444 Notes to Pages 79-81
attended the lectures of "Magister Ammon (Philosophy and mathematics) and to
J. G. Teske (experimental physics)." He also learned French, English, Greek, and
Hebrew, and he studied theology with A. Wolffand Schulz. In 1732, he became
the respondent when the newly arrived Schulz defended his Inaugural Dissertation
as a requirement for becoming a professor at Königsberg. Characteristically, it was
entitled "Of the Agreement of Reason with Faith ..." Knutzen taught himself
calculus, and he is said to have learned all of algebra from Wolff's Latin work on
the discipline. See Johann Friedrich Buck, Lebensbeschreibungen derer verstorbenen
preußischen Mathematiker (1764). See also J. Chr. Strodtman, Martin Knutzen,
pp. 75-76.- Erdmann, Knutzen, p. 51.
- He defended this thesis in 1733.
- See Erdmann, Knutzen, p. 52; see also Pisanski, Entwurf einer preussischen Literär¬
geschichte, p. 539. Knutzen's writings were successful beyond Königsberg. In 1745,
he republished his Inaugural Dissertation under the title System of Efficient Causal¬
ity, and in 1747 he published Elements of Rational Psychology, or Logic Demonstrated
in the Method of General and Special Mathematics. - Riedesel, Pietismus und Orthodoxie, p. 97. Riedesel said this of Schulz, but the
same holds for Knutzen. - Erdmann, Knutzen, p. no.
- Gottsched, Neuer Büchersaal, IV, 3, p. 241; Erdmann, Knutzen, p. 112.
- Locke, Essay, Book I, Chapter 4, p. 85, insists that even our knowledge of the
principle of (non)contradiction, l'impossibile est idem esse, et nonesse," is derived from
experience. - See Klemme, Die Schule Immanuel Kants, p. 4on. See also Alois Winter, "Selbst¬
denken, Antinomien, Schranken. Zum Einfluss des späten Locke auf die Philoso¬
phie Kants," in Eklektik, Selbstdenken, Mündigkeit, ed. N. Hinske (Hamburg:
Meiner, 1986), pp. 27-66. - It had first appeared as a series of articles in the Königsberger Intelligenzblätter. It
was reissued several times. The fourth edition (Königsberg: Härtung) appeared in
1747. Its title reads Philosophischer Beweiß von der Wahrheit der christlichen Reli¬
gion, darinnen die Nothwendigkeit einer geoffenbarten Religion insgemein, und die Wahr¬
heit oder Gewißheit der Christlichen insbesondere, aus ungezweifelten Gründen der Ver¬
nunft nach mathematischer Lehrart dargethan und behauptet wird. - The works of these British authors were readily available in the extensive libraries
of Königsberg theologians such as the orthodox Quandt and the Pietist Salthenius.
Salthenius possessed an especially outstanding collection in that area. Pisanski,
Entwurf einer preussischen Literärgeschichte, pp. 513^; Klemme, Die Schule Immanuel
Kants, pp. 4, 24. - See also Martin Knutzen, Vertheidigte Wahrheit der christlichen Religion gegen den
Einwurf: Daß die christliche Offenbahrung nicht allgemein sey. Wobey besonders die
Scheingründe des bekannten Englischen Deisten Matthäi Tindal, welche in deßen Be-
. weise, Daß das Christentum so alt wie die Welt sey, enthalten, erwogen und widerlegt
werden (Königsberg: Härtung, 1747). - Borowski, Leben, pp. 37, 39, 50, 85.
- From Vorländer, Kants Leben, p. 23.