Event Details

Bennett McNulty, McKnight Land-Grant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota will speak on "Kant’s Aethereal Hammer: When Everything Looks Like a Nail."

Throughout Immanuel Kant’s works on natural philosophy, he utilizes an omnipresent aether to explain a wide variety of physical events: including optical, thermodynamical, chemical, and magnetic phenomena. Kant even went as far as claiming that the existence of an omnipresent physical aether can be deduced a priori (without appeal to experience, observation, or experiment), in the notorious “aether proof” of his Opus postumum. In retrospect, these commitments are widely seen as a blunder, especially after the demise of the luminiferous aether at the turn of the 20th century.

Refreshments at 3 p.m.