History of scientific ideas

Chapter 39: BOOK III.

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About This Book

The work surveys the historical development and philosophical foundations of central scientific concepts—space, time, number, motion, cause, force, matter, organismal notions, and methods—showing how they function as necessary ideas rather than empirical derivations. It examines perception and mathematical reasoning, the axioms underlying geometry and arithmetic, controversies over causation and force, and the establishment of statics, dynamics, and gravitational law. Emphasizing the interplay of induction, deduction, and metaphysical reflection, it maps debates and proposes resolutions that aim to reconcile observed facts with the conceptual conditions that make scientific knowledge possible.

BOOK III.

THE

PHILOSOPHY

OF THE

MECHANICAL SCIENCES.

It is only because we subject trains of phenomena, that is, all change whatever, to the law of causality—to the relation of cause and effect—that experience or empirical knowledge becomes possible.

Kant, Kr. d. R. V. 11 Th. 1 Abth. 11 Buch. 2 Haupt.

Quicquid premit vel trahit alterum, tantundem ab eo premitur vel trahitur … Si corpus aliquod in corpus aliud impingens motum ejus vi suâ quomodocunque mutaverit, idem quoque vicissim in motu proprio eandem mutationem in partem contrariam vi alterius (ob æqualitatem pressionis, mutuæ) subibit … Obtinet etiam hæc Lex in attractionibus.

Newton, Princip. ad init.