A show on Radio Romania Cultural: ”Springs of Philosophy” (22 May 2010)
Moderator: Constantin Aslam (CA). Guest: Marcel Chelba (MC)
Second edition: Kantinomus Verlag, Tübingen, 2023.
ISBN: 978-3-9820930-8-6
© Marcello-Silvestri Chelba
Digital edition: PDF, 19 pages.
Kant was not contradicted by modern science, but confirmed. The epistemology of modern physics is an eminently Kantian epistemology. This is what I have tried to show in my book: Critical Introduction. On the Possibility of Metaphysics as Science in the Perspective of Kantian Critical Philosophy (Crates, 2004). This book was the subject of the debate in the Radio Romania Cultural broadcast, published here.
Reading sample:
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”CA – I need one more clarification. Please.
MC – Yes?
CA – Let’s understand that you, with this metaphor, with the parable of the bird and the mole…
MC – Exactly, now we’re going to draw…
CA – No, my question was the following, just to understand better: you went with the perspective of contemporary physics in Kant to do a reading – a double reading, so to speak – Critique of Pure Reason on the one hand and contemporary theoretical physics on the other hand, as if left hand/right hand, to see if they are symmetrical?
MC – Yes, sure, I looked for such analogies and found very strong analogies.
CA – Right. Please.
MC – Mole’s perspective would be exactly the perspective of empiricist thinking and classical, Newtonian physics. Bird’s perspective, the one with infinity inside, would be the view of modern science (and Kantian transcendental idealism). Let me give you…
CA – How interesting! How interesting!
MC – Let me give you a quote, for example… from Niels Bohr. I’ve prepared a couple of quotes, which I think are essential, and I’d like you to let me give them to the listeners.
CA – I leave you. My request is that you don’t go into technical details. Yes?
MC – Of course. Here is what Niels Bohr says: ”The source of the schizophrenia of the wholemodern worldview stems from the separation, the opposition between subject and object. The separations, the oppositions, perhaps even deeper, like that between real and possible, actual and potential, matter and spirit, have hindered the progress of contemporary knowledge towards a true global synthesis.” Thus, the perspective of modern science, of quantum mechanics and relativistic physics, is precisely one that surpasses the classical9 one, of Newton, by this completeness of the physical system. Quantum physics, for example, is a physics in which this splitting or independence…
CA – Between subject and object …
MC – …between subject and object… has disappeared. They are linked in a single physical system and hence all the ambiguity and all the paradoxes of this new perspective of knowledge opened up by quantum mechanics and relativistic physics.
CA – And the second quote – that you said you had two.
MC – From Schrödinger I would give you a quote.
CA – Please!
MC – “Einstein did not – as we sometimes hear – reveal the lie of Kant’s deep thoughts on the idealization of space and time; on the contrary, he took a big step towards the perfection of this idealization.” That is, relativistic physics has not disproved Kant’s theory of the apriorism of space and time as transcendental synthetic concepts; on the contrary, it has strengthened this theory, because space and time in relativistic physics are… just that, synthetic a priori intuitions, constructions of our productive imagination, not representations of empirical experiences.
CA – What you are saying – I am interrupting you for a moment – what you are saying, dear Mr. Marcel Chelba, is quite revolutionary. We learnt at school that Kant’s theories on space and time in the Critique of Pure Reason have been disproved by relativistic mechanics, by quantum theory, and that, therefore, we would need another philosophical construction, since Kant is no longer relevant, his philosophical representations coming into conflict with recent developments in science. But you claim the opposite.
MC – Yes. Unfortunately there is a very serious misunderstanding, shall we say – a misunderstanding of Kant – right in the middle of the revolution of scientific thought.
CA – But what I say belongs in the Western academic textbook. It’s not about Romania here.
MC – Although the pioneers of this scientific revolution that took place at the beginning of the last century with quantum mechanics and relativity theory made full use of Kantian concepts and referred to him, even with obvious suggestions, nevertheless, in philosophical criticism or in modern epistemology Kant was considered outdated or invalidated by these advances.
CA – Right. Right.
MC – Let me give you a quote from Fritjof Capra — a more recent commentator — to see a link of modern physics to Kant, but totally ignored. He references, makes connections with Eastern philosophy, which is not wrong, there are these connections, but European philosophy has the benchmarks and the critical grid by which to interpret these results of modern science, it doesn’t have to go that far.
CA – But the physicist regards them as oddities, Mr. Chelba. Please.
MC – Here’s what Capra says: …”
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Marcel Chelba – On Kant’s Modernity, Kantinomus, 2023
Kantinomus Verlag 