Book ID: CBB001252396

The Determinate World: Kant and Helmholtz on the Physical Meaning of Geometry (2009)

unapi

Hyder, David Jalal (Author)


Walter de Gruyter


Publication Date: 2009
Physical Details: viii + 229 pp.; bibl.
Language: English

This book offers a new interpretation of Hermann von Helmholtz's work on the epistemology of geometry. A detailed analysis of the philosophical arguments of Helmholtz's Erhaltung der Kraft shows that he took physical theories to be constrained by a regulative ideal. They must render nature completely comprehensible, which implies that all physical magnitudes must be relations among empirically given phenomena. This conviction eventually forced Helmholtz to explain how geometry itself could be so construed. Hyder shows how Helmholtz answered this question by drawing on the theory of magnitudes developed in his research on the colour-space. He argues against the dominant interpretation of Helmholtz's work by suggesting that for the latter, it is less the inductive character of geometry that makes it empirical, and rather the regulative requirement that the system of natural science be empirically closed.

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Reviewed By

Review Hatfield, Gary (2012) Review of "The Determinate World: Kant and Helmholtz on the Physical Meaning of Geometry". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 769-770). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001252396/

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Authors & Contributors
Panza, Marco
Michel, Nicolas
Winter, Maximilien
Villeneuve, Jean-Philippe
Verburgt, Lukas M.
Smith, James T.
Journals
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Science in Context
Journal for General Philosophy of Science
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Intellectual History Review
Publishers
Springer Nature
Université de Montréal (Canada)
Meltemi
Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin
Champion
Carocci Editore
Concepts
Philosophy of mathematics
Mathematics
Geometry
Epistemology
Algebra
Physics
People
Grassmann, Hermann Günther
Poincaré, Jules Henri
Lagrange, Joseph Louis
Kant, Immanuel
Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von
Euclid
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
16th century
Renaissance
Ancient
Places
Europe
Italy
Greece
France
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