It is well-known that Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason , discusses explicitly the conceptual limitations, to which all our cosmological speculations are subjected. He suggests that the universe as a whole, the object of cosmological explanation, is not an object of possible experience, and, consequently, of knowledge; whence his renunciation to a cosmology as a science, to a rational cosmology that can explain the cosmos in its totality. His meditations on cosmology claim to prove that the ultimate basic questions potentially pertaining cosmology about universe – its finiteness in space, its origin in time – do not stand up to critical examination and are rationally insoluble: it is possible to give apparently cogent reasons to support opposite views in both questions, then one arrives to what seems a contradiction (the so-called cosmological antinomies), and neither answer can be definitely accepted. But how does Kant reach this result and, above all, which is its epistemological effect on modern cosmology, on its scientific status, in particular in the light of cosmological principle, generally considered a cornerstone in history and in foundations of cosmology, and one of the fundamental tenets of its modern standard relativistic models?
How contemporary cosmology bypasses Kantian prohibition against a science of the universe
FANO, VINCENZO;G. MACCHIA
2010
Abstract
It is well-known that Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason , discusses explicitly the conceptual limitations, to which all our cosmological speculations are subjected. He suggests that the universe as a whole, the object of cosmological explanation, is not an object of possible experience, and, consequently, of knowledge; whence his renunciation to a cosmology as a science, to a rational cosmology that can explain the cosmos in its totality. His meditations on cosmology claim to prove that the ultimate basic questions potentially pertaining cosmology about universe – its finiteness in space, its origin in time – do not stand up to critical examination and are rationally insoluble: it is possible to give apparently cogent reasons to support opposite views in both questions, then one arrives to what seems a contradiction (the so-called cosmological antinomies), and neither answer can be definitely accepted. But how does Kant reach this result and, above all, which is its epistemological effect on modern cosmology, on its scientific status, in particular in the light of cosmological principle, generally considered a cornerstone in history and in foundations of cosmology, and one of the fundamental tenets of its modern standard relativistic models?I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
