This book argues for the importance of Kant's theories of the epistemological, metaphysical, and practical foundations of the ‘exact sciences’ — relegated to the dustbin of the history of philosophy for most of the 20th century. It has two aims, one negative and one positive. Its negative aim is to develop a Kantian critique of scientific naturalism. Its positive and more fundamental aim is to work out the elements of a humane, realistic, and nonreductive Kantian account of the foundations of the exact sciences. According to this account, the essential properties of the natural world are direc ... More

This book argues for the importance of Kant's theories of the epistemological, metaphysical, and practical foundations of the ‘exact sciences’ — relegated to the dustbin of the history of philosophy for most of the 20th century. It has two aims, one negative and one positive. Its negative aim is to develop a Kantian critique of scientific naturalism. Its positive and more fundamental aim is to work out the elements of a humane, realistic, and nonreductive Kantian account of the foundations of the exact sciences. According to this account, the essential properties of the natural world are directly knowable through human sense perception (empirical realism), and practical reason is both explanatorily and ontologically prior to theoretical reason (the primacy of the practical).