ABSTRACT
In 1755, a printer, one Johann Friederich Petersen, went broke. Although at the time it hardly seemed like a world-shaking event, as a result of Petersen’s fi nancial problem, Immanuel Kant’s General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, which would have been his fi rst published book, was stillborn at the press (NHTH1). Nobody knows what the history of philosophy would look like today had this volume gone forward as planned. Kant (1724-1804), thirty-one at the time, had just fi nished his doctorate, and was ready to undertake his life’s work, which would be spent with his fi rst love, natural science “treated according to Newton’s Principles.” A year earlier, Kant had already stated his theory on the effect of the tides on the rotation of the Earth in a journal (xi). So, fi ve years before the return of Halley’s Comet (the momentous impact of which has been discussed in the two previous chapters), Kant had already turned his attention to deep space, comets, and the origins of the solar system. It seems clear that he retained this interest, for he included a section from this early work in “The Only Possible Argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of God” (1763). In General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Kant presents his thesis in accordance with the “laws of mechanics” according to “Newton and his followers” (TP 179). At the time, probably hoping for an invitation to the Berlin Academy of Science, Kant penned a fl orid dedication to Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. But Kant’s entry into that august society was not to be, and it was not until a decade or so later that the General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens would actually issue from the press (NHTH ix), by which time Kant had become a famous philosopher.
