München 2009 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 2: Naturphilosophie

AGPhil 2.1: Talk

Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 14:00–14:30, M014

Euler and Kant — •Dieter Suisky — Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Physik, dsuisky@physik.hu-berlin.de

In the 1740s, after the previous publication of Mechanics or the science of motion analytically demonstrated in 1736, Euler elaborated in the treatise Anleitung zur Naturlehre worin die Gründe zur Erklärung aller in der Natur sich ereignenden Begebenheiten und Veränderungen festgesetzet werden those principles which he had used before only implicitly or presented in an abridged version. Euler’s work, however, was only published several decades after Kant’s Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft in 1862. Both authors intended to analyze the Gründe for events happen in nature together with their successful investigation and theoretical representation.

It will be demonstrated that essential parts of Kant’s critical and pre-critical analysis had been partially anticipated by Euler, mainly concerning (i) the decisive role of relative motion and the introduction of observers, (ii) the division of bodies in infinity, (iii) the role of impenetrability and (iv) the origin and the role of forces. Although Kant did not accept Euler’s foundation, its paradigmatic function can be confirmed by reading the Anfangsgründe.

Based on the established complementary of space and point, time and instant and continuum and discrete things (Leibniz), Euler completed the notion of continuous bodies by the notion of bodies of infinitesimal magnitude or discrete mass points. Later, physically interpreted relations between extension and localization had been recognized by the discovery of the corpuscle-wave dualism.