84 Kant: A Biographythat could be computed. Though of great interest to the physicist, they did
not have to be feared as bad omens. Knutzen concluded, therefore, that
Heyn was an alarmist and an obscurantist. Intending to defeat the fear of
comets "in its last stronghold," he vehemently attacked Heyn.^107 Heyn
responded in kind, accusing Knutzen not only of plagiarism — the predic¬
tion had already been made a year earlier in the Leipziger gelehrte Anzeigen —
but also suggesting that he had not sufficiently proven the identity of the
comet of 1698 and the comet of 1744. Knutzen and his students seem to
have dismissed Heyn's reference to Euler, just as they rejected Euler's
criticism itself.
Knutzen's understanding of scientific and mathematical matters was
inadequate to the task of advancing the discussion of the more technical
aspects of physics. He did not belong to that "small elite" of scientists on
the continent who understood the details of Newtonian physics.^108 His
knowledge of calculus was especially deficient. Relying more on mechan¬
ical models than on calculations, he had some general understanding of
Newton's Principia but could not make any original contribution to science.
Nor was he willing to draw a sharp line between science and metaphysics.
Theological and apologetic concerns dictated what could and could not
be accepted at least as much as did scientific views. As a scientist, he was
rather limited even by eighteenth-century standards.
Kant followed the comet controversy with at least as much interest as
he had the dispute centering on Fischer's book earlier in the year. He be¬
came very interested in the subject of cosmogony, and this was one of the
reasons why his earliest works deal with such matters. On the other hand,
the controversy about Knutzen's comet may also have led to disenchant¬
ment with his teachers. Euler's criticisms may have made Kant realize
Knutzen's shortcomings as a scientist. In any case, one of the people to
whom Kant sent his first work was Euler; and in one of his first essays he
dismissed the study of comets as irrelevant to understanding planets such
as the Earth.^109
During his years of study at the University of Königsberg, Kant became
acquainted with many different approaches to philosophy, theology, and
the natural sciences. While many scholars have viewed the university as
more or less outside of the main stream of the intellectual developments
of the eighteenth century, or as completely dominated by Pietism, this was
not the case. First, any student at the University of Königsberg during the
relevant period was exposed not only to Pietistic and Thomasian doctrine,
but also to the philosophy of Wolff and his followers. The presentation of