Kant's physics and philosophy of nature

1 Kant’s Physics and Philosophy of Nature: Anticipating the Standard Model Martin Schönfeld. 2016. Kant s Physics and Philosophy of Nature “nticipating the Standard Model. Draft. The definitive version of this paper will be published in Sorin Baiasu/Mark Timmons, ed., The Kantian Mind (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2017), all rights reserved. Martin Schönfeld University of South Florida mschonfe@usf.edu What we now call physics was part of philosophy of nature in early modernity. It included all topics of natural science, not just those of material nature, and its methods involved a range of approaches. Newton, for example, adopted an empirical, quantitative, and analytic methodology in works such as Principia (1687), whose full title is Mathematical Principles of Philosophy of Nature. Kant, on the other hand, favored a conjectural, qualitative, and synthetic approach in his early, pre-critical contributions to philosophy of nature. Kant did not rely on experimentation and quantification, but proceeded in nonmathematical form by critiquing experimental results and empirical findings, and by connecting pieces of information into larger syntheses, always searching for deeper causal patterns of reality. In the 1740s and ‘50s, Kant investigated the energetic and elementary aspects of nature—force, space, matter; as well as fire, storms, and earthquakes. Philosophy of nature was his sole focus from 1744 to 1755, his main focus from 1756 to 1763, and a side-interest thereafter. He wrote the last tract on the topic in 1768. The leitmotif of his inquiries is evolution: the origin of space and matter, the emergence of order and complexity, and the self-organization and dissolution of nature. In his day, however, such inquiries were not well received. They collided with the creationist dogma of the Christian belief-systems that dominated Germany in early modernity before the completion of the Enlightenment. Evolutionary lines of inquiry drew accusations of atheism, freethought (Freigeisterei) and ‘Spinozism,’ a label that denoted Spinoza’s pantheism but also Chinese metaphysics, especially Daoism (cf. EaD, AA 8.335.25-36; “Lao-Kiun,” in Kant’s spelling, is Laozi 老子). 2 As a consequence of his early physics, Kant was marginalized and failed to advance. Only after he abandoned these interests and assumed the guise of a skeptic—with TG (1766), which could be read as a critique of conjecture, and MSI (1770), with its cognitive distinction between conceptual patterns and empirical structures—was it possible for him to become a professor of logic and metaphysics. In the 1780s, in the critical period, his interest in physics returned, but instead of investigating nature, he now examined the investigation itself. His focus shifted from first-order to second-order concerns, or from questions on nature to questions on science. This critical philosophy of science deserves an account of its own, but can be treated here only in passing, since our concern is Kant’s actual philosophy of nature. Yet interesting about Kant’s eventual return to physics is its importance for the critical project. In KrV (1781/1787), physics is the benchmark for investigations. It serves as marker of what it means for a research program to “travel the secure course of a science” (B viii; Guyer/Wood 1998: 106).1 The ideal of an investigation is science; the ideal of science is physics; and the ideal of physics is Newtonian physics (Friedman 1992: 136). At the end of KrV, Kant sees future philosophers systematically embracing a scientific method, whose adoption, he hopes, would let philosophy answer all the questions of human reason (A855/B883). Despite its indirect role, physics is the engine that propels the critical project forward and serves as the yardstick for its completion. The critical elevation of physics in KrV is certainly in need of proof. It committed Kant to a series of demonstrations, which shed light on his trajectory in the 1780s and ‘90s. In this idealized characterization, and as the quote of the “secure course” already suggests, an inquiry qualifies as a science only if it has certainty. But certainty is not given empirically; it can only be demonstrated a priori. Since physics is the ideal science, the certainty of its foundations needs to be shown. The general object of physics is matter, and in MAN (1786), Kant constructs a groundwork for Newtonian physics aimed at the identification of the a priori in matter. This theory of matter derives from the categories in KrV. MAN applies quantity, quality, relation, and modality to determine matter, quantitatively, as “the moveable in space”; qualitatively, as “the moveable insofar as it fills a space”; relationally, as “the movable insofar as it, as such a thing, has moving force”; and concerning its mode of knowability, as “the movable insofar as 3 it, as such a thing, can be an object of experience” (AA 4:480, 496, 536, 554; Friedman 2004: 15, 33, 75, 92). In Kant’s mind, the categorical demonstrations of MAN yield a transition from the critical philosophy to the metaphysical foundations of natural science. Believing that MAN had discharged the burden of proof, he thought that the critical project was reaching completion and regarded the third Critique, KU (1790), as the work that “brings [his] entire critical enterprise to an end” (AA 5:170; Guyer/Matthews 2000: 58). But certainty happens to be just one of two traits in need of demonstration. A set of propositions can be certain and yet fail to be scientific if they lack interconnections and a theoretical center. In Kant’s critical project, science possesses unity next to certainty. Unity expresses itself in propositional coherence. Like certainty, unity can only be shown a priori. But since certainty is about the foundations, while unity is about the propositional edifice, proving certainty does not prove unity. Another and separate demonstration is needed. In letters to Christian Garve and Johann Kiesewetter in 1798, Kant conceded that there is still a hole in his project, right between the foundations of physics, and physics itself. (Förster 1993: xvi, Kant to Garve 21/9/1798 AA 12:257, Kant to Kiesewetter 19/10/1798, AA 12:258.) Without filling this second gap, the critical project would not be complete. To close this gap and show the unity of science, a “transition from the metaphysical foundations of natural science to physics” (to Kiesewetter, ibid.) needed to be done. He worked on this project until his health started failing in 1801. The unfinished result is the OP. It does not give us the promised demonstration of the unity of physics. Instead, its argumentation oscillates between second- and first-order questions and shows Kant returning, in a way, to his pre-critical roots. Once more he engages in conjecture about nature, and like Einstein and others after him, he sought the ontological unity of the physical world in the hypothesis of a self-organizing energy-field, the ether. Fascinating about the pre-critical conjectures of the young Kant is their controversial character to this day. Scholars, by and large, dismiss them as misguided and obsolete (e.g. Lalla 2003: 453). This is the interpretive standard, and as a result, the scholarly literature is scant. On the other hand, scientists praise pre-critical conjectures such as the Nebular Hypothesis as “the essence of modern models” (Coles 2001: 240), and they find anticipations of modern physics even in Kant’s earliest work, GSK (Barrow 2002: 203-205). This disagreement is not entirely due to faulty communication across disciplinary boundaries 4 (although it surely plays a part), for both sides do have a point. Scholarly skepticism is appropriate in that the concepts Kant uses for the phenomena investigated—matter, force, or space—differ from their definitions today. But scientific praise is appropriate, too, because discrepancies do not constitute discontinuties from Kant’s physics to the Standard Model. There are links between the ideas in the former and the information in the latter. When Kant examines ‘living force’ or vis viva and ‘dead force’ or vis mortua in GSK, for example, he works with concepts that are now obsolete. Also, Kant’s scientific context—Leibnizian dynamics and Cartesian kinematics—lacks the definition of mass that would be found in Newtonian mechanics. Nonetheless, the dynamic phenomena denoted by these concepts are real enough and have quantitative correlates (the product of mass and velocity squared, and the product of mass and velocity, respectively). Leibnizian vis viva and Cartesian vis mortua are fuzzy on ‘mass,’ but their approximations such as ‘quantity of matter’ worked well enough in experimental setups. So, there are scholarly reasons to regard ‘living force’ and ‘dead force’ as antiquated notions, and there are scientific reasons to consider them as legitimate and meaningful precursors to their modern equivalents, energy and momentum. Recent scientific progress has made it easier to make sense of Kant’s obscure early physics. As we know more about nature now, we can also see the pre-critical conjectures in clearer light. Findings in physics, chemistry, and complexity theory have made possible readings of Kant’s conjectures that simply had not been possible a generation ago. As this chapter will describe, it appears Kant not only anticipated isolated aspects of the Standard Model but also got the overall story of natural evolution right. In light of these progressions, scholarly misgivings appear increasingly dated. Today, scientific praise has the last word. 1. Liabilities and Kant’s Retreat However, before the early physics became obscure, it had been rather provocative. Continuously working on its central claims would prove to be an academic liability and eventually forced Kant to retreat. His actual investigations of material nature are wide and varied. He examined the nature of force (in his first book, GSK, written 1745-47); the history and future of the Earth (in two articles, FEV and UFE, 1754); the nature of fire (in his Magisterial Dissertation, DI, 1754); the fate of the cosmos (in his anonymous second book, NTH, 1755); the origin of solar systems and the structure of star clusters (also in his second 5 book, and in his third, BDG, 1763); the ultimate elements of matter and space (in his Professorial Dissertation, MoPh, 1756); the mechanics of earthquakes, winds, and the monsoon (a series of articles, VUE, GNVE, FBZE, TW, and EACG, 1756-57); the concept of mass (a tract, NLBR, 1758), and the structure of space (a short tract, GUGR, 1768). All these investigations interlock with one another, collectively casting light on a systematic conception of nature (Schönfeld 2000: 3-4). Over time, Kant’s conception of nature underwent shifts. They did so not, as one might expect, from a theoretical need to revise his conclusions, but rather as rhetorical attempts at damage control. His early conclusions—the positions advanced from 1745 to 1756—had created a problem, preventing him from filling the vacant professorship of metaphysics and logic that he applied for. He secured employment as an assistant librarian and adjunct instructor, but his application in April 1756 for the position was denied, despite his degrees—promotion to Magister in June 1755 with DI, permission to lecture (venia legendi) in September 1755 with PND, and defense in April 1756 of MoPh. In order to teach physics, philosophy of nature, or metaphysics at a Prussian university in the mid-eighteenth century, the successful candidate need to possess not only the requisite credentials (which Kant had), but must also abide by a certain political correctness. By the 1750s, the ongoing Enlightenment was sufficiently advanced so that it was not necessary anymore to profess one’s piety at every turn. But the division of Church and State had not yet progressed to the point so as to free teaching from the authority of faith. According to Biblical doctrine, nature was created in a limited time by a supernatural God, who also created humans in his own image, with supernatural, immortal souls. This was dogma. It entailed three constraints on propositions about nature:  First, since creation, nature underwent variations but no constitutive changes. All constitutive changes had been wielded by God during creation. None happened afterwards.  Second, because God is the creator, creative activity is in God. Nature’s activity follows lawful processes, and its parts can reproduce and procreate, but the whole is devoid of creative power. 6  Third, nature is a composite of physical nature, living creatures, and humans with souls. Physical nature and living creatures are of the same stuff, matter. Supernatural, immortal souls are of another kind, mind. Matter and mind are mutually exclusive. Matter is extended but does not think, and minds think but are not extended. Ontologically, they have nothing to do with one another. Their interaction cannot be accounted for by physical means. These constraints meant that a professor of philosophy had to acknowledge that nature is static; that it is mechanical and passive; that its ontology is dualistic, and that the problem of mind-body interaction can only have a theological solution. If one chooses to deny any of this and state the opposite—that nature is dynamic, that it has power to evolve on its own, that it is a coherent whole in which mind and matter are surface aspects whose interaction is energetic—then one cannot teach. At best, one’s career will not advance, and one will risk being branded as an atheist, Spinozist, or ‘freethinker’ (Freigeist). This was no different in Königsberg than anywhere else in Prussia, if not Europe. The former chair of metaphysics and logic, Martin Knutzen, belonged to the Pietist congregation and fit administrative expectations (Kuehn 2001a: 76-86). However, the former holder of the (discontinued) chair in natural philosophy, the sinologist Christian Gabriel Fischer, had chosen to challenge the dogma. He was expelled from the university, banished from the city, and forcibly exiled from Prussia in 1725 (Kuehn 2001b: 12). Freethinkers were not always persecuted in Germany, but if they were tolerated at all, then only outside academia. Christian Wolff (1679-1754) defended Chinese philosophy at Halle, which led to accusations of Spinozism and to his exile in 1723 (Albrecht 1985: XLVILIII). Georg Bilfinger (1693-1750), a scholar of Chinese philosophy, followed Wolff into exile, and moved to Russia to do physics at the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences (Schönfeld 2010: 48-56). Life improved for freethinkers in the 1730s, and markedly got better in Prussia with the coronation of Frederick II in 1740. Bilfinger went back to Swabia in 1734. Fischer received permission to return to Königsberg in 1736. Wolff was allowed to return to Halle in 1740. But Bilfinger resigned from academics, Fischer remained barred from teaching, and Wolff was rehabilitated only because he spent years in exile writing assurances that his views agreed with dogma. The king’s secular reach was checked by the clout of the 7 clergy and the power of theology departments at universities. Theologians served as watchdogs on campus, as Fischer, Wolff, Bilfinger, and Kant all had to learn the hard way. Kant entered the university in 1740 and eventually studied under Knutzen. In 1745 he started working on a topic about the nature and measurement of physical force. But instead of writing up his research as a dissertation in Latin, he wrote a book in German, GSK, which disqualified it as an academic document. He completed it in 1747 and then left the university without a degree. GSK appeared in 1749. It is an amateurish work, a raw unedited text, stylistically crude, and flawed in its contents. Evidently it is the product of a lone wolf, without a teacher who might otherwise have been willing to proof-read the manuscript and suggest revisions. Apparently, Kant and Knutzen had suffered a fall-out, which was no surprise considering the risky claims in GSK (e.g. § 1, 6, 9-10, and see below). Instead of heeding Knutzen’s Christian views, Kant followed Fischer’s. And like Fischer, he left school and town, only returning years later. The three dissertations upon his return, on fire, metaphysical cognition, and physical monads (DI, PND, and MoPh), contained no theologically controversial statements. But just as the freethinker John Toland (1670-1722) had differentiated between exoteric and esoteric statements—the former kowtowing to dogma and for public consumption; the latter frank but just for friends—Kant had dropped hints, in UFE, that he had been working on an evolutionary cosmology, or cosmogony (AA 1:191.4-8), which he published anonymously as his second book, NTH, in 1755. Only few copies saw the light of day, because the publisher went bankrupt, or was driven into bankruptcy, just when printing the text, and the copies, locked up in a warehouse, fell victim to a fire. Some copies survived, and a bookseller’s advertisement offering “NTH by Magister Kant,” either a casual slip or deliberate sabotage, just when he applied for the position that had been left vacant since Knutzen’s death, blew his cover (Rahts 1902 in AA 1:545). His third book, BDG (1763) is an exercise in contrition and reads as an attempt to make amends. It is a diligent effort in rational theology, and it contains a summary of NTH— but only of the parts related to the so-called Nebular Hypothesis (see below) and purged of all the former problematic contentions. The conception of nature laid out (BDG II.7, AA 2:137151) was perfectly mechanical, beautifully Newtonian, and devoid of any and all conjectures about force before space, cosmogonic self-organization, and cyclic universes. The nebular 8 hypothesis, which details the emergence of complexity out of chaos, is now applied only to the solar system (AA 2:144-147) and the rings of Saturn (AA 2:149-150), not to the whole cosmos anymore. By reducing his evolutionary cosmology to historical astrophysics, Kant hoped to demonstrate his desire to stay within the constraint that concedes only nonconstitutive changes to variations of nature. The purpose of this summary, he writes, is to show that mechanistic explanations of natural developments harmonize with faith in an omniscient and wise creator-God (AA 2:147.31-148.13). Still, it was to no avail. The professorship in metaphysics kept eluding him. In 1764, the university offered him a professorship in poetry. As Voltaire’s case illustrates, poetry can take more liberties. Kant would not be allowed to teach philosophy, given his publication record on material nature, but his pre-critical conjectures could be forgiven—as poetic license, as it were—if deemed fiction. Kant rejected this offer. In 1770, he wrote the inaugural dissertation, MSI, which could be read as a concession to dualism and skepticism, and thereby as a tacit disavowal of freethought. With this public recanting, he joined academic philosophy full time at last. 2. Evolution of Space If one wanted to sum up the theological liabilities of Kant’s physics in one word, then evolution would come to mind. In the preface to NTH, he writes, I assume the matter of the entire world in a state of general dispersion and render it into complete chaos. I see matter form in accordance with the established laws of attraction and modify its motion through repulsion. … I enjoy the pleasure to see the generation of a well-ordered whole only guided by established laws of motion … This unexpected evolution (Auswickelung) of the order of nature on a large scale seems initially suspect to me, since it bases such a composite rightness (zusammengesetzte Richtigkeit) on such a mean and simple basis. But … such an evolution of nature (Auswickelung der Natur) is nothing incredible, because nature’s essential striving (wesentliche Bestrebung) necessarily brings this about, and … this is the most magnificent testimony of nature’s dependence on that primordial being (Urwesen), 9 which contains even the source of beings as such and their first laws of causation. (AA 1:225.32-226.15 my translation; compare Reinhardt 2012: 197)2 Kant’s Auswickelung der Natur (AA 1:226.8) is a German rendition of the Latin evolutio naturae. The verb auswickeln and its noun, Auswicklung (in Kant’s spelling with an extra ‘e’), denotes activities such as unfolding, unfurling, or unwrapping. The root of ‘evolution’ refers to the opening or unrolling (e-volvere) of parchments in libraries. Evolution in Kant is the unrolling of the book of nature. This differs from our understanding. We associate evolution with life, while Kant used it for matter. Evolution, for us, governs organic nature. For Kant, evolution happens to material nature first, and to organic nature only after material nature has gained the requisite level of composite rightness (AA 1:226.6-7). We also associate evolution with a mutability of life against shifting adaptive pressures. For Kant, evolution does not consist in random adaptations, but instead in an irreversible emergence of complex structures. Composite rightness—complexity—emerges by lawful processes from a “mean and simple basis” (AA 1:226.7). This basis is a chaos of particles subject to laws of motion. Kant’s evolution of nature is something we now call emergent evolution or emergence, whose study belongs to the systems- and complexity theories located in the material sciences between physics and biology. How entropy not only allows for, but also necessitates complexity, was shown by Ilya Prigogine, whose work on dissipative structures was a contribution to non-equilibrium thermodynamics and won him the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (I. Prigogine 1993:263-285). With what does nature’s evolution begin? In NTH, Kant traces the emergence of complexity from dispersed matter in space. In GSK, however, he considers an earlier stage, the emergence of matter and space from energy. He begins with praising Leibniz as the first who understood bodies contain essential forces—a force that belongs to matter “even prior to extension” (§1; AA 1:17.20-23). Extension is the property shared by space and matter. Since force exists prior to extension, there must have been a primordial stage in which there was only force, but neither space nor matter yet. In §4 Kant deduces “the origin of what we call motion”: in a given substance, force is determined to act outwardly, thereby altering the state of other substances (AA 1:19.2-6). In §7 he deduces “links and relations” emerging from reciprocal effects of energetic activity (AA 1:21.30-33). This growing web of “connections, situations, and relations” entails the emergence of places (AA 1:22.5-7). In §9, he remarks: 10 It is easy to show that there would be no space and no extension (Ausdehnung) if substances had no force to act external to themselves. For without force there is no connection, without connection, no order, and, finally, without order, no space. Yet it is somehow more difficult to see how the plurality of dimensions in space derives from the law according to which this force of substances acts externally. (AA 1:23.49; Schönfeld/Edwards 2012: 26-27) The primordial stage of nature consists of undifferentiated energy. But as an aside, it needs to be noted that present-day knowledge of physical phenomena such as ‘matter,’ ‘mass,’ ‘space,’ and ‘energy’ is qualitatively and quantitatively vastly sharper than it had been in Kant’s lifetime. The ongoing revolution in the natural sciences began around 1600, and while Kant’s understanding of these phenomena reflects the one-and-a-half century mark of scientific progression, ours has passed the four-century mark. But what Kant’s understanding lacks in physical precision is made up by metaphysical imagination. He likens the creative and all-pervading energy to Spinoza’s conatus, calling it ‘force’ or ‘living force’ in GSK. In a tract written next, FEV, he adds ontological details: this “continuously effective force” (AA 1:211.24) constitutes life in nature, governs all creation, and should not be understood as a non-material force, like a soul, but rather as: … a subtle but universally effective matter, a general world spirit, which serves as the principle of activity in the products of nature, and which is a true Proteus, capable of assuming all shapes and forms (AA 1:211.24-34; my trans.). This living force, subtle matter, or undifferentiated energy acts outwardly. Energy radiates, and radiation yields a field, which turns out to be a fabric of links, constitutive of places, and thus of space (GSK §7 AA 1:21.30-33; 1:22.5-7; §9 1:23.5-9). Radiation creates extension (§9 AA ibid.).This may sound like a non sequitur in English, but the semantic implication is shared by Latin and German. The Latin extensio consists of the preposition ex meaning ‘out’ and the verb tendere, ‘to stretch’. It is the same with the German Ausdehnung, a compound of aus and dehnen. Extension, in Kant’s mind, is a ‘stretching-out’. English makes it seem as if extension were a state. German and Latin, however, suggest that extension is an effort, sustained by force. What acts outwardly is radiation (Ausbreitung, a ‘broadening-out’; §10 AA 1:24.24). By acting outwardly, force broadens and stretches out. 11 Out-stretching is extension. Thus the volume of space stems from the action of force. Radiation is the cause. Extension is the effect. But something is still missing. Radiation may be simple, but extension is complex. Energy dissipating is one thing, but space extended is three things: length, width, and depth. Where do these new properties come from? In §9, Kant acknowledges that the derivation of dimensions from the activity of force is more difficult, but in §10 he attempts just that: Because everything found among the properties of a thing must be derivable from what contains within itself the complete ground of the thing itself, the properties of extension, and hence also its three-dimensionality, must also be based on the properties of the force substances possess in respect of the things with which they are connected. The force by which any substance acts in union with other substances cannot be conceived without a certain law that manifests itself in its mode of action. Since the kind of law by which substances act on each other must also determine the kind of union and composition of many substances, the law according to which an entire collection of substances (i.e., a space) is measured, or the dimension of extension, will derive from the laws according to which the substances seek to unite by virtue of their essential forces. … I am of the opinion that substances … have essential forces … such … that they propagate their effects in union with each other according to the inverse-square relation of the distances; secondly, that the whole to which this gives rise has, by virtue of this law, the property of being threedimensional; thirdly, that this law is arbitrary, and that God could have chosen another, e.g., the inverse-cube relation; fourthly, and finally, that an extension with different properties and dimensions would also have resulted from a different law. (AA 1:24.2-30; Schönfeld/Edwards 2012:27-28) So radiation generates extension, and this creative activity happens in a regular, lawful mode. As a quantity of force stretches out from its source, its intensity—the power per unit area in the direction of travel—gets ever more stretched out the farther it travels. The farther it goes, the thinner it gets. Intensity wanes inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source. This evokes Newton’s inverse-square law of universal gravitation. But Kant argues for something else. While Newton examines nature in the context of mechanics, Kant examines nature’s history in the context of cosmology. For Newton, space is 12 the referential frame for the propagation of gravitational force, and the strength of this force weakens in the inverse-square as it traverses space. But for Kant, space is the structural consequence of the radiation of primordial force, and the density of space weakens in the inverse-square as this space expands from the source. In Newton, force travels across space, and here, the propagation of force is relative to space, while space serves as the absolute backdrop for traveling forces. But in Kant, force extends space. This makes force into the absolute backdrop of space and space into the relational fabric of force. The consequence of Kant’s conjecture, relational space, evokes Leibniz, not Newton. The origin of space is a chain of transformations. As force acts outwardly, it radiates a field. As the field spreads out, it gets thinner. As it decompresses its tightly packed being, it wraps itself out, unfolding along dimensions, unfurling as space. The generative radiation is governed by the inverse-square law. This use of the law evokes Newton’s predecessor Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), who found the inverse-square law in light in 1604, as the rate of photometric measurement that governs how luminance wanes when traveling from the source.3 Combining Leibniz’s relational space with Kepler’s inverse-square law of radiation, Kant hypothesizes in §10 the emergence of spatial dimensionality from radiated extension. 3. Evolution of Matter So now nature has evolved space. Where does matter come from? Kant’s answer in GSK that matter derives from places (Orte) in the spatial dimensionality only raises new questions. In the fabric of space, any place is a point. But points are not extended. This is good news insofar as a lack of extension means points are not divisible, suggesting that matter consists of indivisible ultimate elements. But it is bad news, too, since extension-less points do not add up to the volume of a body, suggesting that elements would have to have volume while being indivisible. Geometrically this is a problem. How can matter have elements if they are not points? And how can matter be in space if its elements are points? Kant attacks this problem in MoPh. His approach in MoPh hinges on ideas in GSK on the nature of force—not so much on what force does but rather what it is. Following a suggestion by the sinologist and natural philosopher Georg Bilfinger (1693-1750), Kant suspected that the stalemated conflict 13 between Cartesian and Leibnizian theories of force indicates that the truth of the matter is the conflict; that force really is captured by both theories (GSK §20, AA 1:32). The structure of force is a yin-yang 陰陽 of mutually exclusive aspects: Descartes’ ‘quantity of motion’ that anticipated the physical quantity of momentum, and Leibniz’s ‘living force’ that anticipated kinetic energy. Force is both. Put in modern terms, Kant’s ‘true estimation’ of force is a combination of Cartesian momentum and Leibnizian energy (§163, AA 1:181).4 Applied to matter, Kant argues in NTH that this combination expresses itself in force acting outwardly in two ways, as attraction and repulsion (AA 1:234). This attractiverepulsive interplay, for Kant, is the “single universal rule” of material nature (AA 1:306.22). It explains nature’s evolution from a simple basis to complex order. The interplay weaves space into a fabric and stitches points into folds. In PhMo Kant argues that the two actions of force differ in their reach: attraction acts in the inverse square, repulsion in the inverse cube (AA 1:484.32-33). This is the key to Kant’s solution of the puzzle of matter. Consider a point. But assume it nothing to be but power: a source of radiation. This power-point or ‘physical monad’ acts in a binary way, spreading attraction and repulsion. Further assume that repulsion is stronger than attraction, making the source energetically impenetrable and effectively resistant to division. Repulsion, propagating in the inverse-cube, falls off quicker than attraction, propagating in the inverse-square. The energy field generated by attractive-repellent radiation from the power point thus gains a boundary, at which repulsion (strong but declining quickly) and attraction (weak but declining slowly) are equal (AA 1:484-485). Inside the horizon, repulsion prevails, allowing the monad to sustain itself. Outside, attraction prevails, letting other monads coalesce into a matrix. The geometric problem finds a resolution in dynamics. A point is unextended, but if physical space is energetic, so must ultimately be its points. A point source creates extension by outward activity. The binary radiation creates bubbles, which Kant calls ‘activity spheres’ (sphaerae activitatum; AA 1:481.36-39). Its centre is a power point. Its volume is a field ruled by repulsion. Equidistant from the centre in all directions is an attractive-repulsive equilibrium, the dynamic horizon, or the surface of the bubble. 14 The trick to this dynamic resolution of the puzzle is to add time. A geometric point is unextended, but a point source produces extension through activity over time. A power point acting outwardly in mutually opposite directions, by attractive pulls and repellent pushes, can do so by successive oscillation, alternating in a dynamic vibration. This binary radiation spawns bubbles whose surface is the energy equilibrium of attraction and repulsion. These activity-spheres are three-dimensional volumes in time. They are the smallest indivisible units of spatial and material extension. So now nature has evolved matter. According to MoPh, the ultimate elements of material particles are energetic vibrations with standing wave-fronts, with physical monads at the centres and oscillating activity-spheres enveloping them. Kant’s reasoning anticipates, in philosophical, non-mathematical form, the contemporary view that final elements are strings vibrating in bubbles that lend space to their hidden dimensions. Today Kant’s activityspheres are called Calabi-Yao manifolds, after Eugenio Calabi, whose work on the Kähler metric in differential geometry earned him the Steele Prize in 1991, and Shing-Tung Yau 丘 成桐, whose proof of the Calabi conjecture earned him the Fields Medal in 1982. Calabi-Yao manifolds have made string theory into a candidate for the unified final theory. 4. Evolution of Complexity In NTH, Kant shifts perspectives from particle physics to astrophysics and cosmology. Nature’s primordial force has generated space and matter. Matter is still tiny, and as yet unordered, dispersed through space. Kant imagines this by envisioning fog. Is it possible to link this imagined archaic state to the present? Nature today consists of planets, stars, and galaxies. Locally it consists of the solar system, with the Sun at the center and the Earth in orbit housing life. How does one get from here to there, from fog to system? At this juncture, Newtonian mechanics enters the picture. Gravitational force (the macroscopic guise of attractive force) and the laws of motion gain key importance now. Start with a fogbank, then, and imagine a chaos of particles suspended in space (AA 1:263.16-23). As soon as masses exert gravitational forces, uniform distribution yields local concentrations. The fog lifts in some places and thickens in others (AA 1:264.20-34). Concentrations pull on one another, until one pull prevails as gravitational center (AA 1:265.16-19). The fog 15 collapses into itself, leaving clear skies in its wake. Fog becomes cloud. The cloud keeps accreting (AA 1:265.20-24), and the particle streams accelerate towards a centre growing crowded. Collisions happen. Crashing particles veer off at odd angles. Repulsion makes itself known. Widening currents of the inbound stream are deflected laterally (AA 1:265.24-30). The cloud tightens into a sphere, but surges soar this way and that. The cloud grows tides. The tides suffer the same fate as the concentrations earlier on (AA 1:265.30-34). One tide, one deflected current, one lateral vector prevails (AA 1:265.34-266.8). The tides join and surge in one direction. The cloud spins. As rotation gains speed, centrifugal forces check attraction at the equator of spin (AA 1:266.8-12). Meanwhile accretion pulls in the poles. The cloud bulges out and flattens into a disk. Somewhere along this process (AA 1:266-268) the center grows so hot that it bursts into flame. A sun is born. Along the disk spinning around the star, lumps accrete into planets and absorb the last fog shrouds while rotating in one ecliptic plane. The disk becomes a planetary system (AA 1:267). Nature, Kant thinks, reiterates its patterns across scales, and ‘analogies and harmonies’ govern them all (1:235.16). What happens to solar systems is bound to happen to spiral galaxies (1:250-3). On the planets, meanwhile, complexity keeps unfolding. Planets have a purpose; their telos is to evolve conditions that can support organisms and minds (1:352.34-353.4). Where conditions are best, life flourishes and cultures arise. Kant’s conjecture that stellar and galactic systems evolve from clouds is the Nebular Hypothesis. In 1943, C. F. von Weizsäcker gave Kant’s hypothesis its astrophysical form, which included testable predictions (such that the outer regions of the solar system would contain remnants of the cloud; cf. also NTH AA 1:281.14-19). In 1949, G. P. Kuiper confirmed the Weizsäcker-Kant prediction and found the Kuiper Belt named after him. Astrophysicists predict that even older shrouds of the fog, the conjectured Oort Cloud, will soon be found. Unfortunately, evolution does not continue for good. The oldest areas, which formed up earliest, are also first to decay. At the heart of expansion, dissolution sets in. Chaos spreads once more (AA 1:319). Nature expands outwards but its center does not hold, collapsing into itself—thus to face the very conditions that make the process start all over again. For Kant, the universe in eternity is a phoenix of nature who burns up only to take wing from the ashes (1:321.13-14). Today, this remains speculation. But, as it so happens, the 16 1998 discovery of the acceleration of cosmic expansion, which earned Saul Perlmutter, B. P. Schmidt, and A. G. Riess the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011, lends support to the idea that the Big Bang may actually be part of Kant’s larger cosmic cycle.5 Thus nature evolves. In sum, the freethinker Kant can rightly boast, “just give me matter, and I shall build you a world with it!” (AA 1:229.10-11 and 1:230.1-2). To make due on his claim, all he needs is energy. MARTIN SCHÖNFELD (6350 words) 17 References Barrow, J. D. (2002) The Constants of Nature. New York: Pantheon. Coles, P. (2001), ed. The Routledge Companion to the New Cosmology. London: Routledge. Förster, E. (1993), “Introduction,” in Förster, E., ed. and trans. Opus Postumum. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge. Friedman, M. (1992) Kant and the Exact Sciences, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard. Friedman, M. (2004), ed. and trans. Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Cambridge: Cambridge. Guyer, P., and Wood, A. (1998), ed. and trans. Critique of Pure Reason. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge. Guyer, P., and Matthews, E. (2000), ed. and trans. Critique of the Power of Judgment. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge. Höffe, O. (1994) Immanuel Kant, New York: SUNY. Kuehn, M. (2001a) Kant: A Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge. ---. (2001b) “Kant’s teachers in the exact sciences,” 11-30 in Watkins, E., ed., Kant and the Sciences, Oxford: Oxford. Lalla, S. (2003) “Kant’s ‘Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels’ (1755),” Kant-Studien 94 (2003): 425-453. Prigogine, I. (1993) “Time, Structure and Fluctuations,” Nobel Lecture 8 Dec 1977, 263-285 in Frängsmyr, T., ed., Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1971-1980, Singapore: World Scientific. Rahts, J. (1902) “Anmerkungen zu Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels,” 545-558 in AA 1, Berlin: Reimer (later DeGruyter). Reinhardt, O. (2012), ed. and trans. Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. 182-308 in Watkins, E., ed., Natural Science. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge. Schönfeld, M. (2000) The Philosophy of the Young Kant: the Pre-Critical Project, Oxford: Oxford. ---. (2011) “Bilfinger, Georg Bernhard,” 1: 48-56 in Klemme, H., and Kuhn, M., Dictionary of Eighteenth Century German Philosophers, 3 vol., London: Thoemmes/Oxford Reference. 18 --- . and Edwards, J. (2012) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces. 1-155 in Watkins, E., ed., Natural Science. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge. Further Reading E. Adickes’s Kant als Naturforscher (Berlin: DeGruyter, 1924) is a comprehensive account of Kant’s scientific research, in two volumes, by one of the first editors of the Akademy Edition. J. Cañedo-Argüelles’s Commentario, pp. 311-473 in Cañedo’s Spanish translation of GSK, Pensamientos sobra la verdadera estimación de las fuerzas vivas (Bern: Peter Lang, 1988), is the most detailed commentary with historical backstories about Kant’s earliest work. I. Polonoff’s Force, Cosmos, Monads and Other Themes in Kant’s Early Thought (Bonn: Bouvier, 1971) is an in-depth study of Kant’s philosophy of nature. G. Tonelli’s Elementi metodologici e metafisici in Kant dal 1747 al 1768 (Torino: Edizione di ‘Filosofia’, 1959), is a classic of scholarship and an authoritative examination of the metaphysical assumptions and methodological approaches in Kant’s pre-critical philosophy. Note on Contributor Martin Schönfeld is Professor at the University of South Florida, Tampa, USA, where he teaches history of ideas, comparative philosophy, and environmental thought. He is currently working on Philosophy of Climate Change: A Kantian Approach. Notes 1 Works by Kant are cited according to volume and page numbers in the Akademieausgabe (AA), followed by line numbers, if appropriate. Translations of Kant s works are cited by translator s name, year of publication, and page number in the Cambridge Edition. Kant s Critique of Pure Reason is cited according to the pagination of the first (A) and second (B) editions. Reinhardt translates Auswickelung as development cf. Reinhardt 97. This is not quite accurate, because the German for development would be Entwicklung, which is not Kant s term. 2 The inverse-square law of force propagation was first formulated as the photometric law in Kepler s Astronomia Pars Optica (1604), chapter 1, proposition 9; cf. Johannes Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, ed. M. 3 19 Caspar (Munich: Beck, 1937ff.) 20ff. vol., 2:19. Kepler was also the first to conjecture that gravitational force is a property of matter, such that bodies are attracted to one another by a force propagating at the inverse-square to their distance; cf. letter to Fabricius, item 4, 11 Oct 1605, Werke 15:241. Kant s momentum-energy conjecture of force makes more sense in Einsteinian relativity than in Newtonian mechanics. In Newtonian mechanics, momentum, energy, and force are three distinct but related quantities: the space integral of force is energy, and its time integral is impulse, which changes an object s momentum. In General Relativity, space-time is relative to mass, and constant in a mass before and after collisions is its total of momentum-energy. Analogous to the contraction spacetime, Einstein s student John “. Wheeler suggested momenergy for this invariant dynamic quantity. 4 Cf. Martin ”ojowald, ”ig ”ang or ”ig ”ounce? New Theory on the Universe s ”irth, Scientific American 299.4 (October 2008): 44-5 the same, What happened before the ”ig ”ang? Nature Physics 3 (2008): 523-5 5 and Class for Physics, The “ccelerating Universe scientific background on the Nobel Prize in Physics , 7 pp., Royal Swedish “cademy of Sciences, , URL http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/advanced-physicsprize2011.pdf 5