Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on Ethics

...was aware that Kant had come first original: "Kant’s priority". Laplace claims, indeed, that he was not aware of any theory except Buffon’s Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), a French naturalist who suggested the planets were formed by a comet hitting the sun (a rather wild one); but then Laplace was never one to acknowledge that he borrowed anything from anyone else. Even when he used the mathematical discoveries of his French contemporaries, he introduced them as if they were his own; how much more so if he adopted a suggestion from an anonymous German philosopher. If he really did bet on the ignorance of his reader, the outcome has proven him right; for even those writers who mention that Kant came first speak as if Kant had merely offered a hint, while Laplace had developed a full theory. In reality, Kant wrote an entire treatise on the subject, while Laplace wrote only a few pages.¹

Kant begins by defending his attempt against the possible objections of those who might view it as an effort to do away with the necessity of a Divine Author. Such people, he says, seem to suppose that nature, if left to its own laws, would produce only disorder. They believe that the adaptations we admire in the universe indicate the interference of a forcing hand—as if nature were a rebellious subject that could be brought to order only by compulsion, or else an independent principle whose properties are uncaused, and which God must struggle to force into the plan of His purposes. But, he answers, if the general laws of matter are themselves a result of supreme wisdom, must they not be designed to carry out its wise purposes? In fact,

¹ I do not think it likely that Laplace would have seen Kant’s anonymous book; but it must be remembered that Kant mentioned his theory in several publications, and likely referred to it in his lectures.