Kant’s Copernicusian Revolution

Subject Areas : Philosophy

لیلا نصیری ¹ , حسین گلچینی ²

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Received: 2009-11-05 Accepted : 2011-01-23 Published : 2010-09-23

Keywords: Kant’s Copernicusian revolutio, analytic/synthetic, apriori, aposteriori, rationalist, empiricist,

Abstract :

Kant’s Copernicusian revolution is a well-known topic in history ofepistemology, though its implications and impacts are not welldiscussed enough. No need to mention that analysis of knowledge wasKant’s first philosophical self-commitment. Aspiring of Copernicus’srevolution in astronomy, he changed the centrality of subject/object inhis epistemological approach and maintained that mind (cognitivefaculties) must be departure of metaphysical analysis; that was arevolutionary idea. Doing so, he, as it is well-known, divided alljudgments from two different aspects: first, analytic/synthetic; andsecond, apriori/aposteriori. He, then, argued that there are apriorisynthetic judgments – by which the possibility of knowledge iswarranted – are universal and necessary. These judgments not onlyrefer to external world, but also belong equally to physics,mathematics, and metaphysics. He believed that his doctrine could(dis)solve the old long-standing epistemological problem in modernphilosophy such as the debates on source of knowledge(reason/experience), dogmatism/skepticism, etc., among rationalistsand empiricists. Although his ideas, specially stressing on aprioriconcepts as a key, help him to (dis)solve some epistemological puzzles,either reveal a few new problems in newly changed epistemologicalscope.