This book offers a comprehensive critique of the Kantian principle that 'objects conform to our
cognition' from the perspective of a Copernican world-view which stands diametrically opposed
to Kant's because founded on the principle that our cognition conforms to objects. Concerning
both Kant's ontological denial in respect of space and time and his equivalence thesis in
respect of 'experience' and 'objectivity' Ryall argues that Kant's transcendental idealism
signally fails to account for the one thing that is essential for Copernicus and the only thing
that would validate a comparison between his and Kant's critical philosophy namely the subject
as 'revolving object'. It is only by presupposing - in a transcendentally realistic sense -
that human beings exist as physical things in themselves therefore that the 'observer motion'
of Copernican theory is vindicated and the distorted nature of our empirical observations
explained. In broadly accessible prose and by directlychallenging the arguments of many
stalwart defenders of Kant including Norman Kemp Smith Henry E. Allison and Michael Friedman
Ryall's book will be of interest to both scholars and students of Kant's philosophy alike.
