This paper is about the rationality of methodological variance, where changes in method and methodology of science may be warranted/triggered by the urgency of finding alternatives to the methodology currently in fashion that fails to address the relevant and pressing problems. It deals obliquely with Maxwell‘s criticisms of Pandit, offering only a bare sketch of appraisal of his methodological proposals of AOE, AOR and WI, not only as going beyond SR but as better alternatives to dominant methodologies such as that (...) of Karl R. Popper, without rehearsing or recycling Maxwell‘s well-known arguments in great detail. More importantly, how these proposals improve upon the eighteenth century Enlightenment idea of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social/cultural progress towards an enlightened world, i.e., a world that is sensitive to problems of living and human well-being, is discussed. Having dealt with such problems in Pandit, the present appraisal is limited to the rationality of understanding, or better of rethinking, academic inquiry within the wider contexts and reaches of wisdom inquiry, with particular reference to the pressing global problems including those problems that are traceable to ETS progress, which is itself often found to violate the principle of interconnectedness across nature. (shrink)

This essay investigates the transformation of the faculty of understanding in Kant’s Transition from Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics drafts found in Opus postumum. I argue that in fascicles X and XI Kant implicitly reverses the architectonic order of sensibility and understanding. Without an account of this reversal, Kant’s critique of Isaac Newton’s conception of phenomena and the so called Selbstsetzungslehre in fascicle VII fall apart. I argue that what is at stake is a challenge Kant makes to (...) his own presuppositions and a challenge to the Kantian philosopher who wishes to stay with a strictly ‘critical’ Kant. (shrink)