[1155] A 169-70 = B 211-12. For comment upon Kant’s view of the point as a limit, cf. below, p. 489 ff.
[1156] Though Kant maintains in A 171 = B 212-13 that owing to our dependence upon empirical data and our necessary ignorance of the nature of the causal relation we cannot similarly demonstrate the principle of the continuity of change, he has himself, in characteristically inconsistent fashion, given three such demonstrations. Cf. below, pp. 380-1.
[1157] Cf. Kant’s Monadologia physica (1756), and New Doctrine of Motion and Rest (1758). Kant’s final statement of this dynamical theory is given in his Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science (1786).
[1158] In this matter Kant regards himself as defending the Newtonian theory of an attractive gravitational force. The mechanistic view admits only one form of action, viz. transference of motion through impact and pressure. “From ... Democritus to Descartes, indeed up to our own day, the mechanistic method of explanation ... has, under the title of atomism or corpuscular philosophy, maintained its authority with but slight modification; and has continued to exercise its influence upon the principles of natural science. Its essential teaching consists in the assumption of the absolute impenetrability of primitive matter, in the absolute homogeneity of its constitution (difference of shape being the sole remaining difference), and in the absolutely indestructible coherence of matter in its fundamental corpuscles” (Metaphysical First Principles, W. vol. iv. p. 533; ii. Allgemeine Anmerkung, 4).
[1159] This is additional to its other correlative assumption of the absolute void. “The absolute void and the absolutely full are in the doctrine of nature very much what blind chance and blind fate are in metaphysical cosmology, namely, a barrier to the enquiring reason, which either causes its place to be taken by arbitrary fictions, or lays it to rest on the pillow of obscure qualities” (Metaphysical First Principles, W. vol. iv. p. 532 (I read forschende for herrschende)). “There are only two methods of procedure ...: the mechanistic, through combination of the absolutely full with the absolute void, or an opposite dynamical method, that of explaining all material differences through mere differences in the combination of the original forces of repulsion and attraction” (loc. cit.).
[1160] In the first edition Kant formulates this principle in the light of his extremely misleading distinction between mathematical and dynamical principles (cf. above, pp. 345-7): “All appearances, as regards their existence, are subject a priori to rules determining their relation to one another in one time.”
[1161] Cf. below, p. 358.
[1162] In A 182 = B 225 the stronger term change (Wechsel) is employed.
[1163] A 178-80 = B 221-3 (on the distinction between mathematical and dynamical principles) has been commented upon above, pp. 345-7.
[1164] Philos. Krit. 2nd ed. i. p. 545. Caird adopts a similar view, i. pp. 540, 580.