Kant's Construction of Nature A Reading of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science

Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science is one of the most difficult but also most important of Kant's works. Published in 1786 between the first (1781) and second (1787) editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Metaphysical Foundations occupies a central place in the development of Kant's philosophy, but has so far attracted relatively little attention compared with other works of Kant's critical period. Michael Friedman's book develops a new and complete reading of this work and reconstructs Kant's main argument clearly and in great detail, explaining its relationship to both Newton's Principia and eighteenth-century scientific thinkers such as Euler and Lambert. By situating Kant's text relative to his pre-critical writings on metaphysics and natural philosophy and, in particular, to the changes Kant made in the second edition of the Critique, Friedman articulates a radically new perspective on the meaning and development of the critical philosophy as a whole.

Preface and acknowledgements; Introduction: the place of the Metaphysical Foundations in the critical system; 1. Phoronomy; 2. Dynamics; 3. Mechanics; 4. Phenomenology; Conclusion: the complementary perspectives of the Metaphysical Foundations and the first Critique.

Develops a new reading of Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, reconstructing his main argument in clear detail. Michael Friedman articulates a radically new perspective of Kant's critical philosophy as a whole and convincingly demonstrates the importance of eighteenth-century science and Isaac Newton's legacy for Kant and modern philosophy.

Michael Friedman is Frederick P. Rhemus Family Professor of Humanities, Director of the Patrick Suppes Center for the History and Philosophy of Science and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. His more recent publications include Reconsidering Logical Positivism (Cambridge, 1999), A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (2000) and Dynamics of Reason: The 1999 Kant Lectures at Stanford University (2001). Friedman is the editor and translator of Immanuel Kant: Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Cambridge, 2004) and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Carnap (with Richard Creath, Cambridge, 2007).