Kant's concept of evolution

Evolution Martin Schönfeld. 2016. Evolution (Auswickelung). Draft. The definitive version of this paper will be published in Julian Wuerth, ed., The Cambridge Kant Lexicon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2017), all rights reserved. Martin Schönfeld University of South Florida mschonfe@usf.edu Evolution (Auswickelung). In his 1755 Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Kant argues for the evolution of nature, or evolution of the order of nature on a large scale ([UNH] 1:226.8 and 1:226.4-5/my trans.; CENS:197 has development, which, in German, would be Entwicklung). Auswickelung is an early modern rendition of evolutio, which means unrolling, unfurling, or unwrapping. The Latin term denotes the act of opening book-scrolls. Kant translates evolutio as Auswickelung in a comment on G. F. Meier s. Meier s Logic (Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre) ([Nachlass #2343] 16:324). Kant s doctrine of evolution concerns material nature, touching on life in passing. The evolution of life is viewed as a natural consequence of the formation of planets (UNH 352-355). The evolution of animals, he surmises in the 1790 Critique of the Power of Judgment, stems from a common prototype ... through the gradual approach of one animal genus to the other, from ... human beings, down to polyps, and from this even further to mosses and lichens, and finally to the lowest level of nature that we can observe, that of raw matter [CPJ] 5:418-19/CECPJ:287). In the pre-critical philosophy of nature, Auswickelung denotes a doctrine of physical self-organization or emergent evolution. The metaphorical unrolling of the Scroll of Nature describes the progression from energy to matter to mind, the transition from chaos to order, and the evolution from simplicity to complexity Kant s term for complexity is compound soundness [zusammengesetzte Richtigkeit] UNH, 1.226.6- CENS 9 has composite rightness . This doctrine stipulates processes subsumed today by the phenomenon of emergence. Exclaiming just give me matter, and I shall build you a world with it! cf. 1:229.10-11/CENS 200; 1:230.1- 2/CENS ibid.), he explains in UNH (II, III; 1:259- how material world-building happens. A scientific legacy of his doctrine is the Kant-Weizsäcker Nebular Hypothesis of stellar dynamics (1944), elaborated by E. Öpik, G. Oort, and P. Kuiper. In astrophysics, the Nebular Hypothesis accounts for the evolutionary pattern of stars, solar systems, and spiral galaxies. Kant s doctrine of evolution spans three stages of natural history: the emergence of spatial extension from energetic radiation, the emergence of material points from oscillating forces, and the emergence of macroscopic structures from interplays of dispersed particles. Kant describes the transition from energy to space in his 1749 Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces [TE], the transition from space to matter in his 1756 Employment in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics combined with Geometry, of which Sample I contains the Physical Monadology [PM], and the transition from material chaos to astrophysical structures in UNH. In TE, he suggests that extension was not a primordial property of nature, and that something else—force—had existed before anything else appeared (§ 1; 1:17/CENS 22). Force acts outwardly: energetic activity spreads from a dynamic center, defined as a substance (§4, 1:19/CENS 23). This outward action yields external connections, positions, and relations, which constitute places (§ 7, 1:22/CENS 26). In doing so, force creates order and space (§ 9, 1:22/CENS 26) Force radiates (ausbreiten 1:24.23) in the inverse square to the distance from its source. This rate of radiation generates the structure of extension, the three-dimensionality of space (§ 10, 1:24): substances...have essential forces of such a kind that they propagate their effects in union with each other according to the inverse-square relation of the distances [and]...the whole to which this gives rise has, by virtue of this law, the property of being three-dimensional (CENS 27-28; 1:24.19-26). The inverse square law was formulated by Kepler (Astronomia Pars Optica [1604], prop. 9 . Unlike Newton, who uses Kepler s law to describe the propagation of gravity across space, Kant uses it to describe the emergence of volume from radiation. Kant s idea that force extends space anticipates the standard model, the Λ-CDM (Lambda cold dark matter) model of Big Bang cosmology. In PM, Kant describes the second stage, the emergence of material points. It begins with the thesis that dynamic activity is an interplay of attractive and repulsive forces—the former propagating in the inverse square, the latter in the inverse cube of the distance from the source (1:484). In TE, he had suggested that force is binary and that its true estimation is jointly dead force vis mortua) and living force vis viva), whose properties correspond to momentum and energy respectively. In PM, Kant retains the idea that force is binary but replaces momentum-energy with attraction-repulsion. Force radiates space, space contains matter, and matter consists of dynamic substances or physical monads (PM 1:477). Physical monads act outwardly as attractive-repulsive oscillation (prop. 10, 1:483485). Close to the monadic center, repulsion (vis repulsiva) overpowers attraction (vis attractiva). Since repulsion radiates in the inverse cube, its intensity falls off sharply. Attraction, in the inverse-square, radiates farther and falls off more slowly (1:484). At some distance, both forces are equal, delineating the event horizon or surface of the activity-sphere sphaera activitatis) of the physical monad. The dynamic activity of the point-source pushes out an impenetrable volume inside its event horizon (prop. 7, 1:481-482). Geometrically, monads are points. Dynamically, they unfold activityspheres of repulsion radiating higher-dimensional space (cf. PM prop. 7 and TE §10). Materially, attraction emanating from the event horizons makes physical monads accrete into particles. Kant s idea that energetic interplays whip out dimensional bubbles as elements finds a modern analogue in M-theory, which unifies string theories. In contemporary physical theorizing, matter consists of ultimate elements both dynamic and geometric, akin to Kant s activity-spheres: the three-dimensional Calabi-Yao manifolds created by higher-dimensional superstrings. In UNH, Kant describes the third stage of nature s evolution, the emergence of macroscopic structures. His account begins with the assumption of chaos; randomly dispersed matter in space (1:263-264). Because of gravitational attraction, particles accrete towards a center (1:264). Collisions deflect converging particles laterally, generating tides and rotation (1:264-265). The rotating cloud grows dense and energetic at its center, which turns into a proto-star (1:265). Centripetal forces acting on the cloud pull its poles in, while centrifugal forces generated by rotation push an equatorial bulge out. This flattens the glowing sphere into a disk rotating around a now discrete sun. Particle-streams on the disk accrete into planets traveling in one direction (1:266-269). Self-organization is inversely proportional to the distance from the center of activity, and the ecliptic plane of planets unravels at its edge into free orbits of irregular smaller bodies, the comets, and dissolves farther out into remnants of the original cloud, now a shell enveloping the solar system (1:268 note). Self-organization reiterates across scales; solar systems integrate as galaxies, and galaxies as groups that integrate as the cosmos (1:254-256). At the peak of cosmic self-organization, planets spawn plants, animals, and intelligence, on Earth and elsewhere (1:352-355). But the universe bears the seeds of self-destruction. The more complex cosmic structures grow, the more prone they are to dissipation, until the universe collapses into chaos—only to rise again as phoenix of nature (1:317-321; 1:321.13). Kant s idea (UNH I and II) that planetary and star systems evolve from particle clouds is today information in astrophysics and cosmology. His idea (UNH III) that maximum levels of complexity increase as the history of life proceeds, is now information in paleontology and biology. Self-organization of complex material structures through irreversible entropic processes is well understood in chemistry (I. Prigogine, Nobel 1977; L. Onsager, Nobel 1968). Lastly, Kant s idea that complexity unravels into chaos only to spawn another universe (UNH II.7) is studied in Big Bang cosmology in the Big Rip hypothesis, the Big Crunch scenario, and the Big Bounce model. The 1998 discovery of accelerating cosmic expansion is a first empirical clue of Kant s prospect (S. Perlmutter, B. Schmidt, A. Riess; Physics Nobel 2011). The pre-critical doctrine of evolution violated theological dogma, and it did pose interpretive difficulties for past scholarship, but scientific progressions have clarified the conjectures. Related terms: force, attraction, repulsion, monad, universe, natural history, phoenix of nature. Martin Schönfeld