Twelve essays explore the philosophy of science in general and the physical sciences in particular A common theme unites all twelve essays: In discussing the ...

In this insightful study of the common origins of analytic and continental philosophy, Friedman looks at how social and political events intertwined and influenced philosophy during the early twentieth century, ultimately giving rise to the two very different schools of thought. He shows how these two approaches, now practiced largely in isolation from one another, were once opposing tendencies within a common discussion. Already polarized by their philosophical disagreements, these approaches were further split apart by the rise of Naziism and (...) the resulting emigration of all influential German-speaking philosophers except for Heidegger. Although the book gives a general overview of the philosophical issues of the period, the author pays special attention to the relationships among three key twentieth-century philosophers: Rudolf Carnap, Ernst Cassirer, and Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

Biographical material.--Descriptive and critical essays on the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer.--The philosopher speaks for himself.--Bibliography of the writings of Ernst Cassirer.

v. 1. Language.--v. 2. Mythical thought.--v. 3. The phenomenology of knowledge.--v. 4. The metaphysics of symbolic forms.

The paper (given in the section on "Recent work in the History of Philosophy of Science) discusses the method and some of the results of the doctoral dissertation on philosophical interpretations of Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, submitted to the Dept. for History of Science, Univ. of Hamburg, in 1989, also published by Birkhauser, Basel, in 1990. It is claimed that many of the gross oversimplifications, misunderstandings and misinterpretations occurring in more than 2500 texts about the theories of (...) relativity written by scientists, philosophers, and laymen contemporary to Einstein can in fact serve as a clue to a better understanding of the general process by which philosophical interpretations are formed. Another very important source for answering the question of how misinterpretations are formed are hitherto unpublished documents in the estates of physicists and philosophers of that time, including apart from Einstein himself: Bergson, Bridgman, Carnap, Cassirer, Metz, Meyerson, Petzoldt, Reichenbach, Schlick and Vaihinger. (shrink)