The 1920-1960 period saw the creation of the conditions for a unification of disciplines in the area of evolutionary biology under a limited number of theoretical prescriptions: the evolutionary synthesis. Whereas the sociological dimension of this synthesis was fairly successful, it was surprisingly loose when it came to the interpretation of the evolutionary mechanisms per se, and completely lacking at the level of the foundational epistemological and metaphysical commitments. Key figures such as Huxley, Simpson, Dobzhansky, and Rensch only paid lip (...) service to the conceptual dimension of the evolutionary synthesis, as they eventually realized that a number of evolutionary phenomena could not be explained by its narrow theoretical corpus. Apparently, the evolutionary synthesis constituted a premature event in the development of evolutionary biology. Not only are the real achievements of the evolutionary synthesis in need of reevaluation, but this reassessment also has important implications for the historiography of Darwinism and the current debates about the darwinian movement. (shrink)

Writers on organisational change often refer to the cosmology of Heraclitus in their work. Some use these references to support arguments for the constancy and universality of organisational change and the consignment to history of organisational continuity and stability. These writers misunderstand the scope of what Heraclitus said. Other writers focus exclusively on the idea that originated with Heraclitus that the universe is composed of processes and not of things. This idea, which has been particularly associated with Heraclitus’s thought from (...) the time of Plato, does indeed provide a rich source of insights into organisational analysis, not least the current trends towards giving proper attention to processual studies of organisational change. Yet there is some uncertainty as to whether Heraclitus actually said that the universe was composed exclusively of processes rather than things, and even if that was what he thought, he intended his ideas on flux to be understood not in isolation but in the context of other aspects of his cosmology. Writers on organisational change seldom make reference to this wider context. Heraclitus was a rational but also a religious thinker. A central element in his thought was the notion of divine Justice, which to a Greek of his era meant the order of the universe. Remote as his Olympian theology may seem today, it sets a crucial and entirely rational context for understanding his ideas about flux. It means that ideas about continuity and stability were quite as important in Heraclitus’s cosmology as his more commonly quoted ideas about change. This paper sets out an overview of Heraclitus’s philosophy, insofar as it appears to have potential relevance to organisational analysis, and discusses how far it supports or contradicts the ideas that organisational change scholars have drawn from it. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 63, Issue 1, pp 1 - 24 This article examines Diogenes of Apollonia’s doctrines of intellection and soul in relation to his material principle, air. It argues that for Diogenes both intellection and soul are not, as commonly thought, some sort of air, even though both intellection and soul are to be understood in terms of air and the system of τρόποι of air that he has set up. These new interpretations of intellection and soul yield insight (...) into Diogenes’ claims about the ordering activity of air as intellection and a renewed appreciation for his material monism. (shrink)

The Evolutionary Synthesis is often seen as a unification process in evolutionary biology, one which provided this research area with a solid common theoretical foundation. As such, neo-Darwinism is believed to constitute from this time onward a single, coherent, and unified movement offering research guidelines for investigations. While this may be true if evolutionary biology is solely understood as centred around evolutionary mechanisms, an entirely different picture emerges once other aspects of the founding neo-Darwinists’ views are taken into consideration, aspects (...) potentially relevant to the elaboration of an evolutionary worldview: the tree of life, the ontological distinctions of the main cosmic entities , the inherent properties of self-organizing matter, evolutionary ethics, and so on. Profound tensions and inconsistencies are immediately revealed in the neo-Darwinian movement once this broader perspective is adopted. This pluralism is such that it is possible to identify at least three distinct and quasi-incommensurable epistemological/metaphysical frameworks as providing a proper foundation for neo-Darwinism. The analysis of the views of Theodosius Dobzhansky, Bernhard Rensch, and Ernst Mayr will illustrate this untenable pluralism, one which requires us to conceive of the neo-Darwinian research agenda as being conducted in more than one research programme or research tradition at the same time. (shrink)

A pergunta, “Tudo é número?” no título do famoso artigo de 1989 de Zhmud, deixa aberto um desafio para o extremamente importante testemunho aristotélico de que “tudo é número” era a definição fundamental da filosofia pitagórica. Tal desafio não é nada simples, especialmente quando se considera que, até então, as histórias tanto da filosofia quanto da matemática antiga parecem não ter dúvidas de que esta afirmação é correta. Este artigo pretende submeter à avaliação crítica a alegação de Aristóteles de que (...) os pitagóricos acreditavam que “tudo é número”. Nossa análise dos muitos modos nos quais Aristóteles enuncia a tese de que “tudo é número” revelará, para além de variações meramente semânticas, uma contradição teórica fundamental que o próprio Aristóteles parece incapaz de resolver. De fato, três versões diferentes da doutrina estão presentes na doxografia aristotélica: uma identificação dos números com objetos sensíveis; uma identificação dos princípios dos números com os princípios das coisas que existem; uma imitação dos objetos pelos números. Enquanto as versões e parecem identificar, em termos que lembram Platão, os números com a causa material da realidade, a versão, a saber, números como causas formais da realidade, é uma reconstrução aristotélica da teoria pitagórica. Aristóteles teria sido levado a tal reconstrução pela dificuldade que encontrou para aceitar a noção pitagórica material de número, e por considerá-la, para seu gosto, fortemente marcada pela recepção da mesma teoria no ambiente da Academia. (shrink)

Was ist eine gute Weltanschauung? Die Aufsätze behandeln einige der großen Themen der westlichen Philosophie unter neuen Gesichtspunkten, wie z. B. das Apeiron des Anaximander, das Leib-Seele-Problem bei Descartes und Wittgensteins Begriff der Sprache und Lebensform. Sie beleuchten aber auch Seitenwege wie z. B. einen Ausflug Schopenhauers, ein „Plagiat" Nietzsches und einige der Aphorismen Ludwig Hohls.

This dissertation explores Aristotle’s use of teleology as a principle of explanation, especially as it is used in the natural treatises. Its main purposes are, first, to determine the function, structure, and explanatory power of teleological explanations in four of Aristotle’s natural treatises, that is, in Physica (book II), De Anima, De Partibus Animalium (including the practice in books II-IV), and De Caelo (book II). Its second purpose is to confront these findings about Aristotle’s practice in the natural treatises with (...) the theoretical picture of the structure of teleological explanations gained from Aristotle’s theory of scientific demonstration. For this purpose a new interpretation of Analytica Posteriora II.11 is presented. This study thereby contributes to recent scholarship on the relation between Aristotle’s philosophy of science and his philosophy of nature, while at the same time adding to our knowledge of Aristotle’s notion of teleology in terms of its explanatory merits and limits. (shrink)

Karl Popper identified Xenophanes of Colophon (570−478 BCE) as the originator of the method of conjectures and refutations. This essay explores this claim, and the methods of both philosophers (section 1). Disparagement (ancient and modern) of Xenophanes has been misguided (section 2). Xenophanes, a critical rationalist and realist, pioneered philosophy of religion (section 3) and epistemology (section 4), but his method was not confined to falsificationism, and appears compatible with inductivism and abductionism (section 5). The method employed by Popper in (...) interpreting Herodotus in support of his conjectures about Xenophanes is typical of the multiple-strand reasoning characteristic of the humanities, and is as much inductivist or abductionist as refutationist (section 6). Popper’s theories about Xenophanes are convincing; but even if Popperians would claim that Popper’s refutationism largely fits the natural sciences, his application of it to history is implausible, and conflicts with own practice (section 7). An appendix reflects on Popper’s interest in cultured refugees. (shrink)

This catalogue is divided into two parts. Part 1 presents basic bibliographical information on books and journal issues that consist exclusively or in large part in papers devoted to the Presocratics and the Sophists. Part 2 lists the papers on Presocratic and Sophistic topics found in the volumes, providing name of author, title, and page numbers, and in the case of reprinted papers, the year of original publication. In some cases Part 2 lists the complete contents of volumes, not only (...) the Presocratic and Sophistic-related papers. Annual updates are submitted as additional files below. (shrink)

In her 1996 and 2006 essays “Being and Becoming: Rhetorical Ontology in Early Greek Thought” and “The Task of the Bow: Heraclitus’ Rhetorical Critique of Epic Language,” Carol Poster was the first to argue for the historical and theoretical relevance of Heraclitus in the discipline of rhetoric. Despite the admonitions of Edward Schiappa (1999) and Thomas Cole (1991) against applying rhetorical theories that only emerged after the fourth century BCE to pre- or proto-rhetorical texts, Poster argues that Heraclitus merits the (...) attention of rhetorical as well as philosophical scholarship not only because Heraclitus had such a profound influence on the thought and work of thinkers who would later become the ancient .. (shrink)

El autor examina brevemente a Aristóteles como historiador de las ideas y su valoración de los pensadores precedentes. El análisis brinda mayor apoyo a la consideración de Aristóteles como hisotirador de la filosofía temprana.