Kant's thoughts on the ageing of the earth

References

• Kant , I. 1755 . Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprung des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt Königsberg Kant's Cosmology as in his Essay on the Retardation of the Rotation of the Earth and his Natural History and theory of the heavens, translated by W. Hastie (Glasgow, 1900; New York and London, 1970). It should be noted here that Kant's treatise, though printed in 1755, was not distributed because the publisher went bankrupt, and so only became known at the end of the eighteenth century when it was reprinted.
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• Kant's essay on the effect of tidal friction on the Earth's rotation (1754) is quite well known to Englishspeaking readers, appearing in translation with Hastie's edition of the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte, referred to in footnote 1. There is also the essay of 1747 on the vis viva controversy; the dissertation on the nature of fire (1755); some papers written on the nature of earthquakes (1756) stimulated by the occurrence of the Lisbon earthquake the previous year; a paper on ‘combining metaphysics with geometry’ (1756); two papers on Kant's theory of winds (1756 and 1757); and an essay on a ‘new theory of motion and rest’ (1758). The texts of these papers may be found in the various collected editions of Kant's works, including the edition that we have employed for the translation of the paper on the ageing of the Earth (see Die Frage, ob die Erde veralte, physikalisch erwogen Immanuel Kant's sämtliche Werke in sechs Bänden (Grossherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe). Zweiter Band, Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften Leipzig 1912 447 468 in
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• Kant , I. 1912 . “ Die Frage, ob die Erde veralte, physikalisch erwogen ” . In Immanuel Kant's sämtliche Werke in sechs Bänden (Grossherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe). Zweiter Band, Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften 447 – 468 . Leipzig According to Ernst Cassirer (Kants Leben und Lehre [Berlin, 1921], p. 39), the essay was first published in two parts in a Königsberg weekly: Wöchentliche Königsbergische Frag- und Anzeigungs-Nachrichten, 10 August, 1754, and 14 September, 1754.
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• English translations of small portions of all of Kant's writings are, however, to be found in: Rabel G. Kant Oxford 1963 Two pages of this (11–12) are devoted to the essay with which we are concerned in this paper.
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• For this distinction, see: Oldroyd D.R. Historicism and the rise of historical geology History of Science 1979 17 191 213 227–257
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• Kant , I. 1912 . “ Meditationum quarundam de igne succincta delineatio, quam speciminis causa amplissimae facultati philosophicae, ut examini benevole admittatur, humillime offert Immanuel Kant, reg. bor. scientiarum phil. cultor. regiomonti die 17 aprilis anno 1775 ” . In Kants sämtliche Werke 227 – 246 . Leipzig in
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• Cassirer . 1921 . Kants Leben und Lehre 39 – 39 . Berlin
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• Paulsen , F. 1902 . Immanuel Kant: His Life and Doctrine 34 – 34 . London
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• For an indication of Kant's reading at this period on matters concerned with physical geography, see May J.A. Kant's Concept of Geography and its Relation to Recent Geographical Work Toronto 1970 15 15 This volume provides an extensive and careful discussion of Kant's ideas on geography and their role in his philosophical system. But May says little about Kant's thinking on the question of the ageing of the Earth.
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• Cassirer . 1921 . Kants Leben und Lehre 42 – 43 . Berlin
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• Kant , I. 1963 . “ What does it mean: to orientate oneself in thinking? ” . In Kant 168 – 170 . Oxford in
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• Kant's Königsberg lecture material on physical geography was only published in the early nineteenth century as Immanuel Kant's physische Geographie, 3 vols (Mainz and Hamburg, 1801–1804). For analysis of his geographical thought, see May Kant's Concept of Geography and its Relation to Recent Geographical Work Toronto 1970 15 15
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• Rabel . 1963 . Kant Oxford p.v has written of Kant's readers being ‘caught in a jungle of apparently neverending sentences where, like creepers in a tropical forest, relative clauses hang about wildly, coming from nowhere; they get entangled in brackets which stick to them like burrs and from which they try in vain, breathless and helpless, to extricate themselves’. Kant's paper of 1754 is not unlike this; our tactics for its translation are given below, footnote 38
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• For Descartes' theory, see Oldroyd D.R. Mechanical mineralogy Ambix 1974 21 157 178 J. F. Scott, The Scientific Work of René Descartes 1596–1650 (London, 1952), chapters 11 and 12.
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• On Leibniz's system, see Oldroyd D.R. Howes J.B. The first published version of Leibniz's Protogaea', Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 1978 9 56 60
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• On Buffon's system, as propounded in 1749, see, for example Greene J.C. The Death of Adam: Evolution and its Impact on Western Thought New York 1961 63 67
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• On Linaeus, see Linné C. L'équilibre de la nature traduit par Bernard Jasmin introduction et notes par Camille Limoges Paris 1972 which contains a French translation of Linnaeus's work, Oratio de telluris habitabilis incremento … (Leyden, 1744).
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• On de Maillet, see Telliamed or Conversations between an Indian Philosopher and a French Missionary on the Diminution of the sea by Benoit de Maillet translated and edited by Albert V. Carozzi Urbana 1968
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• On this tradition, see particularly Barkan L. Nature's Work of Art, the Human Body as Image of the World New Haven 1975
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• The classic account of this controversy (though largely limited in scope to the British situation) is Jones R.F. Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth-century England , 1st ed. St. Louis 1961 228 234 1936]). The question of the relative merits of the ancients and moderns does not seem to have been so important an issue in Germany in the seventeenth century as it was in France and Britain. The Thirty Years' War delayed many intellectual movements in Germany. There had, however, been a continuing debate on it specifically in relation to literature from Opitz (1624) to Lessing. See S. von Lempicki, Geschichte der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft bis zum Ende des 18 Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1968)
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• Kant . 1970 . Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprung des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt Königsberg
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• Kant . 1970 . Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprung des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt 23 – 23 . Königsberg
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• Kant . 1970 . Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprung des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt 143 – 143 . Königsberg 148 and 152
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• Kant . 1970 . Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprung des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt 153 – 153 . Königsberg
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• Kant . 1970 . Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprung des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt Königsberg It is not clear why Kant supposed that planets might lose their orbital motion and fall into the sun. Possibly, he was drawing on Newton's hint in the 31st Query of the Opticks that there could be planetary perturbations which God might need to correct from time to time. If God did not play this artificer's role in the planetary mechanism, then (presumably) planets might sometimes crash into the sun. The problem was highlighted in the Clarke/Leibniz correspondence, and was only treated satisfactorily by Laplace at the end of the eighteenth century.
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• Kant . 1970 . Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprung des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt 149 – 149 . Königsberg
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• See below, p. 360 Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprung des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt Königsberg 1970 85 85
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• See O'Rourke J.E. A comparison of James Hutton's Principles of Knowledge and Theory of the Earth Isis 1978 69 5 20 W. Blei, ‘Ist Immanuel Kant der geistige Vater der Huttonschen Theorie?), Zeitschrift für geologische Wissenschaft, 2 (1974), 1333–5.
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• O'Rourke , J.E. Kant's significance for geology . INHIGEO Zusammenfassung, VIII. Symposium, Münster und Bonn . 12–24 . September . pp. 213 – 215 .
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• Blei . 1978 . A comparison of James Hutton's Principles of Knowledge and Theory of the Earth . Isis , 69 : 5 – 20 . notes five points of general similarity between the thought of Hutton and Kant's cosmogony, as propounded in 1755: (i) land is constantly being lost and reformed; (ii) the processes occur for the sake of living things; (iii) new land is formed by elevation; (iv) there is a three-part cycle of geomorphological change; (v) the processes occur in unimaginably long periods of time.
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• See Davies G.L. The eighteenth-century denudation dilemma and the Huttonian theory of the Earth Annals of Science 1966 22 129 138
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• Hutton , J. 1795 . Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations, In four parts … Vol. I 275 – 276 . Edinburgh See also G. L. Davies, The Earth in Decay: A History of British Geomorphology 1578–1878 (London, n.d.), chapter 6.
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• Davies . 1795 . Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations, In four parts … Vol. 1 275 – 276 . Edinburgh 189 and passim) has called this the ‘limnological objection’; and he traces the history of this controversy in detail.
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• Ospovat , D. 1977 . Lyell's theory of climate . Journal of the History of Biology , 10 : 317 – 339 .
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• The reference is to a passage in Fontenelle's well-known Plurality of Worlds (1686), in which an analogical argument was developed against the Ancients' belief in the constancy of the heavens. In English translation, we may read: ‘If roses, which last but a day, could write Histories, and leave Memoirs to one another; and if the first Rose should draw an exact picture of their Gardiner [sic], and after fifteen thousand Rose-Ages it should be left to other Roses, and so left still to those that should succeed, without any change in it; should the Roses hereupon say, we have every day seen the same Gardiner, and in the memory of Roses, none ever saw any Gardiner but this; he is still the same [as] he was, and therefore certainly he will never die, as we do; for there is no change in him at all. Would not these Roses, Madam, talk very foolishly? A Plurality of Worlds … translated into English by Mr. Glanville London 1688 149 150
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• See Fontenelle B.le B.de Digressions sur les anciens et les modernes, in Fontenelle: Oeuvres completes Depping G.-B. Geneva 1969 3 II, 353 (1st French edition, 1688).
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• See Fontenelle B.le B.de Digressions sur les anciens et les modernes, in Fontenelle: Oeuvres completes Depping G.-B. Geneva 1969 3 355 355
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• It is not possible to say precisely which authority Kant had in mind for this suggestion, but very likely he was drawing on von Haller's Primae linae physiologiae … (Göttingen, 1747), which concludes with an interesting discussion of the process of ageing. See First Lines of Physiology, by the Celebrated Baron Albertus Haller … printed under the inspection of William Cullen Edinburgh and London 1786 II 244 244 2 vols
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• In his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte, Kant supposed that, during the formation of the Solar System, the lighter material accumulated near the periphery of the System, while denser material accreted near the centre. Thus he postulated that there was a decrease in the average density of the planets from Mercury to Saturn. (See Kant Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprung des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt Königsberg 1970 85 85 In essence, then, Kant's ‘theory of the Earth’ was that during the formation of the Solar System, the Earth formed as a fluid body. Its outer crust cooled and solidified, but within the still-fluid interior there developed a gradation of matter from dense at the middle to fine at the periphery. Hence large caverns might form under the solid crust, blocks of which might collapse into the caverns from time to time and hence the Earth's general contours would be established. The subsequent action of the processes of weathering and erosion, acting on this ‘primitive’ Earth are described in later sections of the paper presently being described. It should be noted that Kant's theory of the Earth is restated in a footnote to the section of the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte entitled ‘A general theory and history of the sun’ (Kant, footnote 1, 1970, 163).
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• It may be noted that in his paper of 1756, ‘Von den Ursachen der Erderschütterungen bei Gelegenheit des Unglücks, welches die westlichen Länder von Europa gegen das Ende des vorigen Jahres betroffen hat’ Kant Die Frage, ob die Erde veralte, physikalisch erwogen Immanuel Kant's sämtliche Werke in sechs Bänden (Grossherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe). Zweiter Band, Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften Leipzig 1912 469 519 in Kant utilized this theory of collapse structures to account for the grievous earthquakes of 1755.
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• One of the chief concerns of Kant's Allgemeine Naturgeschichte (1755) was the establishment of a ‘balanced’ cosmos. This doctrine can be seen as belonging to a wider aspect of eighteenth-century metaphysics, according to which in a divinely-ordered purposive system, all is in a condition of balance and harmony. See for example, the discussion by Limoges in his introduction to Linné C. L'équilibre de la nature traduit par Bernard Jasmin introduction et notes par Camille Limoges Paris 1972
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• This notion was widespread in the eighteenth century. Linnaeus, for example, believed that the original Garden of Eden was a high island near the equator, which could provide a suitable environment for all the originally created forms of life. As the sea slowly receded, so dry land was exposed and the organisms, including man, gradually spread over the globe. (See Linné C. L'équilibre de la nature traduit par Bernard Jasmin introduction et notes par Camille Limoges Paris 1972 29 49 The idea of life having originated in some high mountain region emerged later, in the form of The Aryan myth, with Friedrich Schlegel's hypothesis of Europe being colonized by beautiful, masterful men, moving westward in the distant past from the Asian roof of the world.
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• Kant is referring here to the formation of river levees. See Holmes A. Principles of Physical Geology Edinburgh 1944 167 167 Fig. 77
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• Kant here seems to view the Earth's past as a process involving a necessary sequence to events that unfold according to some prefigured pattern. In this sense his position (and also that expounded in the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte) is characteristically ‘genetic’ rather than ‘historical’. (See Oldroyd Historicism and the rise of historical geology History of Science 1979 17 191 213
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• See Herodotus History II 13 13 Herodotus, however, gives the measures in ‘cubits’, not feet. Consequently, if the cubit is taken as equal to about twenty inches, there may not have been any significant difference in flood level between Kant's time and Antiquity. And Herodotus himself may have been relaying inaccurate information.
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• Wallerius J.G. Minéralogie ou description générale des substances du règne minéral Paris1709–85 2 professor of chemistry, metallurgy and pharmacy at the University of Uppsala, stated that sea water contained about 1/30th of salt near Carlscroon; near Warberg it had 1/16th; and near Udewalla and Gullmarsberg 1/10th. See his Hydrologie,—ou description de règne aquatique, p. 80, as appendix to the second volume of 1753. These figures do not agree with those given by Kant, but we have been unable to locate the original source that he employed
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• Manfredi , Eustachio . 1674–1739 . mathematician and astronomer, and founder of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna.
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• Manfredi , E. 1745 . De maris altitudine aucta . Bononiensi scientiarum et artium instituto atque academia commentarii , 2 : 237 – 247 . (part 1)
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• Hartsoeker , Nicholas . 1656–1725 . Dutch mathematician, physicist, microscopist and anatomist, known for his popular expositions of the mechanical philosophy
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• There was a long-standing tradition relating to these subterranean passages, used to account for the volcanic activity in the Italian region. See Paisley P.B. Oldroyd D.R. Science in the Silver Age: Aetna, a classical theory of volcanic activity Centaurus 1979 23 1 20
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• These are classic examples of this geomorphological feature. See Holmes Principles of Physical Geology Edinburgh 1944 299 299 and also our sketch of Kant's local region in figure 1.
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• On Boerhaave's experiments, see Lindeboom G.A. Herman Boerhaave: the Man and his Work London 1968 337 339
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• See Vegetable Staticks [by] Stephen Hales Hoskin M.A. London 1961 102 102 (1st edition, London, 1727).
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• The original French text, to which Kant's footnote referred, was: Maraldi G.F. i Diverses observations de physique generale Histoire de l'Academie Royale des Sciences. Année MDCCIV. Avec les memoires de mathematique & de physique pour la même année Paris 1706 8 10 Maraldi (1665–1729) was an astronomer and collaborator of Cassini. He described the Italian earthquakes of 1702/3, during which two springs of whitish, tasteless water erupted for a quarter of an hour and caused local flooding.
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• This sentence, and the three that precede it, were previously translated into English by Martin S.G. in his paper ‘Kant as a student of natural science’ Immanuel Kant 1724–1924: Papers read at Northwestern University on the Bicentenary of Kant's Birth Schaub E.L. 101 111 in (at 105 Martin regarded this passage as evidence of Kant introducing the concept of ‘base-levelling’. But this interpretation has been rejected by May (footnote 9, 88). Clearly Martin's interpretation involved historiographical anachronism. Nevertheless, one can, with hindsight, see ideas in Kant's essay that show some similarity to the nineteenth-century opinions of W. M. Davis.
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• Rectified spirit. For a discussion of the long tradition of distillation of ‘essences’ from vegetable matter, and the supposed relation of the extracts obtained to the Aristotelian ‘fifth essence’, see, for example, Multhauf R.P. The Origins of Chemistry London 1966 208 215
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• See, for example Whiston W. A New Theory of the Earth, from its Original, to the Consummation of all Things … , 4th edition London 1725 G. L. L. de Buffon, Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière …, 44 vols (Paris, 1749–1804), I, 133–6; J. Heyn, Specimen cometologiae sacrae (Leipzig, 1743).
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