Newton

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani sees Newton as the culmination of the scientific revolution and as the figure of the knowledge of nature in Kant's time, whose Critique of Pure Reason measures itself against his physics: "how is Newton possible?"12. The law of universal gravitation serves him as a recurring example. On the one hand, it expresses the empire of necessity: the moon has no choice, it revolves around the larger mass. Freedom, which rises upward, is then "Newton in reverse"3. On the other hand, this law shows how the human mind appropriates, in one sentence, all the motions of the universe, using measurable quantities, mass and distance4. He rejects the apple legend, which stems from naive empiricism: the law came out of thousands of equations5. He points out that this physics remains valid within its domain but loses its claim to universality with relativity and quanta6. He also takes up Kant's phrase about Rousseau, "the Newton of morals". He further mentions the prism, colours reduced to frequencies, and the rivalry with Leibniz over infinitesimal calculus.

1. 1#13 • Retour aux logiques du sujet9 Jul 2020 · 1:38:42
2. 29 #11 Comment des sciences de l'histoire peuvent-elles être réelles?7 Jan 2021 · 10:01
3. 3#3.6 D'Ulysse à Dédale1 Aug 2017 · 33:52
4. 4La répression du sujet dans la société civile bourgeoise9 Aug 2025 · 10:00
5. 5De Copernic à Lénine: Révolution !28 Aug 2026 · 27:45
6. 6#3.6 D'Ulysse à Dédale1 Aug 2017 · 25:42

Summary produced automatically from 125 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.