Kant, Goedel and Relativity

Dorato, Mauro (2002) Kant, Goedel and Relativity.

Abstract

Since the onset of logical positivism, the general wisdom of the philosophy of science has it that the kantian philosophy of (space and) time has been superseded by the theory of relativity, in the same sense in which the latter has replaced Newton’s theory of absolute space and time. On the wake of Cassirer and Gödel, in this paper I raise doubts on this commonplace by suggesting some conditions that are necessary to defend the ideality of time in the sense of Kant. In the last part of the paper I bring to bear some contemporary physical theories on such conditions.