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  1. How Can Life of Value Best Flourish in the Real World?Nicholas Maxwell (ed.) - 2009
    1. The Urgent Need for an Intellectual Revolution 2. Two Fundamental Problems 3. Autobiographical Remarks 4. What Kind of Inquiry Can Best Help Life of Value to Flourish? 5. How is Life of Value Possible in the Physical Universe? 6. Connections between the Two Problems .
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  • The key to the solution of the world crisis we face.Nicholas Maxwell - 2021 - Human Affairs 31 (1):21-39.
    Humanity faces two fundamental problems of learning: learning about the universe, and learning to become civilized. We have solved the first problem, but not the second one, and that puts us in a situation of great danger. Almost all of our global problems have arisen as a result. It has become a matter of extreme urgency to solve the second problem. The key to this is to learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second one. (...)
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  • What’s Wrong With Science? Towards a People’s Rational Science of Delight and Compassion, Second Edition.Nicholas Maxwell - 2009 - London: Pentire Press.
    What ought to be the aims of science? How can science best serve humanity? What would an ideal science be like, a science that is sensitively and humanely responsive to the needs, problems and aspirations of people? How ought the institutional enterprise of science to be related to the rest of society? What ought to be the relationship between science and art, thought and feeling, reason and desire, mind and heart? Should the social sciences model themselves on the natural sciences: (...)
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  • Can Scientific Method Help Us Create a Wiser World?Nicholas Maxwell - 2016 - In Nikunj Dalal, Ali Intezari & Marty Heitz (eds.), Practical wisdom in the age of technology: insights, issues, and questions for a new millennium. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 147-161.
    Two great problems of learning confront humanity: (1) learning about the universe, and about ourselves as a part of the universe, and (2) learning how to make progress towards as good a world as possible. We solved the first problem when we created modern science in the 17th century, but we have not yet solved the second problem. This puts us in a situation of unprecedented danger. Modern science and technology enormously increase our power to act, but not our power (...)
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  • Philosophy Seminars for Five-Year-Olds,.Nicholas Maxwell - 2005 - Learning for Democracy 1 (2):71-77.
    We need a revolution in education, from five year olds onwards, so that exploration of problems is at the heart of the enterprise.
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  • Karl Popper, Science and Enlightenment.Nicholas Maxwell - 2017 - London: UCL Press.
    Karl Popper is famous for having proposed that science advances by a process of conjecture and refutation. He is also famous for defending the open society against what he saw as its arch enemies – Plato and Marx. Popper’s contributions to thought are of profound importance, but they are not the last word on the subject. They need to be improved. My concern in this book is to spell out what is of greatest importance in Popper’s work, what its failings (...)
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  • Reply to comments on science and the pursuit of wisdom.Nicholas Maxwell - 2010 - Philosophia 38 (4):667-690.
    In this article I reply to comments made by Agustin Vicente and Giridhari Lal Pandit on Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom (McHenry 2009 ). I criticize analytic philosophy, go on to expound the argument for the need for a revolution in academic inquiry so that the basic aim becomes wisdom and not just knowledge, defend aim-oriented empiricism, outline my solution to the human world/physical universe problem, and defend the thesis that free will is compatible with physicalism.
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  • Scientific objectivity and the logics of science.H. E. Longino - 1983 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 26 (1):85 – 106.
    This paper develops an account of scientific objectivity for a relativist theory of evidence. It briefly reviews the character and shortcomings of empiricist and wholist treatments of theory acceptance and objectivity and argues that the relativist account of evidence developed by the author in an earlier essay offers a more satisfactory framework within which to approach questions of justification and intertheoretic comparison. The difficulty with relativism is that it seems to eliminate objectivity from scientific method. Reconceiving objectivity as a function (...)
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  • From knowledge to wisdom: a revolution in the aims and methods of science.Nicholas Maxwell - 1984 - Oxford: Blackwell.
    This book argues for the need to put into practice a profound and comprehensive intellectual revolution, affecting to a greater or lesser extent all branches of scientific and technological research, scholarship and education. This intellectual revolution differs, however, from the now familiar kind of scientific revolution described by Kuhn. It does not primarily involve a radical change in what we take to be knowledge about some aspect of the world, a change of paradigm. Rather it involves a radical change in (...)
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  • The foundations of planetary agrarianism. Thomas Berry and liberty Hyde Bailey.Paul A. Morgan & Scott J. Peters - 2006 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 19 (5):443-468.
    The challenge of pursuing sustainability in agriculture is often viewed as mainly or wholly technical in nature, requiring the reform of farming methods and the development and adoption of alternative technologies. Likewise, the purpose of sustainability is frequently cast in utilitarian terms, as a means of protecting a valuable resource (i.e., soil) and of satisfying market demands for healthy, tasty food. Paul B. Thompson has argued that the embrace of these views by many in the consumer/environmental movement enables easy co-optation (...)
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  • Are probabilism and special relativity incompatible?Nicholas Maxwell - 1985 - Philosophy of Science 52 (1):23-43.
    In this paper I expound an argument which seems to establish that probabilism and special relativity are incompatible. I examine the argument critically, and consider its implications for interpretative problems of quantum theory, and for theoretical physics as a whole.
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  • Induction and scientific realism: Einstein versus Van Fraassen part one: How to solve the problem of induction.Nicholas Maxwell - 1993 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (1):61-79.
    In this three-part paper, my concern is to expound and defend a conception of science, close to Einstein's, which I call aim-oriented empiricism. I argue that aim-oriented empiricsim has the following virtues. (i) It solve the problem of induction; (ii) it provides decisive reasons for rejecting van Fraassen's brilliantly defended but intuitively implausible constructive empiricism; (iii) it solves the problem of verisimilitude, the problem of explicating what it can mean to speak of scientific progress given that science advances from one (...)
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  • Induction and scientific realism: Einstein versus Van Fraassen part three: Einstein, aim-oriented empiricism and the discovery of special and general relativity.Nicholas Maxwell - 1993 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (2):275-305.
    In this paper I show that Einstein made essential use of aim-oriented empiricism in scientific practice in developing special and general relativity. I conclude by considering to what extent Einstein came explicitly to advocate aim-oriented empiricism in his later years.
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  • On relativity theory and openness of the future.Nicholas Maxwell - 1993 - Philosophy of Science 60 (2):341-348.
    In a recent paper, Howard Stein makes a number of criticisms of an earlier paper of mine ('Are Probabilism and Special Relativity Incompatible?', Phil. Sci., 1985), which explored the question of whether the idea that the future is genuinely 'open' in a probabilistic universe is compatible with special relativity. I disagree with almost all of Stein's criticisms.
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  • Methodological problems of neuroscience.Nicholas Maxwell - 1985 - In David Rose & Vernon G. Dobson (eds.), Models of the Visual Cortex. New York: Wiley.
    In this paper I argue that neuroscience has been harmed by the widespread adoption of seriously inadequate methodologies or philosophies of science - most notably inductivism and falsificationism. I argue that neuroscience, in seeking to understand the human brain and mind, needs to follow in the footsteps of evolution.
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  • Aim-Oriented Empiricism and the Metaphysics of Science.Nicholas Maxwell - 2019 - Philosophia 48 (1):347–364.
    Over 40 years ago, I put forward a new philosophy of science based on the argument that physics, in only ever accepting unified theories, thereby makes a substantial metaphysical presupposition about the universe, to the effect it possesses an underlying unity. I argued that a new conception of scientific method is required to subject this problematic presupposition to critical attention so that it may be improved as science proceeds. This view has implications for the study of the metaphysics of science. (...)
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  • Is the Wisdom Revolution Underway?Nicholas Maxwell - manuscript
    The world faces grave global problems. These have been made possible by modern science and technology. We have put knowledge-inquiry into academic practice – a seriously irrational kind of inquiry that seeks knowledge and technological know-how dissociated from a more fundamental concern to seek and promote wisdom. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in academic inquiry, so that knowledge-inquiry becomes wisdom-inquiry – a kind of inquiry rationally designed and devoted to helping humanity make progress towards a wiser world. (...)
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  • The sacred and the limits of the technological fix.Alan R. Drengson - 1984 - Zygon 19 (3):259-275.
    Three points are discussed: first, that limits of technological fixes are revealed by current economic, social, and environmental problems; second, that these problems cannot be solved by a technological fix but require alternative forms of activity and being; third, that realizing these limits makes possible the re‐emergence of the sacred. Two attitudes toward technology, nature, and the sacred are described: Technocrats desacralize nature and strive to shape it technologically for human ends alone; pernetarians resacralize nature and develop a perennial philosophy (...)
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  • How can life of value best flourish in the real world?Nicholas Maxwell - 2009 - In Leemon McHenry (ed.), Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell. Frankfurt, Germany: Ontos Verlag.
    The Urgent Need for an Intellectual Revolution For much of my working life (from 1972 onwards) I have argued, in and out of print, that we need to bring about a revolution in the aims and methods of science – and of academic inquiry more generally. Instead of giving priority to the search for knowledge, academia needs to devote itself to seeking and promoting wisdom by rational means, wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for (...)
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  • Philosophical Journal as a Space for Interdisciplinary and Intergenerational Dialogue (The Meeting of the Editor-in-Chief of the Russian Journal of the Philosophical Sciences Khachatur Marinosyan with New Authors).Nikolai B. Afanasov - 2019 - Russian Journal of Philosophical Sciences 62 (5):139-150.
    The article presents the author’s reflection on the topic of scientific communication and forms of presentation of scientific results in the form of journal publications. As a starting point for reflection served the meeting that took place on March 28, 2019 held by the editor-in-chief of the Russian Journal of Philosophical Sciences Khachatur Marinosyan with new researchers. The event was mainly devoted to the structure of the representation of modern knowledge, a crucial role in which is continued to be played (...)
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  • The fate of the enlightenment: Reply to Kekes.Nicholas Maxwell - 1986 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 29 (1-4):79-92.
    If humanity is to learn how to live together more cooperatively and wisely than at present, it is essential that we create a new kind of academic inquiry and education that is rationally devoted to helping us learn how to be cooperative and wise. This new kind of inquiry would give intellectual priority to articulating our problems of living, proposing and criticizing possible solutions, possible cooperative actions. The pursuit of knowledge would play a subordinate role. This in essence is the (...)
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