It was a reality that awakened Kant from his “dogmatic slumber.”
He was reading Hume one day. Specifically, Kant was reading what Hume had to say concerning causality. Hume advanced the idea that causal connection is something which is not only actually unobservable to also impossible to determine logically, thus violating the two pillars upon which the scientific project had been established for Kant.
In other words, Kant recognized that we can observe event A and we can observe event B, and we can observe that these two events occur in close proximity of time but we cannot observe a third entity of a causal connection between these two events.
Consequently, we cannot assume a necessary connection between these two events.
In other words, a necessary connection cannot be observed much less confirmed between the two. Therefore, out concept of causality has no empirical foundation or any logical foundation.
Kant agreed wholeheartedly with Hume’s conclusions on this matter.
But Kant also saw that it there were no such thing as causal connection there would be no possibility of an empirical world. However, he concluded that we do know that such an empirical world actually exists. Kant entertained the question, “How can it be possible for us to acquire knowledge of such things if not by either observation or by logic? Is there another possible way to gain knowledge?”
He further determined, or so it seems, that the concepts of time and space are in the same predicament as causality. For example, nothing that is infinite can fall within the bounds of human experience and therefore neither time nor space could ever be established by observation or logic.
Kant had learned from Hume that all of what had seemed to be the fundamental of science, such as space and time, were unverifiable logically and empirically. However, Kant could have concluded that the scientific project was therefore invalidated, but he did not do so.
To conclude that science was therefore useless was a nonsensical conclusion.
