In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, the author argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe regularities that exist in nature. Cartwright draws from many real-life examples to propound a novel distinction: that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.

First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s monumental _Phénoménologie de la perception _signalled the arrival of a major new philosophical and intellectual voice in post-war Europe. Breaking with the prevailing picture of existentialism and phenomenology at the time, it has become one of the landmark works of twentieth-century thought. This new translation, the first for over fifty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available to a new generation of readers. _Phenomenology of Perception _stands in the great phenomenological tradition of Husserl, (...) Heidegger, and Sartre. Yet Merleau-Ponty’s contribution is decisive, as he brings this tradition and other philosophical predecessors, particularly Descartes and Kant, to confront a neglected dimension of our experience: the lived body and the phenomenal world. Charting a bold course between the reductionism of science on the one hand and "intellectualism" on the other, Merleau-Ponty argues that we should regard the body not as a mere biological or physical unit, but as the body which structures one’s situation and experience within the world. Merleau-Ponty enriches his classic work with engaging studies of famous cases in the history of psychology and neurology as well as phenomena that continue to draw our attention, such as phantom limb syndrome, synaesthesia, and hallucination. This new translation includes many helpful features such as the reintroduction of Merleau-Ponty’s discursive Table of Contents as subtitles into the body of the text, a comprehensive Translator’s Introduction to its main themes, essential notes explaining key terms of translation, an extensive Index, and an important updating of Merleau-Ponty’s references to now available English translations. Also included is a new foreword by Taylor Carman and an introduction to Merleau-Ponty_ _by Claude Lefort. Translated by Donald A. Landes. (shrink)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the _body_ to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others. Perhaps above all, Merleau-Ponty's (...) insights about the embodied mind are a bold and refreshing challenge to the new era of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, as scientists and psychologists discover the centrality of the body to mind and intelligence. (shrink)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others.

"... Dr. Ihde brings an enlightening and deeply humanistic perspective to major technological developments, both past and present." —Science Books & Films "Don Ihde is a pleasure to read.... The material is full of nice suggestions and details, empirical materials, fun variations which engage the reader in the work... the overall points almost sneak up on you, they are so gently and gradually offered." —John Compton "A sophisticated celebration of cultural diversity and of its enabling technologies.... perhaps the best single (...) volume relating the philosophical tradition to the broad issues raised by contemporary technologies." —Choice "... important and challenging... " —Review of Metaphysics "... a range of rich historical, cultural, philosophical, and psychological insights, woven together in an intriguing and clear exposition... The book is really a pleasure to read, for its style, immense learning and sanity." —Teaching Philosophy The role of tools and instruments in our relation to the earth and the ways in which technologies are culturally embedded provide the foci of this thought-provoking book. (shrink)

This collection of six essays centers on Professor Koyre;'s great theme: the relative importance of metaphysics and observation, with controlled experiment a kind of marriage between the two. Professor Koyre;'s thesis might be summed up as a claim that when one is seeking to explain the scientific revolution, attention must be concentrated on the philosophical outlook of the scientist and away from speculative theories. At the time of his death, Alexandre Koyre; was a professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes (...) Études (Sorbonne) and a memeber of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. (shrink)

Derrida's introduction to his French translation of Husserl's essay "The Origin of Geometry," arguing that although Husserl privileges speech over writing in an account of meaning and the development of scientific knowledge, this privilege is in fact unstable.

He adds, "I show my worries to be less about the loss of subjects or authors, than I do about (there) not being bodies or perceivers". The book has two parts.

Ihde's book breaks new ground and... makes an important debate accessible." —Robert Ackermann Instrumental Realism has three principal aims: to advocate a "praxis-perception" approach to the philosophy of science; to explore ways in which ...

Machine generated contents note: Preface; Introduction: Husserl's life and writings; 1. Husserl's Crisis: an unfinished masterpiece; 2. Galileo's revolution and the origins of modern science; 3. The Crisis in psychology; 4. Rethinking tradition: Husserl on history; 5. Husserl's problematical concept of the life-world; 6. Phenomenology as transcendental philosophy; 7. The ongoing influence of Husserl's Crisis.

Offering a collection of fifteen essays that deal with issues at the intersection of phenomenology, logic, and the philosophy of mathematics, this 2005 book is divided into three parts. Part I contains a general essay on Husserl's conception of science and logic, an essay of mathematics and transcendental phenomenology, and an essay on phenomenology and modern pure geometry. Part II is focused on Kurt Godel's interest in phenomenology. It explores Godel's ideas and also some work of Quine, Penelope Maddy and (...) Roger Penrose. Part III deals with elementary, constructive areas of mathematics. These are areas of mathematics that are closer to their origins in simple cognitive activities and in everyday experience. This part of the book contains essays on intuitionism, Hermann Weyl, the notion of constructive proof, Poincaré and Frege. (shrink)

This book examines a selection of philosophical issues in the context of specific episodes in the development of physical theories. Advances in science are presented against the historical and philosophical backgrounds in which they occurred. A major aim is to impress upon the reader the essential role that philosophical considerations have played in the actual practice of science. The book begins with some necessary introduction to the history of ancient and early modern science, with major emphasis being given to the (...) two great watersheds of twentieth-century physics: relativity and, especially, quantum mechanics. At times the term 'construction' may seem more appropriate than 'discovery' for the way theories have developed and, especially in the later chapters, the question of the influence of historical, philosophical and even social factors on the very form and content of scientific theories is discussed. (shrink)

Abstract Not much scholarly work is needed in order to stumble across many passages where Edmund Husserl seems to advocate an anti-realist attitude towards the natural sciences. This tendency, however, is not well-received within the secondary literature. While some commentators criticize Husserl for his alleged scientific anti-realism, others argue that Husserl's position is much more realist than the first impression indicates. It is against this background that I want to argue for the following theses: a) The basic outlook of Husserl's (...) epistemology as well as his more substantial comments regarding the natural sciences indeed result in a (sophisticated version of) scientific anti-realism which bears certain resemblances to Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism; b) This scientific anti-realism can be defended against the two most common objections raised in the secondary literature; c) It is only by means of this sophisticated version of scientific anti-realism that phenomenology can circumvent the problem of ?scientific objectivism? (shrink)

Offering a collection of fifteen essays that deal with issues at the intersection of phenomenology, logic, and the philosophy of mathematics, this 2005 book is divided into three parts. Part I contains a general essay on Husserl's conception of science and logic, an essay of mathematics and transcendental phenomenology, and an essay on phenomenology and modern pure geometry. Part II is focused on Kurt Godel's interest in phenomenology. It explores Godel's ideas and also some work of Quine, Penelope Maddy and (...) Roger Penrose. Part III deals with elementary, constructive areas of mathematics. These are areas of mathematics that are closer to their origins in simple cognitive activities and in everyday experience. This part of the book contains essays on intuitionism, Hermann Weyl, the notion of constructive proof, Poincaré and Frege. (shrink)

Quentin Meillassoux has recently launched a sweeping attack against ‘correlationism’. Correlationism is an umbrella term for any philosophical system that is based on ‘the idea [that] we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other’. Thus construed, Meillassoux' critique is indeed a sweeping one: It comprises major parts of the philosophical tradition since Kant, both in its more continental and in its more analytical outlooks. In light of (...) this critique, the aim of this paper is twofold: On the one hand, I shall defend phenomenology against Meillassoux' main argument, the ‘argument from ancestrality’. On the other hand, I will argue that this argument, albeit unsuccessful in its original form, can be modified to pose a more serious threat. Although this modified version can also be circumvented, it forces phenomenologists to clarify their stance towards the natural sciences. (shrink)

Husserl’s Crisis argues that early modern science, exemplified in Galileo, separates the Lifeworld from a world of science by forgetting its origins in bodily perception on the one side, and the practices which found the science on the other. This essay argues that, rather, by overemphasizing mathematization and underemphasizing instruments or technologies which mediate perception, Husserl creates the division he describes. Positively, through the embodied use of instruments science remains thoroughly immersed in the Lifeworld.

Not only a hero of the scientific revolution, but after his conflict with the church, a hero of science, Galileo is today rivalled in the popular imagination only by Newton and Einstein. But what did Galileo actually do, and what are the sources of the popular image we have of him? This 1998 collection of specially-commissioned essays is unparalleled in the depth of its coverage of all facets of Galileo's work. A particular feature of the volume is the treatment of (...) Galileo's relationship with the church. It will be of interest to philosophers, historians of science, cultural historians and those in religious studies. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with the processes of idealization as described by Husserl in his last work, "The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology". Central as the processes of idealization are to Husserl's reflections on the origin of natural scientific knowledge and his attempt to reground that knowledge in the "forgotten meaning-fundament of natural science," they have not always been well understood. One reason for this is the lack of concrete historical examples. The main purpose of this paper is (...) to correct this deficit. The paper is comprised of four sections. The first distinguishes two separate processes of idealization, one ascending from the life-world and the other descending and applying to it. The interaction of the two is then considered. The second section takes up Husserl's own discussion of Galileo's employment of idealization in his original mathematization of nature. The third section examines Galileo's analysis of freefall as a historical example of the processes of idealization. Here it is seen that the evidence clearly justifies Husserl's claims regarding the role of idealization in the origins of modern natural science. The conclusion employs the insights gained in the previous sections to exhibit the importance of understanding the processes of idealization as propaedeutic to the appreciation of the role and importance of the phenomenological methods of epoché and reduction to restoring lost layers of meaning by nullifying the idealizations which cover the life world. (shrink)

EDMUND HUSSERL in his early writings on space distinguishes three kinds of problems surrounding the presentation of space: psychological, logical, and metaphysical. By the term "psychology" Husserl means a descriptive and genetic psychology which seeks to characterize the contents and structure of particular experiences and to investigate the genetic relations between different experiences. Included among the genetic questions concerning space is the problem of the origin of the science of space.

After over 300 years of scrutiny, the subject of Galileo continues to be pursued with unabating intensity. Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter points to the popular interest in the man and his legacy. The Catholic Church, understandably interested in dispelling the notion that its censure of Galileo centuries ago is proof positive that religious faith and science as well as ecclesiastical authority and free pursuit of scholarship are irreconcilable, continues to offer explanations. New books, articles and conferences probe both in breadth (...) and in depth the magnetic field charged by Galileo, science, and the Church. Galileo's analysis of the physics of motion has also received considerable attention. In particular, a great deal has been written during the past thirty years about the structure and objectives of three experiments with inclined planes. Galileo had carried them out in Padua and recorded them in his working papers. The assessments of the three experiments differ widely in points of detail, but all regard them as sophisticated, ingenious, and remarkable. This article presents a new critical study of these experiments. Its conclusion is that one of the experiments is indeed a success, but that the other two fail and are abandoned because Galileo did not have a firm enough grip on the underlying physical principles and mathematical relationships. (shrink)

The history of natural philosophy is something of a no-man’s land between the history of philosophy on one side and the history of science on the other. This situation derives in part from the fact that natural philosophy itself is unpopular among both philosophers and scientists. Nevertheless, the historiographical situation is rather lamentable since the sharp science/ philosophy distinction did not emerge until relatively recent historical times and since the historical sensibility requires one to respect the beliefs of the historical (...) agents. The present book—a translation from the 1968 La philosophie naturelle de Galilée—is to be welcomed insofar as it helps to correct this lamentable situation. It does so by means of a long discussion of the Aristotelian and medieval doctrines of motion which concludes that Aristotle, the medievals, and Galileo can all be seen to be trying to solve the same basic problem in natural philosophy. It would be difficult, after Clavelin’s book, to maintain, for example, that Aristotle’s problem was the philosophical or metaphysical problem of motion, whereas Galileo’s was the scientific problem. There is a continuity of the basic problem, as regards motion, from Aristotle to Galileo which is not to be confused either with a continuity of particular subsidiary problems or with a continuity of solutions. Clavelin is at pains to point out and emphasize the originality of Galileo’s contribution, as stemming from the novelty of his particular subsidiary problems and of his solutions. In fact, the reason that Clavelin himself gives for beginning the book with a long discussion of the pre-Galilean doctrines of motion is that he wants better to explain and justify that originality. (shrink)