Martin knutzen
Martin Knutzen (1713-1751) was a German philosopher, a disciple of Alexander Baumgarten and a teacher of Johann Georg Hamann and Immanuel Kant, whom he introduced to Newton's physics.
Knutzen was a leading professor of logic and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad). A disciple of Christian Wolff, in the rationalist school, Knutzen was also interested in the natural sciences, and taught physics, astronomy and mathematics, as well as philosophy. The study of Newton's doctrines led him to question the Leibnizian and Wolffian theory of pre-established harmony, defending the role of mechanical causality in the movement of physical objects; his teachings in this regard would influence Kant's later work, which would seek to reconcile the autonomy of the spiritual with the reality of mechanics in the Critique of Judgment .
Knutzen's relationship with Kant, a Pietist like himself, was extremely close. Close in age, Knutzen introduced him to the study of mechanics and optics, as well as extensively discussing questions of faith. Its vast library of natural sciences was an invaluable resource in the writing of Kant's first treatise, Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte ("Meditations on the True Estimation of Living Forces"), a mathematical essay, and exerted a powerful influence on Kantian thought.
Knutzen would also be an important figure in the formation of Johann Georg Hamann.
Her Life
Martin Knutzen, was born in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) in 1713, the city where he died in 1751.
According to his biographers (Beck, 1960) (Erdmann, 1973) (Kuehn, 2001) who are followed in this writing, Martin Knutzen, the extraordinary young professor who held the chair of mathematics and philosophy, planted and made grow the seed of philosophy and science in Kant.
Knutzen had a strong personality, which marked the evolution of Kant at the University of Könisberg. Kant maintained close contact with Professor Knutzen; he had unlimited access to Knutzen's private library. It was this one who introduced him to the scientific literature of the time and especially to the works of Isaac Newton who so influenced Kant in the development of his own philosophy. However, Knutzen did not consider Kant to be one of his best students, among whom were Friedrich Johann Buck (1722-1786) or Johann Friedrich Weitenkampf (1726-1758). Kant's name never appeared in Knutzen's extensive correspondence with Euler, which is an indication of Knutken's low regard for him.
Knutzen was 10 years older than Kant and reached the professorship at the age of 21. His precocity, however, did not lead him to greater responsibilities. External pressures prevented him from taking over a regular professorship. Like his Kant's disciple, Knutzen led a life far removed from the madding crowd and devoted to study. His “sedentary lifestyle” meant that he never strayed more than thirty miles from his hometown of Königsberg.
Flottwell wrote on January 29, 1751 that Knutzen had first inherited 10,000 thalers and later another 15,000 and yet this philosopher lived constantly in a bad mood, without social contacts and in complete isolation. Three days after Flottwell wrote these words, Knutzen was dead (Kuehn, 2001). Indeed, his impetuous and exaggerated character, both in study and in academic work, ended his life at the age of 37. He died enjoying enormous prestige and great admiration on the part of his students, to whom Kant belonged in a very special way, whom he brought into contact with the latest advances and discoveries in science, on the one hand, and with English empiricism, on the other. for the other.
Knutzen's widow remarried Kant's close friend, juris doctor and young lawyer Johann Daniel Funk (1721-1764). With him Kant felt at ease with him, being the maximum mutual interaction. Funk gave lectures on jurisprudence and as Hippet (Borowski, 1804) pointed out: Just because he could live without the income of his lectures, Funk was by far the best of professors (Magister). Even at that time it was evident to me that gentlemen with other incomes had one or more concubines alongside his official wife. My dear old Funk, who had married the widow of Professor Knutzen, someone very famous in his time, did not deprive himself of certain distractions added to the conjugal act, but his lessons were as chaste as a bed. élego.
His Thought and Work
Knutzen sought to find a balance between pietistic Lutheranism and the dogmatic philosophy of Christian Wolff, trying to make the teachings of the former compatible with the teachings and assumptions of Wolff's enlightened philosophy. For Knutzen, philosophy was not a merely propaedeutic element that served as a tool to gain access to theology, but rather an independent science that established its own postulates. This is evident in one of his writings, published in 1740, the year that Kant entered the university, entitled: "Philosophical demonstration of the truth of the Christian region" (Knutzen, 1740). This title, which was to become his most famous work and which gave him fame in the 18th century, reflects that the Philosophy is the repository of rational demonstration even of religion itself. In writing this book, Knutzen not only showed the firmness of his roots in the Königsberg theological discussion, but also revealed his intimate knowledge of a hitherto unknown aspect of British philosophy. The book also offers a good insight into Knutzen's theological position. This work had first appeared as a series of articles in the "Königsberger Intelligenzblätler" (Knutzen, 1745). Knutzen breathed, in this way, fresh, modern and advanced air into the Prussian cultural environment dominated by Schultz's pietistic theology.
Many of his students were proud to have studied with him. Thus, Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788), mentor of the literary movement "Sturm und Drang", said in his autobiography: I was a student of the famous Knutzen in all his courses on philosophy and mathematics, as well as in his private lectures on algebra; I was also a member of the psychotheological society which he founded but which was not successful. Other students like Ludwing and Ernest Borower (1740-1838) and Benno Erdmann spoke in similar terms.
Knutzen took, philosophically speaking, an anti-Leibnizian position, maintaining that the theory of pre-established harmony was as wrong as occasionalism and that the only reasonable theory was that of physical influence, in the path of Locke and corpuscularism. Indeed, Leibniz's theory of preset harmony in its strictest form was unacceptable to Knutzen for theological reasons. There were also differences and controversy between the opinion of Knutzen, Kant, Leibniz, Descartes and Newton about the concept of live force, dead force and moment of force. And once again, in the end, Newton was the right one. So his positions are closer to the British philosophers than to the German ones. Similar can be said about his epistemology. In fact, his death occurred when he was translating John Locke's essay "Of the Conduct of the Human Understanding", in Spanish & # 34; The conduct of understanding & # 34;.
In 1744, an important controversy took place that shocked the scientific and academic circles of the time. Years earlier, in 1738, Knutzen had predicted that a comet observed in 1698 would reappear again in the winter of 1744. This prediction was apparently based on Newton's theory about the course of periodic comets, which orbited the Sun describing ellipses (Waschkies, 1987). When a comet appeared that same year, Knutzen became famous in the city and gained a reputation as a great astronomer that went beyond the borders of Königsberg. Knutzen, in 1744, published a book with the title: "Rational Thoughts on Comets, in which their nature and character, as well as the causes of their motion, are examined and represented, and at the same time a brief description is given." of this year's remarkable comet." This book was, according to Christian Jacob, Kraus (1753-1807), Kant's most intelligent disciple, which aroused his interest in science, leading him to write his own "General History of Nature and Theory of Heaven" (Kant, 1755) that appeared eleven years later. Like other students, Kant must have seen Knutzen as a hero.
However, doubts soon arose, and from none other than the great and prolific mathematician Leonhard Euler. Indeed, Euler, both by letter and in an article appearing at the end of 1744, showed that Knutzen's prediction was not "true." The reason was clear, the comet of 1744 was "not" the same as the comet of 1698, and consequently it showed that Knutzen did not know enough physics (Waschkies, 1987). Euler maintained that it would take at least four or five hundred years before the comet of 1698 could be seen again. But this refutation did not give a fig to most of the citizens of Königsberg and even less to Knutzen and his students. They never recognized that the teacher's prediction of him was wrong to the point where a poem, written on the occasion of Knutzen's funeral, he was compared to Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke and Boyle.
Knutzen's work on comets was in any case motivated by theological interests. In fact, it was written in part in response to a pamphlet titled “Attempted Consideration of Comet, the Deluge, and the Prelude to the Last Judgment; according to astronomical reasons and the Bible..." appeared in Berlin and Leipzig in 1742 and whose author was Johann Heyn. He maintained that the fear of comets as bearers of bad omens was well founded. Knutzen rejected this view, basing himself on Newton, and concluded that Heyn was an alarmist and an obscurantist. He responded to Knutzen by accusing him of plagiarism, since the prediction had already been made a year earlier in the "Leipziger Gelehrte Anzeigen", and also suggesting that Knutzen had not sufficiently proven the respective identities of the 1698 and 1744 comets. Knutzen and his His disciples ignored Heyn's reference to Euler, just as they had ignored Euler's own critique.
Knutzen's conception of scientific and mathematical questions was inadequate to advance the discussion of the more technical aspects of physics. Knutzen did not belong to that "small elite" of continental scientists who understood the details of Newtonian physics. His knowledge of his calculation was manifestly improvable. Relying more on mechanical models than on rigorous calculations, he possessed some knowledge of Newton's "Principia" but was unable to make any original contribution to science. Neither he nor he wished to draw a sharp line between science and metaphysics. Theological and apologetic interests dictated what he could and could not be accepted at least as much as scientific perspectives. As a scientist Knutzen was rather limited, even by 18th century century standards.
It was said of Knutzen that when he was a student he did not approach the Aristotelians but "the men who had sufficient preparation to be able to instruct him in the most recent philosophy, in mathematics." Knutzen himself studied calculus and it seems that he studied algebra from Wolf's Latin work (Buck, 1768). Although perhaps Knutzen's most important contribution to mathematics, or more specifically to number theory, may be of a historical nature. In fact, Knutzen in his enlightened essay entitled: "Von dem Wahren Auctore der Arithmeticae Binariae,..." in Spanish "Of the true author of Binary Arithmetic, also called Leibnizian Dyadic" (Knutzen, 1742), affirms, rightly, that the binary numbering system attributed by many, including himself, to Leibniz, was due to the Spanish bishop Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (Caramuel, 1670). Specifically in the "Meditatio Proemialis" of his work titled in the baroque style of the time: "Mathesis biceps vetrus et nova. In omnibus, et singulis veterum, et recentorum placita examinantur; interdum corriguntur, semper elucidantur…”.