Kant reacts to the threat of determinism: summary

1. Kant led a reaction to the deterministic thinking that gathered force from the early triumphs of science. The reaction became the 'romantic movement' which developed at the end of the 18th Century.

2. Kant argued that there were two aspects to reality: one was the world as it appeared to observation and entered into thought, the other was the world as it really was, independently of any conceptual framework of an observer. In observing and thinking about the world, human beings apply categorization.