Kant and his influence on Mach, Einstein (Einstotle) and Scientism.

Part 8 in the series of Scientism and Philosophy. The last post covered Newton. This post deals with Euler, Kant, Mach and Einstotle. Relativity is the confirmation of Kantian apriori philosophy.

“For Kant’s Copernican Revolution solves a human problem to which Copernicus’ own revolution gave rise. Copernicus deprived man of his central position in the physical universe. Kant’s Copernican Revolution takes the sting out of this. He shows us not only that our location in the physical universe is irrelevant, but also that in a sense our universe may well be said to turn about us; for it is we who produce, at least in part, the order we find in it; it is we who create our knowledge of it. We are discoverers: and discovery is a creative art.” (Karl Popper, p. 181)

Propaganda

As taught in every classroom and echoed in every official philosophical narrative, Kant (1724 ‐ 1804) is usually portrayed as a ‘giant of philosophy’. The never married, isolated, reclusive, ‘cannot be bothered to have children’ sophist, who never travelled and knew nothing of the world of work or reality, is hailed as a great Copernican-confirmer, another of the Enlightenment’s luminous orbs of rationalism. The revisionist historians paint the recluse as a happy, sociable chap. Contemporary accounts express the opposite viewpoint.

In the standard narrative, apparently no one before Kant and the self-proclaimed Enlighteners, had thought about morality, physics, science, reason, life or the soul. In this vein we should never underestimate the powerful impact of the printing press (1440). The ease of publication, distribution and the forced necessity of literacy, allowed such propaganda to take root. The narrative was and is, that before the 17th century all was dark.

This claim is fiction of course. Relativity for example, was discussed by the schoolmen in the first universities during the 12th century (at Chartres for example). By the time Galileo and friends were taught physics, the laws of inertia and motion were already well understood, not to mention astronomy and advanced geometry. You have to be incredibly naive to believe that Newton et al conjured their theories and experiments out of nothing.

Euler, Kant and cosmology

Euler (d. 1783) was a philosopher-physicist who insisted that absolute space and absolute time were factual and comported with observational evidence. Euler did not accept George Berkeley’s (1685-1753) suggestion that the stars are the absolute frame of reference, nor did he believe that stars were the source which controlled the laws of inertia (a body will remain at rest or travel in a straight line unless acted on by a force). Berkeley’s claim was more metaphysical, than mechanical and in this assessment Euler was right (Euler, p. 324) . Euler preceded, and greatly influenced Kant.

Kant deployed metaphysics to further elaborate Euler. Kant was a Cartesian dualist, ‘Rationalist’ and religious sceptic. Kant’s goal was to make ‘metaphysics’ into a ‘science’. Like Euler, Kant was not just a philosopher but dabbled in science and physics (Ferngren, p. 215).

Based on what Euler had stated and had attempted to prove, Kant also concluded that space and time are a-priori (intuitive, assumed to be true) elements of existence given the reality that without space and time (separate domains), we would have no experience. Kant also felt that scientific laws such as Newton’s first law of motion which includes the ‘law of inertia’, were based on metaphysics which could be proven by sensory, mechanical experience.

The Problem Statement

So, what was Kant on about?

The ‘driver’ for Kant and Enlightenment philosophy was primarily Copernicanism and in particular, the lack of proofs for heliocentricity. This greatly agitated these self-proclaimed ‘geniuses’. The silly ignorant Medievals and the nature worshipping pagans of antiquity had bequeathed, supported and endeavoured to prove through Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology, geocentricity. This was anathema to the ‘brilliant lights’ of the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Kant asserts that despite the lack of proofs, Copernican theory was and is correct. He accepts that ‘circular motion’ is supported by the ‘law of inertia’ and can be proven logically using this dictum. No one however, including Kant, has ever proven ‘how’ or ‘why’ this ‘law’ existed, or if it could be disproven.

Kant and like-minded philosophes had a somewhat dim view of Newton. Kant believed that the physics of Saint Newton was arcane, mythological and blindly mechanical. Like gravity, Newtonian motion works ‘just because it must’. Kant writes:

“Newton’s dynamics goes essentially beyond all observations. It is universal, exact and abstract; it arose historically out of myths; and we can show by purely logical means that it is not derivable from observation-statements” (cited in Karl Popper’s, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 190).

Karl Popper, the 20^th century atheist philosopher and logical positivist, in analysing Kantian cosmology adds his interpretation:

“Kant also showed that what holds for Newtonian theory must hold for everyday experience…that everyday experience, too, goes far beyond all observation. Everyday experience too must interpret observation; for without theoretical interpretation, observation remains blind – uninformative. Everyday experience constantly operates with abstract ideas, such as that of cause and effect, and so it cannot be derived from observations” (Popper, p. 180).

This is still true today. Kant was an absolutist and the only way Copernicanism can function is through Relativity which effectively destroys an absolute frame of refence and introduces the merger of space and time. As Kant admits this is contrary to our reality and sensory perception.

Therefore, Kant and his friends had a problem. Circular motion as demanded by Copernicanism, might be supported by Newtonian physics, but it was unexplained and unobserved. Other cosmological models explain perfectly well what is viewed in the sky. The metaphysics of Newtonian mechanics is therefore insufficient to account for our everyday experience. The claims that ‘gravity’, ‘attraction’ and the ‘law of inertia’, ‘force’ the Earth to move around the Sun, cannot be corroborated by mechanical experimentation.

For Kant et al, Newton’s absolute frame of reference does not provide the mechanical evidence for the Earth’s rotation or its serene glide around the Sun. Yet ‘Relativity’ cannot be supported by reality. How then to support Copernican theory? Easy - make it an ‘a priori’ or assumed proof.

Kant’s cant

For Kant, both space and time (separate domains), are the absolute basis of our experience. Experience can understand space and time, but not change them (as Relativity does by combining them). So far so good. But to solution the problem statement given above, namely the lack of proof for Copernican philosophy, Kant conjures up a world where even though space and time cannot be altered, they should be viewed as a ‘matter of perception’ given they are built upon all the objects ‘we experience’. Kant does not openly embrace Relativity, but opens the door to it, by arguing that experience is subjective.

Therein lies the problem with Kant and modern science and which is never discussed in the tomes about Western philosophy and science, nor ever taught to earnest PhD’s in philosophy. Kant’s formulation goes beyond the acceptable and common sensical view of absolute space, time and experience, into the realm of the ridiculous and inane. Kant is basically expressing the view that ‘science’ is about explaining ‘appearances’. It is now art. Or pace Pierre Duhem’s insight, ‘science’ is simply about ‘saving the phenomena’.

To square the Copernican circle, Kant’s philosophical program introduced a separation between what he calls, the ‘nou-menal world’ or the object as ‘the thing in itself’, and a ‘pheno-menal world’, or the world as we know it from experience and our 5 senses. Kant’s idea of science and cosmology moves the ‘Enlightenment’ from reasoning about the ‘phenomenal world’, to the gibberish and cant of the ‘noumenal world’, in which all the things we experience could just be byproducts of our imagination.

Thus, the Earth ‘obviously’ orbits around the Sun, it is just that we don’t experience or observe it. Given that Copernicanism is a priori fact, we don’t need to ‘prove it’. The perceived lack of motion is simply a flaw in our noumenal imagination.

This inane patois spread over reality, destroys objective science. It leads to nominalism (nothing is real), subjectivism (everyone decides their own truth), logical positivism (‘logical’ arguments devoid of proof, which ‘explain’ phenomena), and Relativity. The destruction of any absolutes leads to the illogical assertions that a man is a woman; that multiverses exist; space and time ‘must be merged’ (to make the equations balance) and that Chewbacca and Hans Solo zipping and zooming from Alpha Centauri (25 trillion miles away) are visiting Earth.

Mach-o Man

The greatest influence on Einstotle was Ernst Mach a 19^th – 20^th century Austrian physicist and psychologist. Though the two men would eventually diverge on several key points, Einstotle was a disciple of Mach. Mach’s program can be summarised in a few lines:

· Our interpretation of reality relies only on sensations,

· There is no need to assume an unknown reality hidden behind the sensations,

· Therefore, only sensations and their connections exist,

· Scientific knowledge of the world is therefore nothing else than the simplest possible description of the connection between the elements of our experience and sensations. (see Schlick p. 240)

Mach’s program is very similar to Kant’s. Kant limited the human understanding of reality to the categories of the mind obtained by a priori intuition, as opposed to the objectiveness of a thing in itself. This is Kant’s ‘noumenal’ view of science and philosophy. The ‘phenomenal’ world of reality and absolutes was gone.

Mach follows Kant in this philosophical direction, though in reading his works it is clear he does search for some form of absolute. Mach speculates about the aether, a medium filling all space, and fixed stars. Einstein ruminated on the same (see Einstein p. 121). In the end of course, Mach chose relativity as the model to explain phenomena.

Einstein admitted that Mach’s books (Science of Mechanics, The Principles of Physical Optics and Analysis of Sensations) had the greatest initial effect on his worldviews. Mach is clearly evident in Einstein’s key postulates including those forwarded in his 1905 paper on Relativity including:

· The fundamental problems of physics cannot be understood until an epistemological (knowledge) analysis of space and time is undertaken; and

· Reality is what is given by sensations, or ‘events’, rather than set on a plane beyond or behind sense experience (Holton, p. 242)

The above guardrails are straight from Mach. Einstein confesses in his autobiographical notes of 1946, that Mach’s works shaped his view of Relativity, a theory he openly purloined from others without attribution. Mach’s framework encompassed the dynamics of energy explained by Hertz and von Helmholtz, which themselves are premised on a neo-Kantian framework emphasizing the possible role of non-Euclidean geometrics. This is the basis for concepts around the 4^th dimension of space-time which includes the maths of Riemann used by Einstein to build his view of curved space. There is a direct line connecting Kant, Mach and Einstotle.

Bottom Line

By the time Einstein entered European physics, ‘science’ had metamorphosed from a mechanical and physical investigation into another ‘creative art’ (quoted from Popper at the beginning of the post).

By the grace of Kant’s ‘noumenal’ philosophy and abstract rationality, Einstotle and friends could explain - a priori - how ‘forces’ and ‘constants’ ‘confirmed’ Copernicanism. This has allowed ‘the science’ to tell us how mankind can ride on moonbeams, how a large explosion of a dot could explain our universe, how you could grow older than your twin brother, how a moving object can shrink and change its shape as needed, or why space was ‘curved’ and merged with time. Fiction was now science.

Kantian theology, based on theories dating back to Copernicus, eviscerated reality and imposed a new godlike view of interpretation. Following Kant, Mach extended the confusion by extolling metaphysics and Relativism as the probable basis for ‘scientific’ knowledge. This was picked up by not only Einstotle, but most European ‘thinkers’ including the German sophists Hegel, and Heidegger, the Vienna circle of ‘positivists’ and is found in the influential works of Poincare, Lorentz, Fitzgerald and Riemann, all of whom informed Einstotle’s Relativity.

Mankind could now impose his thoughts on the universe and mold it anyway he wanted, as long as the theories were supported by relativistic mathematical equations that no one understood but which ennobled Relativism with inscrutable ‘credibility’. Relativity is therefore the confirmation of Kantian philosophy, where metaphysics now becomes ‘science’. Exactly what Kant intended.

Ineluctable, ‘enlightened’ ‘progress’. All hail.

Sources

Inline and links to the past posts on the same topic:

Newton’s Philosophy and the faux-‘Mechanisation’ of nature

G. B Ferngren et al, The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition, 2018.

Leonhard Euler, “Réflexions sur l’espace et le temps,” Memoir de l’academie des sciences de Berlin.

Immanuel Kant, “Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft,” Schriften zur Naturphilosophie, Werkausgabe Band IX, ed., W. Weischedel, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1968

Moritz Schlick, Ernst Mach, der Philosoph, in a special supplement on Ernst Mach in the Neue Freie Presse, Vienna, June 12, 1926, as cited in Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, p. 240

Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, pp. 180-181

G. Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, 1973.