29th Annual Student Research Conference
Time and Space: Made in China My Head
Molly A. Turner
Dr. Chad Mohler, Faculty Mentor
Immanuel Kant stimulated the philosophical world by providing innovative ideas concerning the nature of space and time, as advanced in his "Transcendental Aesthetic" within the Critique of Pure Reason. As Kant manifests his revolution about space and time, he seem brings light to a striking conclusion about the nature of all knowledge: objects' structures conform to the mind, and knowledge of an object qua object is unobtainable. This paper provides critical analysis of Kant's work by identifying objections raised from Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, a posteriori claims of knowledge, and various premises concerning time and space extracted from Sir Isaac Newton's conclusions in the Principia. It is revealed that one can begin to understand the world from geometry through the synthetic a priori intuition of space--well enough to accommodate Newton's absolute laws--as long as one refrains from thoughts regarding space as a property of things in themselves.
Keywords: Kant, Newton, Metaphysics , Time, Space, Relationalism, Substantialism, Leibniz
Topic(s):Philosophy & Religion
Physics
Mathematics
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: -1
Location: VH 1212
Time: 8:00