سکوت

Before Kant (1724–1804) developed his idealist view of time, he proposed an evolutionary view of the cosmos. His idealist view of time is, as we shall see later, objective rather than subjective. Kant had inherited the Copernican worldview,  first proposed in the modern age by Nicholas Copernicus (1543) and later refined by Kepler, Galileo, Descartes and Newton, according to which the sun was the centre of the solar system and the planets orbited the sun in elliptical orbits. But when Kant published his General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens (1755) the extent of the universe was no longer confined, as Copernicus had still assumed, to the solar system and the fixed stars on the horizon. Kant’s treatise is the first systematic attempt to give an evolutionary account of cosmic history (Whitrow 1989, 153). Kant’s evolutionary history is limited to the physical uni- verse, since he explicitly excludes living organisms from his evolutionary con- siderations. Kant depicts the order of nature as an unfolding, ongoing process and distances his view from the Biblical story of a six-day creation process.

The Creation is never finished or complete. It did indeed once have a beginning but it will never cease. (Kant 1755, Seventh Chapter, 145; cf. Toulmin and Goodfield 1965, 130)

According to Kant the cosmos reveals a dynamic history and is no longer split into two spheres: the realm of eternity, perfection, and symmetry as against the realm of temporality, imperfection and asymmetry. Kant conceives of the whole cosmos as an ordered structure, in analogy with the solar system. The solar system is only part of a larger structure, the Milky Way, which is our home galaxy. But 

the universe plays host to other galaxies, which may only appear as ‘small luminous patches’ in the telescope (Toulmin and Goodfield 1965, 129–131). This whole hierarchical structure is governed by dynamic laws, similar to the ones, which Kepler had formulated for the solar system. Kant argues that the whole cosmos consists of ordered systems, like our solar system, and that the smaller systems can be understood as embedded in larger systems within galaxies. And the galaxies themselves form larger systems, which are known as clusters.

Furthermore this cosmic order was the result of the action of mechanical laws, which moulded the original chaos into the observable order of nature. The mechanical laws work in a regular, predictable fashion. The work of blind mechanisms, which drove the mechanical evolution of cosmic history, does not, in Kant’s view, throw serious doubts on philosophical proofs of a divine creator (Kant 1755, Preface). Kant assumes that the Deity is the first cause, who sets the whole machinery in motion, thus leaving an ‘agreement between my system and religion’. The implication is, however, that creation is not the act of a single moment (Kant 1755, Seventh Chapter, 145). Kant proposes the idea of a succes- sive extension of ‘creation’ through the infinite universe. Kant thought that Nature underwent formations of order, out of chaos. The importance of this theory of cosmic evolution for the notion of time is that it throws serious doubt on the Biblical chronology of 6,000 years. Bishop James Ussher (1581–1656), for instance, had calculated the creation of the world as occurring on October 23, 4004

B.C. But Kant’s position implies that the gradual establishment of order out of chaos had taken a vast period of time.

There had perhaps flown past a series of millions of years and centuries, before the sphere of ordered Nature, in which we find ourselves, attained the perfection which is now embodied in it; and perhaps a long period will pass before Nature will take another step as far in chaos. But the sphere of developed Nature is incessantly engaged in extending itself. Creation is not the work of a moment. (Kant 1755, Seventh Chapter, 145)

Working within a Newtonian paradigm, Kant relates the creation of order out of chaos to an infinite time  scale:

This infinity and the future succession of time, by which Eternity is unexhausted, will entirely animate the whole range of Space to which God is present, and will gradually put it into that regular order which is conformable to the excellence of His plan. (…) The creation is never finished or complete. It has indeed once begun, but it will never cease. It is always busy producing new scenes of nature, new objects, and new Worlds. (…) It needs nothing less than an Eternity to animate the whole boundless range of the infinite extension of Space with Worlds, without number and without end. (Kant 1755, Seventh Chapter, 145)

Although Kant paints a picture of an evolutionary universe, it did not include organic nature. Kant speculated that the whole mechanical world would be understood by reference to mechanical laws before ‘a single weed or caterpillar’ could be explained from mechanical causes (Kant 1755, Preface, 29). Kant’s evolutionary account of cosmic history does not include the evolution of species. This inclusion had to wait 104 years until Darwin published his Origin of Species (1859) (Weinert 2009, Sect.  II.1).

According to some commentators, Kant seems to have believed in a cyclic cosmology, each cycle ranging from a Big Bang to a Big Crunch (Toulmin and Goodfield 1965, 134), an idea, which has been resurrected in modern cosmology (Penrose 2010). He certainly postulated a ‘Big Bang’ scenario, from which the present order of Nature evolved according to mechanical laws. It seems that our world has attained ‘perfection’—a common assumption amongst Enlightenment philosophers—but other worlds are still evolving towards perfection. According to Kant’s cosmic expansion hypothesis, the formation of the universe is marked by a basic asymmetry, since mechanical laws work on the original chaos to produce the current, ordered state of the world. But it is not clear from Kant’s statement whether he subscribed to a cycle of cosmic evolution and cosmic destruction. Rather, Kant seems to recognize that decay and destruction are built into the fabric of nature. He envisages that ‘whole worlds’ and ‘whole world orders’ will decline but he also holds that the phoenix of nature will create new worlds and new world orders.

Millions and whole myriads of centuries will flow on, during which always new Worlds and systems of Worlds will be formed, one after another, in the distant regions away from the Centre of Nature,  and  will  attain  perfection.  (Kant  1755,  Seventh  Chapter,  145; cf. Kragh 2007, 78–83)

Thus Kant does not seem to envisage that the whole universe will expand, grind to a halt, and re-contract to collapse into a Big Crunch. Rather, regions of the universe will fall into decline to be replaced by other regions elsewhere in the universe, where ever productive nature will install new orders. As we shall see later, these speculations are surprisingly close to the views of Ludwig Boltzmann and modern cosmology. This pattern of decline and renewal, this destruction of old worlds and the ever present operation of mechanical laws, invests the cosmic evolution with an arrow of time. But Kant did not only provide an evolutionary account of cosmic history, he also developed his own theory of space and time. His views on time became very influential and were taken up by proponents of the Special theory of relativity. Kant develops this view in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). It stands in stark contrast with his view on an evolutionary cosmos, which clearly implies a physical notion of time. But in his later work, Kant embraces an idealist view of time, which, in contrast to Saint Augustine’s view, is objective in nature. Still, Kant does not escape the difficulties, which accrue, when the need for physical time is neglected in one’s view of time, as will now be discussed.