Conferência de Michael Friedman.
Kant's discussion of quantity of matter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science amounts to a deep analysis of the Newtonian concept of quantity of matter in the Principia. Kant's analysis reveals the intricate way in which Newton extends the traditional static measurement of terrestrial gravity or weight in a balance to a universal measure of mass or quantity of matter anywhere in the universe via the Newtonian law of universal gravitation. We thereby gain a better appreciation of the philosophical point, for Kant, of his "transcendental" theory of matter in the Metaphysical Foundations.
Michael Friedman is the winner of the 2015 Fernando Gil prize for philosophy of science (http://fernando-gil.org.pt/en/nominees/2015/winner/). He is the Frederick P. Rhemus Family Professor of Humanities, Director of the Patrick Suppes Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 1973, and then taught at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Indiana University (in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science) before going to Stanford. Some of his more recent books include Reconsidering Logical Positivism (1999), A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (2000), and Dynamics of Reason: The 1999 Kant Lectures at Stanford University (2001). He is the editor and translator of Immanuel Kant: Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (2004), the co-editor of The Kantian Legacy in Nineteenth-Century Science (2006), and the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Carnap (2007).
