Keld Nielsen

The Influence Of Kant's Philosophy On The Young H. C. Ørsted

In attempting to answer the question why it was H. C. Orsted (1777–1851) who discovered electromagnetism, historians of science have discussed whether Orsted was influenced by Schelling’s Naturphilosophie or rather by Kant’s philosophy. Thus, R. C. Stauffer and L. P. Williams have seen Orsted’s discovery of electromagnetism as closely related to the influence which J. W. F. Schelling’s Naturphilosophie had exerted on Orsted prior to the discovery; the main point being that Orsted did not perceive of electricity, heat, light, and magnetism as imponderable, corpuscular fluids but as forces of a common origin.1 A contrary view has been put forward by Shanahan, who claims that the most important background to Orsted’s discovery was his knowledge of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy.2 Although Shanahan agrees with Stauffer and Pearce Williams in that Orsted’s ideas of forces were essential to the discovery, he claims that the decisive influence came from Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science published in 1786. According to Shanahan, this book introduced Orsted to ideas that were to constitute the core of his scientific thinking throughout his life, and, furthermore, that Kant’s insistence on the limited applicability of a priori methods in science contained a vital antidote to Schelling’s rambling speculations. In Shanahan’s words “it was [Orsted’s] deeply rooted acceptance of certain Kantian doctrines, and his explicit rejection of central doctrines of [Schelling’s] Naturphilosophie, that made this discovery possible.”3 However, as Caneva has later pointed out, “no one has yet studied Orsted’s work in its totality with due attention to the full range of his philosophical and scientific sources.”4 The purpose of this paper is to undertake only a small part of this overwhelming task by examining in detail to what extent and in which way the