The ArgumentThe purpose of this article is to read Heidegger's critique of modern science —especially in What Is a Thing? —as evolving from ontological issues that preoccupied Heidegger in the period after the publication of Being and Time. The main issues at stake are formal ontology and its connection with mathematics and modern mathematical physics, and the distinction between formal and regional ontology. The connection between these issues constitutes Heidegger's understanding of mathematics. An exposition of Heidegger's notion of the “mathematical” (...) can help us uncover his assumptions in his critique of modern science, and give us new possibilities for evaluating it. (shrink)

Twelve years after his famous Essay on Some Problems Concerning the Normal and the Pathological (1943), the philosopher Georges Canguilhem (1904–1995) published a book-length study on the history of a single biological concept. Within France, his Formation of the Reflex Concept in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1955) contributed significantly to defining the “French style” of writing on the history of science. Outside of France, the book passed largely unnoticed. This paper re-reads Canguilhem’s study of the reflex concept with respect (...) to its historiographical and epistemological implications. Canguilhem defines concepts as complex and dynamic entities combining terms, definitions, and phenomena. As a consequence, the historiography of science becomes a rather complex task. It has to take into account textual and contextual aspects that develop independently of individual authors. In addition, Canguilhem stresses the connection between conceptual activities and other functions of organic individuals in their respective environments. As a result, biological concepts become tied to a biology of conceptual thinking, analogical reasoning, and technological practice. The paper argues that this seemingly circular structure is a major feature in Canguilhem’s philosophical approach to the history of the biological sciences. (shrink)

Excerpted from an article on Leibniz first published in 1974 in Hermès III, la Traduction, Michel Serres’s ‘Transdisciplinarity as Relative Exteriority’ offers a synoptic view of Serres’s vision of the relationship between philosophy and the sciences. Serres charts four historical strategies by which philosophy has secured its theoretical control over the sciences, four versions of philosophical exteriority towards the scientific field. He contrasts this topography or philosophical ‘theatre’ of representation to Leibniz’s immanent relation to scientific discourse. A systematic whole without (...) fixed metalanguage, the Leibnizian encyclopaedia constitutes, according to Serres, a truly transdisciplinary method. (shrink)

One of the difficulties facing the philosopher of science today is the divide between historical epistemology and analytic philosophy of science. For over half a century these two traditions have followed independent and divergent paths. Historical epistemology, which originated in France in the early twentieth century, has recently been reformulated by a number of scholars such as Lorraine Daston, Ian Hacking, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. Elaborating novel historical methods, they seek to provide answers to major questions in the field. In the (...) light of this situation, my article examines the cultural barrier that explains the uneasy relationship between the two traditions. This barrier hinges on a number of factors—institutional, political and social—that are bound up with the philosophical issues in question. By resorting both to historical study and logical analysis, the new historical epistemology incites us to move beyond a rather sterile antagonism. (shrink)

C'est avec la grammaire générative que la discussion sur les rapports entre l'analyse linguistique et le rationalisme est devenue particulièrement abondante, en même temps qu'elle devenait une affaire idéologique concernant un large public. En présentant sa Cartesian Linguistics comme un chapitre dans l'histoire du rationalisme, Chomsky a prétendu avec éclat que: il y aurait une tradition rationaliste ayant des idées précises sur le langage, liée aux thèses cartésiennes et à la grammaire générale de Port-Royal; la grammaire générative reprendrait cette tradition (...) et lui apporterait une confirmation définitive. De manière générale, la validité historique des thèses de Chomsky a été contestée avec succès par les historiens: qu'il s'agisse de l'idée d'une linguistique cartésienne, de la prédominance du rationalisme aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles, de l'identité de démarche entre Port-Royal et la grammaire générative, voire même de la définition du rationalisme classique. (shrink)

Este texto introduz a tradução do discurso de intitulado "Sobre os números transfinitos" ("Über transfinite Zahlen"), proferido por Henri Poincaré em 27 de abril de 1909, na Universidade de Göttingen. Após uma breve apresentação do pensamento do autor acerca dos fundamentos da aritmética, procura-se citar os aspectos mais relevantes da chamada crise dos fundamentos da matemática, para então introduzir a reformulação do conceito de predicatividade aventada no referido discurso sobre números transfinitos, contribuição compreendida como um recurso teórico necessário para a (...) superação dos paradoxos relativos à teoria dos conjuntos. Com isso, pretende-se evidenciar o papel central do texto publicado nesta edição para o desenvolvimento da concepção matemática de Henri Poincaré. This article provides an introduction to the translation of the lecture entitled "On transfinite numbers" ("Über transfinite Zahlen"), given by Henri Poincaré at the University of Göttingen on April 27, 1909. Following a short presentation of Poincaré's views on the foundations of arithmetic, it identifies the aspects of the so-called crisis of the foundations of mathematics that are most relevant for understanding his reconstruction of the concept of predicativity, which is intended to be a theoretical resource that may overcome the paradoxes of set theory. In doing so, the article highlights the central role of this text in the process of maturation of Poincaré's views on the foundations of mathematics. (shrink)