Bøger i Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science serien

This extended new edition offers a multifaceted insight into a period of intellectual history in the West in which the balance between speculative theories and experiential science was reset. As is well known, the interrelationship between philosophy and science underwent a profound change in the early modern period, in the course of which the sciences freed themselves from the conceptual framework of traditional metaphysics. The contributions of the volume focus on the eighteenth century, the critical and quite contradictory final phase of this process. The volume distinguishes itself by tracing this transition process not only in the obvious case of the new mechanics - Newtonianism and analytic mechanics - but also by addressing new speculative philosophies of nature - early modern atomism or imponderable physics - and new metaphysical controversies such as the body-mind problem (Can matter think?) as well as developments in special scientific fields such as cosmology/astronomy and natural history.The volume is written by historians of philosophy and the sciences of the early modern period and is intended primarily for specialists and students in these fields of knowledge. However, it is certainly also interesting and useful for cultural historians working on this period.

Stephen Turner has explored the ongms of social science in this pioneering study of two nineteenth century themes: the search for laws of human social behavior, and the accumulation and analysis of the facts of such behavior through statistical inquiry.

This volume addresses the question of time from the perspective of the time of nature. The book first explores the experience of time and its relation to time in nature in a set of chapters that bring together what human experience and physics enable metaphysicians, logicians and scientists to say about time.

This co-edited volume compares Chinese and Western experiences of engineering, technology, and development. Part III focuses on engineering, ethics, and society, with chapters on engineering education and practice in China and the West.

The first section is concerned with the emergence and expansion of a form of mechanical knowledge defined by us as pre-classical mechanics. The definition purports to the period roughly between the 15th and the 17th century, before classical mechanics was formulated as a coherent and comprehensive mechanical theory in the sequel of Newton's work.

, by an observer, already seems to violate the fundamental requirement which Maturana and Varela posit for the characterization of such system- namely, that they are autonomous, self-referring and self-constructing closed systems - in short, autopoietic systems in their terms.

Defends the view that science provides us with knowledge about the world which is based on experimental evidence and on reasoned and critical discussion. This book argues that science is a reasonable enterprise. It is suitable for philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science, and scientists themselves.

In The Natural Background to Meaning Denkel argues that meaning in language is an outcome of the evolutionary development of forms of animal communication, and explains this process by naturalising the Locke-Grice approach.

Much of Duhem's work as a professional scientist was closely related to the newly emerging discipline of physical chemistry.

The texts of Boris Hessen and Henryk Grossmann assembled in this volume are important contributions to the historiography of the Scienti?c Revolution and to the methodology of the historiography of science.

This volume addresses the question of time from the perspective of the time of nature. The book first explores the experience of time and its relation to time in nature in a set of chapters that bring together what human experience and physics enable metaphysicians, logicians and scientists to say about time.

This co-edited volume compares Chinese and Western experiences of engineering, technology, and development. Part III focuses on engineering, ethics, and society, with chapters on engineering education and practice in China and the West.

This is the second volume of Proceedings of the Israel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science. The Israel Colloquium has, I believe, struck roots in the Israeli scientific and intellectual life, while drawing on the ever-increasing readiness of the international scientific and intellectual community for continuous support.

Galileo's trial over his theories on the Earth's motion ended with his condemnation by the Inquisition. This book judiciously compares and contrasts that trial and the subsequent controversy over the rightness of that condemnation continuing to our day.

Taking their lead from scientific structuralists such as Henri Poincare, Ernst Cassirer, and Bertrand Russell, some contemporary philosophers and scientists have argued that the most fruitful approach to solving many problems in the philosophy of science lies in focusing on the structural features of our scientific theories.

This volume covers a wide range of topics in the most recent debates in the philosophy of mathematics, and is dedicated to how semantic, epistemological, ontological and logical issues interact in the attempt to give a satisfactory picture of mathematical knowledge.The essays collected here explore the semantic and epistemic problems raised by different kinds of mathematical objects, by their characterization in terms of axiomatic theories, and by the objectivity of both pure and applied mathematics. They investigate controversial aspects of contemporary theories such as neo-logicist abstractionism, structuralism, or multiversism about sets, by discussing different conceptions of mathematical realism and rival relativistic views on the mathematical universe. They consider fundamental philosophical notions such as set, cardinal number, truth, ground, finiteness and infinity, examining how their informal conceptions can best be captured in formal theories.The philosophy of mathematics is an extremely lively field of inquiry, with extensive reaches in disciplines such as logic and philosophy of logic, semantics, ontology, epistemology, cognitive sciences, as well as history and philosophy of mathematics and science. By bringing together well-known scholars and younger researchers, the essays in this collection ¿ prompted by the meetings of the Italian Network for the Philosophy of Mathematics (FilMat) ¿ show how much valuable research is currently being pursued in this area, and how many roads ahead are still open for promising solutions to long-standing philosophical concerns.Promoted by the Italian Network for the Philosophy of Mathematics ¿ FilMat

Papers from a Sesquicentennial Conference

This book is unusual in many respects. Zilberman's legacy still awaits its true discovery and this book is a second installment to it after The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought (Kluwer, 1988). A prophetic leap to largely uncharted territories, this book could be of considerable interest for experts and novices in the field of analogy alike.

This collection of essays has evolved through the co-operative efforts, which began in the fall of 1974, of the participants in a workshop sponsored by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. The idea of holding one or more small colloquia devoted to the topics of rational choice in science and scientific progress originated in a conversation in the summer of 1973 between one of the editors (GR) and the late Imre Lakatos. Unfortunately Lakatos himself was never able to see this project through, but his thought-provoking methodology of scientific research programmes was ably expounded and defended by his successors. Indeed, this volume continues and deepens the debate inaugurated in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave), a book which grew out of a conference held in 1965. That debate has continued during the years that have passed since that conference. The group of discussions about the place of rationality in science which have been held between those who emphasize the history of science (with Feyerabend and Kuhn as the most prominent exponents) and the critical rationalists (Popper and his followers), with Imre Lakatos defending a middle ground, these discussions were seen by almost all commentators as the most important event in the philosophy of science in the last decade. This problem area constituted the central theme of our Thyssen workshop. The workshop operated in the following manner.

The work of Galileo has long been important not only as a foundation of modern physics but also as a model - and perhaps the paradigmatic model - of scientific method, and therefore as a leading example of scientific rationality. Specifically, how and on what grounds are we to accept or reject scientific theories, or scientific reasoning?

But how far will Goethe share the devotion of these cosmic rationalists to the beautiful harmonies of mathematics, so distant from any pure and 'direct observation'? When such would be found, Goethe would be content, for (as he said to Eckermann, Feb. 18, 1829): .

Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1964/1966

The articles repre sent the work of the so-called 'Praxis' group in Yugoslavia, a heterogeneous movement of philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, historians, and cul tural critics, united by a common approach: that of social theory as a critical and scientific enterprise, closely linked to questions of contemporary practical life.

In this stimulating study of the logical character of selected fundamental topics of physics, Zinov'ev has written the first, and major, stage of a general semantics of science. the logic of fields and of field propagation; and as logic, logical physics deals with the linguistic expressions of time, space, particle, wave, field, causality, etc.

TIus is the second, and fmal, volume to derive from the exciting Kronberg conference of 1975, and to show the intelligent editorial care of Gerard Radnitzky and Gunnar Andersson that was so evident in the first book, Progress and Rationality in Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 58). Together they set forth central themes in current history and philosophy of the sciences, and in particular they will be seen as also providing obbligatos: research programs, metaphysical inevitabilities, methodological options, logical constraints, historical conjectures. Boston University Center for the R. S. COHEN Philosophy and History of Science M. W. WARTOFSKY July 1979 T T ABLE OF CONTENTS v EDITORIAL EDITORIAL PREFACE PREFACE ix PREFACE PREFACE INTRODUCTION GUNNAR ANDERSSON / Presuppositions, Problems,Progress 3 PART I: METAPHYSICS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE NICHOLAS RESCHER / Some Issues Regarding the Completeness of Science and the limits of Scientific Knowledge 19 MAX JAMMER / A Consideration of the Philosophical Implications of the New Physics 41 PAUL FEYERABEND / Dialogue on Method 63 PETER HODGSON / Presuppositions and limits of Science 133 PART II: RESEARCH PROGRAMS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE WOLFGANG STEGMULLER / A Combined Approach to the Dynam­ ics of Theories. How to Improve Historical Interpretations of Theory Change by Applying Set Theoretical Structures 151 JOSEPH J. KOCKELMANS / Reflections on Lakatos' Methodology of Scientific Research Programs 187 P A TRICK A.

This book exhibits deep philosophical quandaries and intricacies of the historical development of science lying behind a simple item of common sense in modern science: the composition of water as H2O. It offers a unique new advocacy for pluralism in science.

Wolfgang Spohn is one of the most distinguished analytic philosophers in Germany. His work covers a huge range including epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of science. This collection presents 15 of his most important essays on theoretical philosophy.

We are often told that quantum phenomena demand radical revisions of our scientific world view and that no physical theory describing well defined objects, such as particles described by their positions, evolving in a well defined way, let alone deterministically, can account for such phenomena.