On the currentness of Kant: notes on possible relations between the analogies of experience and some aspects of currently established scientific theories

Abstract

The objective of this article is to propose a confrontation of Kantian statements exposed in his text Analogies of experience with scientific theories largely accepted today. Thus, it is evalueted, even though in a brief way, the extent and the sustentation of the Kantian theses exposed in the referred text, taking as a basis for reflection important aspects of relativity, of thermodynamics and of quantum physics. Such an analysis reveals, on the one hand, that the aplicability of the first and of the third analogies of experience, which deal, respectively, with the categories of substance and of community, seems to be restricted just to the domain of objects of Newtonian physics, excluding the domains of relativity and of quantum physics; and, on the other hand, that the aplicability of the second analogy of experience, which refers to the category of causality, encounters difficulties not only in its application to the objects of thermodynamics, but also in its application to the objects of classical physics.