No response that was not as long and intricate as the two commentaries combined could do justice to their details, so what follows will satisfy nobody, myself included. I will concentrate on one issue discussed by both commentators: the relationship between evolution and teleological (or intentional) explanation. My response, in its brevity, may have just one virtue: it will confirm some of the hunches (or should I say suspicions) that these and other writers have entertained about my views. For more (...) closely argued defenses of my points, see Dennett 1990a,b,c; 1991a,b. (shrink)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's approach to natural scientific research has unmistakable parallels to phenomenology. These parallels are clear enough to allow one to say confidently that Goethe's delicate empiricism is indeed a phenomenology of nature. This paper examines how Goethe's criticisms of Newton anticipated Husserl's announcement of the crisis of the modern sciences, and it describes how Goethe, at a critical juncture in cultural history, addressed this emerging crisis through a scientific method that is virtually identical to the method of (...) contemporary empirical-phenomenological research in the human sciences. Goethe's practice of science shares with phenomenology a participatory, morally-responsive, and holistic approach to the description of dynamic life-world phenomena. Delicate empiricism has its own version of the phenomenological epoché, and, like Husserl's technique of imaginative variation, it strives to disclose the essential or archetypal structure of the phenomenon through the endowment of human imagination. However, a close reading of Goethe suggests that the tendency amongst some scholars to distinguish phenomenology as human science from the natural sciences is actually a costly error which unwittingly falls prey to implicit Cartesian assumptions. Goethe, however, manages to avoid these problems by performing from the first a phenomenology of nature's sensibility. (shrink)

Cílem příspěvku je představit a zhodnotit filosofickou pozici A. N. Whiteheada, podle které je dualismus fatálním omylem v jádru moderní vědecké kosmologie, a proto je možné pokládat jej za jednu z příčin moderních ekologických a socioekonomických krizí. Nejprve je shrnuta Whiteheadova kritika mechanistického materialismu, z něhož vychází dualistický rys západního myšlení, který Whitehead nazývá bifurkací přírody. Je ukázáno, jak oddělování lidské mysli a kosmu neponechává žádný prostor svébytnému vědomí a životu a jak atribut nezávislosti ducha ústí v soukromé světy zkušenosti (...) a morálky. Dále je argumentováno, že centrální motivací Whiteheadovy kosmologické koncepce je vybudování systému, v němž si estetické, náboženské a morální zájmy podají ruku s koncepty světa, které mají své kořeny v přírodních vědách. Whiteheadova kosmologie je interpretována jako posun od materialismu k organicismu a zároveň jako přechod od statického k dynamickému pojetí kosmu. (shrink)

Accounts of Hobbes’s ‘system’ of sciences oscillate between two extremes. On one extreme, the system is portrayed as wholly axiomtic-deductive, with statecraft being deduced in an unbroken chain from the principles of logic and first philosophy. On the other, it is portrayed as rife with conceptual cracks and fissures, with Hobbes’s statements about its deductive structure amounting to mere window-dressing. This paper argues that a middle way is found by conceiving of Hobbes’s _Elements of Philosophy_ on the model of a (...) mixed-mathematical science, not the model provided by Euclid’s _Elements of Geometry_. I suggest that Hobbes is a test case for understanding early-modern system-construction more generally, as inspired by the structure of the applied mathematical sciences. This approach has the additional virtue of bolstering, in a novel way, the thesis that the transformation of philosophy in the long seventeenth century was heavily indebted to mathematics, a thesis that has increasingly come under attack in recent years. (shrink)

In these notes, unadorned page numbers under 350 refer to Dennett (1987) - The Intentional Stance, hereafter referred to as Stance - and ones over 495 refer to Dennett (1988) - mostly to material by him but occasionally to remarks of his critics. Since the notes will focus on disagreements, I should say now that I am in Dennett’s camp and am deeply in debt to his work in the philosophy of mind, which I think is wider, deeper, more various (...) and more fruitful than mine or anyone else’s. Still, I have some ideas and emphases that I think he could profit from. In the final chapter of Stance Dennett compares his work with that of several others, including me. He sees me as having a position like his, the main difference being that I think (as he doesn’t) that our attributions of mental content can always be highly determinate (pp. 347f). In fact, there are differences between us but this isn’t one of them. I want to get this straight, so as to clear the decks for the positive points I am going to make. There is some indeterminacy and there could be lots of it; Dennett’s case for that is unanswerable. As for how much there actually is: I don’t know and don’t even suspect; there is simply no declared issue between Dennett and myself on that. Nor do we disagree on a related matter. If there is no evidence that settles whether the animal believes that P or believes that Q, should we say that nevertheless one of these is right, and it’s just that we can’t know which it is? Dennett says No. I perfectly agree. (shrink)

Just as mathematics helps us to represent and reason about the natural world, in its internal applications one branch of mathematics helps us to represent and reason about the subject matter of another. Recognition of the close analogy between internal and external applications of mathematics can help resolve two persistent philosophical puzzles concerning its applicability: a platonist puzzle arising from the abstractness of mathematical objects; and an empiricist puzzle arising from mathematical propositions’ lack of empirical factual content. In order to (...) see how this is the case, we will examine what it is to apply mathematics internally and describe examples. (shrink)

Scientific revolution has been one of the most controversial topics in the history and philosophy of science. Yet it has been no consensus on what is the best unit of analysis in the historiography of scientific revolutions. Nor is there a consensus on what best explains the nature of scientific revolutions. This chapter provides a critical examination of the historiography of scientific revolutions. It begins with a brief introduction to the historical development of the concept of scientific revolution, followed by (...) an overview of the five main philosophical accounts of scientific revolutions. It then challenges two historiographical assumptions of the philosophical analyses of scientific revolutions. (shrink)

La filosofía de la ciencia se desarrolló durante la primera mitad del siglo xx bajo el supuesto de que la ciencia podía caracterizarse por la estructura lógica tanto del conocimiento articulado en las teorías más exitosas como de sus explicaciones. En la segunda mitad del siglo xx se cuestiona fuertemente esa idea, pero se sigue asumiendo que la filosofía de la ciencia debe hacerse siguiendo los cánones de una epistemología fundamentalista que considera que el avance de la ciencia pasa por (...) una ontología cada vez mas austera guiada por la idea de "mientras menos mejor". Desde esta perspectiva fundamentalista, el que las diferentes ciencias hablen de diferentes tipos de cosas es un obstáculo al entendimiento, producto de la imperfección del conocimiento actual. Este ideal nos invita a pensar que la epistemología debe hacerse reflexionando sobre el conocimiento articulado en nuestras teorías más austeras y nos compromete con propuestas reduccionistas problemáticas que no permiten explicar la diversidad de recursos epistémicos que de hecho utilizan los científicos. En este libro promovemos una epistemología que no sigue el lema de "mientras menos mejor", sino el de "organizar nuestros recursos epistémicos de manera que se genere entendimiento". Así, la misma estructura de las explicaciones y las prácticas (que incluye métodos y normas respecto de lo que se considera plausible y valioso) es lo que nos da la pauta para responder a la pregunta de qué es lo que hay. Esta estrategia epistémica nos obliga a hacer una filosofía de la ciencia muy cercana a la ciencia, reconociendo la pluralidad de sus métodos, objetivos y prácticas, sin reducir la filosofía de la ciencia a la sociología o a cualquier otra ciencia en particular. (shrink)

From the time of the publication of Henry More's first work, the collection of poems, ΨγΧΩΔΙΑ Platonica , Platonism provided the dominant theme in his philosophy. At Cambridge, More, his colleague, Ralph Cudworth, and their disciples, were responsible for a considerable revival of English Platonism, which became an important factor in late seventeenth-century natural philosophy. This movement is noted for its active and influential opposition to the mechanical world view, characterized in the writings of Hobbes and Descartes.

This article describes some key features of the distinctive approach to issues in science and religion of the Epiphany Philosophers (EPs), and introduces a set of articles from a recent meeting. The objective of the EPs is not merely to establish harmonious coexistence between science and religion. Rather, they are dissatisfied with both, and have a reformist agenda. They see science as unduly constrained by arbitrary metaphysical assumptions, predominantly of an atheist kind, and wish to see it liberated from such (...) constraints. They are also interested in the potential contribution of contemplative enquiry to scientific research. They see no reason why science should not engage with the transcendent, but they do not support any simplistic argument from scientific research to religious belief. They wish to see an approach to religion that is rooted more firmly in the contemplative path. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that inconsistencies in scientific theories may arise from the type of causality relation they—tacitly or explicitly—embody. All these seemingly different causality relations can be subsumed under a general strategy developed to defeat the paradoxes which inevitably occur in our experience of the real. With respect to this, scientific theories are just a subclass of the larger class of metaphysical theories, construed as theories that attempt to explain a (part of) the world consistently. All metaphysical theories (...) share a common structural backbone specificially designed to defeat paradoxes, their often wildly diverging ontological claims notwithstanding. This common structure shapes the procedures which govern the invention of ideas in the context of such theories, by codifying some onto-logical a priori assumptions regarding the consistency of reality into its bare conceptual framework. Causality plays a key rôle here, because it implies conservation of identity, itself a far from simple notion. It imposes strong demands on the universalising power of the theories concerned. These demands are often met by the introduction of a metalevel which encompasses the notions of ‘system’ and ‘lawful behaviour’. In classical mechanics, the division between universal and particular leaves its traces in the separate treatment of cinematics and dynamics. The fundamental backbone’s specific gestalt thus functions as a theory’s individual signature and paves the way to a comparative historical approach towards their study. An important part of my paper therefore explores the strong connections between paradoxes as they appear and are dealt with in ancient philosophy and their re-appearance in early modern natural philosophy and science. This analysis is applied to the mechanical theories of Newton and Leibniz, with some surprising results. (shrink)

Nietzsche was a philosopher, not a biologist, Nevertheless his philosophical thought was deeply influenced by ideas emerging from the evolutionary biology of the nineteenth century. His relationship to the Darwinism of his time is difficult to disentangle. It is argued that he was in a sense an unwitting Darwinist. It follows that his philosophical thought is of considerable interest to those concerned to develop an evolutionary biology of mankind. His approach can be likened to that of an extraterrestrial sociobiologist studying (...) clever beasts... in some out of the way corner of the universe ... It is shown how be uses this viewpoint to account for the origin of the central psychobiology of humankind: for dualistic philosophies, such as that of Descartes (which Ryle famously called the official doctrine), for human notions of truth and falsehood, being and becoming, and for other fundamental concepts of Western philosophy and science. All these, he argues, are no more and no less than the necessary adaptations of a zoological species, Homo sapiens, in its struggle for life in a Darwinian world. It is concluded that Nietzsche was the first philosopher to accept and use in their full depth the philosophical implications of nineteeth-century evolutionism, implications which are still resisted to this day. It is also argued that this interpretation of Nietzsche's aphoristic writings provides them with an organic consistency. (shrink)

Tertiary qualities have been studied primarily by Gestalt psychologists. My aim in this article is to revisit the theoretical assumptions regarding tertiary qualities. I start from the Galilean distinction of the qualities of experience, the Lockean subdivision of qualities, the subjectivist definition in aesthetics and the theoretical contribution of Gestalt theory, to show the theoretical value of ‘tertiary qualities’ in the current context of experimental psychological research. I conclude that tertiary qualities are a crucial keyword for an experimental psychology based (...) on the primacy of perception. Such a perspective is in favour of a neo-Gestalt Experimental Phenomenology. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper is a study of the role of language in scientific activity. It recommends that language be viewed as a community's means of patterning its affairs. Language represents where the boundaries of the community are and who is entitled to speak within it, and it displays the structures of authority in the community. Moreover, language precipitates the community's view of what the world is like, such that linguistic usages can be taken as referring to that world. Thus, language (...) connects on the one side to a community's practical life, and, on the other, to the reality on which it “reports.”The example treated is Robert Boyle's view of the language proper for experimental practice, and his arguments against the value and legitimacy of mathematical representations within the experimental community. Boyle argued that the use of mathematics was inappropriate because (i) it would restrict the number of potential participants; (ii) it would give rise to unwarranted expectations of the certainty and accuracy to be expected of real physical inquiries; (iii) it would suggest views of natural law and God's relations with the natural world which were incorrect and possibly dangerous; and because (iv) the world upon which the experimentalist operated was not such as was represented by mathematical idealizations. I try to establish that decision about the appropriate language for the experimental community was a moral choice. (shrink)

Artykuł porusza problematykę buntu człowieka przeciwko ograniczeniom ludzkiej, ziemskiej kondycji i odnosi się do poświęconych temu zagadnieniu prac Hanny Arendt. Autor wychodzi od analizy przypadku niemal 200 tysięcy osób z całego świata, które w 2013 roku zgłosiły się do projektu „Mars One” i tym samym wyraziły chęć bezpowrotnego lotu na Marsa. Następnie omawia przemiany w sferze nauki, technologii i zbiorowych wyobrażeń, które mogły do tego doprowadzić, pisząc o narodzinach wizji Ziemi jako „więzienia” związanych z eksploracją naszej planety, a także o (...) ujednoliceniu obrazu wszechświata, które dokonało się za sprawą newtonowskiej fizyki. Dalej autor przedstawia koncepcję „kondycji ludzkiej” w rozumieniu Arendt i wskazuje na inne współczesne przykłady zmagania się człowieka ze stałymi ograniczeniami ludzkiej egzystencji, takimi jak nasza śmiertelność czy przymus pracy. Na koniec autor powraca do wyjściowego pytania o przyczyny tak powszechnej woli „ucieczki z Ziemi” i zastanawia się nad możliwymi konsekwencjami jej realizacji, przywołując tezę Arendt o obniżeniu rangi człowieka postępującym wraz z rozwojem nowożytnej nauki. (shrink)

Negative gegenseitige Befruchtung mag als seltsamer Titel erscheinen. Gegenseitige Befruchtung scheint per definitionem etwas Positives zu sein. Aber diese Untersuchung will die Aufmerksamkeit auf die Tatsache richten, daß in einer großen Anzahl von Fällen die gegenseitige Befruchtung einige negative Effekte auslöst; einige von ihnen mögen sogar katastrophal sein. Dieser Artikel kann die Aufmerksamkeit nur auf die negativen Auswirkungen und die Notwendigkeit lenken, die Bedingungen, welche den positiven oder negativen Ausgang oder die Unwirksamkeit einer bestimmten gegenseitigen Befruchtung determinieren, ausführlicher zu untersuchen; (...) um die Randbedingungen auf beiden Seiten zu formulieren: Das Befruchtende und das Befruchtete. (shrink)

The philosophical or metaphysical architecture of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is analyzed and diflussed. It is argued that natural selection was for Darwin a paradigmatic case of a natural law of change — an exemplar of what Ghiselin (1969) has called selective retention laws. These selective retention laws lie at the basis of Darwin's revolutionary world view. In this essay special attention is paid to the consequences for Darwin's concept of species of his selective retention laws. Although (...) Darwin himself explicity supported a variety of nominalism, implicit in the theory of natural selection is a solution to the dispute between nominalism and realism. It is argued that, although implicit, this view plays a very important role in Darwin's theory of natural selection as the means for the origin of species. It is in the context of these selective retention laws and their philosophical implications that Darwin's method is appraised in the light of recent criticisms, and the conclusion drawn that he successfully treated some philosophical problems by approaching them through natural history. Following this an outline of natural selection theory is presented in which all these philosophical issues are highlighted. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende establecer los límites y alcances de las principales interpretaciones de Newton en el siglo XX, resaltando, de un lado, la evidencia textual de la que disponían los intérpretes y, de otro, las corrientes filosóficas y epistemológicas que definen los rasgos principales de sus interpretaciones. Se verá que el rechazo al positivismo no es condición suficiente para establecer una interpretación adecuada y que, de la mano del fortalecimiento de la investigación a partir de los manuscritos de Newton, se (...) hace necesario un modelo interpretativo más amplio, flexible y detallado que los establecidos por algunos de los más importantes estudiosos como Alexandre Koyré, I. Bernard Cohen, Betty Dobbs y Richard Westfall. (shrink)

Proponents of physical intentionality argue that the classic hallmarks of intentionality highlighted by Brentano are also found in purely physical powers. Critics worry that this idea is metaphysically obscure at best, and at worst leads to panpsychism or animism. I examine the debate in detail, finding both confusion and illumination in the physical intentionalist thesis. Analysing a number of the canonical features of intentionality, I show that they all point to one overarching phenomenon of which both the mental and the (...) physical are kinds, namely finality. This is the finality of ‘final causes’, the long-discarded idea of universal action for an end to which recent proponents of physical intentionality are in fact pointing whether or not they realise it. I explain finality in terms of the concept of specific indifference, arguing that in the case of the mental, specific indifference is realised by the process of abstraction, which has no correlate in the case of physical powers. This analysis, I conclude, reveals both the strength and weakness of rational creatures such as us, as well as demystifying the way in which powers work. (shrink)

Descartes held that practicing mathematics was important for developing the mental faculties necessary for science and a virtuous life. Otherwise, he maintained that the proper uses of mathematics were extremely limited. This article discusses his reasons which include a theory of education, the metaphysics of matter, and a psychologistic theory of deductive reasoning. It is argued that these reasons cohere with his system of philosophy.

There are many in the social sciences and social philosophy who would aspire to overcome the ‘nature/culture binary’, including some who, with at least an implicit nod toward a putatively ‘anti-essentialist’ process ontology, have set out with an orientation toward a paradigm of ‘biosocial becoming’ (Ingold and Palsson, 2013). Such contemporary work, however, in areas such as social and cultural anthropology and sciences studies has often failed to clarify, let alone justify, the warrants of their most basic assumptions and assertions. (...) In what follows, adumbrations will be offered for a comprehensive metaphysics of ‘biosocial becoming’ that can stand accountable both to empirical/descriptive and to normative claims. (shrink)

In this paper I put forward a new micro realistic, fundamentally probabilistic, propensiton version of quantum theory. According to this theory, the entities of the quantum domain - electrons, photons, atoms - are neither particles nor fields, but a new kind of fundamentally probabilistic entity, the propensiton - entities which interact with one another probabilistically. This version of quantum theory leaves the Schroedinger equation unchanged, but reinterprets it to specify how propensitons evolve when no probabilistic transitions occur. Probabilisitic transitions occur (...) when new "particles" are created as a result of inelastic interactions. All measurements are just special cases of this. This propensiton version of quantum theory, I argue, solves the wave/particle dilemma, is free of conceptual problems that plague orthodox quantum theory, recovers all the empirical success of orthodox quantum theory, and at the same time yields as yet untested predictions that differ from those of orthodox quantum theory. (shrink)

The studies that make up this book were written and brought together to honor the memory of Jan Pinborg. His unexpected death in 1982 at the age of forty-five shocked and saddened students of medieval philosophy everywhere and left them with a keen sense of disappoint ment. In his fifteen-year career Jan Pinborg had done so much for our field with his more than ninety books, editions, articles, and reviews and had done it all so well that we recognized him (...) as a leader and counted on many more years of his scholarship, his help, and his friendship. To be missed so sorely by his international colleagues in an academic field is a mark of Jan's achievement, but only of one aspect of it, for historians of philosophy are not the only scholars who have reacted in this way to Jan's death. In his decade and a half of intense productivity he also acquired the same sort of special status among historians of linguistics, whose volume of essays in his memory is being G. L. Bursill-Hall almost simultane published under the editorship of ously with this one. Sten Ebbesen, Jan's student, colleague, and successor as Director of the Institute of Medieval Greek and Latin Philology at the University of Copenhagen, has earned the gratitude of all of us by memorializing Jan 1 in various biographical sketches, one of which is accompanied by a 2 complete bibliography of his publications. (shrink)

This article casts light on the intimate relationship between metaphysics and science in Adam Smith’s thought. Understanding this relationship can help in resolving an enduring dispute or misreading concerning the status and role of natural theology and the ‘invisible hand’ doctrine. In Smith’s scientific realism, ontological issues are necessary prerequisites for scientific inquiry, and metaphysical ideas thus play an organizing and regulatory role. Smith also recognized the importance of scientifically informed metaphysics in science’s historical development. In this sense, for Smith, (...) the metaphysico-scientific link, was a basic criterion of scientific validation by Inference to the Best Explanation. Furthermore, Smith’s comments implicitly suggest that in scientific progress there is a dialectic between metaphysics and science. These themes are illustrated primarily through his writings on the history of astronomy. (shrink)

Between World War I and World War II, the students of Columbia University's John Dewey and Frederick J. E. Woodbridge built up a school of philosophical naturalism sharply critical of claims to value-neutrality. In the 1930s and 1940s, the second-generation Columbia naturalists and their students who later joined the department reacted with dismay to the arrival on American shores of logical empiricism and other analytic modes of philosophy. These figures undermined their colleague Ernest Nagel's attempt to build an alliance with (...) the logical empiricists, accusing them of ignoring the scholar's primary role as a public critic. After the war, the prestige of analytic approaches and a tendency to label philosophies either???analytic??? or???Continental??? eclipsed the Columbia philosophers??? normatively inflected naturalism. Yet in their efforts to resist logical empiricism, the Columbia naturalists helped to construct a sturdy, canonical portrait of???American philosophy??? that proponents still hold up as a third way between analytic and Continental approaches. (shrink)

This essay proposes a possible direction for feminist epistemology-an embodied rationality that defines the process of knowing as a dialogue with particulars or the "things themselves." On the grounds that modern reality is marked by abstract projects of homo mensura, I argue that the task of postmodernism is to ground cognition in the world by breaking the habit of looking at the world, as if from a distance, and by ceasing to think about the world as if it were composed (...) of a collection of objects-in-general. (shrink)

We present two case studies from contemporary biology in which we observe conflicts between established and emerging approaches. The first case study discusses the relation between molecular biology and systems biology regarding the explanation of cellular processes, while the second deals with phylogenetic systematics and the challenge posed by recent network approaches to established ideas of evolutionary processes. We show that the emergence of new fields is in both cases driven by the development of high-throughput data generation technologies and the (...) transfer of modeling techniques from other fields. New and emerging views are characterized by different philosophies of nature, i.e. by different ontological and methodological assumptions and epistemic values and virtues. This results in a kind of conflict we call “epistemic competition” that manifests in two ways: On the one hand, opponents engage in mutual critique and defense of their fundamental assumptions. On the other hand, they compete for the acceptance and integration of the knowledge they provide by a broader scientific community. Despite an initial rhetoric of replacement, the views as well as the respective audiences come to be seen as more clearly distinct during the course of the debate. Hence, we observe—contrary to many other accounts of scientific change—that conflict results in the formation of new niches of research, leading to co-existence and perceived complementarity of approaches. Our model thus contributes to the understanding of the pluralization of the scientific landscape. (shrink)

Le présent essai examine d'abord les notions newtoniennes d'espace et de temps absolus en elles-mêmes et dans leurs relations réciproques, puis ensuite dans leurs rapports avec d'autres notions connexes comme celles de lieu et de mouvement, en prenant pour base le Scholium qui fait suite aux définitions formulées au début des Principia mathematica philosophiae naturalis. La seconde partie analyse les arguments et precédés utilisés par Newton pour identifier des mouvements absolus, et prouver ainsi que de tels mouvements existent. La troisième (...) partie montre en quel sens il faut entendre que ces mouvements sont « absolus », et pourquoi on ne peut en tirer une preuve ultérieure de l'existence d'un temps et d'un espace absolus et subsistants. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Perhaps the most influential historian of science of the last century, Alexandre Koyré, famously argued that the icon of modern science, Galileo Galilei, was a Platonist who had hardly performed experiments. Koyré has been followed by other historians and philosophers of science. In addition, it is not difficult to find examples of Platonists in contemporary science, in particular in the physical sciences. A famous example is the icon of twenty century physics, Albert Einstein. This paper addresses two questions related to (...) the Platonism of modern physical science. The first is: How is Galileo’s Platonism compatible with the fact that he did perform experiments? The solution to this apparent paradox can be found in Plato’s late dialogue Timaeus. In the dialogue the world has been created by a divine craftsman according to an original plan. The task of the scientist is not primarily to describe the material world, but to reconstruct the original plan. This view has later been known as “God’s Eye View”. The second question is: If a God’s Eye View is unattainable, how is it possible to give a “rational reconstruction” of Galileo’s Platonism? The key-word is idealisation. It is further argued that idealisation is intimately related to technology. Technology is required to realize ideal experimental conditions, and the results are in its turn implemented in technology. The implication is that the quest for unity in science, based on physics as the basic science, should be replaced by the recognition of the diversity of the sciences. (shrink)

Academia’s mathematical metaphysics are briefly explored en route to an elaboration of the qualitatively rigorous requirements underpinning the calibration and unambiguous interpretation of quantitative instrumentation in any science. Of particular interest are Gadamer’s emphases on number as the paradigm of the noetic, on the role of play in interpretation, and on Hegel’s sense of method as the activity of the thing itself that thought experiences. These point toward and overlap with (1) Latour’s study of the metrological social networks through which (...) technological phenomena are brought into language as modes of being that can be understood, and (2) the way that Rasch’s models for measurement comprise a potential beginning for metaphysically astute, qualitatively and quantitatively integrated, mathematical methods in the social sciences. The paper closes with observations on the general problem that is philosophy, the need to remain open to multiplicities of meaning even as clear understandings are sought and obtained. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to an overview of Cassirer’s work both as historian of philosophy and historian of science. Indeed, the “intelletcual cooperation” between history of philosophy and history of science represents an essential feature of Cassirer’s style of philosophizing: while the roots of a wide exploration stretching from Renaissance thought to modern physics go back to the Neo-Kantianism of the Marburg School, the results of a similar cross-fertilization of research fields have deeply contributed to shaping new standards of inquiry. (...) Cassirer’s relationship with the Warburg milieu in Hamburg and late in his life with the American intellectual scenario are surely worthy of closer investigation. Distinguished scholars such as Meyerson, Brunschvicg, Burtt, Koyré, Metzger, Lovejoy, Kristeller, have disussed, appreciated, critizised Cassirer’s still today fascinating studies devoted to Pico della Mirandola, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, to mention but a few. To explore some of these aspects focusing both on affinities and differences within a cosmpolitian intellectual community can provide a better understanding of philosophy and history of science in the first half of 20th century. Cassirer’s legacy requires, therefore, a new assessment. (shrink)

This paper has two main foci: (1) the history of curriculum design, and (2) implications from the new sciences of chaos and complexity for the development of new forms of curriculum design and teaching implementation. Regarding the first focus, the paper posits that there exist—to use Wittgenstein's phrase—‘family resemblances’ between Peter Ramus’ 16th century curriculum design and that of Ralph Tyler in the 20th century. While this 400‐year linkage is by no means linear, there are overlapping strands from Ramus to (...) Comenius to the Puritans to colonial New England to Horace Mann to Ralph Tyler. What unites these strands, all belonging to the Protestant Methodization movement that swept across northern Europe into colonial America and the USA, is the concept of Method. Taylor's ‘time and motion’ studies set the stage for Tyler's Basic Principles of curriculum design—those starting with set goals and concluding with measured assessment. The second focus draws on the new sciences of chaos and complexity to develop a different sense of curriculum and instruction—open, dynamic, relational, creative, and systems oriented. The paper concludes with an integration of the rational/scientific with the aesthetic/spiritual into a view of education and curriculum informed by complexity. (shrink)

This paper has two main foci: the history of curriculum design, and implications from the new sciences of chaos and complexity for the development of new forms of curriculum design and teaching implementation. Regarding the first focus, the paper posits that there exist—to use Wittgenstein's phrase—‘family resemblances’ between Peter Ramus’ 16th century curriculum design and that of Ralph Tyler in the 20th century. While this 400‐year linkage is by no means linear, there are overlapping strands from Ramus to Comenius to (...) the Puritans to colonial New England to Horace Mann to Ralph Tyler. What unites these strands, all belonging to the Protestant Methodization movement that swept across northern Europe into colonial America and the USA, is the concept of Method. Taylor's ‘time and motion’ studies set the stage for Tyler's Basic Principles of curriculum design—those starting with set goals and concluding with measured assessment. The second focus draws on the new sciences of chaos and complexity to develop a different sense of curriculum and instruction—open, dynamic, relational, creative, and systems oriented. The paper concludes with an integration of the rational/scientific with the aesthetic/spiritual into a view of education and curriculum informed by complexity. (shrink)

Ist der Unterschied zwischen wissenschaftlichen Gesetzen und Theorien ein qualitativer oder lediglich von quantitativer Art? Der Autor versucht zu zeigen, daß Gesetze und Theorien fundamental verschieden sind und daß die Kenntnis ihrer verschiedenen Natur notwendig für ein richtiges Wissenschaftsverständnis ist. Aus seiner Sicht sind Theorien geistige Konstruktionen mit dem Ziel, kausale Erklärungen von empirischen Gesetzen zu geben, während diese Gesetze auf der Grundlage von Messungen entdeckt werden und die Tatsachen der Wissenschaft konstituieren. Erkenntnistheoretisch sind daher Theorien und Gesetze auf verschiedenen (...) Ebenen anzusiedeln: während Gesetze Wissen liefern, liefern Theorien Verstehen. Der Kern der Theorien besteht aus Modellen, die idealisierte Abstraktionen aus Zustandsarten darstellen. Theoretische Modelle konstituieren Ontologien, die kausale Mechanismen aufzeigen. Solche Ontologien betreffen den Bedeutungsaspekt des Gegenstandsbereichs, auf den die Theorie angewendet wird, während empirische Gesetze den Ausdrucksaspekt des gleichen Gegenstandsbereichs betreffen. Theorien erklären Gesetze, indem sie zeigen, wie der Ausdrucksaspekt lediglich der natürliche Ausdruck der Auswirkungen der Kausalmechanismen in Bedeutungsaspekt sind. (shrink)

By accepting that the formal structure of human language is the key to understanding the uniquity of human culture and consciousness and by further accepting the late appearance of such language amongst the Cro-Magnon, I am free to focus on the causes that led to such an unprecedented threshold crossing. In the complex of causes that led to human being, I look to scholarship in linguistics, mythology, anthropology, paleontology, and to creation myths themselves for an answer. I conclude that prehumans (...) underwent an existential crisis, i.e., the realization of certain mortality, that could be borne only by the discovery-creation of the larger realm of symbolic consciousness once experienced as the sacred (but today we know it as "the world" – as opposed to our immediate natural environment and that of other animals). Thus, although we, the human species, are but one species among innumerable others, we differ in kind, not degree. This quality is our symbolically enabled self-consciousness, the fortress of cultural identity that empowers but also imprisons awareness. (shrink)