Un texto de Immanuel Kant sobre las causas de los terremotos (1756)

Abstract

The following text is the Spanish version of the first of three essays that Kant published in the aftermath of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. In a typical englihnment exercise of explaining phenomena based on a combination of observation and reason, Kant looks into the possible natural causes of earthquakes and tries to extract pragmatic consequences to mitigate their destructive consequences. Of special historic interest is his hypothesis about subterranean comunication between large mountainous areas and their corresponding depressions (rives, lakes, seas) by means of extensive caverns, which would explain both the direction of the earthquakes and the simultaneity of their vibratory effects in very different geographic areas of this type. His attributing the same physical origin to earthquake and volcanoes can be situated within this same argumentative line: a gaseous ignition in these intercomunicating underground caverns