To what extent should (could?) Kant's work be considered good astronomy?
I have started this thread to cover an interesting topic that arose in a recent ATM thread - the extent to which the work of the philosopher Immanuel Kant could (or should) be considered astronomy ... by the standards of the day, or today's standards (or any other for that matter).
Unfortunately, this interesting question is quite OT (off topic) for that thread.
Here are the posts from that thread, relevant to this question, in the order in which they appeared:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Coldcreation
With the 18th century work of Herschel, Laplace, and the ensuing efforts of 19th century astronomers, both theoretical and observational cosmology crossed the threahold of a new era. The discovery of a supernova in the Andromeda nebula (1880's) came as a surprise to some, to others it was confirmation of what they had suspected all along: Our galaxy was not unique. Immanuel Kant had written about this possibility in his influential Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755).
Following suggestions from a certain Mr. Wright of Duram__who regarded the fixed stars as a system with the greatest resemblance to that of the planets, rather than a randomly scattered swarm__Kant wrote of the stars in our Milky Way as forming a circular plane. Furthermore he wrote "I consider the species of nebulous stars, of which De Maupertuis makes mention in his treatise "On the Figure of the Fixed Stars" which present the form of more or less open elipses: and I easily persuade myself that these stars can be nothing else than a mass of many fixed stars...And I further saw that that, on account of their feeble light, they are removed to an inconceivable distance from us."
[snip]
"We see that at immense distances there are more of such star-systems, and that the creation in all the infinite extent of its vastness is everywhere systematic and related in all its members...The plan of their revelation must therfore, like themselves, be infinite and without bounds." Kant, 1755)
Kant was 31 years old when he wrote what is often credited to E. Hubble: the discovery that galaxies (nebula) are star systems that lie beyond the Milky Way, and thus enlarging our view of the heavens.
Hubble, Einstein, de Sitter (and others) were almost certainly familliar with Kant's theory (which by the way introduced several aspects of what would later find its way into relativistic cosmology, from SR to the big bang: He had written about "the power of expansion poportional to the heat...the most violent conflagration...the most volatile matter" with obvious Newtonian influence). M. Friedman noted that reference to the Kantian framework was almost necessary arbitration in all debate of the foundations of physical science up until the early 1930's.
I don't recall seeing one equation in Kant's seminal work(s).
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Tensor
Quote:
|
I don't recall seeing one equation in Kant's seminal work(s).
|
Which may explain why we don't use the whole of Kant's ideas anymore. Those parts that we do use, have survived primarialy due to numerical analysis showing (and expanding on Kant's original idea) how that idea matches observations better than another idea.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Nereid
This is a great example!
Kant wrote down an idea, a story; Kant was a philosopher, and he was not doing astronomy.
When historians trace the origin of successful (modern) theories, they invariably find (or make up) plausible stories to tell about how the ideas which became the theories began far back in time. They also usually find that there are many fathers - the ideas which became the theories (in the historians' stories) grew in certain (social, political, scientific, ...) environments, etc.
What we rarely see are all the orphans - the ideas which didn't make it, which weren't able to make some kind of paternity claim. Perhaps Kant wrote a hundred other ideas in that seminal work, none of which you could quote, because there are no successful theories you could claim are the descendants of those (failed) ideas?
A more nuanced view: there are parts of the Kant quote which, interpreted today, are wrong ("and that the creation in all the infinite extent of its vastness is everywhere systematic and related in all its members...The plan of their revelation must therfore, like themselves, be infinite and without bounds.") - it is contradicted by Olbers' paradox, for example (though Kant was already dead by the time Olbers wrote this). Perhaps Kant knew this (but chose to write it anyway)?
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 ...
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Coldcration
Quote:
This is a great example!
|
Thank you.
Quote:
|
A more nuanced view: there are parts of the Kant quote which, interpreted today, are wrong ("and that the creation in all the infinite extent of its vastness is everywhere systematic and related in all its members...The plan of their revelation must therfore, like themselves, be infinite and without bounds.") - it is contradicted by Olbers' paradox, for example (though Kant was already dead by the time Olbers wrote this). Perhaps Kant knew this (but chose to write it anyway)?
|
Here I do not agree with your mainstream view. I agree with the Kantian assessment; "infinite and without bounds" (though what he meant by the plan of their revelation is unclear).
(Off topic it is certainly, but since you brought it up, Olbers paradox is irrelevent if another interpretation for redshift z turns out to be viable. In short, a stationary infinite universe should not be ruled out because of the paradox. Hint: Perhaps the subject of an interesting new thread).
Quote:
|
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 ...
|
Good points. Another possibility is for those with ideas to associate themselves or work with mathematicians, physicists. The difficulty there is obvious though. It's like a rock band, everyone has their own ideas about how the music should sound.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Nereid
OK, so to turn up the contrast, how is this kind of poring over the words of Kant any different from reading tea leaves or the entrails of a sacrificial goat?
Or, to put it another way, maybe Kant was merely an intermediary - the astronomy he did (as recorded in his works) is due to what he ate and drank?
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Coldcreation
Quote:
|
OK, so to turn up the contrast, how is this kind of poring over the words of Kant any different from reading tea leaves or the entrails of a sacrificial goat?
|
From a quantatative perspective, the mainstream view of creation__and the subsequent mythical steps that are thought to have led to the present-day astronomical structures of the universes__is merely an act of transubstantiation (in vino veritas) in which the matter-antimatter asymmetry created the CMBR (and a few light elements).
Kant was an luminary. You may be right though. If he were around today he might just be posting here at ATM, qualitatively hand waving. He was correct in his predictions that nebulae were star systems (galaxies) and therefor that the visible universe was much larger than previously thought; for this he is recognised. Not bad.
Quote:
|
Or, to put it another way, maybe Kant was merely an intermediary - the astronomy he did (as recorded in his works) is due to what he ate and drank?
|
What ever it was, he must have done more than just eat and drink, he inhaled.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Nereid
You mean he was lucky?
If he'd guessed otherwise, we wouldn't be having this discussion, right?
Or, more generally, do the people who win the lottery have some special system (for picking winning lottery numbers)?
Or perhaps we could work out the number of teeth a horse has, by sitting around inside, in armchairs, and chatting?
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by hhEb09'1
You think Kant just made up random thoughts, and the reason that we remember him was just that he got lucky, and happened to be right? Is that a fair paraphrase?
|
Quote:
|
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.
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).
Further, as I mentioned earlier, when we view the past in the way CC has done - selective quotes from the whole body of (Kant's) work - we are like the folk who say there is something special about Homo sapiens (other than that individuals of this species are making these notes!) in that we are the goal, or best result, (or something) of evolution ... at the time of any of our ancestors, could a prediction have been made as to which species (contemporary with that ancestor of ours) would end up evolving into a species contemporary with Homo sap. (and which would be 'the end of the line')? 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)?
|
(to be continued)
|