Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:38:54.240Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inertia, the Communication of Motion, and Kant's Third Law of Mechanics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Howard Duncan
Howard Duncan*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Ottawa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science are found a dynamist reduction of matter and an account of the communication of motion by impact. One would expect to find an analysis of the causal mechanism involved in the communication of motion between bodies given in terms of the fundamental dynamical nature of bodies. However, Kant's analysis, as given in the discussion of his third law of mechanics (an action-reaction law) is purely kinematical, invoking no causal mechanisms at all, let alone dynamist mechanisms, in the explanation. It is argued that the reason for the non-incorporation of Kant's theory of matter in the account of impact is his overriding desire to provide a mathematical framework to explain the communication of motion, a provision which Kant felt to be impossible in the context of a metaphysical dynamism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 1984 , pp. 93 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

This essay was made possible, in part, by a Postdoctoral Fellowship received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

References

Brittan, Gordon (1978), Kant's Theory of Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Buchdahl, Gerd (1969), Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science. Boston: Blackwell Scientific Publications.Google Scholar
Harman, P. M. (1982), Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy. Brighton, England: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Hesse, Mary (1970), Forces and Fields. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1929), Critique of Pure Reason, N. K. Smith (tr.). New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1970), Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, J. Ellington (tr. with Essay, “The Unity of Kant's Thought in his Philosophy of Corporeal Nature”). Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried W. (1969), Specimen Dynamicum in Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, Loemker, L. (ed.). Dordrecht: D. Reidel Press.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst (1960), The Science of Mechanics, T. J. McCormack (tr.). LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court.Google Scholar
Newton, Sir Isaac (1934), Principia Mathematica, F. Cajori (tr.). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Newton, Sir Isaac (1952), Opticks. New York: Dover Press.Google Scholar
Westfall, Richard (1971), Force in Newton's Physics. New York: Elsevier Science Publishing Co.Google Scholar