficult question to be answered in the context of this inter pretation is how this "application" (which constitutes the extension of the CPuR) is to be conceived. Earlier commentators (e. g., Adickes and Stadler) assumed that the task of the MF was merely to subsume the concept of "matter" (conceived as material bodies) under the trans cendental principles-so to speak syllogistically-in order to determine the necessary properties of objects of the external senses. In so doing, they simply presupposed the concept of material body as given in the form of the "object in general" by the CPuR. Plaass, on the contrary, came to the conclusion that the so-called 'Copernican tum' of the CPuR (the assumption that the subjectively necessary conditions of experience determine the necessary conditions of objects of possible experience) in a sense had to be repeated in the MF as the means of applying the gen eral metaphysics to matter and thereby creating the special metaphysics of nature. Thus, this "application" actually takes place by re developing the transcendental principles in the form of the necessary determinations and laws of matter. The consequences of Kant's repetition of the Copernican tum in regard to the concept of matter are, in fact, more significant than those of subsumption of special under general concepts would be. According to the Copernican principle invoked here, the a priori and hence apodeictic structure of experience ultimately derives from what the cog nitive faculties th-emselves contribute to experience. When this principle is used to establish the metaphysical foundations of science, we have to assume that the more specific conditions of the possibility of scientific experience actually determine the necessary structure of the object of science, i. e., that these conditions make scientific experience possible and, in the process of this enabling, also determine what the subject matter of physics can be-not the other way around. Thus it is not the case that 'already given objects' (e.g., in the general sense derived from the CPuR) determine which kind of scientific experience we can have or what physics can investigate. We argue later that this approach has great similarity to contemporary approaches in the philosophy of science that assume the theory or paradigm a science uses at a given time largely determines the nature of the object that it investigates. According to Plaass, then, the MF carries forward from the Criti que not simply its results, but also Kant's 'Copernican principle'. The