KANT ON THE THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF NEWTONIANSCIENCEANDREW N. CARPENTERUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY
Kant's deep interest in Newtonian science is evident in his Universal Natural Historyand Theory of the Heavens (1755), a work whose subtitle is Essay on the Constitutionand Mechanical Origin of the Entire Universe, Treated in Accordance with NewtonianPrinciples. The plan of this work is to show how "general laws of motion" and "theaccepted law of attraction" can be used to explain the development of the universe outof an original chaos (1:246). In this way, he seeks "to discover the systematic factorwhich ties together the great members of the created realm in the whole extent of infinity" (1:221).I investigate the philosophical significance of the Universal Natural History. I discusshow Kant's interest in Newtonian forces leads him to affirm a peculiar version of thephysical influx theory. It is particularly significant that Kant appeals to God's agencyto explain how substances can interact. What emerges is a view of Newtonian scienceaccording to which the Newtonian laws of motion are understandable only if we positthem as the content of God's 'divine schema' for our world. Had God's divine schemabeen different, our world would have been vastly different. For example, under adifferent schema, our world might have contained fewer or more than threedimensions, objects could interact by exerting a universal attractive force which variesby the cube of distance, or intersubstantial interaction might have been impossiblealtogether.Kant argues that divine agency is needed to explain the possibility of interactionbetween any two substances. God acts to ground the physical laws governingintersubstantial interaction. In an important passage, he writes:...[I]n so far as each individual substance has an existence which is independent of other substances, no reciprocal connection occurs between them; and since it certainlydoes not fall to finite beings to be the cause of other substances, and since,nonetheless, all the things in the universe are found to be reciprocally connected withone another – since all this is the case, it has to be admitted that this relation dependson a communality of cause, namely on God, the universal principle of beings. (1:413)If this is right, then metaphysicians and scientists make a mistake if they merelyexamine objects in the world when they investigate objects’ capacities to interact witheach other. Explaining why objects can interact with each other, Kant insists, requiresappealing to substances’ common dependence on their divine creator.I explore several ways in which Kant's theological grounding of Newtonian physicsallows him to go further than Newton did himself, for example by providing a"Newtonian" account of the origin and development of the cosmos.
Kant and Leibniz
Kant's interest in the physics, metaphysics, epistemology, and theology of hispredecessor G.W. Leibniz is evident in his writings in the philosophy of naturalscience as well as in the Critique of Pure Reason. The conventional view that Kantsought to steer a middle course between the rationalism of 18
th
century Germanschool philosophy initiated by Leibniz's follower Christian Wolff and the empiricismof David Hume, furnishes a useful point of departure for understanding Kant'sintellectual context and his aims and intentions. Kant's aim in propounding his criticalphilosophy was not, however, merely to transcend the stalemate of dogmatism vs.skepticism, but to secure the status of morality and to bring peace to warring factionsin the the academy — and perhaps to the world. Kant addressed the Leibnizian topicsof the nature of substance, the human soul and its powers, space, time, and forces,mechanism and teleology, and divine creation in passages scattered throughout hismajor and minor writings.The main features of Kant's reception of Leibniz are surveyed below under separateheadings.
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1. Introduction
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2. The Principle of Contradiction
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3. The Identity of Indiscernibles
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4. Substance and “Matter”
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5. Space and Time
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6. Perception and Thought
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7. Soul and Body
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8. Freedom and the Principle of Sufficient Reason
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9. Mechanism and the Order of Nature
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10. Theology and Theodicy
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Bibliography
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Other Internet Resources
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Related Entries
1. Introduction
Kant's references to Leibniz, though sporadic, reveal an ongoing interest in Leibnizianproblems and concepts. At one time or another, Kant addressed all of Leibniz's maindoctrines, including his defense of living forces against the Cartesians, his attack onabsolute space and time against the Newtonians, his immaterial atomism ormonadology, his theodicy, and his various principles and laws — the identity of indiscernibles, continuity, non-contradiction and sufficient reason. The challengingtone towards the followers of Leibniz that the young Kant, as an aspiring physicistand cosmologist, adopted gave way in time to respectful engagement with thephilosopher himself, as Kant became an increasingly determined critic of materialism.Yet Kant's attitude towards his famous predecessor, whose ideas were extensivelydiscussed in French, and later in Prussian intellectual circles after Leibniz's death in1716, never reaches equilibrium. This is unsurprising, for Kant's own texts show an
attraction both to pantheistic teleological theories of the whole, as well asepistemological caution and a regard for healthy common sense. Kant describesLeibniz as one of the greatest and most successful reformers of the modern era (9:32),along with John Locke, and as a genius, along with Isaac Newton (7.226.) Yet he alsorefers repeatedly to the errors of the Leibnizians, whom he considers “dogmatic”philosophers. Their conviction that human reason could acquire knowledge of supersensible entities, including the soul and God, necessitated, in Kant's view, a“critique.” Locke had attempted to construct a critical philosophy against theCartesians but had failed to carry his programme through. “So much there wasdeceptive, that it is necessary to suspend the whole enterprise and to bring instead themethod of the critical philosophy into play. This consists of examining the process of reason itself, of dividing and testing the human knowledge capacity in order todetermine how far out its boundaries may be placed” (9.32.)The suspension of the whole enterprise announced by Kant should not obscure thefact that Leibniz and Kant shared an ethico-religious conception of philosophy.Leibniz wrote in an era in which the universities were still dominated by Christianphilosophy. Whatever his private leanings towards mystical and philosophicalreligion, he believed that a strong and unified religious authority was essential to themaintenance of moral and political order, and the content of morality did not strikehim as problematic. Kant, though steeped in Protestant theology and moralphilosophy, favoured the newer trend towards the academic autonomy of philosophyand secular morality and governance. Yet, as a moral rigorist, he had to contend withthe skepticism and conventionalism voiced by Locke and David Hume and the attackson metaphysics of Etienne de Condillac, Leonhard Euler, Voltaire, and the BaronHolbach. How could morality be reconciled with Newtonian science and how couldthe existence of ineluctable duties be established in the face of the variety of humanpractices and customs? Kant noted the peculiarity of Locke's suggesting that, afterderiving all concepts from experience and reflection on experience, he coulddemonstrate the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, matters lying wellbeyond all experience (KRV A 854f./B 882f.) Leibniz, he noted, was at least notcontradictory in this respect; he denied that knowledge was limited by our experience.For Kant, however, metaphysics could not provide knowledge of the supersensible,including the existence of God, the possibility of the realization of a highest good inthe natural world, or the ability of human beings to realize that good through theirendowments. Human aspirations in this regard were transcendent, futile, and “entirelyvacuous” (20: 301.)To achieve his ends, Kant had to draw a strict distinction between the metaphysics of Leibniz and Wolff and the knowledge it claimed to acquire through the exercise of pure reason and his own “critical” philosophy and the beliefs it showed to benecessary or obligatory to explain and lend coherence to our other beliefs. Thedogmatic metaphysicians preceding him, Kant argued, imagined that they coulddemonstrate the truth of their doctrines in rigorous mathematical fashion, butmetaphysical concepts lacked the precision and intelligibility of mathematicalconcepts. At the same time, they put their trust in intellectual intuition, which was nomore certain than the visionary and mystical writings of Auguste Swedenborg, whohad set down his hallucinations and angelic dictations in twelve volumes of the
Arcana Coelestia
(1749-56), which Kant read in 1765 and satirized in his
Dreams of aSpirit Seer
in 1766. Leibniz's monadology exemplified both errors, for Leibniz
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