4 - Universal natural history and theory of the heavens or essay on the constitution and the mechanical origin of the whole universe according to Newtonian principles (1755)

Summary

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

After publishing two short essays on the Earth (Chapters 2 and 3) in 1754, in March of 1755 Kant, who, it must be remembered, still had no official teaching position at a university nor even a university degree, arranged for the anonymous publication of Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens with the publisher Johann Friedrich Petersen. It was dedicated to King Frederick II of Prussia (though there is no record showing that the king read it or even held it in his hands). Given its grand scope and its targeted dedication, Kant clearly hoped that it would attract widespread attention from more powerful European figures (as opposed to contributing primarily to the scientific education of the citizens of Königsberg, as the previous essays did) and establish for himself a prominent scholarly reputation (much as winning an academy's prize essay question might do). To understand why Kant would have had such high hopes for this work, it is helpful to see the basic contours of his argument.

In general terms, Kant's aim in the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens is to show that the main elements of the entire observable universe – which include the constitution and regular motions not only of the Sun, the Earth, and the other planets, but also that of the moons, comets, and even other solar systems – can all be explained on the basis of three assumptions: (i) a certain initial state – a chaos in which matters endowed with different densities are distributed throughout space in the form of various indeterminate nebula; (ii) Newtonian mechanical principles – primarily attractive and repulsive forces, coupled with the law of universal gravitation; and (iii) the motions that these matters would have initiated and the states that they would eventually come to be in due to these motions and mechanical laws. In this way, Kant intended to lay bare the basic structure that governs the universe.