The "Copernican Revolution in Philosophy"
The attribution of the comparison with Copernicus to Kant himself is based on a passage in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787, and a heavy revision of the first edition of 1781). In an English translation, it begins:
| “ | Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. This would agree better with what is desired, namely, that it should be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori, determining something in regard to them prior to their being given. We should then be proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis. Failing of satisfactory progress in explaining the movements of the heavenly bodies on the supposition that they all revolved round the spectator, he tried whether he might not have better success if he made the spectator to revolve and the stars to remain at rest. A similar experiment can be tried in metaphysics, as regards the intuition of objects. | ” |
Much has been said on what Kant meant by referring to his philosophy as ‘proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis’. There has been a long-standing and still unresolved discussion on the inappropriateness of Kant’s analogy because, as most commentators see it, Kant inverted Copernicus' primary move. This inversion is explained by Victor Cousin:
| “ | Copernicus, seeing it was impossible to explain the motion of the heavenly bodies on the supposition that these bodies moved around the earth considered as an immovable centre, adopted the alternative, of supposing all to move round the sun. So Kant, instead of supposing man to move around objects, supposed on the contrary, that he himself was the centre, and that all moved round him. | ” |
According to Tom Rockmore, Kant himself never used the "Copernican Revolution" phrase about himself, though it was "routinely" applied to his work by others.
Don Schneier has recently proposed an alternative interpretation. On that interpretation, the Copernican thesis that is relevant to Kant is not the Heliocentric one, but that the Earth rotates on its own axis. The relevance of this example to his doctrine is that it familiarly illustrates how what appears to be a property of an object of perception, e. g. the motion of the Sun in its daily transit across the sky, is actually a condition of the subject of perception, i. e. its rotating around the axis of the Earth. This interpretation is supported by the text, and avoids some of the peculiarities that attach to the standard interpretation.
Read more about this topic: Copernican Revolution (metaphor)
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