Bøger af Gustavo E. Romero

This book provides an up-to-date revision of materialism's central tenets, its main varieties, and the place of materialistic philosophy vis a vis scientific knowledge.Materialism has been the subject of extensive and rich controversies since Robert Boyle introduced the term for the first time in the 17th century. But what is materialism and what can it oi er today? The term is usually defined as the worldview according to which everything real is material. Nevertheless, there is no philosophical consensus about whether the meaning of matter can be enlarged beyond the physical. As a consequence, materialism is often defined in stark exclusive and reductionist terms: whatever exists is either physical or ontologically reducible to it. This conception, if consistent, mutilates reality, excluding the ontological significance of political, economic, sociocultural, anthropological and psychological realities. Starting from a new history of materialism, the present book focuses on the central ontological and epistemological debates aroused by today's leading materialist approaches, including some little known to an anglophone readership. The key concepts of matter, system, emergence, space and time, life, mind, and software are checked over and updated. Controversial issues such as the nature of mathematics and the place of reductionism are also discussed from different materialist approaches. As a result, materialism emerges as a powerful, indispensable scientifically-supported worldview with a surprising wealth of nuances and possibilities.

This textbook presents the basics of philosophy that are necessary for the student and researcher in science in order to better understand scientific work.

This book is based on the lecture notes of a one-semester course on black hole astrophysics given by the author and is aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students with an interest in astrophysics.