Kant, Kuhn, and the rationality of science

Michael Friedman

pp. 25-41

in: Michael Heidelberger, Friedrich Stadler (eds), History of philosophy of science, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

In the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason Kant formulates what he calls "the general problem of pure reason," namely, "How are synthetic a priori judgements possible?" Kant explains that this general problem involves two more specific questions about particular a priori sciences: "How is pure mathematics possible?" and "How is pure natural science possible?"— where the first concerns, above all, the possibility of Euclidean geometry, and the second concerns the possibility of fundamental laws of Newtonian mechanics such as conservation of mass, inertia, and the equality of action and reaction. In answering these questions Kant develops what he calls a "transcendental" philosophical theory of our human cognitive faculties — in terms of "forms of sensible intuition" and "pure concepts" or "categories" of rational thought. These cognitive structures are taken to describe a fixed and absolutely universal rationality — common to all human beings at all times and in all places — and thereby to explain the sense in which mathematical natural science (the mathematical physics of Newton) represents a model or exemplar of such rationality.¹

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel

Kuhn Thomas S