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1 results

  • 14 - On the volcanoes on the Moon (1785)

  • Immanuel Kant
  • Edited by Eric Watkins, University of California, San Diego
  • Book:
    Kant: Natural Science
    Published online:
    05 November 2012
    Print publication:
    04 October 2012, pp 418-425

  • Summary

    The occasion for Kant's essay was Aepinus's claim that Herschel's 'discovery' of volcanic activity on the Moon supported his view that volcanic activity could be invoked to explain the irregularities on its surface. Kant wants to maintain that the Moon, like the Earth and the other planets in the solar system, was formed from chaotic, gaseous material that gradually lost heat on the surface and solidified, albeit with irregular crevices. The primary novelty of Kant's explanation here, compared to what he offered thirty years earlier, is his adoption of Crawford's theory of heat. Thus, we have on Earth two kinds of crater-like land-forms: one, of volcanic origin [of the order of] 160 roods in diameter and thus about 20,000 square roods in area; others that are definitely not volcanic and are about 1000 square miles, that is 200,000 times greater in area.