As the 19th century drew to a close, logicians formalized an ideal notion of proof. They were driven by nothing other than an abiding interest in truth, and their proofs were as ethereal as the mind of God. Yet within decades these mathematical abstractions were realized by the hand of man, in the digital stored-program computer. How it came to be recognized that proofs and programs are the same thing is a story that spans a century, a (...) chase with as many twists and turns as a thriller. At the end of the story is a new principle for designing programming languages that will guide computers into the 21st century. -/- For my money, Gentzen’s natural deduction and Church’s lambda calculus are on a par with Einstein’s relativity and Dirac’s quantum physics for elegance and insight. And the maths are a lot simpler. I want to show you the essence of these ideas. I’ll need a few symbols, but not too many, and I’ll explain as I go along. -/- To simplify, I’ll present the story as we understand it now, with some asides to fill in the history. First, I’ll introduce Gentzen’s natural deduction, a formalism for proofs. Next, I’ll introduce Church’s lambda calculus, a formalism for programs. Then I’ll explain why proofs and programs are really the same thing, and how simplifying a proof corresponds to executing a program. Finally, I’ll conclude with a look at how these principles are being applied to design a new generation of programming languages, particularly mobile code for the Internet. (shrink)

The study examines the modes of representation and communication of information through illustrative teaching aids in the 19th century. It focuses primarily on the didactic wall paintings and the tradition of lectures with slides and notes, how could the experience of these types of collectively observed images influence impressions and expectations of early film audiences. Didactic images are here analyzed primarily in terms of their compositional features, but in an effort to explain how processuality penetrated into the didactic (...) image of the 19th century also with regard to the aspect of time. As a result, the study calls for a reassessment of the importance of the didactic wall painting in the formation of modern visuality and observational practices of the late 19th century. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche’s criticism towards the substance-concept „I“ plays an important role in his late thought, and can be properly understood by making reference to the 19th century debate on the scientific psychology. Friedrich Lange and Ernst Mach gave an important contribution to that debate. Both of them developed the ideas of Gustav Fechner, and thought about a „psychology without soul“, i.e. an investigation that gives up with the old metaphysics of substance in dealing with the mind-body problem. In (...) this paper I shall deal with both Lange and Mach (whose writings has been read by Nietzsche), in order to shed some light on Nietzsche’s rejection of the „I“ in philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper we look at the manual analysis of arguments and how this compares to the current state of automatic argument analysis. These considerations are used to develop a new approach combining a machine learning algorithm to extract propositions from text, with a topic model to determine argument structure. The results of this method are compared to a manual analysis.

This paper provides an analysis of Franz Brentano’s thesis that psychology employs a distinctive method, which sets it apart from physiology. The aim of the paper is two-fold: First, I situate Brentano’s thesis (and the broader metaphysical system that underwrites it) within the context of specific debates about the nature and status of psychology, arguing that we regard him as engaging in a form of boundary work. Second, I explore the relevance of Brentano’s considerations to more recent debates about autonomy (...) on the one hand and theoretical and/or methodological integration on the other. I argue that Brentano puts his finger on the idea that an integrated research process presupposes the existence of distinct methods and approaches, and that he highlights the philosophical challenge of accounting for such distinct methods. I suggest that Brentano’s ideas offer unconventional perspectives on current debates, in particular regarding first-person methods and the investigative process in cognitive science. (shrink)

This chapter explores some of the major developments in the philosophical understanding of suicide in 19th Century Western thought. Two developments in particular are considered. The first is a widespread shift towards thinking about suicide in medical terms rather than moral terms. Deploying methods initiated by a number of French and German thinkers in the preceding century who worked at the then emerging interface between the social and biological sciences, a number of 19th century thinkers (...) ejected what they took to be old metaphysical superstitions about ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and replaced them with (allegedly) hard-nosed scientific diagnoses of ‘health’ and ‘sickness’. Dismissing traditional moral arguments against the permissibility of suicide, the phenomenon came to be viewed as a symptom of decline or degeneration. How variations of this view, in biological and social contexts, reorientated practical responses to suicide in terms of treatment rather than moral condemnation is explored. The second 19th century development in philosophical thought with respect to suicide the chapter considers concerns its place in one of the most significant controversies in Germany from 1860 to the turn of the century: the Pessimismusstreit or ‘pessimism dispute’. While philosophical pessimism might be thought to vindicate or even entail suicide, many of the most prominent pessimists—including Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann—denied that this was the case, and perhaps surprisingly took suicide to involve a special kind of moral and/or epistemic failing. The chapter aims to elucidate the different arguments which pessimists appealed to in order to ground this position. (shrink)

At the end of the 19th century, most professional historians – wherever they existed – deemed history to be a form of knowledge ruled by a method that bears no resemblance with those most commonly traceable in the natural sciences. The bulk of the historian’s task was then frequently regarded as being the application of procedures frequently referred to as ‘historical method’. In the context of such an emerging interest on historical methods and methodology, at least three textbooks (...) stand out: Johann Gustav Droysen’s Grundriss der Historik (Outline of the Theory of History), Ernst Bernheim’s Lehrbuch der historischen Methode (Handbook of Historical Method), and Charles Langlois and Charles Seignobos’s Introduction aux études historiques (Introduction to the Study of History). These books were quite influential in Germany, France, and elsewhere, and they very much helped promote a general idea of historical method that would become relatively consensual among historians of many nationalities by the early 20th century. Such a relative agreement on historical method sponsored both the communication and the development of a sense of disciplinary identity among historians trained within different and sometimes conflicting national traditions. It was then partially extended, partially challenged, and surely made more complex when, from the 1920s on, social and economic historians became a good part of the historiographical establishment in many countries. -/- The three books by Droysen, Bernheim, and Langlois and Seignobos were already pieced together by Rolf Torstendahl, who studied them as a group of texts that, despite their differences, contributed to shape the developments outlined above. However, Torstendahl’s primary aim was to show how Droysen, Bernheim, and Seignobos all resorted to ‘method’ as a way to circumvent skepticism against the possibility of historical knowledge, rather than investigate the internal interrelationships between the three texts. In this chapter I follow precisely this latter, not yet taken, road, focusing on crucial cross-references between the Grundriss, the Lehrbuch, and the Introduction. I intend to show that, at a general level, the schemes of historical method found in these texts are largely convergent, and that this convergence is due to Bernheim’s reading of Droysen and to Langlois and Seignobos’s reading of Bernheim. I will attempt to do it through a regressive approach that starts with an analysis of the Introduction. Aspects of the editorial history and circulation of the three texts will also be briefly addressed, as a way to illustrate their special importance within the framework of early 20th century historical theory. Because my argument calls for a focus on the most general lines of Droysen’s, Bernheim’s, and Langlois and Seignobos’s schemes of historical method, I will, for the sake of consistency, refrain from analysing in-depth the complex epistemological and ontological arguments in which those schemes are nested. (shrink)

In the comprehension of many 19th century European philosophers, there seems ever present in much of the work, a shared notion of struggle. This notion seems mainly to arise within the confines of human consciousness. The notion of struggle is in fact pervasive in contemporary thought as well, and could simply be inherent to human nature. However, I will maintain specific focus on the notion of struggle as brought to light by a sampling of works by three relevant (...) 19th century philosophers, namely Fichte, Hegel, and Kierkegaard. I look into some of the foundational claims made by these thinkers to see what can be discovered about their reasoning and what sense can be made of this seemingly unavoidable aspect of the human condition. The goal is to see what relations can be made among their ideas and where conflict and contradiction may arise. Once these elucidations have been made, I argue for my own stance on the notion of struggle both within the confines of human consciousness and on the outset to explain my arguments in terms of human behavior. I argue that there is one thinker amongst the three covered that offers a methodology of practical application in a person’s life in terms of human nature as opposed to the formulations made by the remaining two who I consider only to offer general descriptions of human consciousness. (shrink)

The article examines the collaborations between the pensionnaires of the Villa Medici in Rome and the members of the French School of Athens, shedding light on the complex relationships between architecture, art, and archeology. The second half of the 19th century was a period during which the exchanges and collaborations between archaeologists, artists, and architects acquired a reinvented role and a dominant place. Within such a context, Athens was the place par excellence, where the encounter between these three (...) disciplines took place. The main objective of the article is to render explicit how the revelations of archeology, actively disseminated by the members of the French School of Athens—the “Athéniens”—had an important impact on the approach of certain pensionnaires of the Villa Medici in Rome. Particular emphasis is placed on certain pensionnaires, who decided to devote their envois to ancient monuments of Greece. In parallel, the article intends to shed light on the methods that helped the pensionnaires-architects of the Villa Medici in Rome appropriate archaeological discoveries concerning Greek antiquities. The article takes, as a starting point, the following hypothesis: to better understand the figure of the architect-archaeologist, of whom Jacques Ignace Hittorff is an emblematic example, it is pivotal to bear in mind that before the second half of the 19th century neither the figure of Hellenic archeology nor the figure of the architect had yet acquired their autonomy. Taking into account that Johann Joachim Winckelmann, in the middle of the 18th century, forged an ideal Greek model, which was criticized during the second half of the 19th century, the article also sheds light on the fact that the revelations of archaeologists have called into question the Winckelmannian image of Greece. Another aspect that is explored in the article is Jacques Ignace Hittorff’s studies concerning the polychromy of ancient Greek monuments, paying special attention to his Restitution du temple d’Empédocle à Sélinonte ou l’Architecture polychrome chez les Grecs. The article also explores how the shifts of the status of philhellenism are related to the mutations of the meaning of travel to Greece. In parallel, it investigates the impact of Greek independence on the ideals of beauty and nature in arts, as well as how Greek independence is related to the intensification of the interest in the excavations of Greek antiquities. (shrink)

The Polish philosophy of mathematics in the 19th century had its origins in the Romantic period under the influence of the then-predominant idealist philosophies. The decline of Romantic philosophy precipitated changes in general philosophy, but what is less well known is how it triggered changes in the philosophy of mathematics. In this paper, we discuss how the Polish philosophy of mathematics evolved from the metaphysical approach that had been formed during the Romantic era to the more modern positivistic (...) paradigm. These evolutionary changes are attributed to the philosophers Henryk Struve, Antoni Molicki and Julian Ochorowicz, and mathematicians Karol Hertz and Samuel Dickstein. We also show how implicit ideas (i.e., those not declared openly) from the area between the philosophy of science and general philosophy played a crucial role in the paradigm shift in the Polish philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

The present paper explores diffident and dissident practices reflected by the political talk at the end of the 19th-century in Romania. Relying on Jacques Rancière’s theories on the ‘aesthetic regime of politics,’ the introduction sketches a historical frame and proposes a focus change: the relation between ‘politics’ and ‘aesthetics’ does not stand on a set of literary cases, but on political scripts as such. Thus, the hypotheses investigated by the next three parts can be formulated as follows: 1. (...) though determined by an ideological direction (Conservative or Liberal), the political speech still preserves his tendency towards aesthetic autonomy. 2. oratorical merits (hinting at aesthetic autonomy) can turn into practices of political autonomy, diffidence and, then, dissidence. Methodologically, two types of aesthetic practices organize the chosen materials; both the diffident script and the theatre of dissidence help us to perceive how the philosophical and moral meaning of these practices could change into an ideology of dissidence. The formalization of diffident practices, their conversion to outspoken dissidence, also corresponds to the symmetrical symptom of unlimited authority; when old-time politicians warned on ‘Caesarism,’ ‘Vizierate,’ ‘Despotism,’ ‘Omnipotence’ or ‘Tyranny,’ the Romanian society had already been training for a long experience of ‘dictatorship.’. (shrink)

This article offers a libertarian re-examination of Brazilian political history focusing mainly on the first few decades of the 19th century. The article finds two main tendencies lurking behind the various political parties and labels of the time: one, associated mainly with the Conservative Party, leaned dangerously away from the individual liberties advocated by classical liberalism and instead more toward authoritarian forms of government. The other, associated mainly with the Liberal Party, was more libertarian in nature. This article (...) also concludes that other examinations of these budding political parties fall short by overlooking a potentially authoritarian state underlying the Conservative project that dominated politics in Brazil at the time. (shrink)

A brief overview of the main Croatian philosophers of the 19th century is given (regardless of whether they worked in or outside of Croatia). Special attention is paid to Šimun Čučić (logic, metaphysics, ethics) and Franjo pl. Marković (logic, aesthetics). The philosophy of other authors is briefly summarized on the ground of the existing research results.

The paper presents a critical evaluation of the existing anthologies of Romanian oratory and analyzes the pertinence of a new research line: how to trace back the foundations of Romanian versatile political memory, both from a lexical and from an ideological point of view. As I argue in the first part of the paper, collecting and editing the great speeches of Romanian orators seems crucial for today’s understanding of politics (politicians’ speaking/ actions as well as voters’ behavior/ electoral habits). In (...) the second part, I focus on the particularities generated by a dramatic change of media support (in the context of Romania’s high rates of illiteracy at the end of the 19th century): from “writing” information on the slippery surface of memory (declaimed political texts such as “proclamations,” “petitions,” and “appeals”) to “writing” as such (transcribed political speeches). The last part of the paper problematizes the making of a new canon of Romanian eloquence as well as the opportunity of a new assemblage of oratorical texts, illustrative for the 19th century politics, and endeavors to settle a series of virtual editing principles. (shrink)

This doctoral thesis examines the phenomenon of Filipinization, specifically understood as the ideological construction of a “Filipino identity” or ‘Filipino subject-consciousness” within the highly determinate context provided by the Filipino ilustrado nationalists such as José Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar and their fellow propagandists inasmuch as it leads to the nineteenth (19th) century construction of the modern Philippine nation. Utilizing Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive thinking, this study undertakes a genealogical critique engaged on the concrete historical examination of what is (...) meant by the term “Filipino” across a select historical timeline (1864-1898) and the various notions of Filipino identity implied by the different contexts within which the term “Filipino” has been employed. More specifically, it undertakes a selective philosophical excavation of three seminal texts in the history of Filipinization, viz.: 1) the Manifiesto of Padre Jose Burgos; 2) the writings of the Filipino ilustrados in La Solidaridad; and 3) Jose Rizal’s Annotations on Dr. Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. -/- The philosophical claim of this work is the idea that Filipinization, taken as the differential construction of Filipino identity, is the effective translation of the colonial epistemic violence of Eurocentric racism and its consequent “horror of absolutism” into the homo-hegemony of Filipino nationalisms. By fetishizing the notion of a carefully constructed and essential “Filipino-identity,” Filipinization and the current nationalist discourses that utilize them, unwittingly, stands complicit with the same colonial violence and hegemony that they wish to combat. This happens precisely when the very structures of colonial oppression, on the ideological and practical levels, are transmogrified into nationalist ideals that assume legal and political power unto themselves in a self-referential and self-legitimating fashion. -/- Three processes will demonstrate the above thesis: first, by examining historical texts and setting itself against established nationalist historiographies, a genealogical analysis of the term “Filipino” reveals it as a pliable signifier whose semantics have evolved through time. From its originary referent in the Spanish criollo (creole), it has come to refer to people who would have been otherwise entirely alien to this class, viz., the mestizos (both Spanish and Chinese), the principalia (native elite), and eventually, the lowland Catholicized natives themselves. The historical hermeneutic of this identity-discourse in Padre José Burgos’ Manifiesto yields the fact that what gives the term “Filipino” its semantic consistency as a class concept is its essential constitution as a Hispanic and Catholic identity. -/- Second, from this semantic identification of the term “Filipino” as a Hispano-Catholic identity, we proceed to clarify the meaning of Filipinization in terms of the nationalist propaganda carried out by the Filipino ilustrados in the fortnightly periodical La Solidaridad. Here, the specific ilustrado construction of Filipino identity as a Spanish citizen (ciudadano Español) is revealed precisely as a political and legal construct that served as the basis for their own politics of social inclusion/exclusion. Filipinization can only be applied to those who have been hispanized and Christianized and never to those tribes who have resisted and remained outside Spanish colonial authority. Filipinization is thus revealed as a process of Hispanization and Christianization whereby the recipients of Spanish colonial hegemony are transformed into the religiously docile bodies of the Spanish Empire. -/- From this highly determinate context, the study proceeds to examine Rizal’s ontological grounding of collective Filipino-ness in the mythological construction of the pre-hispanic past as the source of a unique Filipino ancestrality. In his work on de Morga’s Sucesos, what is revealed is a mythologization that grounds a native, essential Filipino identity within a past unscathed by the Spanish colonial experience. Such mythologization, however, can only be possible through an anachronistic nationalist interpretation of historical data. Here, Filipinization is revealed as an exclusive prerogative, a nationalist program by which Rizal and the ilustrado class can combat the evils and excesses of the Spanish colonial enterprise. Ironically, though, this same struggle for emancipation also became an instrument by which the ilustrado class can retain their unjustified position of power over those who belonged to the colonial underside, thus, securing the possibility of perpetuating their own ilustrado bourgeois class interests. -/- Such discursive complicity is the essence of the myth of Filipinization: it presents nationalist identity discourse as an anti-colonial enterprise while being underlined by an economy of motives designed to cater primarily to the exclusive interests of the elite and ilustrado class. Thus, instead of securing the genuine, inclusive emancipation of all colonial subjects and a more humane existence for the poor and suffering majority, ilustrado nationalism has, ironically, merely reinforced those operative structures of colonial discrimination and oppression when the ilustrados: 1) grounded their racial theory upon the very same discourse of Eurocentric superiority that they are precisely supposed to question and 2) claimed a patrimony over Filipinas as their exclusive sovereign inheritance. These two factors illustrate how the manifest transfer of power from the Spanish Empire to the Philippine sovereign nation (and later as a nation-state) illustrate how Filipinization merely has transmogrified the face of Spanish colonialism into its new, subtle, and worse form in Filipino nationalism. -/- In this vein, the existence of the 19th century modern Philippine nation merely masked and deferred the crisis that was supposed to transfer power from the Spanish Empire to the multitude of the poor and suffering native indio majority. This crisis became all the more difficult to address be-cause of the duplicitous character of the discourse of Filipinization itself. It has not only effectively transferred power into the hands of the nationalist elite but also captured authentic emancipatory discourse within the identity-trap against which it can only hope to get out. This study concludes with the claim about the impossibility of ever escaping and overcoming the epistemic and practical violence necessarily contained within the historical discourse of colonialism. Or simply, we have no language or discourse that would enable us to overcome the complicity of Filipinization with the very (epistemic) violence against which it has set itself. (shrink)

The book's purpose is to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between physics and philosophy in the historical context of the 19th century. Through an elaborate examination of the influence of mechanistic philosophy, the evolution of ontology, and the emergence of energy, the author aims to explain the phenomenological laws of thermodynamics in the framework of the mechanical approach. Additionally, the book delves into the introduction of field theory and the beginning decline of the mechanical (...) approach. In essence, this book is a journey that takes you through the most significant milestones of the 19th century in the realm of physics. It illuminates a theoretical framework, i.e., critical rationalism, that facilitates examining the interaction between physics and metaphysics. With the unraveling of history and the preparation of philosophical thought, the book prepares the reader for the eventual abandonment of the 'ether' and paves the way for the birth of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The heated debates and severe conflicts between the atomists and the anti-atomists of the latter half of the nineteenth century are well known to the historian of science. The position of Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev towards these nineteenth century debates on atomism will be studied in this paper. A first attempt will thus be offered to reconcile Mendeleev’s seemingly contradictory comments and ambiguous standpoints into one coherent view.

The research focuses on how the Nguyen dynasty it became the first to have the largest territory in the history of Vietnam in its nearly 60 years of establishing and reigning over the unified country in the first half of the 19th century. It is seen that in terms of organizing the state apparatus, Gia Long and Minh Mang retained the system of agencies of the previous dynasties and continued reforms to ensure socio-political stability in their governance at (...) that time. The study also clarifies the social role of Confucianism in the Nguyen dynasty, i.e. in the first half of the 19th century, which, in our opinion, is theoretically and practically significant, with the hope of further unraveling the role of Confucianism in that period. (shrink)

The investigation that I am going to pursue here is part of a larger effort on my part to understand the relationship between Kant’s so-called “philosophical anthropology” and the development of early German anthropology since it is my sense that Kant had a determinate, if indirect, effect on the history of that separate field. For now this larger project has three main foci: an account of Kant’s philosophical anthropology in all its parts, an inquiry into Kant’s relationship to the theories (...) engaged by German anthropologists between roughly the 1750s-1790s, and finally, an effort to track the subsequent routes taken by German anthropology in the first half of the 19th-c. In this discussion I am going look at one particular trajectory in anthropological research where we can see Kant’s effect. (shrink)

Autor prostredníctvom skúmania literárnych diel Charlesa Dickensa, Williama Makepeaca Thackeryho, George Eliotovej a Thomasa Hardyho vytvára mozaiku viktoriánskej morálky Anglicka 19. storočia. Dospel k záveru, že uvedená doba vôbec nebola taká puritánska, ako si ju zvykneme predstavovať a morálne problémy, ktoré ľudstvo rieši v priebehu svojho vývoja sú vo svojej podstate univerzálne, hoci nie totožné. Líšia sa vo svojich individuálnych podobách, v akých sa s nimi stretávame v jednotlivých obdobiach dejín ľudstva.

This chapter traces how theism was developed by leading 19th and 20th century figures (Schleiermacher, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rahner, and Tillich) responding to Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy. Part one deals with the ontological nature of subjectivity itself and what it reveals about the conditions of the possibility of a subject’s relation to the Absolute. Part two explores the role of subjectivity and interiority in the individual’s relation to God, and part three takes a look at the theme (...) of the “unhappy consciousness,” how its development led to important attacks on theism, and the resources available to theology in countering these attacks. (shrink)

Methodological innovations have a special status in disciplinary histories, because they can be widely adopted and anonymised. In the 1950s, this occurred to Georges Laplace’s innovative use of 3-dimensional metric Cartesian coordinate system to record the positions of archaeological objects. This paper proposes a conceptual and social history of this process, with a focus on its spatial context, the Pyrenean region (Spain, Basque Country, and France). Main results of this research based on archives, publications, and bibliometric data, include: 1) a (...) critical discussion of the notions concerning authorship of such methodological innovations; 2) a presentation of the lesser-known aspects of Laplace’s method, showing its contribution to the abstraction and formalisation of archaeological observations and data recording; and 3) the identification of an international Pyrenean intellectual lineage of innovation regarding stratigraphy and excavation methods, from the late 19th century to the early 21th century. (shrink)

The focus of this article is the global and European experience of the reception, assimilation, and social application of the Bible, reproduced in the works of a number of prominent Kyiv Theological Academy (KTA) representatives from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The analysis specifically covers the works of professors Stefan Solskyi, Kharysym Orda, Nikolai Drozdov, Afanasii Bulgakov, Mykola Makkaveiskyi, Vasylii Pevnytskyi, Arsenii Tsarevskyi, Volodymyr Rybinskyi, Dmytro Bohdashevskyi, and Aleksandr Glagolev. The author uses the metaphor (...) of the Biblical world to describe the historically developed spiritual and cultural component of the European world, for which the Bible played the role of a normative and symbolic core. Affiliation with the Biblical world — as a way of broad social application of the Bible and assimilation of the norms and public behaviors sanctioned by this text — was and still is a stable symbolic marker as well as a cultural and ideological factor of integration with European civilization. The historical panorama of the reception of Biblical knowledge and the inculturation of Biblical morality by Christianized nations, reproduced in the writings of Kyiv academics, is presented as a field of centuries-old intercultural contacts and active inter-confessional interaction, and as an important ideological and moral factor of the socio-political integration and development of civil society. The issues addressed by Biblical studies in Europe and the rest of the world and considerations and solutions prompted by these issues proved to be fruitful for both the academic research and public practices in which academics of the Kyiv Theological Academy were engaged. The past and modern foreign experience related to the inculturation of the Bible was interpreted by the Kyiv researchers in the local context, more specifically, in the modernization attempts of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore, the reflection of European and worldwide experience, though not fully implemented, was productive and was a potential factor that could have contributed to the European modernization of Kyiv cultural and religious life of the time and its integration into the global Biblical World. (shrink)

The paper examines the main trends in the search for a theory of general biology throughout the 20th century — the physicalization on one hand, and the semiotization on the other. These two approaches had their predecessors and were formed already in the 19th century biology, as Darwinian and Baerian biology. In theoretical biology, there are co-existing (however, asymmetrical) trends toward specifying solutions and generalizing axioms. The inclusion of the biological organism as a subject into biological theory (...) requires an analysis of the concept of scientific fact. A cross-disciplinary typology of facts on the basis of their invariant features is provided. The main periods of development of theoretical biology are briefly characterised, and the trend towards the theory of biological communication and meaning outlined. (shrink)

Most historians explains changes in conceptions of the epistemic virtues and vices in terms of social and historical developments. I argue that such approaches, valuable as they are, neglect the fact that certain changes also reflect changes in metaphysical sensibilities. Certain epistemic virtues and vices are defined relative to an estimate of our epistemic situation that is, in turn, defined by a broader vision or picture of the nature of reality. I defend this claim by charting changing conceptions of the (...) virtue of epistemic humility in 19th century intellectual culture - specifically the scientific naturalists. (shrink)

The first beginnings of modern logic in Croatia are recognizable as early as in the middle of the 19th century in Vatroslav Bertić. At the turn of the 20th century, Albin Nagy, who was teaching in Italy, made contributions to algebraic logic and to the philosophy of logic. At that time, a distinctive author Mate Meršić stood out, also working on algebraic logic. In the Croatian academic philosophy, until the publication of Gajo Petrović's textbook (1964) and the (...) contributions by Heda Festini, a critical or indifferent attitude toward modern logic prevailed. The first comprehensive modern logic textbook in Croatian was written by mathematician Vladimir Devidé (1964), known, for example, for his axiomatizations of natural numbers and classical propositional logic. In the Croatian philosophy of the 1980s and 1990s, influential logicians are Goran Švob and mathematician Zvonimir Šikić. At the turn of the 21st century, logical investigations are being intensified and extended to various branches of the contemporary logic. (shrink)

Philosophy from above or from below? Higher ideas or empiricism? -/- These questions have been at the forefront of the differentiation of university subjects in Germany since the mid-19th century. Questions about aesthetics or the beautiful, the true and the good and about what is beautiful, good and true played a central role. -/- Cf. my contribution in Grundriss zur Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 1/2, Die Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts: Deutschsprachiger Raum 1830-1870. ed. Gerald Hartung, Basel: Schwabe, 2023, (...) 425-447 and here the original manuscript or the 2nd citable edition 2024 with extended bibliography and weblinks, published in: UB Heidelberg. Publication platform for art and visual studies, Arthistoricum. -/- . (shrink)

Triumphalist histories of science are nothing new but were, in fact, a staple of the 19th century. This article considers one of the more famous works in the genre and argues that it was motivated by doubt more than by faith.

In this paper I discuss the role played by Ernst Mach on Nietzsche’s thought. Starting from the contents of his Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen, I’ll show the close similarities between their view on both human knowledge and the scientific world description. In his writing on science Nietzsche shares Mach’s critique to the 19th century mechanism and its metaphysical ground, as much as his way of defining the substantial notions such as matter, ego and free will. Moreover, my (...) investigation will make it clear that Mach cannot be seen as a direct source of Nietzsche’s thought, since the latter wrote many times on the same subjects long before his first reading one of his works. Rather, it is possible to consider the writings of Lange, Spir and Spencer as the first sources of Nietzsche’s views on the main themes Mach dealt with in his work from 1886. (shrink)

Renaissance philosopher, mathematician, and theologian Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) said that there is no proportion between the finite mind and the infinite. He is fond of saying reason cannot fully comprehend the infinite. That our best hope for attaining a vision and understanding of infinite things is by mathematics and by the use of contemplating symbols, which help us grasp "the absolute infinite". By the late 19th century, there is a decisive intervention in mathematics and its philosophy: the (...) philosophical mathematician Georg Cantor (1845-1918) says that between the realm of the finite and the absolute infinite, there is an intermediate realm partaking in properties in a certain sense of both the finite and the infinite: the transfinite realm. Like the finite, the transfinite realm is a realm of mathematical objects, numbers, and knowledge. Like the absolute infinite, the transfinite is a form of infinity insofar as transfinite sets and numbers transcend any finite number. Echoing Cusanus and neo-Platonism, Cantor says that the transfinite sequence of all ordinals is a symbol of the absolutely infinite, that is, God. This paper considers how the doctrine of symbolism and the philosophers' different commitments to the laws of logic, especially the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), enables these thinkers to articulate a transcendental apophatic approach to divinity. (shrink)

Nineteenth century Christian thought about self and relationality was stamped by the reception of Kant’s groundbreaking revision to the Cartesian cogito. For René Descartes (1596-1650), the self is a thinking thing (res cogitans), a simple substance retaining its unity and identity over time. For Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), on the other hand, consciousness is not a substance but an ongoing activity having a double constitution, or two moments: first, the original activity of consciousness, what Kant would call original apperception, and (...) second, the reflected self, the “I think” as object of reflection. Both are essential to the possibility of an awareness of a unified experience. Such an awareness is achieved only insofar as the self is capable of reflecting on its activity of thinking. As such, the possibility of self-consciousness, or the capacity to reflect on one’s own acts of thought is essential to the constitution of the self. This new model of the mind became the starting point to the thought of central 19th century figures such as Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), J. G. Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). This chapter will explore their reception of Kant’s model of self-consciousness, the controversies surrounding its development and exposition, and the advantages of this model for theological reflection. The idea of mind as essentially capable of reflection provided an account of how the self can stand in an ontologically immediate relation to God constitutive of the self, while at the same time allowing that the self’s consciousness of itself is distinct from this original moment, so that a limited or false consciousness of self is possible. As such the task of the self is to recognize (that is, to realize in and through self-consciousness) who it most truly is, both in relation to God, and in relation to self and other. (shrink)

This is a collection of original papers that look at the ways in which the dichotomy between explanation and understanding was conceptualized by various late 19th- and early 20th-century writers both in Germany and in other (mostly) European countries.

William Whewell’s philosophy of science is often overlooked as a relic of 19th century Whiggism. I argue however that his view – suitably modified – can contribute to contemporary philosophy of science, particularly to debates around scientific progress. The reason Whewell’s view needs modification is that he makes the following problematic claim: as science progresses, it reveals necessarily truths and thereby grants a glimpse of the mind of God. Modifying Whewell’s view will involve reinventing his notion of necessary (...) truth as the pragmatist notion of superassertibility. And, if scientific progress does not uncover necessary truths, then it does not reveal the mind of God. The result is an outline of an account of scientific progress that is piecemeal and fallibilist in nature, yet at the same time maintains key Whewellian themes of consilience and the unity of science. (shrink)

Study on the "philosophy of history" of three mexican intellectuals in the 19th century./ Estudio sobre la "filosofía de la historia" positivista y liberal en tres intelectuales mexicanos del siglo XIX,.

William Whewell’s 19th century philosophy of science is sometimes glossed over as a footnote to Kant. There is however a key feature of Whewell’s account worth noting. This is his appeal to Aristotle’s form/matter hylomorphism as a metaphor to explain how mind and world merge in successful scientific inquiry. Whewell’s hylomorphism suggests a middle way between rationalism and empiricism reminiscent of experience pragmatists like Steven Levine’s view that mind and world are entwined in experience. I argue however that (...) Levine does not adequately explain exactly how mind and world entwine. He could nonetheless do so if he appealed to Whewell’s hylomorphic metaphor. We may prefer a reductive metaphysical explanation, but I suggest that pragmatists only have recourse to metaphor in this case. Both reductive and metaphorical explanations can enjoy great explanatory power if they exhibit a suitable measure of what I will call sematic distance. Semantic distance measures how close or how far apart explanandum and explanans are from each other in meaning. Metaphorical explanation - as evident in Whewell’s hylomorphism and as detailed via the notion of semantic distance - presents a valuable new explanatory tool to those who hold that mind and world are entwined sans recourse to metaphysics. (shrink)

The article outlines the key areas of the charitable and educational activities of the Orthodox Church, which are analyzed during religious reforms in the 19th and early 20th centuries. in Russia. It is shown that at that time the scale of charity aid and the responsibilities of charitable organizations increased; the control over the distribution of aid has improved, the role of the Church in the social protection of the population has increased. The conclusions made in the article allow (...) us to look at a holistic picture of the Church's activities in providing the educational process in Russian church schools during the period under study. It turned out that the concrete activity of the clergy, which was impossible without the proper level of education, placed the clergy in the most literate category of the population. It is the priests, in the absence of a developed education system in Russia, began to introduce primary public education. This article helps to understand and systematize the position of the Church as a spiritual and moral institution that preserves Russia's cultural heritage. Of particular importance is the regional nature of the topic under study, which makes it possible to understand the general and specific relations between the Church and the state. For the international community, the article will be useful as an archival exhibition, which is a rare publication that reveals the relationship between the Orthodox Church and the state in Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (shrink)

Until the late 19th century scientists almost always assumed that the world could be described as a rule-based and hence deterministic system or as a set of such systems. The assumption is maintained in many 20th century theories although it has also been doubted because of the breakthrough of statistical theories in thermodynamics (Boltzmann and Gibbs) and other fields, unsolved questions in quantum mechanics as well as several theories forwarded within the social sciences. Until recently it has (...) furthermore been assumed that a rule-based and deterministic system was also predictable if only the rules were known, but this assumption has now been undermined by modern chaos-theory describing rule-based and deterministic, but unpredictable systems, while catastrophe-theory delivers a set of types describing various kinds of instability and conditions for the stability of a given system. Hence the main trait in the theoretical development in the 20th-century science can be described as a basic modification and limitation of some of the fundamental and strong assumptions forwarded in the previous epochs of modern science. Ironically, the very same process has been a process in which the human capacity to intervene in nature has expanded dramatically and mainly with the help of the very same theories, and not least because they allow nature to be described and made manipulable on a lower level and a more fine-grained scale. While the overall theoretical consistency between the various theories has gone, the reach of human intervention in nature has increased based on quite new dimensions whether in the area of physics (e.g.: energy technologies, chemical technologies, nanotechnologies etc.) or biology (ge¬netic manipulation) or in the area of psychology, sociology and culture (artificial simulations of mental processes, new means of communication, implying changes in the social infrastructure and cultural behaviour etc.). While some of these changes and new conditions can be reflected from within the conceptual framework of rule-based systems, albeit more complex than formerly recognized, others seem to give rise to the question of whether there are »systems« and relations between different systems in the world which are not rule-based? For instance, it seems to be obvious that the notion of instability represents a major conceptual break with former theories of rule-based systems, as the stability of the latter is an axiomatically given property implied in the very notion of rule-based systems, while instability can only be the result of external influence which should be explained as the result of another rule-based sy¬stem. While there are no difficulties implied concerning the stability of rule-based systems, the notion of unstable states of a system raises the question of how there can be a system at all if there are no invariant stabilising principles? This is the first question which I will address. And I shall do so by taking two examples of such systems as my point of departure. The first example will be the computer and the second will be ordinary language. In both cases I will argue that the stability of these systems (which are both defined by the existence/presence of human intentions) are provided by the help of - differently organised - redundancy functions which both allow the maintenance of systems in unstable macro-states, suspension of previous rules, underdetermination and overdetermination and generation/emergence/creation of new rules more or less independent of previous rules by the help of optional recursions to the permanently accessible underlying levels as for instance the level of binary representation in computers. Since the notion of redundancy is both controversial as such and often avoided, the concept is discussed (as defined in Claude Shannon's mathematical theory of information and in the semiotic framework of J. J. Greimas) and leading to a more general definition in which the redundancy functions serve to overcome noisy conditions, but at the cost of rule-based stability, determination, and predictability. A second question will be how the notion of rule-generating systems relates to the notion of anticipatory systems and it will be argued that rule-generating systems share some features with an¬ticipatory systems and that the former from a certain viewpoint can be seen as a subclass of the latter, although anticipative features are not necessarily a part of the definition of rule-generating systems. On the other hand, it will be discussed whether anticipatory systems which are not rule-generating systems can exist and it will be argued that the capacity to anticipate is strongly limited if it is not part of a rule-generating system. Therefore, it is concluded that the most powerful anticipatory systems need to be rule-generating systems. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, physiologists such as David Ferrier, Eduard Hitzig, and Hermann Munk argued that cerebral brain functions are localized in discrete structures. By the early 20th century, this became the dominant position. However, another prominent physiologist, Friedrich Goltz, rejected theories of cerebral localization and argued against these physiologists until his death in 1902. I argue in this paper that previous historical accounts have failed to comprehend why Goltz rejected cerebral localization. I show that Goltz (...) adhered to a falsificationist methodology, and I reconstruct how he designed his experiments and weighted different kinds of evidence. I then draw on the exploratory experimentation literature from recent philosophy of science to trace one root of the debate to differences in how the German localizers designed their experiments and reasoned about evidence. While Goltz designed his experiments to test hypotheses about the functions of predetermined cerebral structures, the localizers explored new functions and structures in the process of constructing new theories. I argue that the localizers relied on untested background conjectures to justify their inferences about functional organization. These background conjectures collapsed a distinction between phenomena they produced direct evidence for (localized symptoms) and what they reached conclusions about (localized functions). (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Titu Maiorescu had a special relationship with psychology under the influence of both Kant and Herbart. The following study presents Maiorescu’s answers to the main issues raised by the materialism controversy that broke out in Germany in the mid-1850s century, at a time when he was writing and defending his doctoral thesis in Giessen. Most of these issues were related to the mind–body liaison and the capability of science to explain the mind. KEYWORDS: materialism controversy; mind–body relationship; psychology (...) and metaphysics; materialism vs, spiritualism; transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Since the 19th century Renaissance studies gained gradually autonomy from the Medieval and the Early Modern studies. In countries like Greece, where the traditional view was that no Renaissance occurred in the Balkan Peninsula during the 14th -16th century as a result of the Turkish occupation, Renaissance studies had to struggle to gain autonomy and distinct presence in the curricula of Greek universities. This article aims to present the current status of the Renaissance studies in the Greek (...) universities and to give a critical account of it. The interest for Renaissance studies in Greece is not increased. Usually, Greek scholars and students feel awkward towards that period because they think of Renaissance as something alien to their culture. It is common among scholars of humanities when they refer to the period from 1450-1600, to use the term “post-byzantine” instead of Renaissance. Also, Renaissance studies do not have a rich tradition in Greek universities. There were no major academic figures who were experts in the period so as to promote Renaissance studies and leave a legacy of students and written works. Other Greek scholars hold that the Renaissance is not a distinct period and should be studied in the pattern of the Modern European period. (shrink)

The 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill is widely regarded as one of history’s leading proponents of inductive science and of political liberty. Yet, oddly, philosophers working in his train have been remarkably unsuccessful in saying exactly what is wrong with the scientific skepticism or the political tyrannies of the past one hundred and fifty years. Is it possible that Mr. Mill was not such a good guy after all? … I recommend the book to anyone interested in a (...) scholarly treatment of Victorian England, of 19th-century science, of the history of scientific method, of the philosophy of induction, or of the underappreciated historian and philosopher William Whewell. For anyone who thinks John Stuart Mill was a champion of commonsense realism, inductive science, or individual liberty, the book is a must-read. (shrink)

Psychology considered as a natural science began as Aristotelian "physics" or "natural philosophy" of the soul, conceived as an animating power that included vital, sensory, and rational functions. C. Wolff restricted the term " psychology " to sensory, cognitive, and volitional functions and placed the science under metaphysics, coordinate with cosmology. Near the middle of the eighteenth century, Krueger, Godart, and Bonnet proposed approaching the mind with the techniques of the new natural science. At nearly the same time, Scottish (...) thinkers placed psychology within moral philosophy, but distinguished its "physical" laws from properly moral laws. British and French visual theorists developed mathematically precise theories of size and distance perception; they created instruments to test these theories and to measure visual phenomena such as the duration of visual impressions. By the end of the century there was a flourishing discipline of empirical psychology in Germany, with a professorship, textbooks, and journals. The practitioners of empirical psychology at this time typically were dualists who included mental phenomena within nature. Accordingly, psychology as a natural scientific disciplines was not invented in the 18th and 19th centuries, but *remade* from the extant empirical psychology. (shrink)

During the 19th century, Emily Dickinson likely grappled with the intricate philosophical and theological responses to the metaphysical quandary of the body-soul duality. Philosophers constructed their arguments on empirical reasoning, contending that our bodies' existence equates to our existence. The soul, however, presented a challenge in terms of empirical evidence. Conversely, theologians championed the concept of the soul as an explanatory framework for the intricacies of the human mind. Their stance emphasized that just because the soul remains imperceptible (...) does not negate its existence; faith in both the soul and God was paramount. These two camps, philosophers and theologians, engaged in a spirited discourse. Theologians disapproved of what they perceived as the philosophers' reliance on mere intellectual speculation, while philosophers were disheartened by what they saw as fervent religious zealotry. Within this intellectual landscape, thinkers like Charles Peirce and William James engaged in lively debates at nearby Harvard University during Emily Dickinson's lifetime. In this paper, I argue that, in "I am Afraid to Own a Body," Emily Dickinson takes her speaker and readers on a transcendent journey, surpassing the limits of even the most eloquent philosophical discourse or theological teachings. (shrink)

During the second decade of the 20th century Hans Kleinpeter, an Austrian scholar devoted to the development of the modern science, published some brief papers on Nietzsche’s thought. Kleinpeter has been one of the main upholders of Mach’s epistemology and probably the first who connected his ideas with the philosophy of Nietzsche. In his book on Der Phänomenalismus (1913) he described a new world view that arose in the 19th century, a perspective that ‒ according to him (...) ‒ completely contrasted the mechanistic and metaphysical world view of the old school of scientific inquiry. The main outcome of the scientists whose name was related with this perspective (e.g. Clifford, Maxwell, Kirchoff and, obviously, Mach himself) has been the refusal of the absolute value of any “truth”. Kleinpeter’s statements on this topic are a good example of the rising of a Scientific Philosophy, whose development involved many scientists and thinkers that later set up the Verein Ernst Mach and the Wiener Kreis. On the other hand, his interest on Nietzsche is a relevant case of reception of the latter’s thought, that Kleinpeter puts into the context of the contemporary epistemology. In fact, he considers Nietzsche as one of the main upholders of the phenomenalistic world view, and states that he «took part at the same renewal of philosophical investigation that arose from the latest results of scientific inquiry» during the 19th century. A renewal whose main outcomes has been presented by John Stallo in his book on The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881), which Kleinpeter translated in German and published in 1901. According to Kleinpeter, in Nietzsche’s writings (mostly unpublished) one can find a theory of knowledge quite close to the one presented by both Mach and the new born Pragmatism, i.e. the complete refusal of an absolute truth and, therefore, the development of an antimetaphysical world view. In my paper I’ll discuss the main statements presented by Kleinpeter on this topic and show which of Nietzsche’s ideas has actually been in compliance with the main outcomes of late 19th century science. Thus, I’ll carry out a reconstruction of an unfamiliar side of the first period of reception of the philosophy of Nietzsche and its relevance to the development of a new (scientific) world view. (shrink)

In the late 19th century Husserl studied our internal sense of time passing, maintaining that its deep connections into experience represent prima facie evidence for it as the basis for all investigations in the sciences: Phenomenology was born. Merleau-Ponty focused on perception pointing out that any theory of experience must in accord with established aspects of biology i.e. embodied. Recent analyses suggest that theories of experience require non-reductive, integrative information, together with a specific property connecting them to experience. (...) Here we elucidate a new class of information states with just such properties found at the loci of control of complex biological systems, including nervous systems. Complexity biology concerns states satisfying self-organized criticality. Such states are located at critical instabilities, commonly observed in biological systems, and thought to maximize information diversity and processing, and hence to optimize regulation. Major results for biology follow: why organisms have unusually low entropies; and why they are not merely mechanical. Criticality states form singular self-observing systems, which reduce wave packets by processes of perfect self-observation associated with feedback gain g=1. Analysis of their information properties leads to identification of a new kind of information state with high levels of internal coherence, and feedback loops integrated into their structure. The major idea presented here is that the integrated feedback loops are responsible for our ‘sense of self’, and also the feeling of continuity in our sense of time passing. Long-range internal correlations guarantee a unique kind of non-reductive, integrative information structure enabling such states to naturally support phenomenal experience. Being founded in complexity biology, they are ‘embodied’; they also fulfill the statement that ‘The self is a process’, a singular process. High internal correlations and RenéThom-style catastrophes support non-digital forms of information, gestalt cognition, and information transfer via quantum teleportation. Criticality in complexity biology can ‘embody’ cognitive states supporting gestalts, and phenomenology’s senses of ‘self,’ time passing, existence and being. (shrink)

PDF includes the introduction. Abstract: In this wide-ranging and authoritative volume, leading scholars engage with the philosophy and writings of Wilhelm Dilthey, a key figure in nineteenth-century thought. Their chapters cover his innovative philosophical strategies and explore how they can be understood in relation to their historical situation, as well as presenting incisive interpretations of Dilthey's arguments, including their development, their content, and their influence on later thought. A key focus is on how Dilthey's work remains relevant to current (...) debates around art and literature, the biographical and autobiographical self, knowledge, language, science, culture, history, society, and psychology and the embodied mind. The volume will be important for researchers in hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and the history of German philosophy, providing a valuable introduction to Dilthey's work as well as detailed critical analysis of its ongoing significance. (shrink)