Available for the first time in 20 years, here is the Rudolf Carnap's famous principle of tolerance by which everyone is free to mix and match the rules of ...

Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle.

For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary.

Professor Hilary Putnam has been one of the most influential and sharply original of recent American philosophers in a whole range of fields. His most important published work is collected here, together with several new and substantial studies, in two volumes. The first deals with the philosophy of mathematics and of science and the nature of philosophical and scientific enquiry; the second deals with the philosophy of language and mind. Volume one is now issued in a new edition, including an (...) essay on the philosophy of logic first published in 1971. (shrink)

Described by the philosopher A.J. Ayer as a work of 'great originality and power', this book revolutionized contemporary thinking on science and knowledge. Ideas such as the now legendary doctrine of 'falsificationism' electrified the scientific community, influencing even working scientists, as well as post-war philosophy. This astonishing work ranks alongside The Open Society and Its Enemies as one of Popper's most enduring books and contains insights and arguments that demand to be read to this day.

Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.

Suitable for students and scholars, this title challenges the assumption that skepticism, rather than established belief, lies at the heart of scientific discovery.

Bertrand Russell was one of the greatest logicians since Aristotle, and one of the most important philosophers of the past two hundred years. As we approach the 125th anniversary of the Nobel laureate's birth, his works continue to spark debate, resounding with unmatched timeliness and power. The Problems of Philosophy, one of the most popular works in Russell's prolific collection of writings, has become core reading in philosophy. Clear and accessible, this little book is an intelligible and stimulating guide to (...) those problems of philosophy which often mistakenly lead to its status as too lofty and abstruse for the lay mind. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics, steering the reader through his famous 1910 distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description," and introducing important theories of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Hume, Locke, Plato, and others to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike.With a new introduction by John Perry, this valuable work is a perfect introduction to the field and will continue to stimulate philosophical discussion as it has done for nearly forty years. (shrink)

In this important volume Habermas outlines the views which form the basis of his critical theory of modern societies. The volume comprises five interlocking essays, which together define the contours of his theory of communication and of his substantive account of social change. ′What is Universal Pragmatics?′ is the best available statement of Habermas′s programme for a theoryof communication based on the analysis of speech acts. In the following two essays Habermas draws on the work of Kohlberg and others to (...) develop a distinctive account of moral consciousness and normative structures. ′Toward a Reconstruction of historical Materialsim′ takes these issues further, offering a wide–ranging reconstruction of Marx′s historical materialsim understood as a theory of social evolution. The final essay focuses on the question of legitimacy and on the legitimation problems faced by modern states. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the key questions of social and political theory today. (shrink)

Change and necessity is a statement of Darwinian natural selection as a process driven by chance necessity, devoid of purpose or intent.

Feyerabrend argues that intellectual progress relies on the creativity of the scientist, against the authority of science.

Summary Pluralism and monism are the two current views concerning scientific research and language understanding. Between them there is a third, intermediate, view. We take a procedural methodology of science as exemplified in the work of L. Tondl, and procedural linguistics , as exemplified in the work of B. Harrison, to be representative of this third possibility. Procedures are cognitive, linguistic, and physical processes which, through their hierarchical interconnections can generate fruitful mechanisms . These mechanisms are sensitive to context and (...) operate in heuristic and algorithmic ways. Their similar logical structure points towards a profound unified basis for scientific and linguistic activities, thus providing an interesting bridge between what is achieved by a little child talking to his parents, and a creative scientist struggling to interpret the results of his experiments. (shrink)

For a decade, we have admired the incisive and broadly informed works of Ladislav Tondl on the foundations of science. Now it is indeed a pleasure to include this book among the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. We hope that it will help to deepen the collaborative scholar ship of scientists and philosophers in Czechoslovakia with the English reading scholars of the world. Professor Ladislav Tondl was born in 1924, and completed his higher education at the Charles University (...) iIi Prague. His doctorate was granted by the Institute of Information Theory and Automation. He was a professor and scientific research worker at the Institute for the Theory and Methodology of Science, which was a component part of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. Tondl's principal fields of interest are the methodology of the empirical and experimental sciences, logical semantics, and cybernetics. For many years, he collaborated with Professor Albert Perez and others at the Institute of Information Theory and Automation in Prague, and he has undertaken fruitful collaboration with logicians in the Soviet and Polish schools, and been influenced by the Finnish logicians as well, among them Jaakko Hintikka. We list below a selection of his main publications. Perhaps the most accessible in presenting his central conception of the relationship between modem information theory and the methodology of the sciences is his 1965 paper with Perez, 'On the Role of Information Theory in Certain Scientific Procedures'. (shrink)

Contains an introductory essay by the editor on the ten contemporary articles selected and on the questions which they raise.

In this paper a model is presented for the growth of knowledge in a dynamic scientific system. A system which is in some respects an idealization of a Lakatosian research program. The kinematics of the system is described in terms of two probabilistic variables, one of which is related to the evolution of its theoretical component and the other--to the growth of the empirical component. It is shown that when the empirical growth is faster than the theoretical growth the posterior (...) probability of the theoretical component increases. Thus, empirical progressiveness of a research program, as explicated in this model, is accompanied by an increase in the degree of confirmation. In such a case the system grows in a Popperian-like spirit, while learning from experience in a Bayesian manner. (shrink)

This is the basis of the first part of the book.