Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

's (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) (in German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft) was a basic influence on the rise of science departments of the universities in the German-speaking countries in the nineteenth century.

Hans Christian Ørsted

Hans Christian Ørsted

Hans Christian Ørsted was a Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields, an important aspect of electromagnetism...

 (1777-1851) wrote "Differential

Differential calculus

In mathematics, differential calculus is a subfield of calculus concerned with the study of the rates at which quantities change. It is one of the two traditional divisions of calculus, the other being integral calculus....

 and integral calculus consist of nothing but .. thought experiment

Thought experiment

A thought experiment or Gedankenexperiment considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences...

s and considerations of them. ... In his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant has given us the most beautiful examples of this kind of presentation, without, however, drawing attention to it himself. " .

Kurt Gödel

Kurt Gödel

Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the...

 (1906-1978) was influenced by Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft. Gödel studied it while a member of the Vienna Circle

Vienna Circle

The Vienna Circle was an association of philosophers gathered around the University of Vienna in 1922, chaired by Moritz Schlick, also known as the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...

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Contents

The book is divided into four chapters. The chapters are concerned with the metaphysical foundations of phoronomy (kinematics

Kinematics

Kinematics is the branch of classical mechanics that describes the motion of bodies and systems without consideration of the forces that cause the motion....

), dynamics, mechanics

Mechanics

Mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the behavior of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effects of the bodies on their environment....

, and phenomenology

Phenomenology (science)

The term phenomenology in science is used to describe a body of knowledge that relates empirical observations of phenomena to each other, in a way that is consistent with fundamental theory, but is not directly derived from theory. For example, we find the following definition in the Concise...

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