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

Rationality of science was the topic of two conferences (held in 1988 and 1989) organized by the Department of Philosophy of Science, Institute of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University. It is intended mainly for specialists in the philosophy of science and scientists interested in philosophy.

Plaass's treatise stood at the beginning of a renewed wave of scholarship regarding Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MF).

In this book Martin Bunzl considers the prospects for a general and comprehensive account of explanation, given the variety of interests that prompt explanations in science.

Foundational questions in logic, mathematics, computer science and physics are constant sources of epistemological debate in contemporary philosophy. These are some of the questions discussed in this volume, which collects 14 lectures on the foundation of science given at the School of Philosophy of Science, Trieste, October 1989.

Scholarly studies of mathematics and the sciences, carried out by philos ophers and historians in Taiwan in recent years, have two main goals: first, positive and critical participation in the logical analysis of scientific theories and scientific explanation;

The strongest of the new contenders for epistemological recognition are social constructivists, who analyze in detail how knowledge is produced within specific social settings, including the instruments and procedures of par ticular laboratories and the economic and political realities of particular scientific communities.

But in such passages the extent of treatment could not - as was otherwise the case - be made to depend solely on a judgment as to the value and significance of the investigations presented.

Philosophers often look at the past with categories and interests taken from the present or at the least from the recent past, but many historians, especially those who love research for its own sake, will try to look at the past from a perspective either from that period or from even earlier.

Tran Duc Thao, a wise and learned scientist and an eminent Marxist philoso pher, begins this treatise on the origins of language and consciousness with a question: "One of the principal difficulties of the problem of the origin of consciousness is the exact determination of its beginnings.

Only recently has the phenomenon of technology become an object of in terest for philosophers.

For a North American seeking to know the Mexican mind, and especially the sciences today and in their recent development, a great light of genius is to be found in Mexico City in the late 17th century.

Such inferences can be expansive, or, ampliative in the sense that the performances of such inferences actually increases our putative knowledge. Standard non-deductive inferences do not really exist, but one may think of elementary inductive inferences in which conclusions regarding the future are drawn from knowledge of the past.

This work contains a collection of essays which look at the history of physics. Topics covered included: mathematical foundations of physics in the work of Henry Cavendish and Joseph Fourier; the development of physics in the 19th century; and thermodynamics and matter theory.

This volume explores the reorganisation of knowledge taking place in the course of Galileo's research process extending over a period of more than thirty years, pursued within a network of exchanges with his contemporaries, and documented by a vast collection of research notes.

Habent sua Jata colloquia. The present volume has its ongms in a spring 1984 international workshop held, under the auspices of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, by The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas of Tel-Aviv University in cooperation with The Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation. It contains twelve of the twenty papers presented at the workshop by the twenty-six participants. As Proceedings of conferences go, it is a good representative of the genre, sharing in the main characteristics of its ilk. It may even be one of the rare instances of a book of Proceed­ ings whose descriptive title applies equally well to the workshop's topic and to the interrelations between. the various papers it includes. Tension and Accommodation are the key words. Thus, while John Glucker's paper, 'Images of Plato in Late Antiqu­ ity,' raises, by means of the Platonic example, the problem of interpreta­ tion of ancient texts, suggesting the assignment of proper weight to the creator of the tradition and not only to his many later interpreters in assessing the proper relationship between originator and commentators, Abraham Wasserstein's 'Hunches that did not come off: Some Prob­ lems in Greek Science' illustrates the long-lived Whiggish tradition in the history of science and mathematics. As those familiar with my work will undoubtedly note, Wasserstein's position is far removed from my stance on ancient Greek mathematics.

I suppose Joseph Agassi's best and dearest self-description, his cher ished wish, is to practice what his 1988 book promises: The Gentle Art of Philosophical Polemics.

As official sponsors of the First International Conference in the History and Philosophy of Science, the two Divisions of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science owe a great deal to the University of Jyvliskyla and the 1973 Jyvliskylli Summer Festival for the extra ordinarily generous hospitality they provided.

What has been called 'post-positivist' philosophy of science has introduced radically new concerns with historical, social, and valuative components of scientific thought in the natural sciences, and has raised up the demons of relativism, subjectivism and sociologism to haunt the once calm precincts of objectivity and realism.

WARTOFSKY TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface VII JOHN WORRALL / Imre Lakatos (1922-1974): Philosopher of Mathematics and Philosopher of Science JOSEPH AGASSI / The Lakatosian Revolution 9 23 D.

" Crow's reasons for considering these four figures together and the reasons discussed above are complementary. The foregoing considerations were intended to show why Fisher, Haldane, Muller and Wright should be considered together in the history of theoretical evolutionary genetics.

" Crow's reasons for considering these four figures together and the reasons discussed above are complementary. The foregoing considerations were intended to show why Fisher, Haldane, Muller and Wright should be considered together in the history of theoretical evolutionary genetics.

To the scientists and philosophers of our time, Hegel has been either a ne glected or a provocative thinker, a source of irrelevant dark metaphysics or of complex but insightful analysis.

After relatively short academic appointments at the University of Toronto and at Princeton University, he taught at the University of Chicago until reaching the age of normal retirement.

WARTOFSKY TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface VII JOHN WORRALL / Imre Lakatos (1922-1974): Philosopher of Mathematics and Philosopher of Science JOSEPH AGASSI / The Lakatosian Revolution 9 23 D.

Wartofsky is philosopher of the natural and the social sciences, of perception, esthetics and the creative arts, of the 18th century French and the 19th century Germans, of politics and morality, ofthe methods and morals of medicine, and it is plain, of all human existence.

Naturally, we may wish to understand whether Kant is relevant to Popper's philosophy of knowledge, how Popper has understood Kant, and to what extent the Popperian Kant has systematically or historically been of influence on later philosophy of science, as seen by Popper or not.

This collection of essays is a tribute to Stillman Drake by some of his friends and colleagues, and by others on whom his work has had a formative influence.