observe that though they were both ardent Newtonians, Lambert did not accept the law of gravitation as necessarily a metaphysical truth; Kant, however, with less caution, assumed the principle of the dynamical action and interaction of matter, and sought to refute thereby the Leibnizian Monadology. The two mathematicians, nevertheless, were otherwise quite in agreement, for both endeavored to reconcile teleology and mechanism.
Passing now to the more important question of the respective contributions of the two thinkers to the theory of knowledge, the problem proposed in the Critique and that which is developed in the philosophical section of the Organon are essentially the same: that of Kant is, How are synthetic, a priori judgments possible in mathematics and in physics? that of Lambert is, How is scientific knowledge possible? The methods employed are also very nearly identical. Kant's method is, to analyze knowledge and the fundamental element in knowledge — experience; that of Lambert is, to analyze scientific knowledge. Kant, however, clearly followed the critical method more rigorously, even if, as some hold, unsuccessfully; for he sought to demonstrate how experience itself is possible. His predecessor analyzed knowledge, but not the important element in knowledge. As regards the results arrived at by their analyses, both philosophers agree in considering all knowledge to be based on experience, and in assigning to the objective and subjective factors alike a share in the process of cognition. Their criteria, furthermore, are the same; necessity and universality are regarded as non-empirical, and therefore a priori. Still more important, as regards his relation to Kant, is Lambert's view that the a priori concepts are formal principles only, and do not therefore give material truth. To this fundamental doctrine of the later Critical Philosophy, Lambert, unfortunately, does not consistently adhere. For his confusion of the ontological with the subjective validity of the simple concepts is in direct contradiction with this doctrine.[1]
- ↑ Lambert speaks of the propositions of geometry as "eternal and unchangeable truths." Vol. i, ch. 2, §658.
