Basic Considerations on Epistemology ( 1937 )

| The doctrines of knowledge a priori and of exclusive empirism [ausschließender Empirismus] oppose each other in the epistemological discussion. The a priori view is characterized by the claim that we are in possession of certain pieces of knowledge, being originally contained in reason although coming to actuality only through stimulation by sensation, that can be expressed in the form of general laws in a final way if having brought to full consciousness. This doctrine furthermore maintains that those a priori knowable general laws contain the principles for exact natural science, and that especially the method of the formation of theories of physics is determined by them in a definite and final way, so that, after having found these principles, there is no further development of speculation in physics in any essential sense. Thus, according to Kant, classical kinematics forms the necessary framework for all of physics. The principles of Newtonian dynamics, too, are