Student and Private Teacher 83thinkers, who have no proper concept of God and his actions through his
creation," but he could have wholeheartedly agreed with Fischer's rejec¬
tion of the claims made by the theological faculty that they were the proper
judges of this work. A "philosophical system... founded merely on rea¬
sons known by the intellect from experience" had to be judged by philoso¬
phers and scientists, not by theologians.^101 Not much later, Kant himself
offered such a system.
The year 1744 was important for another commotion and controversy.
In 1738, Knutzen had predicted that a comet that had been observed in
1698 would reappear in the winter of 1744.^102 When a comet appeared,
Knutzen became an instant celebrity in Königsberg, and gained a repu¬
tation as a great astronomer well beyond the confines of Königsberg.
Knutzen's Rational Thoughts on the Comets, in which is Examined and Rep¬
resented Their Nature and Their Character as well as the Causes of Their Mo¬
tion, and at the Same Time Given a Short Description of the Noteworthy
Comet of This Year, published in 1744, was, according to Kraus, responsible
for awakening Kant's interest in science, and it was this book that led Kant
to write his own Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, which
appeared eleven years later.^103 Like Knutzen's other students, Kant may
have viewed him as a hero.
Doubts soon arose. Euler showed both in letters to Knutzen and in an
article that appeared later in 1744 that Knutzen's prediction had not come
"true," that the comet of 1744 was not identical to the comet of 1698, and,
at least by implication, that Knutzen did not know enough physics.^104 He
argued that it would be "at least four to five hundred years" before the comet
could be seen again.^105 Yet this refutation did not seem to matter to most
of the people in Königsberg, and most certainly it did not matter to Knutzen
and his students. They never acknowledged that Knutzen's prediction had
been wrong. In a poem written for the occasion of his burial, he is com¬
pared with Newton, Leibniz, Locke, Descartes, and Bayle.
Knutzen's work on the comets was in any case largely motivated by the¬
ological concerns. It was written in part as a response to a tract entitled
"Attempt of a Consideration of the Comet, the Deluge, and the Prelude
of the Final Judgment; in Accordance with Astronomical Reasons and the
Bible.. ."^106 Its author was Johann Heyn, who had become notorious as
a follower of William Whiston. Among other things, Heyn argued in this
tract that the ancient fear of comets as a bad omen was well founded.
Knutzen objected to this view. For him, just as for Newton and Wolff,
comets were just small planets circling the sun. They took a regular course