ABSTRACT
Whereas Hume did his best to show that, from the empiricist standpoint, the apparent necessary connection between things was an illusion, Newton had outlined a view of the universe in which cause and effect, far from being a subjective notion, represented a principle to which our reason could attain a vision in mathematical enquiry. Moreover, it was Newton’s contention that physical science, being based upon mathematical principles and indeed approximating to the form of mathematics, assumed without question the universality of necessary connection. In other words, such a coherent structure as the universe derived none of its character from the human mind engaged in its contemplation. It was completely objective; and the fact that impressed itself most forcibly upon the young Kant was the absolute incompatibility between this mathematical vision of reality, with its objective conception of space and time, and the fractured and disparate cosmos implied by Hume. That is the reason why, at the beginning of The Critique, Kant asks how the judgments that we make in physical science can have acquired their character of absolute necessity and universality—in short, how they can be a priori. From this he goes on to ask a further question: namely, how can these truths, which are not learned from experience, manifest themselves in our common judgment of the world? How, in other words, is a synthesis possible between190 such truths and the raw material provided by our senses?
