Kant’s Philosophy of Chemistry and Nietzsche’s Cosmology: On the Material Hermeneutics of Alchemy and Cinnabar. Part I
By reading Kant on chemistry as a science, including his definition of science as such, this essay reviews Kant and the history of chemistry. Kant’s Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens is read in terms of contemporary axiomatic systems, via the astrophysicist Rudolf Kurth’s 1956 account, along with Nietzsche’s account of logic and causality. Nietzsche cites Kant’s theory in the context of a sustained discussion of Anaxagoras’ pre-Platonic cosmology. The paper includes reflections...
