0. Introduction Many people understand the expression “formal logic” as meaning modern mathematical logic by opposition to traditional logic before the revolution that happened in the second part of the 19 century with Boole, Frege and others. But in fact this expression was created by Kant (see Scholz 1931). Some people like to quote a excerpt of the preface of the second edition of the Critic...

In this paper I discuss two questions. What does Kant understand by mechanical explanation in the Critique of judgment? And why does he think that mechanical explanation is the only type of the explanation of nature available to us? According to the interpretation proposed, mechanical explanations in the Critique of judgment refer to a particular species of empirical causal laws. Mechanical law...