Neo-Kantianism, Scientific Realism, and Modern Physics
Neo-Kantianism, Scientific Realism, and Modern Physics
Kant’s original philosophical project took Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics as synthetic a priori sciences fixed for all time. Developments in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century science made this view untenable, but a number of neo-Kantian philosophers responded by relativizing the conception of a priori principles to the historical development of mathematics and physics after Kant. Friedman’s conception of a dynamics of reason follows this tradition. Mark Wilson has addressed many of these same post-Kantian developments on behalf of a sophisticated version of scientific realism inspired by the earlier work of Hilary Putnam, and Wilson has expressed dissatisfaction with the ‘ersatz’ conceptions of scientific objectivity characteristic of neo-Kantianism. This chapter argues that Wilson’s and Friedman’s approaches can be seen as complementary rather than incompatible, responding to different but equally important aspects of the historical development of modern physics from Newton to the early twentieth century.
Keywords: Kant, Newton, neo-Kantianism, relativized a priori, dynamics of reason, Mark Wilson, scientific realism, scientific objectivity, modern physics
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
