The concept of force: from Cartesianism to Kantianism and modernity
Force is one of the central concepts in multiple sciences. Remarkably, this concept is treated similarly by the natural scientific interpretations of Cartesianism, Kantianism and by contemporary researchers. All of them focus on the manifestation of some basic substance that is also studied unsuccessfully by philosophers and theologians. Presently, works in the field of social sciences and humanities frequently refer to the concept of force (power) and use ambiguous terms such as ‘soft’, ‘hard’, ‘smart’, which only reinforces a mythical status of this concept. However, some insights by Descartes and Kant in this area, often overlooked by their followers, deserve special attention.