The restrictive and proliferative function of Kant's regulative ideas

pp. 480-485

in: Lewis White Beck (ed), Proceedings of the Third international Kant congress, Berlin, Springer, 1972

Abstract

This sketch of a paper is concerned with the problem of growth of science which I take up as discussed by Popper and Feyerabend. My suggestion is that the Dialectic of Kant's first Critique is pertinent to this problem. Newtonian mechanics was not just one special theory among others, but rather identical with physics. Newton had, once and for all, established the basic concepts and laws by virtue of which true knowledge of nature could be gained. He also, in his Principia, gave to the new science the deductive structure that approached the ideal of mathematics as closely as possible. The concepts of space and time, mass and force, as defined and connected in the basic laws of Newtonian mechanics constituted what Popperians call "the one true theory". Thus, the future development of physics seemed predetermined: novel areas of phenomena had to be treated according to the mechanical principles, that is, in conceptual and structural correspondence to Newton's physics.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel

Popper Karl