THE ORSTED-RITTER PARTNERSHIP AND THE BIRTH OF ROMANTIC NATURAL-PHILOSOPHY

Kant's critique of corpuscular theory created a tabula rasa situation in natural philosophy and opened up a vast new field of research, part icularly related to the study of heat, light, electricity and magnetis m. Orsted introduced Kantian epistemology in Scandinavia and made frie nds with J. W. Ritter, an outstanding experimenter who was the first t o make dynamical philosophy productive. The Orsted-Ritter partnership aimed at the construction of a cosmology based on dynamical philosophy as well as galvanic interpretations of the Lichtenberg and Chladni pa tterns. It is suggested that Kantian critique and dynamical cosmology provided the framework within which Orsted and Ritter made their epoch al discoveries as well as their bold speculations. Finally, it is argu ed that the Romantics widened the scope of natural philosophy itself.