Physics

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches physics from the standpoint of epistemology. He seeks to understand how discourse about nature became scientific. With Kant, he argues that physics, after mathematics, entered "the secure path of a science" only through a revolution: reason perceives only what it itself produces a priori, as Galileo, Torricelli and Stahl show1. He thus rejects d'Alembert's "bad empiricism" and today's neopositivism, which confuse matter with the sensible. He points out that Newton had worked out his equations before the apple1. Drawing on The Evolution of Physics, he takes up Einstein's enigma: physical concepts are free creations of the mind, and yet mathematics applies to reality, as the orbit of Mercury confirms2. He sees in this the paradox that the world of words imposes itself on the world of things. He places physics within an order in which the sciences appear, moving toward man21. Finally, he takes up Kant's description of Rousseau as the "Newton of morals": Newton explains nature through force, while Rousseau grounds the human world in freedom3.

1. 1De Copernic à Lénine: Révolution !28 Aug 2026
2. 29 #20 Du SIGNAL au SIGNE • Einstein28 Apr 2021
3. 3S comme Sauvagerie2 Jan 2015

Introduction produced automatically from the 3 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.