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Continuing with copies of posts ...
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Originally Posted by hhEb09'1
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Originally Posted by Nereid
Not at all ... what I'm saying is that Kant had no way of knowing how well - or how poorly - his ideas matched any 'reality' that he had not tested (through quantitative observation and experiment), especially those aspects of 'reality' which he could not possibly have tested, at the time he lived.
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What he did try to do was extend Newton's laws beyond the solar system, to see what the implications were. That's similar to what we do today, with our inferences about dark matter, so I'm still wondering what problem you have with that.
Worse, I've always got the impression that you'd like to suppress all such speculation on this board. I disagree with that wholeheartedly.
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In this sense, his 'astronomy' is/was equivalent to that of the Greeks who tried to determine the number of teeth a horse has, by sitting around discussing it (rather than go outside, open a horse's mouth, and count them).
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Equivalent? Like Kant could walk into the field somewhere and examine a nebula close up?
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Similarly, of all of Kant's works, which ideas ended up being somehow prescient (to our eyes)? And which are no longer cited, by even historians of science? And of all the (non-quantitative) ideas, how many require what sort of (revisionist?) interpretation, to make them appear pertinent (today)?
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I get the sense that you are making up theories about Kant without looking into the horse's mouth. |
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Originally Posted by dgruss23
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This is a great example! 
Kant wrote down an idea, a story; Kant was a philosopher, and he was not doing astronomy.
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I just re-read Kant's entire essay ( found here but you have to do a lot of skimming to find the relevant section) in which he proposes the concept of external galaxies. You're actually going to stand by the notion that what he wrote was not science?
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In my telling of the story of astronomy, the Kantian ideas (above) are not astronomy - they are not quantitative. However, if some equivalent were to be written today, we should expect that they be quantified before being given serious scrutiny. Why? Many reasons, but one obvious one is that it is so much easier to turn a story into something quantitative (at least to the OOM level) and (in principle) testable than it was 250 years ago - you can teach yourself the necessary math, from online courses (for example), and (possibly) for free! And the high quality data ...
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You're making a fundamental error here - you cannot apply today's standards to past thinkers - they must be judged based upon their own time period (see many a Stephen Jay Gould essay for further discussion).
Are you going to stand by this notion that what Kant wrote was not astronomy in his time?
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Not at all ... what I'm saying is that Kant had no way of knowing how well - or how poorly - his ideas matched any 'reality' that he had not tested (through quantitative observation and experiment), especially those aspects of 'reality' which he could not possibly have tested, at the time he lived.
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Have you read his essay? After outlining his hypothesis he states the following:
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Originally Posted by Kant (1755)
We do not need to look long for this phenomenonamong the observations of the astronomers
... (snip)...
It is thenebulous stars which we refer to, or rather a species of them, which M. de Maupertuis thus describes: They are, he says, small luminous patches, only a little more brilliant than the dark background of the heavens; they are presented in all quarters; they present the figure of ellipses more or less open; and their light is much feebler than that of any other object we can perceive in the heavens.
...(snip) ...
It is far more natural and conceivable to regard themas being not such enormous single stars but systems ofmany stars, whose distance presents them in such anarrow space that the light which is individually imperceptible from each of them, reaches us, on account oftheir immense multitude, in a uniform pale glimmer.Their analogy with the stellar system in which wefind ourselves, their shape, which is just what it oughtto be according to our theory, the feebleness of theirlight which demands a presupposed infinite distance: allthis is in perfect harmony with the view that theseelliptical figures are just universes and, so to speak,Milky Ways, like those whose constitution we have justunfolded.
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It seems that Kant had a pretty good idea of what the observations of the time had to say regarding his hypothesis! But how was Kant to know anything about how his idea might hold up to future observations? How can any scientist? The point of developing a hypothesis is to develop an idea that future observations might test. Kant seemed to understand this quite well:
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Originally Posted by Kant (1755)
In fact, we see that the elliptical figures of these species of nebulous stars, as represented by M. de Maupertuis, have a very near relation to the plane of the Milky Way. Here a wide field is open for discovery, for which observation must give the key.
The Nebulous Stars, properly so called, and those about which there is still dispute as to whether they should be so designated, must be examined and tested under the guidance of this theory. When theparts of nature are considered according to their designand a discovered plan, there emerge certain propertiesin it which are otherwise overlooked and which remainconcealed when observation is scattered without guidanceover all sorts of objects.
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That's not science? |
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Originally Posted by Robert Tulip
As one new to BAUT, I have read this thread to get a sense of some of your perspectives, and have some responses to share.
Astronomy is quantitative, but must be placed in a qualitative framework. This is what Immanuel Kant meant when he said 'the starry heavens above and the moral law within' form the twin pillars of the human ability to combine reason and observation. The comment (#107) that "Reality would seem to be top down order and bottom up phenomenology" touches on this problem of how astronomy links to the rest of life. Mathematical astronomy addresses the 'top down order' but how does mathematics apply to phenomena?
Kant sought to answer this by relating the new Copernican mathematics to a sense of human perspective - using astronomy for philosophy to produce a theory of duty. For this he was reviled by the church as the all-destroyer and epitome of atheism, and became the central thinker of the European Enlightenment.
Astronomers also recoil from this Kantian project, but more because his effort to reconcile science with morality (what I call perspectivalism) tries to integrate mathematics with a qualitative endeavour of defining duty, and thereby retains the taint of non-quantitative approaches.
However, it can be argued that sticking to mathematics alone leaves astronomers without a perspective, except perhaps the cosmological perspective of the whole universe.
You might be surprised how wide is Kant's influence, grounded in the scientific knowledge of his day, on fields such as law, psychology and politics. The enlightenment stamp he put on these fields was firmly grounded in Newtonian physics.
Robert Tulip
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Originally Posted by Coldcreation
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Originally Posted by dgruss23
[snip]
Of course there is the sub-topic as to whether or not Kant was doing science. But that seems to have fizzled despite the asking of direct pertinent questions over a week ago.
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Here is a text from the last section of the link above: Kant's Universal Natural History, with respect to Thomas Wright, from who Kant was inspired:
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BE MORGAN'S ACCOUNT OF WRIGHT'S SPECULATIONS 205
It seems to me that Wright is entitled to have his speculations considered, not as the accident of a mind which must give the rein to imagination, and sometimes get into a right path, but as the justifiable research and successful conclusion of thought founded on both knowledge and observation. And I submit that his name ought to be enrolled in the list of discoverers.
University College,
March 7, 1848.
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Originally Posted by dgruss23
Yes, I disagree with the claim that Kant was not doing science, but just telling a story.
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Originally Posted by Coldcreation
The reason for bringing Kant into the discussion in the first place, here, was precisely because his writings are a clear and blatent violation of the entire premise set out in the OP of this thread: that without math, you are not doing physics (which includes astronomy, cosmology, etc.)...
To date, it seems Nereid had dodged the Kant factor, albeit artfully (with adjectives like lucky, lottery, something Kant ate, drank, smoked... or 'that was then, I'm talking about now,' etc).
I'm still eagerly awaiting his response to your inquiry...
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Originally Posted by dgruss23
In response to that post Nereid said this:
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Originally Posted by Nereid
Kant wrote down an idea, a story; Kant was a philosopher, and he was not doing astronomy.
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I think the quotes taken directly from Kant's writing showed this statement to be wrong here . A direct question was asked in the course of rebutting Nereid's claim about Kant.
Is anyone prepared to defend the claim that Kant was not doing science? Or shall it be conceded that such a statement is incorrect? |
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