Thesis ID: CBB001561970

Geometry and Experimental Method in Locke, Newton and Kant (2003)

unapi

Domski, Mary (Author)


Indiana University
Friedman, Michael


Publication Date: 2003
Edition Details: Advisor: Friedman, Michael
Physical Details: 188 pp.
Language: English

Historians of modern philosophy have been paying increasing attention to contemporaneous scientific developments. Isaac Newton's Principia (1687) is of course crucial to any discussion of the influence of scientific advances on the philosophical currents of the modern period, and two philosophers who have been linked especially closely to Newton are John Locke and Immanuel Kant. My dissertation aims to shed new light on the ties each shared with Newtonian science by treating Newton, Locke, and Kant simultaneously. I adopt Newton's philosophy of geometry as the starting point of investigation, for here I believe we have a constructive means by which to assess Locke and Kant's relationship to Newton, In particular, I defend the thesis that the justification Newton, Locke and Kant offer for applying geometrical principles to nature is central to understanding their respective ties to a Newtonian science characterized by the intermingling of mathematics and experiment. Although little is said by Locke in regard to a mathematical approach to nature, I hope to show that his interpretation of the origins of our geometrical ideas has a close affinity to Newton's own characterization of geometry, leading us to reexamine the extent of Locke's Newtonianism. Kant famously attempts to bridge the gap between geometry and the empirical world by establishing space as a pure form of intuition. My discussion of Kant's Newtonian approach to nature centers on the imagination, and I argue that the mediating work completed by this faculty in geometrical construction and experience in general is equally important to understanding Kant's application of geometry to the empirical realm, In the end, I hope my treatment of the strategies employed by Newton, Locke, and Kant to account for a mathematical-experimental method of natural philosophy sheds further light on the importance of Newton to the progress of modern philosophy.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 64 (2004): 4071. UMI order no. 3111858.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001561970/

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Authors & Contributors
Domski, Mary
Biener, Zvi
Boccaccini, Federico
Schliesser, Erick
Schliesser, Eric
Marmodoro, Anna
Concepts
Mathematics and its relationship to science
Philosophy
Physics
Methodology of science; scientific method
Philosophy of science
Natural philosophy
Time Periods
18th century
17th century
Enlightenment
Early modern
Medieval
Places
England
Spain
Germany
France
Great Britain
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