98 Kant: A Biography
him - and he still thinks with great satisfaction back to this period."^166 Kant
never gave up his academic citizenship and continued to be a "student."
He probably always planned to return to the University of Königsberg.
By August 1754, after about six years of absence, Kant was back in
Königsberg, preparing his dissertation, working on his second major Ger¬
man work, and preparing essays that would appear in short order. The uni¬
versity had changed during his absence. Knutzen was dead, and some of
Kant's fellow students had already obtained positions. Many others had
left and taken positions outside the university or outside of Königsberg.
Kant himself was single-minded in his pursuit of a position at his alma
mater. At the same time, he probably was also the supervisor of a member
of the Keyserlingk family who was studying at the University of Königs¬
berg.^167 In any case, during that year he published two essays in the weekly
Königsbergische Frag- und Anzeigungs-Nachrichten. The first, entitled "In¬
vestigation of the Question whether the Earth Has Experienced a Change
in Its Rotation ...," appeared in the issues of June 8 and 15. It was meant
to answer a question formulated for a public competition by the Berlin
Academy. Though the deadline was at first 1754, the Academy extended it
on June 6,1754, for another two years. When Kant decided to publish this
essay, he did not know of the extension. Kant claimed that he could not
have achieved the kind of perfection required for winning the prize be¬
cause he restricted himself to the "physical aspect" of the question.^168 More
importantly, he used the essay to call attention to a book that would soon
appear with the title, "Cosmogony or Attempt to Derive the Origin of the
Cosmos, the Formation of the Heavenly Bodies and the Causes of Their
Motions from the General Laws of the Motion of Matter According to
Newton's Theory."^169 The second essay was on "The Question whether
the Earth is Aging, Considered from the Point of View of Physics." It ap¬
peared in six parts in August and September of 1754. In it, he tried to
clarify what the question means "without considering the comets, which
some have, for some time now, found easy explanations for any extraordi¬
nary event."^170 Comets are just as irrelevant to the question of the aging
of the earth "as earthquakes and fires are to the question of how buildings
age."^171
At the same time, Kant was also working on the book he had already
called attention to in his essay. Its final title was General Natural History
and Theory of the Heavens, or an Essay on the Constitution and Mechanical
Origin of the Whole Universe, Treated in Accordance with Newtonian Prin¬
ciples.^172 Kant knew that it would appear dangerous to those of "true faith,"