The present study defines the function of the foundation of science in early modern Dutch philosophy, from the first introduction of Cartesian philosophy in Utrecht University by Henricus Regius to the acceptance of Newtonian physics by Willem Jacob ‘s Gravesande. My main claim is that a foundation of science was required because the conceptual premises of new ways in thinking had to be justified not only as alternatives to the established philosophical paradigms or as an answer (...) to the “sceptical crisis” signalled by Richard Popkin, but also in order to be introduced in the academia. This being my general thesis, different kinds of foundation of scientific knowledge are analysed in the light of the specific problems philosophers had to face. To this end, foundational theories are analysed in the light of 1) the overall aim of their philosophy, 2) the relations of disciplines they thought out, 3) what they regarded as scientific knowledge. Through this analysis, I assess that the foundation of science was carried out by metaphysical, logical and theological arguments, which fitted the needs of answering the didactical and introductory requirements of new paradigms, assessed the reliability of new methodology in leading us to grasp the truth, and provided philosophy with its conceptual apparatus. Finally, I demonstrate that a philosophy of science as a reflection on the principles, methods, concepts and application of modern science emerged in the Dutch Republic. (shrink)

Nach einer kurzen Erinnerung an einige von Keplers Hauptwerken, in denen traditionelle und moderne Elemente eingehen (Abschnitt 1), wird zwei Beispielen die Differenz zwischen diesen beiden Elementen näher untersucht. Das erste Beispiel, Keplers Naturbegriff, dient zur Diskussion der Kritik qualitativer Unterscheidungen. Hierbei stehen Keplers Verhältnis zur aristotelischen Naturauffassung und die Relevanz dieser Relation für die moderne Wissenschaftsauffassung im Mittelpunkt (Abschnitt 2). Das andere Beispiel befasst sich mit dem absoluten Wahrheitsanspruch von Keplers Wissenschaft und rückt damit exemplarisch eine Differenz zur (...) modernen Wissenschaftsauffassung in den Vordergrund (Abschnitt 3). Anschließend werden umfassender traditionelle Elemente der frühneuzeitlichen Wissenschaft, wie sie Kepler vertrat, dem modernen Wissenschaftsverständnis gegenübergestellt. Nachdem damit die Entfernung Keplers zur Gegenwart gleichsam maximiert ist, wende ich mich den Wissenschaftsauffassungen von Wolfgang Pauli und Werner Heisenberg zu, die in bemerkenswerter Nähe zu Keplers vormodernen Ansichten stehen und doch ganz im Kontext der Moderne entwickelt wurden (Abschnitt 4). Obwohl also in jüngster Zeit ganz differente Einstellungen zu Keplers Verhältnis zur modernen Wissenschaft vertreten wurden, lässt sich doch eine Tendenz zur Abstandsvergrößerung in dieser Relation ausmachen (Abschnitt 5). (shrink)

It is plausible to think that before the emergence of terms like “consciousness” and “Bewusstsein,” philosophers and scientists relied on intuitions about phenomena of subjective experience that we would now classify as “conscious.” In other words, pre-modern thinkers availed themselves of one or another concept of consciousness as they developed their theories of mind, perception, representation, the self, etc., although they did not attend to consciousness in its own right. In the early modern period, terminology of consciousness (...) emerges to pick out concept(s) of consciousness. This brings with it an occasion for philosophical disagreements concerning consciousness among contemporaries, on the one hand, and an occasion for us as interpreters of historical authors to better assess their views on consciousness, on the other. (shrink)

El 27 de septiembre de 1943, Hans-Georg Gadamer publicó un breve pero significativo ensayo en el periódico conservador Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten und Handels-Zeitung, titulado “Wissenschaft als Beruf. Über den Ruf und Beruf der Wissenschaft in unserer Zeit”. El artículo, que recuperaba en medio de la Segunda Guerra Mundial el problema del valor y posición de la ciencia y la filosofía, nunca fue reimpreso en su obra completa, ni en los diez tomos editados por la editorial Mohr Siebeck ni (...) tampoco por separado en libros o revistas. Debido a su relevancia filosófica, política e histórica, se ofrece aquí, en primer lugar, una introducción crítica al contexto y principales contenidos de este texto, especialmente por medio del análisis de su confrontación con la actualidad a través de referencias explícitas e implícitas a la conferencia Wissenschaft als Beruf de Max Weber de 1917. En segundo lugar, se ofrece aquí su primera traducción del alemán al castellano.// This article introduces the first Spanish translation of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s overlooked 1943 essay Wissenschaft als Beruf. Über den Ruf und Beruf der Wissenschaft in unserer Zeit. Engaging Max Weber’s seminal 1917 lecture Wissenschaft als Beruf, Gadamer criticizes the bureaucratization and instrumentalization of modern science, recovering the question of research’s value amidst World War II’s catastrophes and National Socialism’s totalitarian rule. Never reprinted in Gadamer’s complete works, the text articulates an early critique of technocratic rationalization, affirming science’s need to reclaim its originary mission. By analyzing Gadamer’s confrontation with the present through overt and covert references to Weber, the introduction situates the essay’s historical and intellectual backdrop, develops its core arguments and traces echoes in Gadamer’s later works addressing contemporary challenges. This first Spanish translation unveils a forgotten text where Gadamer confronts modern science’s distortion, calling for the recovery of its existential and cultural meaning. (shrink)

Iberian repertorios de los tiempos stemmed from Medieval almanacs and calendars. During the sixteenth century significant editorial, conceptual and material changes in repertorios incorporated astronomy, geography, chronology and natural philosophy. From De Li’s Repertorio (1492) to Zamorano’s Cronología (1585), the genre evolved from simple almanacs to more complex cosmological works which circulated throughout the Iberian-American world. This article claims that repertorios are a form of syncretic knowledge rather than “popular science” by relying on the concept of “knowledge in transit”. (...) Elaborating on this perspective, I present how repertorios ended up delivering a worldview from existing materials, a fact so far unnoticed by scholarship. At the same time, repertorios should not be considered an exclusively Iberian phenomenon, but the full scope of their nature as a form of syncretic knowledge should include their networks with migrants, indigenous, mestizos, and criollos across the Atlantic. In this sense, I try to trace the paths connecting productions in the Americas with Iberian repertorios. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, “empiricism” is a label that usually denotes an epistemological view that emphasizes the role that experience plays in forming concepts and acquiring and justifying knowledge. In contemporary philosophy, there are some authors who call themselves as empiricists, although there are differences in the way they define what experience consists in, how it is related to theory, and the role experience plays in discovering and justifying knowledge, etc. (e.g., Ayer 1936; Van Fraassen 2002). In contrast, in the early (...) modern period, empiricism was not a label that philosophers traditionally characterized until nowadays as empiricists (most famously, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume) used to describe their doctrines. Indeed, as attributed to early modern philosophical authors, empiricism is not an actor’s category, but an analytic historiographical category retrospectively applied to them and confronted to rationalism, whose main representatives were considered to be Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and G.W. Leibniz. Such a narrative began to be established by the late nineteenthcentury and described early modern empiricism as an epistemological stance maintaining (1) that the origin of all mental contents lies in experience (a genetic statement), and (2) that knowledge can only be justified a posteriori (an epistemic statement). This entails that empiricists deny the existence of innate mental contents and the possibility of a purely a priori knowledge. In the history of early modern science such a dichotomy has been usually rendered in terms of the opposition between continental rationalist Cartesian science vs British empiricist Newtonian science. In the last four decades, many aspects of this traditional narrative have been criticized, and the meaning of early modern empiricism is subject of renewed studies. (shrink)

Getting physical: Empiricism’s medical History Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9474-4 Authors John Gascoigne, School of History and Philosophy, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2056, Australia Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

The history of the science of the stars (astronomy and astrology) in fourteenth-century Byzantium is significantly intertwined with the implications of theological and philosophical controversies. A less-explored astronomical text authored by the fourteenth-century Byzantine scholar Theorodos Meliteniotes (ca. 1320–1393 CE) provides new historical factors toward a historiography of the differences between scientific and theological discourses, their development in the transition to early modern times, and the different historical developments of science in the worlds of the Eastern (...) and Western Churches. (shrink)

In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the paradigm of a new science, political economy, was established. It was a science distinct from the Aristotelian sub-disciplines of practical philosophy named oikonomía and politiké, and emphasis on its character of science not unlike the natural sciences – still called ‘natural philosophy’ – mirrored precisely a willingness to stress its autonomy from two other sub-disciplines of practical philosophy, that is, ethics and politics. However, the new science (...) resulted from a transformation of part of traditional practical philosophy, allowing the inclusion of bodies of knowledge accumulated by experts of commerce and public finance. Such bodies of knowledge were unified by the (true or alleged) discovery of regularities, mechanisms, causal connections making for a new partial order within the overall social order. How far this paved the way to a science similar to mathematics rather left a normative discipline as alive as ever was a recurrent question for at least a century, until the marginalist revolution opened the way for a sharp division, leaving ‘economics’ as a science of causes and effects facing ‘economic policy’ as a discourse on ends. (shrink)

Logical reflection in early modern philosophy (EMP) is marked by the instability of the period, although it is more lasting (the Port-Royal Logic was nevertheless used as a handbook in philosophy courses until the end of the nineteenth century). It started in the sixteenth century and ended in the nineteenth century, a period of 300 years during which there were deep transformations in the conceptions of authority and scientific method. For the history of twentieth-century philosophy, it was the (...) period of “classical logic,” which lasted from the Renaissance to the linguistic turn conducted by Gottlob Frege. The period was used to be thought of as centuries of little or no original contribution to logic, in which conceptions of logic were tainted by rhetoric, epistemology, and psychologism in the worst sense (Kneale and Kneale 1962; Michael 1997). From the last decades of the twentieth century, however, scholars began to regard this period more accurately with respect to reflection and changes in logic and semantics. It has recently become a promising field for historical and conceptual research; today we can say that the legacy of early modern logical reformism has a philosophical, logical, and semantic value in itself. (shrink)

Monsters as a category seem omnipresent in early modern natural philosophy, in what one might call a “long” early modern period stretching from the Renaissance to the late eighteenth century, when the science of teratology emerges. We no longer use this term to refer to developmental anomalies (whether a two-headed calf, an individual suffering from microcephaly or Proteus syndrome) or to “freak occurrences” like Mary Toft’s supposedly giving birth to a litter of rabbits, in Surrey (...) in the early eighteenth-century (Todd 1995). But the term itself has a rich semantic history, coming from the Latin verb monstrare (itself deriving from monere, to remind, warn, advise), “to show,” from which we also get words like “monitor,” “admonish,” “monument” and “premonition”; hence there are proverbs like, in French, le monstre est ce qui montre, difficult to render in English: “the monsters is that which shows.” Scholars have discussed how this “monstrative” dimension of the monster is in fact twofold: on the one hand, and most awkwardly, the monster is an individual who is “pointed at,” who is shown; on the other hand, the monster is a sign, a portent, an omen, and in that sense “shows us” something (on the complex semantic history of the term across Indo-European languages see Ochsner 2005). The latter dimension persists in naturalized form in the early modern period when authors like Bacon, Fontenelle or William Hunter insist that monsters (or anomalies) can show us something of the workings of Nature. (shrink)

Are psychiatric disorders natural kinds? This question has received a lot of attention within present-day philosophy of psychiatry, where many authors debate the ontology and nature of mental disorders. Similarly, historians of psychiatry, dating back to Foucault, have debated whether psychiatric researchers conceived of mental disorders as natural kinds or not. However, historians of psychiatry have paid little to no attention to the influence of (a) theories within logic, and (b) theories within metaphysics on psychiatric accounts of proper method, and (...) on accounts of the nature and classification of mental disorders. Historically, however, logic and metaphysics have extensively shaped methods and interpretations of classifications in the natural sciences. This paper corrects this lacuna in the history of psychiatry, and demonstrates that theories within logic and metaphysics, articulated by Christian Wolff (1679-1754), have significantly shaped the conception of medical method and (psychiatric) nosology of the influential nosologist Boissier De Sauvages (1706-1767). After treating Sauvages, I discuss the method of the influential nosologist William Cullen (1710-1790), and demonstrate the continuity between the classificatory methods of Sauvages and Cullen. I show that both Sauvages and Cullen were essentialists concerning medical diseases in general and psychiatric disorders in particular, contributing to the history of conceptions of the ontology and nature of mental disorders. (shrink)

As Francis Bacon put it on the frontispiece of his Novum Organum, grafting an apocalyptic vision on a research program, multi pertransibunt et multiplex erit scientia. The development of science becomes steadily associated with the end of earthly life, a theme that would resound deeply in Western thought up until Goethe’s Faust. What grounds then the multiplicity of knowledge? What is the common trunk out of which all realms of knowledge unfold, like the burgeoning branches of the celebrated tree? (...) After the Augustinian imprint of the first Christian centuries and after the admirable effort of the high scholastics’ Aristotelian and Christian synthesis, the seventeenth century undertakes new scientific work with the need of a new steady ground. All the big names of the modern era, Francis Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Robert Boyle, Spinoza or Leibniz, found themselves engaged in the search for a common trunk of wisdom, each of them nourishing the intimate conviction that they possessed the philosophical core which would satisfy the learned men’s newly found appetite for indefinitely extending knowledge. In doing this, all of these masters needed to confront the philosophical tradition that they received, reworking and merging together the old structures of science through this epistemological prism of the search for the unity of knowledge. (Vlad Alexandrescu). (shrink)

A revisionist account of how philosophical induction was conceived in the ancient world and how that conception was transmitted, altered, and then rediscovered. I show how philosophers of late antiquity and then the medieval period came step-by-step to seriously misunderstand Aristotle’s view of induction and how that mistake was reversed by humanists in the Renaissance and then especially by Francis Bacon. I show, naturally enough then, that in early modern science, Baconians were Aristotelians and Aristotelians were Baconians.

The ethos of Justin Smith’s Nature, Human Nature, & Human Difference is expressed in the narrative of Anton Wilhelm Amo (~1703-53), an African-born​ slave who earned his doctoral degree in Philosophy at a European university and went on to teach at the Universities of Jena and Halle. Smith identifies Amo as a time-marker for diverging interpretations of race: race as inherently tethered to physical difference and race as inherited essential difference. Further, these interpretations of race are fastened to the discourse (...) of science and human diversity within modern Europe. Smith’s thesis maintains that the rise of the concept of race in philosophy begins with a divorcing of the soul from human nature and a movement to a naturalistic classification of human beings through taxonomies (e.g. botany, mineralogy and zoology), which dissolved into this dichotomy: an essential difference between people of reason and people of nature. (shrink)

According to Peter Harrison's book The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science modern science came into existence as a result of the emphasis of Protestants on the literal sense of the Scripture, their refusal of the earlier symbolic or allegorical interpretation, and their efforts at fixing the meaning of the biblical text in which each passage was to be ascribed a single and unique meaning. This article tries to summarize the most significant critiques of Harrison's (...) hypothesis and to acknowledge their legitimacy. However, the alternative explanation of the emergence of modern science as a result of disputes over the biblical interpretation and the subsequent discovery of the ambiguous character of the ordinary verbal language is not fully satisfactory either. (shrink)

We have been accustomed at least since Kant and mainstream history of philosophy to distinguish between the ‘mechanical’ and the ‘teleological’; between a fully mechanistic, quantitative science of Nature exemplified by Newton and a teleological, qualitative approach to living beings ultimately expressed in the concept of ‘organism’ – a purposive entity, or at least an entity possessed of functions. The beauty of this distinction is that it seems to make intuitive sense and to map onto historical and conceptual constellations (...) in medicine, physiology and the related natural -philosophical discussions on the status of the body versus that of the machine. In this presentation I argue that the distinction between mechanism and teleology is imprecise and flawed, on the basis of a series of examples: the presence of ‘functional’ or ‘purposive’ features even in Cartesian physiology; work such as that of Richard Lower’s on animal respiration; the fact that the model of the ‘body-machine’ is not at all a mechanistic reduction of organismic properties to basic physical properties but on the contrary a way of emphasizing the uniqueness of organic life; and the concept of ‘animal economy’ in vitalist medical theory, which I present as a kind of ‘teleo-mechanistic’ concept of organism – neither mechanical nor teleological. (shrink)

This paper explores how a set of observations on the weight of lead were interpreted and assessed between the 1540s and the 1630s across three different interconnecting disciplines: medicine, mineralogy and chemistry. The epistemic import of these discussions will be demonstrated by showing: 1) the changing role and articulation of experience and quantification in the investigation of metals; and 2) the notions associated with weight in different disciplinary frameworks. In medicine and mineralogy, weight was not considered as a specific subject (...) of inquiry in itself, but as a “sign” indicating other relevant properties of metals. In contrast, the chemistry tradition was increasingly concerned with the specific investigation of weight as a property of matter, as seen in the debates that took place in the “chemical revolution.” In addition, this study will reveal the versatility, polysemy, and parallel purposes of the recourse to experiential knowledge in different contexts, where the same “facts” operate within different disciplines. (shrink)

Vitalism has been given different definitions and diverse figures have been labelled as vitalists throughout the history of ideas. Concentrating on the seventeenth century, we find that scholars identify as vitalists authors who endorse notions that are in diametrical opposition with each other. I briefly present the ideas of dualist vitalists and monist vitalists and the philosophical and theological considerations informing their thought. In all these varied forms of vitalism the identifiable common motives are the essential irreducibility of life and (...) the universality of life. (shrink)

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Richard Rorty locates the perceived ills of modern philosophy in the "epistemological turn" of Descartes and Locke. This chapter argues that Rorty's accounts of Descartes' and Locke's philosophical work are seriously flawed. Rorty misunderstood the participation of early modern philosophers in the rise of modern science, and he misdescribed their examination of cognition as psychological rather than epistemological. His diagnostic efforts were thereby undermined, and he missed Descartes' (...) original conception of a general physics, and Locke's probabilist analysis of the grounds for rational belief. (shrink)

With his influence on the development of physiology, physics and geometry, Hermann von Helmholtz – like few scientists of the second half of the 19th century – is representative of the research in natural science in Germany. The development of his understanding of science is not less representative. Until the late sixties, he emphatically claimed the truth of science; later on, he began to see the conditions for the validity of scientific knowledge in relative terms, and this (...) can, in summary, be referred to as hypothesizing. Already in the past century, HeImholtz made first approaches to an understanding of science, which were incompatible with his own former position and which pointed to the modern age to an astonishingly large extent. A comparison with Karl R. Popper's logic of research will illustrate how closely he nevertheless approached modern understanding of science. In Popper's logic of research, hypothesizing of scientific knowledge is definitely much more advanced than in Helmholtz's theory of science. What begins vaguely to emerge with Helmholtz has already become an explicitly formulated programme with Popper. Although HeImholtz and Popper are not on a direct line of epistemological development and Popper refers to HeImholtz only rarely and casually, there are in fact surprising points of contact which have not been taken notice of so far and which appear above all if one looks at Helmholtz's understanding of science against the background of Popper's logic of research. (shrink)

Die Coronapandemie stellt die Gesellschaft vor große Herausforderungen. Vielen Menschen mangelt es an (elementaren) naturwissenschaftlichen Kenntnissen. Sie sind skeptisch und misstrauen grundlegenden Prinzipien und Konzepten der Forschung. Esoterik und (Aber-) Glaube ersetzen ihnen den Zugang zur Wirklichkeit. -/- Nicht nur Fakten sind neuerdings "alternativ". Auch pseudowissenschaftliche Heilmethoden und okkulte Verfahren wurden der Bevölkerung trotz fehlender Wirksamkeitsnachweise lange als gleichwertige Alternativen zur modernen Medizin präsentiert. Ganz so, als wären Vernunft oder Unsinn eben eine Frage des persönlichen Geschmacks, einer anderen Weltanschauung. Sekundiert (...) durch das Gerede von einem "übertrieben szientistischen Weltbild", wurden Empirie und Logik systematisch diffamiert. -/- Infolge dieses Zerrbilds grassieren nun allerhand Verschwörungstheorien. Geistheiler, Seher, Schamanen, Scharlatane, Quacksalber, Sektierer, und Eiferer aller Richtungen und Couleur haben Konjunktur. Ein diffuses Pandemiemanagement und eine miserable Kommunikation tun ihr Übriges und tragen dazu bei, dass Infektionsschutzmaßnahmen oft rundweg abgelehnt und Impfquoten sich nun kaum noch signifikant steigern lassen. -/- The corona pandemic poses major challenges for society. Many people lack (basic) scientific knowledge. They are skeptical and distrust fundamental research principles and concepts. Esotericism and superstition replace them access to reality. -/- Not only facts are recently considered "alternative". Pseudo-scientific healing methods and occult procedures have long been presented to the public as equivalent alternatives to modern medicine, despite the lack of evidence of their effectiveness. Just as if reason or nonsense were just a question of personal taste, a different world view. Seconded by talk of an "exaggeratedly scientific world view", empiricism and logic were systematically defamed. -/- As a result of this distorted picture, all kinds of conspiracy theories are now rampant. Spiritual healers, seers, shamans, charlatans, quacks, sectarians, and zealots of all stripes and persuasions are in demand. Diffuse pandemic management and miserable communication do the rest and contribute to the fact that infection control measures are often flatly rejected and vaccination rates can hardly be increased significantly. -/- . (shrink)

The corona pandemic poses major challenges for society. Many people lack (basic) scientific knowledge. They are skeptical and distrust fundamental research principles and concepts. Esotericism and superstition replace them access to reality. -/- Not only facts are recently considered "alternative". Pseudo-scientific healing methods and occult procedures have long been presented to the public as equivalent alternatives to modern medicine, despite the lack of evidence of their effectiveness. Just as if reason or nonsense were just a question of personal taste, (...) a different world view. Seconded by talk of an "exaggeratedly scientific world view", empiricism and logic were systematically defamed. -/- As a result of this distorted picture, all kinds of conspiracy theories are now rampant. Spiritual healers, seers, shamans, charlatans, quacks, sectarians, and zealots of all stripes and persuasions are in demand. Diffuse pandemic management and miserable communication do the rest and contribute to the fact that infection control measures are often flatly rejected and vaccination rates can hardly be increased significantly. -/- Die Coronapandemie stellt die Gesellschaft vor große Herausforderungen. Vielen Menschen mangelt es an (elementaren) naturwissenschaftlichen Kenntnissen. Sie sind skeptisch und misstrauen grundlegenden Prinzipien und Konzepten der Forschung. Esoterik und (Aber-) Glaube ersetzen ihnen den Zugang zur Wirklichkeit. -/- Nicht nur Fakten sind neuerdings "alternativ". Auch pseudowissenschaftliche Heilmethoden und okkulte Verfahren wurden der Bevölkerung trotz fehlender Wirksamkeitsnachweise lange als gleichwertige Alternativen zur modernen Medizin präsentiert. Ganz so, als wären Vernunft oder Unsinn eben eine Frage des persönlichen Geschmacks, einer anderen Weltanschauung. Sekundiert durch das Gerede von einem "übertrieben szientistischen Weltbild", wurden Empirie und Logik systematisch diffamiert. -/- Infolge dieses Zerrbilds grassieren nun allerhand Verschwörungstheorien. Geistheiler, Seher, Schamanen, Scharlatane, Quacksalber, Sektierer, und Eiferer aller Richtungen und Couleur haben Konjunktur. Ein diffuses Pandemiemanagement und eine miserable Kommunikation tun ihr Übriges und tragen dazu bei, dass Infektionsschutzmaßnahmen oft rundweg abgelehnt und Impfquoten sich nun kaum noch signifikant steigern lassen. -/- . (shrink)

Hans Kelsens Critique of Eric Voegelins "New Science of Politics" has for a long time been very difficult to access, because Kelsen has published only parts of it in his life time and left other parts unpublished. This allowed Voegelin to spread the myth that Kelsen had refrained from publishing his criticism, because he had understood that he was wrong. This is nonsense. The reasons why Kelsen left part of his criticism unpublished are mostly accidental. At the same time (...) Kelsens criticism itself is a very sound rejection of Voegelin's hopelessly flawed theory of modernity as an age of Gnosticism. In this Nachwort to the Edition of Kelsen's Voegelin-criticism I summarize and comment the most important points of Kelsens criticism: 1. Kelsen's take on Voegelin's criticism of positivism. 2. Kelsen's rejection of Voegelin's "theory of representation" which is in fact a rejection of democratic representation in favor of an authoritarian and theocratic model of politics and 3. Kelsen's refuation of Voegelin's explanation of political disorder in the 20th century as a result of Gnostic heresy. My conclusion is that Kelen's criticism is successful (with only very minor qualifications) in all of these points and that thus it is an important contribution to the discussion of Voegelin's scholarship which has until recently been almost entirely apologetic. (shrink)

This paper examines the young Kant’s claim that all motion is relative, and argues that it is the core of a metaphysical dynamics of impact inspired by Leibniz and Wolff. I start with some background to Kant’s early dynamics, and show that he rejects Newton’s absolute space as a foundation for it. Then I reconstruct the exact meaning of Kant’s relativity, and the model of impact he wants it to support. I detail (in Section II and III) his polemic (...) engagement with Wolffian predecessors, and how he grounds collisions in a priori dynamics. I conclude that, for the young Kant, the philosophical problematic of Newton’s science takes a back seat to an agenda set by the Leibniz-Wolff tradition of rationalist dynamics. This results matters, because Kant’s views on motion survive well into the 1780s. In addition, his doctrine attests to the richness of early modern views of the relativity of motion. (shrink)

This paper explores the question of Leibniz’s contribution to the rise of modern ‘science’. To be sure, it is now generally agreed that the modern category of ‘science’ did not exist in the early modern period. At the same time, this period witnessed a very important stage in the process from which modern science eventually emerged. My discussion will be aimed at uncovering the new enterprise, and the new distinctions which were taking (...) shape in the early modern period under the banner of the old Aristotelian terminology. I will argue that Leibniz begins to theorize a distinction between physics and metaphysics that tracks our distinction between the autonomous enterprise of science in its modern meaning, and the enterprise of philosophy. I will try to show that, for Leibniz, physics proper is the study of natural phenomena in mathematical and mechanical terms without recourse for its explanations to metaphysical notions. This autonomy, however, does not imply for Leibniz that physics can say on its own all that there is to be said about the natural world. Quite the opposite. Leibniz inherits from the Aristotelian tradition the view that physics needs metaphysical roots or a metaphysical grounding. For Leibniz, what is ultimately real is reached by metaphysics, not by physics. This is, in my view, Leibniz’s chief insight: the new mathematical physics is an autonomous enterprise which offers its own kind of explanations but does not exhaust what can (and should) be said about the natural world. (shrink)

Origin of life studies have presented one of the most serious challenges to the mechanistic conception that life can be explained scientifically as a mere product of chemistry and physics. Hypotheses about the origin of life can be divided into two categories: (1) biogenesis – life comes from life, and (2) abiogenesis – life comes from non-living matter. The theory of the spontaneous generation of life from inanimate matter had been held even by the ancient Greeks and by numerous scientists (...) well into the 19th century. The theory of abiogenesis poses many problems for understanding the origin of life on Earth, and the appearance of life early in Earth’s history. Numerous chemical, mathematical and informational problems arise which make random mechanical processes of cellular formation and function unlikely. Fossil evidence contradicts a gradualist evolutionary mechanism of development of life, especially the well-known Cambrian explosion, in which highly developed metazoan species suddenly appear in the geological column without intermediate predecessors. But the physical conundrums that mechanistic theories of chemistry and physics face are only one side of the problem. Along with a rising chorus of philosophers, Thomas Nagel, an atheist philosopher, has protested that essential questions about the origin of life, and features such as mind, intelligence and morality are completely left unexplained by mechanistic evolutionary theories. In Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, Nagel plainly lays out his argument that the modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain something so integral to nature as mind or consciousness, thereby threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture of biology, evolutionary theory and cosmology. [13] As an alternative he argues that at least natural teleological principles must be admitted to play a role in our view of science. He writes: “Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.” The Vedantic view of the Absolute as sentient conceives of Bhagavan as the conscious and consequently personal source of the universe. This view holds that life is fundamental, and not merely coextensive with matter. It is thus consistent with the law of biogenesis which is scientifically established in agreement with empirical evidence. Life is the basis of Nature, not matter, and Nature is a system in which the different species are nodes or niches, each possessed of variety and adaptability. Evolution is of consciousness, not of the bodies of organisms. The sedimentary fossils are the result of catastrophic deposits, and are thus not indicative of gradual evolution which is concluded only on the questionable assumption of uniformitarianism. (shrink)

This chapter poses questions about the existence and character of the Scientific Revolution by deriving its initial categories of analysis and its initial understanding of the intellectual scene from the writings of the seventeenth century, and by following the evolution of these initial categories in succeeding centuries. This project fits the theme of cross cultural transmission and appropriation -- a theme of the present volume -- if one takes the notion of a culture broadly, so that, say, seventeenth and eighteenth (...) or nineteenth century European intellectual cultures are deemed sufficiently distinct that one can speak of the "transmission" of texts and ideas from the one to the other as cross cultural. I maintain that a process of transforming and assimilating seventeenth century achievements manifests itself in two distinct cultures of interpretation, one developed by historians of philosophy, the other by scientists and historians of science. The first, following actor's categories, interprets the revolution in the seventeenth century as a philosophical displacement, partly fomented by a radical change in astronomical theory; the second, retrospectively applying the post nineteenth century sense of the term "science" to seventeenth century events, finds a "scientific" revolution, or the birth of modern science. The chapter proposes interpreting the Scientific Revolution as a revolution in natural philosophy and metaphysics. (shrink)

The explanation of nature in theoretical terms was first postulated and initiated by Ancient Greek philosophers. With the rise of monotheistic religions, however, curiosity about our transient world was widely regarded as contributing nothing to salvation. There was a decline in natural philosophy, which lasted for several centuries and was then reversed both in Islamic philosophy and in Christian theology in the Middle Ages. At this point, the "Book of Nature" was recognized as a complement to the Book of Revelation. (...) Originally, Aristotelian philosophy played the leading part in this process, but only after Aristotelian physics was substituted by experimental mathematical mechanics did it become possible for modern science to develop. General laws of physics form the basis of the explanation of events in space and time, including life processes. However, modern science has also revealed its own limitations. The scope and limits of scientific knowledge allows for different philosophical, cultural and religious interpretations of human beings and the universe. The history of science demonstrates erratic and persistent developments, but the long-term retrospective view discredits extreme forms of relativism and structuralism. Science appears as a construct of the human mind, and yet it is capable of generating valid explanations of nature. In the book more attention than usual is given to Cusanus (Nikolas de Cusa). -/- . (shrink)

Many scholars point to the close association between early modern science and the rise of rational arguments in favour of the existence of witches. For some commentators, it is a poor reflection on science that its methods so easily lent themselves to the unjust persecution of innocent men and women. In this paper, I examine a debate about witches between a woman philosopher, Margaret Cavendish , and a fellow of the Royal Society, Joseph Glanvill . I (...) argue that Cavendish is the voice of reason in this exchange—not because she supports the modern-day view that witches do not exist, but because she shows that Glanvill’s arguments about witches betray his own scientific principles. Cavendish’s responses to Glanvill suggest that, when applied consistently, the principles of early modern science could in fact promote a healthy scepticism toward the existence of witches. (shrink)

The book on "Science and the image of man" pursues different pathways by way of which science contributes to the understanding of human beings as a species: the scope and limits of human cognition are revealed by the history and the mental structure of science in a more precise manner than by any other cultural effort. Insights into the evolution and function of the human brain elucidate the origin and the range of general human capabilities, such as (...) language, self-representation and strategic thought. These capabilities are the products of biological evolution as well as preconditions of cultural development, which is based on traditions rather than on genetic inheritance. At the metatheoretical level, modern science reveals its own intrinsic limitations and is open to different cultural and philosophical interpretations. Human consciousness is a product of evolution of the human brain, and yet it may not be possible to decode the mind-brain relation fully by finite procedures. One of the specifically human capabilities is cognition-based empathy; it may have evolved in conjunction with strategic thought, because it facilitates the prediction of the behaviour of others, but it also motivates altruistic behaviour. Stereotyped controversies between sociologists and social biologists on human ethics appear somewhat outdated; there is a biological basis in humans not only for egoism but, to a limited extent, also for cooperativity and solidarity. Ethical demands should respect the biological conditions of the human species. They imply that cooperativeness is a real but limited resource. It requires activation, but excessive moralism is counterproductive. -/- -/-. (shrink)

In the mid-seventeenth century a movement of self-styled experimental philosophers emerged in Britain. Originating in the discipline of natural philosophy amongst Fellows of the fledgling Royal Society of London, it soon spread to medicine and by the eighteenth century had impacted moral and political philosophy and even aesthetics. Early modern experimental philosophers gave epistemic priority to observation and experiment over theorising and speculation. They decried the use of hypotheses and system-building without recourse to experiment and, in some quarters, (...) developed a philosophy of experiment. The movement spread to the Netherlands and France in the early eighteenth century and later impacted Germany. Its important role in early modern philosophy was subsequently eclipsed by the widespread adoption of the Kantian historiography of modern philosophy, which emphasised the distinction between rationalism and empiricism and had no place for the historical phenomenon of early modern experimental philosophy. The re-emergence of interest in early modern experimental philosophy roughly coincided with the development of contemporary x-phi and there are some important similarities between the two. (shrink)

Scholarly attempts to analyze the history of science sometime suffer from an imprecise use of terms. In order to understand accurately how science has developed and from where it draws its roots, researchers should be careful to recognize that epistemic regimes change over time and acceptable forms of knowledge production are contingent upon the hegemonic discourse informing the epistemic regime of any given period. In order to understand the importance of this point, I apply the techniques of historical (...) epistemology to an analysis of the place of the study of astrology in the medieval and early modern periods alongside a discussion of the “language games” of these period as well as the role of the “archeology of knowledge” in uncovering meaning in our study of the past. In sum, I argue that the term “science” should never be used when studying approaches to knowledge formation prior to the seventeenth century. (shrink)

There are various forms of teleological thinking central to debates in the early modern and modern periods, debates in which David Hume (1711–1776) is a key figure. In the first section, we shall introduce three levels at which teleological considerations have been incorporated into philosophical accounts of man and nature, and sketch Hume’s criticisms of these approaches. In the second section, we turn to Hume’s non-teleological ‘science of man’. In the third section, we show how Hume (...) has an account of human flourishing that is not dependent on teleology. In the fourth section, we shall speculate as to the relation between Hume’s account of human nature and contemporary evolutionary accounts of morality and reasoning. (shrink)

In Book I, Part I, Section VII of the Treatise, Hume sets out to settle, once and for all, the early modern controversy over abstract ideas. In order to do so, he tries to accomplish two tasks: (1) he attempts to defend an exemplar-based theory of general language and thought, and (2) he sets out to refute the rival abstraction-based account. This paper examines the successes and failures of these two projects. I argue that Hume manages to articulate (...) a plausible theory of general ideas; indeed, a version of his account has defenders in contemporary cognitive science. But Hume fails to refute the abstraction-based account, and as a result, the early modern controversy ends in a stalemate, with both sides able to explain how we manage to speak and think in general terms. Although Hume fails to settle the controversy, he nevertheless advances it to a point from which we have yet to progress: the contemporary debate over abstract ideas in cognitive science has stalled on precisely this point. (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)

Discovering laws of nature was a way to worship a law-giving God, during the Scientific Revolution. So why should we consider it worthwhile now, in our own more secularized science? For historical perspective, I examine two competing early modern theological traditions that related laws of nature to different divine attributes, and their secular legacy in views ranging from Kant and Nietzsche to Humean and ‘governing’ accounts in recent analytic metaphysics. Tracing these branching offshoots of ethically charged God-concepts (...) sheds light on how our ethical ideals and ideas of natural order can still be valuably integrated. Early modern intellectualists valued the law-governed order of nature as a sign of divine Reason. In turn, Reason traditionally ascribed to God has now been partly reclaimed for humans, reframing the value of natural order anthropocentrically, in terms of the value of our own intelligence. Alternatively, Reason may be reclaimed for nature itself, as in an ‘objective’ idealism or metaphysical rationalism. However, beyond divine Reason, an influential voluntarist tradition in theology stressed a connection between laws of nature and God’s Power or free Will. Tracking how divine Power has been reinvested in human beings provides a broader context for instrumentalism and related lineages of empiricism. But secularization can also transfer Power from God to the impersonal natural world. In this light, current scientific interest in lawlike order may also reflect the inherent value of brute necessity or inhuman causal power in nature: this is a deeper way to reject anthropocentrism and to show our respect for the environment. (shrink)

The accent on scientific and empirical character of alchemy, especially from the field of the history of science, promotes the idea that one can understand the cryptic and metaphorical language of alchemy mainly through the laboratory chemical practice. As a result, the tendency is to interpret the spiritual and esoteric language of alchemy, as metaphors for laboratory work and the most representative research on historiography of alchemy that point the spiritual character as being contaminated by esoteric sciences and Victorian (...) occultism. This paper is paying attention to this dichotomy by attempting to understand the exclusivist position of the position that alchemy is a proto-chemistry and to see the consequences of such an interpretation. It is reviewed one of the most representative voices that interpret alchemy as spiritual by Carl. G. Jung and Mircea Eliade, and their rejection, as it is illustrated by William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, showing the boundaries of both approaches and the hazarded character of understanding alchemy merely as part of the history of chemistry. (shrink)

This is an English translation of my essay: Alfred Gierer Wissenschaft, Religion und die deutungsoffenen Grundfragen der Biologie. Mpi for the History of Science, preprint 388, 1-21, also in philpapers. Range and limits of science are given by the universal validity of physical laws, and by intrinsic limitations, especially in self-referential contexts. In particular, neurobiology should not be expected to provide a full understanding of consciousness and the mind. Science cannot provide, by itself, an unambiguous interpretation (...) of the natural order at the philosophical, cultural and religious level. The diversity of interpretations, however appears as a positive factor of cultural dynamics. Historically, the revival of the philosophy of nature in the middle ages included remarkable biological thoughts such as those of Eriugena and Thierry of Chartres. In this essay, emphasis is placed on basic issues of modern biology – the distinction of man and animal, the evolution of human mental capabilities, the physics of the universe as precondition for biological evolution, and the intricasies of the brain-mind-relation. They are open to agnostic as well as religious interpretations, the individual choice being mainly a matter of wisdom and not just of knowledge. -/-. (shrink)

Mit seinem Einfluß auf die Entwicklung der Physiologie, Physik und Geometrie ist Hermann von Helmholtz wie kaum ein anderer Wissenschaftler der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts repräsentativ für die Naturforschung in Deutschland. Nicht weniger repräsentativ nimmt sich die Entwicklung seiner Wissenschaftsauffassung aus. Während er bis in die späten 60er Jahre einen emphatischen Wahrheitsanspruch der Wissenschaft vertrat, begann er in der nachfolgenden Zeit, die Geltungsbedingungen der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis einer Relativierung zu unterwerfen, die zusammenfassend als Hypothetisierung bezeichnet werden kann. Helmholtz entwickelte (...) damit schon im vergangenen Jahrhundert Ansätze einer Wissenschaftsauffassung , die in erstaunlichem Umfang in die Richtung der Moderne weisen. Wie nah er späteren Wissenschaftsauffassungen bereits gekommen ist, kann ein Vergleich mit Karl R. Poppers Forschungslogik illustrieren. In seiner Forschungslogik ist die Hypothetisierung der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis entschieden weiter vorangeschritten als in Heimholtz' Wissenschaftstheorie. Was sich bei Helmholtz erst vage abzuzeichnen beginnt, ist bei ihm bereits explizit formuliertes Programm geworden. Obwohl HeImholtz und Popper in keiner direkten wissenschaftstheoretischen Entwicklungslinie stehen und Popper sich in seinen Schriften auch nur sehr selten und beiläufig auf Helmholtz bezieht, finden sich dennoch überraschende und bisher nicht beachtete Berührungspunkte, die insbesondere dann hervortreten, wenn man Heimholtz' Wissenschaftsauffassung vor dem Hintergrund von Poppers Forschungslogik betrachtet. (shrink)

Here we discuss and hope to solve a problem rooted in the necessity of the study of historical science, the slow deviation of physics education over the past century, and how the loss of crucial contextual tool has debilitated discussion of a very important yet specialized physics sub-topic: the isotropy of the one-way speed of light. Most notably, the information that appears to be most commonly missing is not simply the knowledge of the historical fact that Poincare and Lorentz (...) presented a mathematically equivalent representation of relativity theory contemporary with Einstein’s publication, but the most deleterious outcome is a lack of understanding of how that theory worked within a mechanical wave system to give the same results in all known experiments via an instrumentation-based illusion. Unfortunately those well educated in relativity theory, often haven’t been granted the advantage of contrast this history of development of the theory gives and thus some of the most direct and critical implications of modern theory are often lost on even graduate students. Chief among the implications that should be trivial to a student of relativity is the incompatibility of a mechanical wave concept of light with the modern assumptions of relativity. However, one should also be able to expect a graduate student to also easily comprehend the mathematical necessity of conjoining space with time is only descended from the presumption of isotropic constancy specifically, and further that the mechanics are one and the same as the relativity of simultaneity. However, many published papers appear to lack this understanding. The result is that the modern consensus appears to have arrived at the conclusion that the one-way speed of light is intrinsically untestable and therefore the physics community has accidentally pushed Minkowski spacetime, and most directly, the relativity of simultaneity, into the domain of pseudoscience, leaving only the historical relativistic “ether” described by Mansouri-Sexl test theory (AKA Lorentz Ether Theory) as the only workable alternative. This situation must be re-examined at the lowest possible level to arrive at an appropriate experimental regime. (shrink)

This paper sets out to undermine the view that a commitment to the early modern conception of the mind as immortalized in Ryle’s metaphor of the (Cartesian) ghost in the machine and in Quine’s metaphor of the (Lockean) myth of the museum is required to articulate a defence of the sui generis character of humanistic explanations. These powerful metaphors have not only contributed to undermining the claim for methodological pluralism by caricaturizing the arguments for disunity in the sciences; (...) they have also, and more worryingly, planted red herrings that have diverted attention away from the genuine issues at stake. This paper is an exercise in removing these false clues to reveal what the claim for the autonomy of humanistic explanations really amounts to. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is twofold. First, I want to analyze two early texts by Vilém Flusser in order to explore what may have been his conceptualization of the relationship between science and philosophy. My analysis suggests that Flusser thought of both as tools to analyze reality by analyzing language. While he saw science as a (sometimes too vigorous) force forward, he viewed philosophy as what can prevent some of the negative consequences of such progress. In (...) direct comparison, Flusser thought of science as a discourse with the purpose to provide novel information and of philosophy as what can keep objective science in check by moving the discourse into the realm of the subjective. It remains to be explored whether these results also apply to Flusser’s later writings. My second goal is to show the relationship between three aspects of modern science (crisis, contrast, and trying out) and what I see as Flusser’s early (mid 1960s) view of science in relation to philosophy and poetry. -/- . (shrink)

Review of THEO C. MEYERING, Historical Roots of Cognitive Science : The Rise of a Cognitive Theory of Perception from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century. Boston: Kluwer, xix + 250 pp. $69.00. Examines the author's interpretation of Aristotelian theories of perceptual cognition, early modern theories, and Helmholtz's theory.

In the growing Prussian university system of the early nineteenth century, "Wissenschaft" (science) was seen as an endeavor common to university faculties, characterized by a rigorous methodology. On this view, history and jurisprudence are sciences, as much as is physics. Nineteenth century trends challenged this view: the increasing influence of materialist and positivist philosophies, profound changes in the relationships between university faculties, and the defense of Kant's classification of the sciences by neo-Kantians. Wilhelm Dilthey's defense of the (...) independence of the methodology of the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) from those of the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) is as much a return to the ideal of Wissenschaft as a cooperative endeavor as it is a defense of the autonomy of interpretive or hermeneutic methods. The debate between Dilthey and the neo-Kantian Wilhelm Windelband at the close of the century illuminates the development of this dialogue over the nineteenth century. (shrink)

This piece explores the origins of science fiction in philosophical speculation about the size of the universe, the existence of other solar systems and other galaxies, and the possibility of alien life. Science fiction helps us to grapple with the dizzying possibilities that a vast universe affords, by allowing our imagination to fill in the details.

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster of (...) disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to a comparison between Ernst Mach's and Friedrich Nietzsche's anti-metaphysical approach to scientific and philosophical concepts. By making reference to Mach’s early essay on the conservation of energy (Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit, 1872), I argue that Nietzsche shares with him the idea that the concepts we adopt are only useful fictions developed during the history of humankind and its culture. This idea is fundamental for the development of (...) modern science, since Mach’s epistemology contributed to give up the mechanistic (Newtonian) view of physics. (shrink)