Teaser|Ruth. E. Hagengruber and Aaron Wells| Du Châtelet and Kant. Copernican Turns.

To what extent Kant was influenced by  key features of Du Châtelet’s work?  Her theory of space and time, her distinctive version of idealism, and her account of mathematical objects as partly dependent on our faculty of imagination are echoed in Kant.

Much work remains to be done on how the two philosophers fit in on such topics as theory of hypotheses, matter theory and infinite divisibility, the nature of fire and imponderable fluids, the historical background to Kant’s phoronomy, and critical responses to Descartes and Cartesianism. Many of these topics were in fact addressed in talks at the workshop. Research was presented on (among other topics): Du Châtelet’s theory of fire, account of scientific hypotheses, theory of the structure of matter, views on mathematical truth, conceptions of time and change, and account of space in connection to inertial structure in physics.

The Springer Book Du Châtelet and Kant. Copernican Turns. edited by Ruth E. Hagengruber and Aaron Wells will be available soon.