Crusius and Lambert on Identifying the Most Basic Content of Scientific Cognition

This chapter argues that Christian August Crusius’s and Johann Heinrich Lambert’s proposals regarding the method of science are closer than first impressions might lead us to think. They both insist that there is an urgent need for an adequate account of how to identify the basic content of scientific cognition. Their perspectives converge on at least three points. First, they both see a problem in Wolff’s overreliance on definitions as the means to introduce this basic content. Second, they agree that axioms and postulates play an essential role instead. Third, they reverse the order of dependence between definitions, axioms, and postulates. While Wolff argued that axioms and postulates are derived from definitions, they submit that the opposite is the case. Starting from this common ground, the chapter also highlights relevant differences between their proposed solutions.