The Limits of Demonstrative Science offers a clear, critical look at how we know what we know.
This scholarly work dives into how knowledge grows from experience and how the mind shapes ideas, with careful comparisons between geometry and mechanics, and between empirical and a priori thought.
In a detailed exchange framed as a letter, Mansel challenges prevailing views on Kant, Locke, Hume, and Mill. He argues that knowledge rests not only on experience but also on the mind’s built‑in forms, and he distinguishes how concepts arise and how judgments are formed in different sciences. The discussion blends historical criticism with a rigorous analysis of technical ideas, aiming to reveal the foundations of scientific reasoning.
What you’ll explore
- How concepts like Space, Force, and Magnitude function in geometry and mechanics
- The difference between concepts formed by experience and those shaped by mental forms
- The critique of sensationalism and the defense of a more nuanced theory of knowledge
- How axioms can be understood as both analytic identifications and empirically grounded statements
Ideal for readers of philosophy of science, epistemology, and the history of 19th‑century ideas, this edition illuminates a pivotal debate about the limits and possibilities of scientific knowledge.