Includes bibliographical references (pages 266-282) and index.
Contents:
Introduction / Michael Bennett McNulty -- 1. Kant's conception of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science: subject matter, method, and aim / Thomas Sturm -- 2. Kant's normative conception of natural science / Angela Breitenbach -- 3. The applicability of mathematics as a metaphysical problem: Kant's principles for the construction of concepts / Katherine Dunlop -- 4. Phoronomy: space, construction, and mathematizing motion / Marius Stan -- 5. Space, pure intuition, and laws in the Metaphysical Foundations / James Messina -- 6. Finitism in the Metaphysical Foundations / Lydia Patton -- 7. The construction of the concept of space-filling: Kant's approach and intentions in the dynamics chapter of the Metaphysical Foundations / Daniel Warren -- 8. Beyond the metaphysical foundations of natural science: Kant's empirical physics and the general remark to the dynamics / Michael Bennett McNulty -- 9. How do we transform appearance into experience? Kant's metaphysical foundations of phenomenology / Silvia De Bianchi -- 10. Absolute space as a necessary idea: reading Kant's phenomenology through perspectival lenses / Michela Massimi -- 11. Proper natural science and its role in the critical system / Michael Friedman.
Summary:
"Immanuel Kant long sought to write a metaphysics of nature. In a 1765 letter to Johann Heinrich Lambert, Kant reported that he was postponing the general project he had been working on, the "Proper Method of Metaphysics." He would instead produce the paired "Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Philosophy" [metaphysische Anfangsgründe der natürlichen Weltweisheit] and "Metaphysical Foundations of Practical Philosophy" [der praktischen Weltweisheit] (Br, 10:56; see Förster 1989, 289-90) as particular examples in concreto of the proper philosophical methodology. Despite Kant's claim that the "content" of these projects was "already worked out," they were, in turn, deferred and subsequently shelved during his writing of the Inaugural Dissertation (MSI) and the subsequent tumult to his metaphysical outlook left in its wake. Nonetheless, Kant still harbored ambition to write a metaphysics of nature, expressing his hope to return to this project in the preface of the 1781 first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason while acknowledging that a critique of reason must antecede his metaphysical ambitions: "[The] Metaphysics of Nature...will be not half so extensive but will be incomparably richer in content than this critique, which had first to display the sources and conditions of its possibility, and needed to clear and level a ground that was completely overgrown" (KrV, Axxi)"-- Provided by publisher.
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