Kantian a priori Laws of Nature and Quantum Discontinuity

Quantum physics has already been seen by its founders as the strongest argument against the idea of a Kantian type of transcendental idealism, i.e., against the idea that the mind gives laws to nature. Attempts to make this classical transcendental view compatible with quantum physics involve reinterpretations of its fundamental concepts. They show the extraordinary fruitfulness of Kant’s philosophy but also fall into the pattern of Fichte’s endeavor to free it from its internal contradictions, i.e., they abandon some of its central assumptions. The paper tries to synthesize some of the sources of the systematic difficulties that impede the original Kantian philosophy from explaining phenomena observed in quantum physics.