The Concept of Experiment in Kant’s Philosophy within the Context of Eighteenth-Century Natural Philosophy

The article reconstructs the concept of experiment in Kant’s philosophy within the context of eighteenth-century natural philosophy. The relevance of the study stems from the absence of a systematic exposition of this concept in Kant’s work, despite its evident methodological significance for the analysis of the structure of cognition. Although Kant actively employs the term “experiment” and related distinctions, particularly in his discussion of the method of natural science, the concept itself does not receive a fully developed theoretical articulation. Accordingly, the study aims to identify the sources of this concept and the conditions of its formation. The primary context of analysis is provided by the typologies of experience developed in eighteenth-century natural philosophy, especially in the works of Lambert and Erxleben, as well as their possible influence on Kant’s understanding of the structure of experience. The methodological framework combines historical-philosophical analysis with a reconstructive approach. The study examines the texts of Lambert and Erxleben, as well as Kant’s lecture course "Danziger Physik", in order to identify the conceptual distinction between observation and experiment. It is shown that in eighteenth-century natural philosophy, experiment is defined as a deliberate modification of the conditions under which a phenomenon occurs and is contrasted with observation as a receptive registration of appearances. The analysis demonstrates that Kant adopts this distinction and integrates it into his own typology of experience, where experiment appears as a form of artificial experience enabling the transition from perception to explanation. It is further argued that in the “experiment of pure reason”—a term used by Kant in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to characterize the critical method—this model is reformulated at the transcendental level and can be interpreted as a procedure for testing the claims of reason. The results contribute to a more precise understanding of the role of the concept of experiment in Kant’s philosophy and provide a basis for further analysis of the relationship between its natural-philosophical and transcendental components.