Descartes' account of the material world relies heavily on time. Most importantly, time is a component of speed, which figures in his fundamental conservation principle and laws. However, in his most systematic discussion of the concept, time is treated as some-how reducible both to thought and to motion. Such reductionistic views, while common among Descartes' late scholastic contemporaries, are very ill-suited to Cartesian physics. I show that, in spite of the apparent identifications with thought and motion, Cartesian (...) time retains—in the form of what I will call 'successive duration'—precisely the intrinsic structure necessary to serve as an independent parameter of quantitative physics. As is often the case with Descartes, he gives the impression of embracing traditional doctrines while in fact radically transforming the underlying concepts to serve his scientific agenda. His theory of time, though formulated in Aristotelian terms, anticipates Newton in important respects. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, artists and scholars have pursued connections between modern art movements and scientific exploration and expertise. Particularly in discussions of Cubism and Futurism, artists and historians have employed the terms ‘fourth dimension’, ‘simultaneity’, and ‘space-time’ in their artistic theories. Select scholars have connected the use of these terms with Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity. This paper presents brief notes on this perceived intersection between Western science and art during the early to mid-twentieth (...) century. It focuses on the Bauhaus master Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, for whom ideas of “space-time” offered new and dynamic possibilities for art and perception. Rather than solely trying to interpret or represent Einstein’s theories in art, Moholy-Nagy considered the artistic implications of a theory that challenged the notion of absolute time and space. His writing on technology and the use of projected light to produce spatial modulation greatly impacted subsequent generations of artists. Moholy-Nagy also viewed greater collaboration within the disciplines of science and art as necessary. He argued that in order to best respond to the twentieth century a new generation of artists must be equipped with both technical and scientific expertise. (shrink)

The reception of the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus in Jewish thought of the 17th-century period is a good exemplification of the issue concerning the formation of the relationship between natural science and theology, or more broadly: between science and religion. The fundamental question concerning this relationship, which we can ask from today’s perspective of this problem, is: How does it happen that claims of a scientific nature, which are initially considered from a religious point of (...) view to be incompatible with the religious view of the world, are later accepted as possible to agree with this image of reality and are assimilated by a given religion? Based on the reception of the Copernican image of the universe by two representatives of Jewish philosophy in the 17th century—David Gans and Joseph Solomon Delmedigo—it is possible to trace this process and pose the thesis that it takes place according to two strategies. Within the framework of the first one, represented by Gans, in a situation of incompatibility between the scientific and religious images of nature, a scientific theory is sought that explains the observed phenomena and, on the other hand, satisfies the religious claims. Finding such a theory solves the problem of the incompatibility mentioned above of images of the world, gives the theory credibility from the religious point of view and constitutes an argument for its correctness. The second strategy, represented by Delmedigo, consists in refraining from pursuing a direct, immediate, and unequivocal reconciliation of the two images of the world while at the same time recognizing a properly justified scientific theory as correctly describing and explaining the phenomena occurring in nature. Consequently, the apparent incompatibility between the scientific and the religious worldview demands either a reformulation of religious statements in such a way as to remove this incompatibility or the restriction of the meaning of religious statements to the strictly religious and moral sphere, without the ambition to speak about nature. In either case, however, it is already a task for the representatives of the religion concerned who, when confronted with adequately justified scientific claims, to avoid exposing their religion to the accusation that its claims are unreasonable and anachronistic, undertake the task mentioned above of modifying or limiting the scope of their statements. It seems that in the representatives of Jewish thought and Judaism, who are the successors of Gans and Delmedigo, generally speaking, the second strategy has prevailed in this version, in which one abandons the claim of religion to statements about the material world at the price of a significant divergence of the paths of science and religion. Consequently, it treats them as different narratives, describing and explaining two separate spheres of reality. (shrink)

This introduction to one of the liveliest and most popular fields in philosophy is written specifically for a beginning readership with no background in philosophy or science. Step-by-step analyses of the key arguments are provided and the philosophical heart of the issues is revealed without recourse to jargon, maths, or logical formulas. The book introduces Einstein's revolutionary ideas in a clear and simple way, along with the concepts and arguments of philosophers, both ancient and modern that have proved of (...) lasting value. Specifically, the theories of the ancient Greek philosophers, Zeno, Euclid and Parmenides are considered alongside the ideas of Newton, Leibniz and Kant as well as the giants of twentieth-century physics, Einstein and Lorentz. The problems at the heart of the philosophy of space and time, such as change, motion, infinity, shape, and inflation, are examined and the seismic impact made by relativity theory and quantum theory is assessed in the light of the latest research. The writing is lucid and entertaining, allowing a beginning readership to grasp some difficult concepts while offering the more experienced reader a succinct and illuminating presentation of the state of the debate. "Space, Time and Einstein" shows the reader the excitement of scientific discovery and the beauty of theory in the search for answers to these fundamental questions. (shrink)

In this book, modern scientists and philosophers of science confront the prophetic legacy of the 17th century philosopher Leibnizâ "a metaphysical agenda full of ideas presaging todayâ (TM)s state of the art research into relativity and quantum cosmology; the physics of force, mass, momentum, time and space; complexity and chaos theories; fundamental particles and multiple worlds; and of the electronic cosmos of our computer era. Their immense relevance to us is demonstrated by the engagement with (...) them of over 200 present-day scientific minds. In essence this monograph comprises a survey and critical comparison of interlocking texts, and will serve philosophers as a gateway into fundamental science from the angle of metaphysics, as well as scientists as a documentation of Leibnizâ (TM)s profound philosophical impact on their own fields. (shrink)

Wolf's study represents an incredible work of scholarship. A full and detailed account of three centuries of innovation, these two volumes provide a complete portrait of the foundations of modern science and philosophy. Tracing the origins and development of the achievements of the modern age, it is the story of the birth and growth of the modern mind. A thoroughly comprehensive sourcebook, it deals with all the important developments in science and many of the innovations in the social (...) sciences, British and Continental philosophy and psychology. Wolf's exposition is clear and accessible. As well as its comprehensive treatment of the practical innovations, it includes a wealth of biographical information to give a human aspect to the extensive canvas. A mine of useful information that will be repeatedly used for reference, it is also lavishishly illustrated throughout. These two volumes, published together for the first time, present in one invaluable source the history, methods and principles that form the foundations of science and philosophy. --covers both the major and minor figures in the history of science and philosophy --accessible to the general reader --provides all necessary information on the period immediately before and after the dates covered --both volumes are fully indexed --lavishly illustrated with over 660 portraits, diagrams of scientific apparatus and instruments, frontispieces, B&W photographs Abraham Wolf (1877-1948) other works include: The Oldest Biography of Spinoza (1927), The Philosophy of Nietzsche (1915). (shrink)

This article documents the general tendency of seventeenth-century natural philosophers, irrespective of whether they were atomists or anti-atomists, to regard space, time and matter as magnitudes having the same internal composition. It examines the way in which authors such as Fromondus, Basson, Sennert, Arriaga, Galileo, Magnen, Descartes, Gassendi, Charleton as well as the young Newton motivated their belief in the isomorphism of space, time and matter, and how this belief reflected on their views concerning the (...) relation between geometry and physics. Special attention is paid to the fact that most of the authors mentioned above regarded rarefaction and condensation, on the one hand, and acceleration and deceleration, on the other hand, as analogous phenomena, which consequently had to be explained in similar terms. (shrink)

The book presented here is dedicated to the scientist, anatomist, geologist, theologian and bishop, Niels Stensen. He was born in 1638 in Copenhagen into a family of Lutheran parsons and preachers. He studied first in his native town and then at the Faculty of medicine in Leiden, in the Netherlands, before embarking on several trips throughout Europe, in France and Italy in particular. On November 2, 1667, he converted to Catholicism in Florence, and from then his interests turned more and (...) more toward theology. However, he still published many scientific works before being ordained bishop in Rome in 1677. From 1678, he lived in Schwerin, the seat of his bishopric, where he died in 1686. Three centuries later, following the pressing demands of a committee of supporters led mainly by Gustav Scherz, the canonization process began, and in 1988 Stensen was finally declared Blessed of the Roman Catholic Church.The book edited by Kardel and Maquet collects for the first time the English tran .. (shrink)

Abstract.The aim of this paper is to examine the work of Tschirnhaus, La Hire and Leibniz on the theory of caustics, a subject whose history is closely linked to geometrical optics. The curves in question were examined by the most eminent mathematicians of the 17th century such as Huygens, Barrow and Newton and were subsequently studied analytically from the time of Tschirnhaus until the 19th century.Leibniz was interested in caustics and the subject probably inspired him in (...) his discovery of the concept of envelopes of lines. (shrink)

The comparison made by Ada Lovelace in 1843 between the Analytical Engine and the Jacquard loom is one of the well-known analogies between looms and computation machines. Given the fact that weaving – and textile production in general – is one of the oldest cultural techniques in human history, the question arises whether this was the first time that such a parallel was drawn. As this paper will show, centuries before Lovelace’s analogy, such a comparison was made by Gottfried (...) Wilhelm Leibniz. During the 17th century, Leibniz compared his calculating machines with another textile machine, the stocking frame, a machine which mechanized knitting and which was invented in 1589. During the following centuries, this machine was considered as a technological wonder and as a creation of God, and, during the last decades of the 17th century, Leibniz emphasized the need to consider it and other textile machines mathematically. What, then, were the reasons for the parallel drawn between this machine and Leibniz’s automatic computation machines? And what were the consequences of this analogy concerning the artisanal knowledge embedded in manual textile practices? (shrink)

Locke is famed for his caution in speculative matters: “Men, extending their enquiries beyond their capacities and letting their thoughts wander into those depths where they can find no sure footing; ‘tis no wonder that they raise questions and multiply disputes”. And he is skeptical about the pretensions of natural philosophy, which he says is “not capable of being made a science”. And yet Locke is confident that “Our reason leads us to the knowledge of this certain and evident (...) truth, that there is an eternal, most powerful and most knowing being; which whether anyone will please to call God it matters not”. His certainty about the existence and attributes of God, I will argue, led him to surprisingly strong convictions about a deep and disputed problem at the intersection of seventeenth century metaphysics and natural philosophy: the absolute reality of space and time. Specifically, he based his absolutist conceptions of space and time on God’s literal omnipresence and eternity. Leibniz probably had Locke in mind when he inveighed in 1716 against “real absolute space, the idol of some modern Englishmen”. And Leibniz was right a decade earlier to voice through his mouthpiece Theophilus the suspicion that, despite Locke’s claim to know nothing about the substance of void space, “there are grounds for thinking you know more about it than you say or believe that you do. Some people have thought that God is the place of objects”. (shrink)

Paradigm-shifts, termed scientific revolutions, occur periodically in the course of science's development The twentieth century witnessed a number of revolutions, first by Albert Einstein and then by Niels Bohr in physics, and subsequently in biology, cosmology and, through the pioneering work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in the transdisciplinary area that includes human mind and consciousness. But scientific development did not come to a standstill: while the spirit of Einstein and Teilhard is as present as ever, their specific (...) theories are subject to the dynamics of theory development through periods of "normal" and "revolutionary" science. Today another revolution is about to occur, bringing science to the threshold of a more comprehensive and integrated account of the observed phenomena. The currently emerging transdisciplinary unified theory is consistent with the goals and vision of both Albert Einstein and Teilhard de Chardin. It penetrates deeper into the domains of reality than the 20th century's mainstream physical, biological and psychological theories did -below the level of the quanta that populate space-time, to the quantum vacuum, better termed cosmic plenum, that generates the quanta and interconnects them throughout space and time. In the twentieth century Einstein's general relativity gave us the relativistically interlinked universe, where all things are connected by signals propagating across the geometric structure of space-time, and Teilhard de Chardin laid the foundations of a unified theory where life and mind emerge consistently out of the physical world. In the twenty-first century transdisciplinary unified theory will extend these conceptions and give us the coherent universe, where all things are intrinsically connected by a fundamental information and virtual-energy field at a fundamental level of physical reality. /// A mudança de paradigmas, a que frequentemente damos o nome de revoluções científicas, ocorrem periodicamente no decurso da evolução científica. O século XX testemunhou uma importante série de revoluções científicas, primeiro por Albert Einstein e depois por Niels Bohr no âmbito da física, e subsequentemente em biologia, cosmo-logia e, graças ao trabalho pioneiro de Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, na área transdisci-plinar que inclui os fenómenos da mente humana e da consciência. Mas o desenvolvimento científico não estagnou: enquanto que o espírito de Albert Einstein e de Teilhard de Chardin continua certamente presente, a verdade é que as suas teorias têm-se necessariamente submetido à dinâmica própria do desenvolvimento das teorias, o que acontece ao longo de períodos de ciência ditos "normais" quer "revolucionários". Segundo o autor do artigo, a humanidade está hoje a ponto de assistir a uma nova revolução, a qual colocará a ciência no limiar de produzir uma narrativa mais compreensiva e integrada dos fenómenos observados. Nesse sentido, a teoria transdisciplinar unificada é perfeitamente consistente com os objectivos e a visão tanto de Albert Einstein como de Teilhard de Chardin. Com efeito, esta teoria penetra mais fundo nos domínios da realidade do que as teorias mais comuns que o século XX produziu seja no domínio da física, da biologia ou da psicologia — passando do domínio dos quanta que povoam o espaço-tempo, para o quantum vacuum, mais precisamente designado plenum cósmico que gera os quanta e os interconecta através do espaço-tempo. No século XX, a teoria da relatividade generalizada de Einstein deu-nos um universo relativisticamente interconectado, no qual todas as coisas estão conectadas por sinais que se propagam através da estrutura geométrica do espaço-tempo. Por seu lado, Teilhard de Chardin lançou os fundamentos de uma teoria unificada em que os fenómenos da vida e da consciência emergem consistentemente do mundo físico. Agora, no século XXI, diz o autor do artigo, a teoria transdisciplinar unificada destina-se a alargar o âmbito destas concepções geniais de modo a dar-nos um universo coerente em que todas as coisas estão intrinsecamente conectadas por uma informação fundamental e um campo energético virtual ao nível mais profundo da realidade física. (shrink)

This book describes the development of the scientific article from its modest beginnings to the global phenomenon that it has become today. The authors focus on changes in the style, organization, and argumentative structure of scientific communication over time. This outstanding resource is the definitive study on the rhetoric of science.

ABSTRACT The beginning of the twentieth century was a period of an intense development of technological utopia. The advancement of the natural sciences at that time provided scholars and thinkers with a new perspective and a better tool for getting to know the universe. Thanks to this, utopian visions created at that time were more daring and ambitious than their predecessors. It is no coincidence that the first cosmic utopias were created at this time, positioning ideal (...) communities outside the earth. Russian authors Alexander Bogdanov and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky stand out among the creators of such utopias. These two renowned scientists, considered pioneers in their respective areas, presented within the span of slightly more than a decade surprisingly similar visions, one of them taking place on Mars and the other in the cosmic space. What sets the two narratives apart is the role they attribute to science and technology. Regardless of the fact that both utopias are characterized by a high level of scientific development and technological advancement, the scientific-technological factor is a vital determinant of the idealized community in only one of them. The key to understanding this discrepancy may be found in the works of British writer H. G. Wells. (shrink)

This book presents an analysis of global legal history in Modern times, questioning the effect of political revolutions since the 17th century on the legal field. Readers will discover a non-linear approach to legal history as this work investigates the ways in which law is created. These chapters look at factors in legal revolution such as the role of agents, the policy of applying and publicising legal norms, codification and the orientations of legal writing, and there is a (...) focus on the publicization of law. The author uses Herbert Hart's schemes to conceive law as a human artefact or convention, being the union between primary rules of obligations and secondary rules conferring powers. Here we learn about those secondary rules and the legal construction of the Modern state, and we question the extent to which codification and law reporting were likely to revolutionize the legal field. These chapters examine the hypothesis of a legal revolution that could have concerned many countries in modern times. To begin with, the book considers the legal aspect of the construction of Modern States in the 17th and 18th centuries. It goes on to examine the consequences of the codification movement as a legal revolution before looking at the so-called "constitutional" revolution, linked with the extension of judicial review in many countries after World War II. Finally, the book enquires into the construction of an EU legal order and international law. In each of these chapters, the author measures the scope of the change, how the secondary rules are concerned, the role of the professional lawyers and what are the characters of the new configuration of the legal field. This book provokes new debates in legal philosophy about the rule of change and will be of particular interest to researchers in the fields of law, theories of law, legal history, philosophy of law and historians more broadly. (shrink)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the need to rethink the status of space and time which Kant considered to be a priori forms of sensibility was prompted by the emergence of new approaches to the methodology of scientific cognition. In neo-Kantian interpretation these cognitive forms acquire a special epistemological status, manifesting themselves in theoretical research as “pre-given” foundations of knowledge. It seems necessary to conduct a comparative analysis of two interconnected neo-Kantian concepts, of Hermann Cohen (...) and Ivan Lapshin. Studying Kant’s philosophy since his student days, Lapshin gradually came to the conclusion that the need to clarify and develop Kant’s transcendental method was dictated by the development of scientific knowledge. Indeed, the works of the Russian neo-Kantian contain echoes and polemical adjustments of Cohen’s spatio-temporal ideas. Our study has revealed common epistemological attitudes in Cohen and Lapshin: the wish to improve elements of Kantian philosophy, adjusting them to prove the possibility of scientific-theoretical cognition and of overcoming psychologism and developing the logicistic approach to the critique of cognition. Each of the two authors developed their own “mechanism” of reducing space and time to a range of intellectual procedures for the construction of the object of knowledge. In Cohen’s account space and time pre-establish the language of observation and found all scientific-theoretical work. Lapshin, on the other hand, in discussing the formal and substantive features of these categories (the introduction of “axioms” of time, the need to specify the concepts of time and space through other categories), notes that their use in scientific judgment implies an epistemological givenness of the concept of the object. This I see as a variant of solving one and the same epistemological task. I submit that Lapshin worked out an independent concept of space and time as cognitive forms that are congruent with the spirit of European neo-Kantianism and contemporary science. (shrink)

This article portrays unification of physics as a central tenet of ErnstMach’s thought, and organizes some of the focal issues in philosophy of science around the process of unification of science. Mach finds a natural place in the history. Newton’s Principia marked the beginning of the era of mathematical physics, which developed triumphantly in the eighteenth century, until new phenomena were discovered in the nineteenth century whose explanations went over and above Newtonian physics. Also Positivism emerged (...) in the nineteenth century. This was the setting where Mach entered. The notion that a central function of physics is to give mathematical descriptions of perceptions is all over Mach’s work, but in Mach’s thought mathematics comes together with hypothetical laws of nature and an overall world-view, similarly as in Newtonian physics where mathematics comes together with the laws of motion. Mach’s criticism of Newtonian absolute time and space was in line with positivism, and his suggestions about an overall holistic worldview were to function as an intuitive background for the new physics. Thus, as a physicist and a philosopher of physics, Mach should be seen primarily as a unifier, and his famous anti-metaphysics should be seen as derivative from this unificationist project: he did not intend to banish the metaphysical core that he himself proposed, but only metaphysics that is not needed in unified science. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on models of conceptual change in science and philosophy. In particular, I developed a new bootstrapping methodology for studying conceptual change, centered around the formalization of several popular models of conceptual change and the collective assessment of their improved formal versions via nine evaluative dimensions. Among the models of conceptual change treated in the thesis are Carnap’s explication, Lakatos’ concept-stretching, Toulmin’s conceptual populations, Waismann’s open texture, Mark Wilson’s patches and facades, Sneed’s structuralism, and Paul Thagard’s conceptual (...) revolutions. -/- In order to analyze and compare the conception of conceptual change provided by these different models, I rely on several historical reconstructions of episodes of scientific conceptual change. The historical episodes of scientific change that figure in this work include the emergence of the morphological concept of fish in biological taxonomies, the development of scientific conceptions of temperature, the Church-Turing thesis and related axiomatizations of effective calculability, the history of the concept of polyhedron in 17th and 18th century mathematics, Hamilton’s invention of the quaternions, the history of the pre-abstract group concepts in 18th and 19th century mathematics, the expansion of Newtonian mechanics to viscous fluids forces phenomena, and the chemical revolution. I will also present five different formal and informal improvements of four specific models of conceptual change. I will first present two different improvements of Carnapian explication, a formal and an informal one. My informal improvement of Carnapian explication will consist of a more fine-grained version of the procedure that adds an intermediate, third step to the two steps of Carnapian explication. I will show how this novel three-step version of explication is more suitable than its traditional two-step relative to handle complex cases of explications. My second, formal improvement of Carnapian explication will be a full explication of the concept of explication itself within the theory of conceptual spaces. By virtue of this formal improvement, the whole procedure of explication together with its application procedures and its pragmatic desiderata will be reconceptualized as a precise procedure involving topological and geometrical constraints inside the theory of conceptual spaces. My third improved model of conceptual change will consist of a formal explication of Darwinian models of conceptual change that will make vast use of Godfrey-Smith’s population-based Darwinism for targeting explicitly mathematical conceptual change. My fourth improvement will be dedicated instead to Wilson’s indeterminate model of conceptual change. I will show how Wilson’s very informal framework can be explicated within a modified version of the structuralist model-theoretic reconstructions of scientific theories. Finally, the fifth improved model of conceptual change will be a belief-revision-like logical framework that reconstructs Thagard’s model of conceptual revolution as specific revision and contraction operations that work on conceptual structures. -/- At the end of this work, a general conception of conceptual change in science and philosophy emerges, thanks to the combined action of the three layers of my methodology. This conception takes conceptual change to be a multi-faceted phenomenon centered around the dynamics of groups of concepts. According to this conception, concepts are best reconstructed as plastic and inter-subjective entities equipped with a non-trivial internal structure and subject to a certain degree of localized holism. Furthermore, conceptual dynamics can be judged from a weakly normative perspective, bound to be dependent on shared values and goals. Conceptual change is then best understood, according to this conception, as a ubiquitous phenomenon underlying all of our intellectual activities, from science to ordinary linguistic practices. As such, conceptual change does not pose any particular problem to value-laden notions of scientific progress, objectivity, and realism. At the same time, this conception prompts all our concept-driven intellectual activities, including philosophical and metaphilosophical reflections, to take into serious consideration the phenomenon of conceptual change. An important consequence of this conception, and of the analysis that generated it, is in fact that an adequate understanding of the dynamics of philosophical concepts is a prerequisite for analytic philosophy to develop a realistic and non-idealized depiction of itself and its activities. (shrink)

One of the paradoxes of the physical sciences is that as our knowledge has progressed, more and more diverse physical phenomena can be explained in terms of fewer underlying laws, or principles. In Hidden Unity, eminent physicist John Taylor puts many of these findings into historical perspective and documents how progress is made when unexpected, hidden unities are uncovered between apparently unrelated physical phenomena. Taylor cites examples from the ancient Greeks to the present day, such as the unity of celestial (...) and terrestrial dynamics (17th century), the unity of heat within the rest of dynamics (18th century), the unity of electricity, magnetism, and light (19th century), the unity of space and time and the unification of nuclear forces with electromagnetism (20th century). Without relying on mathematical detail, Taylor's emphasis is on fundamental physics, like particle physics and cosmology. Balancing what is understood with the unestablished theories and still unanswered questions, Taylor takes readers on a fascinating ongoing journey. John C. Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge. A student of Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, Taylor's research career has spanned the era of developments in elementary particle physics since the 1950s. He taught theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, and at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and he has lectured worldwide. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. (shrink)

The article discusses the differences between the classical logic of science (17th-20th centuries) and non-classical logic (20th century). While classical logic is based on the general properties of the objects studied, non-classical logic is based on the special, individual. The classical logic singled out in the studied objects their common properties that united them and ensured their independence of human. The scientist and his social connections are volatile and cannot serve as a stable basis for obtaining the (...) only possible true result during examination of particular object. At the same time, it was not taken into account that scientists themselves endowed nature with this property of independence. It would be more correct to say that scientist distinguished from all properties of reality precisely these properties as the most convenient for constructing a logical system that explains the entire surrounding world. All other properties were ignored. In the 20th century attention was shifted to the properties of objects and events that determine their identity, which means their ability to communicate. After all, for a communication at least two interlocutors are needed who differ from each other. Each of them has its own origin, which is formed by the context. At the origin of the formation of knowledge there is still no division between subject and object. The surgeon works with his hands guided by his theoretical knowledge. When he encou difficulty, he can modify the theory, thus solving the practical problem that has arisen. In the structure of science, knowledge is embedded in this form, without division between man and the surrounding world. However this last division remains only possible but not essential for logic. The main problem that needs to be further seriously considered is to understand how the social is included in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who was born in 1646 just before the end of the Thirty Years War and who died 1716, is surely one of the most bizarre and interesting of the early modern philosophers. He was an astonishing polymath, and responsible for some of the most advanced work in the sciences of his day—he was, for instance, the co-inventor along with Newton, of differential calculus, and is generally recognized as the greatest logician of the early modern period, responsible for (...) advances in logic not rivaled until the mid-nineteenth century. But this progressive aspect of Leibniz’s thought is paired by one that was more backward looking, deeply engaged with premodern forms of thinking that referred back through Medieval culture to the philosophy of ancient times. And alongside of his scientific advances, he is known for having created one of the most baroque and puzzling metaphysical systems in the history of philosophy—the so-called “Monadology”. For much of his life he was also absorbed in theological disputes that have now been long been forgotten, and generally thought of as alien to modern scientific modes of thought. (shrink)

What if gravity satisfied the Klein-Gordon equation? Both particle physics from the 1920s-30s and the 1890s Neumann-Seeliger modification of Newtonian gravity with exponential decay suggest considering a "graviton mass term" for gravity, which is _algebraic_ in the potential. Unlike Nordström's "massless" theory, massive scalar gravity is strictly special relativistic in the sense of being invariant under the Poincaré group but not the 15-parameter Bateman-Cunningham conformal group. It therefore exhibits the whole of Minkowski space-time structure, albeit only indirectly concerning (...) volumes. Massive scalar gravity is plausible in terms of relativistic field theory, while violating most interesting versions of Einstein's principles of general covariance, general relativity, equivalence, and Mach. Geometry is a poor guide to understanding massive scalar gravity: matter sees a conformally flat metric due to universal coupling, but gravity also sees the rest of the flat metric in the mass term. What is the 'true' geometry, one might wonder, in line with Poincaré's modal conventionality argument? Infinitely many theories exhibit this bimetric 'geometry,' all with the total stress-energy's trace as source; thus geometry does not explain the field equations. The irrelevance of the Ehlers-Pirani-Schild construction to a critique of conventionalism becomes evident when multi-geometry theories are contemplated. Much as Seeliger envisaged, the smooth massless limit indicates underdetermination of theories by data between massless and massive scalar gravities---indeed an unconceived alternative. At least one version easily could have been developed before General Relativity; it then would have motivated thinking of Einstein's equations along the lines of Einstein's newly re-appreciated "physical strategy" and particle physics and would have suggested a rivalry from massive spin 2 variants of General Relativity. The Putnam-Grünbaum debate on conventionality is revisited with an emphasis on the broad modal scope of conventionalist views. Massive scalar gravity thus contributes to a historically plausible rational reconstruction of much of 20th-21st century space-time philosophy in the light of particle physics. An appendix reconsiders the Malament-Weatherall-Manchak conformal restriction of conventionality and constructs the 'universal force' influencing the causal structure. Subsequent works will discuss how massive gravity could have provided a template for a more Kant-friendly space-time theory that would have blocked Moritz Schlick's supposed refutation of synthetic _a priori_ knowledge, and how Einstein's false analogy between the Neumann-Seeliger-Einstein modification of Newtonian gravity and the cosmological constant \Lambda generated lasting confusion that obscured massive gravity as a conceptual possibility. (shrink)

It is well-known that Isaac Newton’s conception of space and time as absolute -- “without reference to anything external” (Principia, 408) -- was anticipated, and probably influenced, by a number of figures among the earlier generation of seventeenth century natural philosophers, including Pierre Gassendi, Henry More, and Newton’s own teacher Isaac Barrow. The absolutism of Newton’s contemporary and friend, John Locke, has received much less attention, which is unfortunate for several reasons. First, Locke’s views of space (...) and time undergo a dramatic evolution that mirrors the overall absolutist trend of the era. Second, there are good reasons to suppose that Locke was influenced late in this evolution by Newton’s Principia, which he read and reviewed shortly after its 1687 publication. It is even possible that Locke read or knew of the earlier and unpublished, though now famous, Newtonian tract De Gravitatione. Third, despite the influence of Newton, Locke’s retains a skeptical attitude concerning our empirical knowledge of absolute space and time. He is especially cautious about absolute time, bucking a widespread tendency to treat time as strongly analogous to space. Their disagreement about the measure of absolute time, we will suggest, reflects a deeper disagreement in the philosophy of science. While Locke counts as scientific knowledge only ideas and demonstrations derivable from immediate experience, Newton endorses a more theory-driven brand of empiricism, which holds that our best explanations of the phenomena provide genuine knowledge that goes beyond what we can directly observe. (shrink)

This essay interrogates the motives of eighteenth-century European naturalists to alternately show and hide their laboring-class fossil suppliers. Focusing on rare moments of heightened visibility, I ask why gentlemen naturalists occasionally, deliberately, and even performatively made visible the marginalized science workers on whom they crucially depended but more typically ignored or effaced. Comparing archival fragments from elite works of natural history across a considerable stretch of time and space, including Italy, France, Switzerland, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Spain, (...) and French, Spanish, and British America, this essay sketches the contours of a disparate group of people I term ‘earth workers’: laborers of very low social rank, such as quarrymen, shepherds, ditch-diggers, and fieldworkers, whose daily labor in and on the earth enabled the discovery of subterranean specimens. At the same time, archival traces of laboring lives ultimately reveal more about the naturalists who created them than they do about the marginalized laborers whose lives they faintly record. Cultural norms of elite masculinity and scholarly self-presentation in the Republic of Letters help us to understand why some eighteenth-century naturalists felt they had to publicly disavow a form of labor that would come to be recognized as a crucial and skilled part of scientific fieldwork in the modern era. Compared to other kinds of invisible labor that historians of science have brought into view, the social meaning of earth work rendered it uniquely visible in some ways and uniquely invisible in others. (shrink)

Jennifer Trusted's new book argues that metaphysical beliefs are essential for scientific inquiry. The theories, presuppositions and beliefs that neither science nor everyday experience can justify are the realm of metaphysics, literally `beyond physics'. These basic beliefs form a framework for our activities and can be discovered in science, common sense and religion. By examining the history of science from the eleventh century to the present, this book shows how religious and mystical beliefs, as well as (...) philosophical speculation have had a considerable role in motivating scientists and inspiring scientific inquiry. _Physics and Metaphysics_ presupposes no technical knowledge of either philosophy or science. It is an ideal introduction to science and the important forces that have shaped its history and ideas. (shrink)

For centuries, the dispute over time has concerned mainly its objective and relative character. For the author, besides philosophy and science, the principal point of reference is man, the way he exists in time and space, and the way he observes, senses and organises those domains, as documented in the products of musical activity.

The ArgumentThis article compares the corresponding effects in science and art of a change in the intuition of time at the beginning of this century. McTaggart's distinction between linear time and tense time is applied to the question of whether linear perspective requires a notion of time as succession. It is argued that the problem of self-representation is a basic problem for this kind of uniform space-time because of the contradiction between this (...) model's need for a privileged point of view and its simultaneous denial of such a possibility. (shrink)

This book analyzes changes in ideas about and experiences of time and space from 1880 to 2020, relying on new technologies for causal explanations of changes in nine key elements of time and space. Time and Space in the Internet Age is a thought-provoking study for academics and general readers interested in the history of technology and science.

The history and philosophy of science are destined to play a fundamental role in an epoch marked by a major scientific revolution. This ongoing revolution, principally affecting mathematics and physics, entails a profound upheaval of our conception of space, space–time, and, consequently, of natural laws themselves. Briefly, this revolution can be summarized by the following two trends: by the search for a unified theory of the four fundamental forces of nature, which are known, as of now, (...) as gravity, electromagnetism, and strong and weak nuclear forces; by the search for new mathematical concepts capable of elucidating and therefore explaining such a relationship. In fact, the first search is essentially dependent on the second; that is to say, that in order for a new theory of physics to come to light, the development of a deeper geometric theory capable of explaining the structure of space–time on a quantum scale appears to be necessary. On careful consideration, we notice that both of these developments converge in the direction of a unitary and fundamental tendency of modern science—which is the geometrization of theoretical physics and of natural sciences. This new emergent situation carries within it a profound conceptual change, affecting the way in which relations are conceived of, first and foremost, between mathematics and physics. This new paradigm can be summed up by the intimately interdependent points: the immense variety of physical phenomena and of natural forms follows from the equally infinite variety of geometric and topological objects that can be made out in space and from which space is made up; the second point, which ensues from the former one and which is of great historical and epistemological significance, is that mathematics is involved in rather than applied to phenomena. In other words, phenomena are effects that emerge from the geometrical structure of space–time. There is no doubt that this new conception of the relationship between the universe of mathematical ideas and objects and the world of natural phenomena is the true scientific revolution of our century, of great conceptual importance, and consequently, capable of changing our view of science and of nature at one and the same time. It is all at once of a scientific, philosophical and aesthetic order. (shrink)

ArgumentBy the late nineteenth century, science pedagogues and academicians became involved in a vast movement to popularize science throughout the Russian empire. With the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, many now found the new Marxist state a willing supporter of their goals of spreading science to an under-educated public. In the Stalin era, Soviet state officials believed that the spread of science and technology had to coalesce with the Communist Party's utilitarian goals and needs (...) to revive the industrial sector of the economy. This resulted in a new Stalinist technologically oriented popularization campaign. In the Khrushchev era (1953–64), Soviet politicians became increasingly more aware of the competitive power of Soviet technology in the global arena and developed extensive campaigns to publicize Soviet feats for a broad domestic and foreign public audience. This was particularly true for topics such as the space program and big technologies such as nuclear power. (shrink)

Prompted by the "Panel Discussion of Grünbaum's Philosophy of Science" (Philosophy of Science 36, December, 1969) and other recent literature, this essay ranges over major issues in the philosophy of space, time and space-time as well as over problems in the logic of ascertaining the falsity of a scientific hypothesis. The author's philosophy of geometry has recently been challenged along three main distinct lines as follows: (i) The Panel article by G. J. Massey calls (...) for a more precise and more coherent account of the Riemannian conception of an intrinsic as opposed to an extrinsic metric, which the author has invoked as his basis for the distinction between non-conventional and convention-laden ascriptions of metrical equality and inequality; (ii) the latter distinction has been claimed to suffer from the liabilities of the so-called "standard conception" of scientific theories [36]; and (iii) pursuant to H. Putnam's "An Examination of Grünbaum's Philosophy of Geometry" [56], J. Earman [16, 17] and R. Swinburne [65] have contended that the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic metrics is scientifically unilluminating, and that the associated distinction between non-conventional and convention-laden metrical comparisons does not have the kind of relevance to extant scientific theories that the author has claimed for it. The essay consists of two installments. The present installment, comprising the Introduction and Part A, is devoted to the clarification, correction and further development of the author's prior writings on the philosophy of geometry. Its main objective is constructive elaboration rather than offering polemics. But rebuttals to Earman, [16, 17], Swinburne [65] and Demopoulos [13] are included, because their inclusion conduced to clarity in giving the new exposition. Part B is to appear in a subsequent issue and will be devoted to replies to critiques contained in the Panel Discussion and in other recent literature. It will range over issues in the philosophy of geometry and in the logic of ascertaining the falsity of a scientific hypothesis. By way of merely elliptical anticipation of much more precise statements given in Part A, section 3(ii), the Introduction dissociates the notion of convention-ladenness developed in Part A from the quite different notion integral to the so-called "standard conception" of scientific theories. Thereby, the Introduction prepares the ground for seeing, as a corollary to Part A, section 3(ii), that the notion advocated in the present essay has nothing to fear from the following fact, noted by C. G. Hempel ([36]; cf. also his 1970 Carus Lectures): "even though a sentence may originally be introduced as true by stipulation, it soon joins the club of all other member-statements of the theory and becomes subject to revision in response to further empirical findings and theoretical developments." Part A, which begins with a fairly detailed table of contents, endeavors to meet the aforementioned three-fold challenge to the author's philosophy of geometry. Massey's call for the provision of clear and detailed characterizations of intrinsic and extrinsic metrics is answered with the invaluable aid rendered personally by Massey himself. These characterizations are shown to permit a precise explication of the portions of Riemann's Inaugural Dissertation relevant to (1) Riemann's brilliant anticipation of Einstein's dynamical conception of physical geometry, and (2) the author's philosophical characterization of the metrics and geometries of space, time, and space-time {section 2(c)}. A byproduct of the analysis is to raise two major philosophical doubts concerning Clifford's sketch of a so-called "space-theory of matter" as elaborated in J. A. Wheeler's relativistic geometrodynamics. That theory's vision of understanding matter as a manifestation of empty curved space is questioned in regard to (1) the existence of an intra-geometrodynamic basis for individuating the metrically homogeneous world points of its space-time manifold {section 1(a)}, and (2) the compatibility of the theory with the Riemannian metrical philosophy apparently espoused by its proponents {section 2(c)(i)}. (shrink)

Lexical evidence reveals that ordinary notions of space underwent a dramatic change from the late seventeenth century into the first decades of the nineteenth century: the word’s core meaning metamorphosed from INTERVAL to DIMENSION, revolutionizing relations between ordinary conceptions of time and space. Analyzing instances of the word in French over the years 1330–1835 indicates this conceptual change of SPACE was concurrent with growing interest in metaphysics and natural philosophy and echoed debates—provoked by Newton’s (...) Principia (1687)—over the precise nature of space. Employing both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, I show how changes in philosophical and scientific theory reshaped the general lexicon. I argue that ordinary lexical mechanisms largely determine the manner of science’s dissemination into culture and propose a model accounting for such changes. (shrink)

Antalya, which is today’s attraction center with its historical and natural beauties, was described as “a city like heaven” since ancient times. This city hosted many civilisations and states until the 13th century and became an important seaport after The Seljuks took over the region. The Seljuks applied civilization and urbanization policy also in Antalya, like other regions they ruled. The mosques, madrasahs (Islamıc theology institutions), schools, baths, caravansearis (hostels), hospices, and water cisterns in this period changed the structure (...) of the city and paved the way for improvements of public life. During the Ottomans some of these social institutions were kept active while the others no longer served to the public. However, with the construction of new social institutions, urbanization was resumed. The madrasas were generally built near or adjacent to the mosques, and had a significant role in developing the society and cultural structure. Although the madrasas in Antalya were mainly the institutions that maintain the education system, the research on these madrasas mostly focuses on their architectural features. The majority of these madrasas that are not comprehensively studied. Therefore, the functioning structures and the problems of Antalya Madrasas (Antalya, Korkuteli and Elmalı), which are reflected in the archive documents between the 17th and 20th centuries and also both individuals and institutions that had influence on these madrasas are going to be investigated in this study. Thus, this paper will shed more light on Antalya Madrasas.Summary: Antalya city, which was completely under the Seljuk sovereignty during the reign of Sultan Alaeddin Keykubat I (1219-1236), was named as Alâiyye dedicated to the Sultan's name and became an important port city of the Seljuk State after then. In the process of the fall of the Seljuk State and the beginning of the Emirates (Beylikler) period, the city became a land of Teke-Oğulları, a part of a Hamid-oğulları, and in 1390 the city became an Ottoman city after the struggle of Yıldırım Bayazid with Teke-oğuları. Antalya was home to the madrasahs, one of the formal education institutions during both the Seljuk and the Ottoman Empire. The madrasahs were built next to the mosque or in a detached area built by sometimes administrators or statesmen, sometimes by members of the dynasty or by the citizens who were wealthy. In Antalya, both single floor and second floor madrasahs were built. This study based on the documents from Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive, the travel books of İbn Bibi and Evliya Çelebi, the works on Antalya Madrasahs to be determine the madrasah in the districts of Antalya as Korkuteli and Elmalı. In addition to the Seljuk madrasahs such as Imaret Madrasah, Atabey Armagan Madrasah and Karatay Madrasah, there are also some madrasahs belonging to the Ottoman period, in Antalya. As a matter of fact, the madrasahs increased in number in the period of the Ottoman. Antalya madrasahs which are reflected in archival documents for any reason are as follows: “Süleyman Madrasah” located in Hatip Süleyman Street, “Madrasah built by Haci Mahmed” located in Elmali Street, “Hacı Abbaszâde Hacı Süleyman Madrasah” in Süleyman Street, “İsmail Efendi Madrasah” in Tahtapazarı Kızılsaray Street, Kasab Hacı Ahmed Madrasah, Hacı Cafer Ağa Madrasah, Murad Ağa Madrasah, Esir Hacı Ali Madrasah, Hacı Hasan Madrasah,“Madrasah built by Hasan Efendi” in Keçiyalar Street, in the Kadılar Street of Gediz County “Madrasah built by Yusuf Efendi”, “Madrasah built by Hızır Efendi” in Cami-i atik Street, Murat Pasha Madrasah, “Sefer Ağa Madrasah” located outside the city wall, “Büyülü Minaret Madrasah, Hatuniye Madrasah, Sheik Sinan Camii Madrasah located outside the city Wall, In addition to these madrasahs mentioned in some studies in Antalya, it is also stated that there are madrasahs such as Müsellim Madrasah, Kesik Minaret Madrasah, Karakas Madrasah, Varsakli Mehmet Efendi Madrasah, Meydan Madrasah, Surmeli Madrasah, Canmülk Madrasah, Ahi Kız Madrasah, Hacı Naim Efendi Madrasah, Susam Madrasah, Çömlekçi Madrasah, Değirmenönü Madrasah, Ak Mescid Madrasah, Âşık Doğan Madrasah and Çukur Madrasah.According to archive documents, in the sub-district of Antalya, which is used as a plateau or plateau area, some madrasahs were recorded as follows: Pınarbaşı Madrasah, Hızır Efendi Madrasah, Mustafa Efendi Madrasah, Emir Sinaneddin Madrasah, Hacı Menlü (Mevlüt) oğlu Ömer Medrese, Abu Bakr Agha Madrasah, Koca Hafız Medrese, Hacı Mollaoğlu El-Hac Ömer Madrasah, Sheikh İsmail Efendi Madrasah. However, Süleyman Fikri Erten, who works on Antalya, stated that the number of madrasahs is eight as: Haci Ahmet Madrasah of Kalkanlı, Sultan Hatun Madrasah, Koparanzade Hacı Hüseyin Madrasah, Karabayırlı Hacı Hüseyin Madrasah, Kaşlı Ali Efendi Madrasah, Hacı Hüseyin Madrasah, Şalaka Ahmet Madrasah and Oyunyeri Madrasah.The madrasahs built in Elmalı, another distict of Antalya, were as follows: Ketenci Ömer Paşa Madrasah, Esbak Mir-i Ahur Hacı Mehmet Bey Madrasah, Haydar Baba Madrasah, Arifî Ahmed Paşa Madrasah, Hüseyin Efendi Madrasah, Debbağ Baba Madrasah, Şeyh Ümmi Sinan Madrasah, Babazade Hacı Abdurrahman Madrasah, Hacı Şeyh Efendi Madrasah, Mustafa Efendi Madrasah, Hasan Efendi Madrasah, Salih Efendi Madrasah, Halil Efendi Madrasah, Çankırlı Madrasah, Osman Efendi Madrasah and “Mehmet Efendi Madrasah in Örtekiz village”. In addition, two madrasahs, except from these, were also found in the archive documents.A madrasah was built almost at every Street of Antalya and the madrasahs were usually named by the name of their builders. Madrasah students were provided with a certain amount of scholarship to continue their education according to the level of the education in the madrasahs and the level of the courses taught, salaries of the scholars, the status of the builder of the madrasah. The scholars who worked in the madrasahs worked with a document called berat-i sharif and in the case of the disappearance of this document a new berat-i sharif would be prepared by the Shaykh al-Islami. Scholars working without this document were also determined. In the scholar appointments foundation, board of trustees, müfti, and the city regents were very influential. There were also some appointments resulted from death, promotion besides leaving job with their own will. There were some problems with the appointments in Antalya and the foundation revenues to which the madrasah was attached were delivered to certain individuals until these problems were resolved.In madrasahs of Antalya, science was given a great importance and all kinds of monetary issues were tired to be eliminated with donations given to both scholars and students. However, it is observed that madrasahs were involved in some events in Antalya. As a matter of fact, among those who participated in the Şah Kulu Rebellion that took place in 1510-1511, there were also madrasah students and education training had therefore been disrupted for a long time. it is known that the state sent orders to the judges (qadi) in the region consecutively in order to prevent the rebellion. Also during this period some madrasahs were used as the activity center of armed students or people who disguised them.One of the issues that negates the education and training in the madrasahs in Antalya is that in 1890 the immigrants started to be hosted in Antalya and the guests visiting were accommodated in madrasahs as there were no other available places. This situation had been continued for a long time and even telegrams have been sent about the students living on the sidewalks.Another important issue that disrupts education was epidemic diseases. It was reported that too many people died in the district of Istanoz because of smallpox, there was no doctor and the health personnel should go to the region urgently. Despite all the problems experienced in madrasahs, they continued their activities in Antalya and while continuing their activities under the control of foundations in 1826, with the establishment of the Ministry of Foundations, they were connected to this institution. (shrink)

This book examines several epistemological regimes in studies of numerical data over the last four centuries. It distinguishes these regimes and mobilises questions present in the philosophy of science, sociology and historical works throughout the 20th century. Attention is given to the skills of scholars and their methods, their assumptions, and the socio-historical conditions that made calculations and their interpretations possible. In doing so, questions posed as early as Émile Durkheim’s and Ernst Cassirer’s ones are revisited and the (...) concept of symbolic form is put to the test in this particular survey, conducted over long period of time. Although distinct from a methodological and epistemological point of view, today these regimes may be found together in the toolbox of statisticians and those who comment on their conclusions. As such, the book is addressed to social scientists and historians and all those who are interested in numerical productions. (shrink)

Although the name of Immanuel Kant has survived in the history of culture as the name of one of the greatest philosophers of modern times, Kant's role as a scientist is also very important. His work in the field of cosmology and physics is directly related to philosophy. Kant's development of the transcendental method was a direct result of thinking about the relationship between mathematics and experiment. Transcendentalism and Kant's theory of subjectivity continue the development of physics from Galileo to (...) Newton and Leibniz. This is especially true of his theory of space and time. All this should have turned transcendental aesthetics into a turning point in the development of mathematical natural science. However, in practice, the alienation of the natural sciences from philosophy has only intensified. An analysis of the scientific revolution at the beginning of the 20th century shows the enormous role of Kant's ideas in it in repulsing scientists from Kantianism. Weinert, a researcher of the relationship of 20th century physics to Kant's philosophy, shows that Einstein, being a Kantian as a philosopher, opposed Kantianism as a physicist. He enthusiastically accepted the Kantian idea of the autonomy of theoretical knowledge, but did not accept the concept a priori. An approach in which experience and theory do not precede each other, but are in constant interaction, is defined in the article as experimental transcendentalism. With the methodological difference between physics and philosophy, the concept of space and time in modern physics has a deep similarity with the transcendental doctrine. The definition of the qualitative structure of space (Analysis Situs), including the theoretical substantiation of its three dimensions, was the subject of reflections of scientists from Galileo, Leibniz and Kant to Einstein and Poincaré. (shrink)

Mental maps and historical consciousness, which describe the spatial and temporal dimensions of worldviews, are not, as commonly stated, twentieth century concepts. Historical consciousness was coined simultaneously by several German scholars in the mid-1800s. Mental maps, used in English since the 1820s, had a prominent role in US geography education from the 1880s. Since then, the concepts have traveled between practical-technical, educational, and academic vocabularies, cross fertilizing fields and contributing to the formation of new research questions. However, when these (...) initial periods of reflection gave way to empirical investigation, strict intra-disciplinary definitions of the concepts have strengthened disciplinary borders by excluding the interpretations of the same concepts in other fields. (shrink)

Part One of the paper begins by recalling a historic conference in 1969 that argued the importance of work that would draw on both history and philosophy of science, two academic fields that had in the previous decades distanced themselves from one another. It goes on to review the rather mixed success of that appeal in the years since then and to suggest the need for a forum that would encourage work of that kind, of the sort that &HPS (...) would offer. Part Two is, in effect, a case study taking a brief look at five moments in 17th century science and noting the emergence of two rather different, but in effect complementary, conceptions of natural science at that time. (shrink)

This book offers an engaging and comprehensive introduction to scientific theories, and the evolution of science and mathematics through the centuries. It discusses the history of scientific thought and ideas and the intricate dynamic between new scientific discoveries, scientists, culture, and societies. Through stories and historical accounts, the volume illustrates the human engagement and preoccupation with science and the interpretation of natural phenomena. It highlights key scientific breakthroughs from the ancient to later ages, giving us accounts of the (...) work of ancient Greek and Indian mathematicians and astronomers as well as of the work of modern scientists like Descartes, Newton, Planck, Mendel and many more. The author also discusses the vast advancements which have been made in the exploration of space, matter, and genetics and their relevance in the advancement of the scientific tradition. He provides great insights into the process of scientific experimentation and the relationship between science and mathematics. He also shares amusing anecdotes of scientists and their interactions with the world around them. Detailed and accessible, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers of science, mathematics, the philosophy of science, science and technology studies, and history. It will also be useful for general readers who are interested in the history of scientific discoveries and ideas. (shrink)

This book explores how physicists, astronomers, chemists, and historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries employed ‘epistemic virtues’ such as accuracy, objectivity, and intellectual courage. In doing so, it takes the first step in providing an integrated history of the sciences and humanities. It assists in addressing such questions as: What kind of perspective would enable us to compare organic chemists in their labs with paleographers in the Vatican Archives, or anthropologists on a field trip with mathematicians poring (...) over their formulas? While the concept of epistemic virtues has previously been discussed, primarily in the contexts of the history and philosophy of science, this volume is the first to enlist the concept in bridging the gap between the histories of the sciences and the humanities. Chapters research whether epistemic virtues can serve as a tool to transcend the institutional disciplinary boundaries and thus help to attain a ‘post-disciplinary’ historiography of modern knowledge. Readers will gain a contextualization of epistemic virtues in time and space as the book shows that scholars themselves often spoke in terms of virtue and vice about their tasks and accomplishments. This collection of essays opens up new perspectives on questions, discourses, and practices shared across the disciplines, even at a time when the neo-Kantian distinction between sciences and humanities enjoyed its greatest authority. Scholars including historians of science and of the humanities, intellectual historians, virtue epistemologists, and philosophers of science will all find this book of particular interest and value. (shrink)

One may discuss the role played by mechanical science in the history of scientific ideas, particularly in physics, focusing on the significance of the relationship between physics and mathematics in describing mathematical laws in the context of a scientific theory. In the second Newtonian law of motion, space and time are crucial physical magnitudes in mechanics, but they are also mathematical magnitudes as involved in derivative operations. Above all, if we fail to acknowledge their mathematical meaning, we (...) fail to comprehend the whole Newtonian mechanical apparatus. For instance, let us think about velocity and acceleration. In this case, the approach to conceive and define foundational mechanical objects and their mathematical interpretations changes. Generally speaking, one could prioritize mathematical solutions for Lagrange’s equations, rather than the crucial role played by collisions and geometric motion in Lazare Carnot’s operative mechanics, or Faraday’s experimental science with respect to Ampère’s mechanical approach in the electric current domain, or physico-mathematical choices in Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory. In this paper, we will focus on the historical emergence of mechanical science from a physico-mathematical standpoint and emphasize significant similarities and/or differences in mathematical approaches by some key authors of the 18th century. Attention is paid to the role of mathematical interpretation for physical objects. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated whether motion metaphors for time affected the perception of spatial motion. Participants read sentences either about literal motion through space or metaphorical motion through time written from either the ego‐moving or object‐moving perspective. Each sentence was followed by a cartoon clip. Smiley‐moving clips showed an iconic happy face moving toward a polygon, and shape‐moving clips showed a polygon moving toward a happy face. In Experiment 1, using an explicit judgment task, participants judged smiley‐moving cartoons (...) as related to ego‐moving sentences about space and about time, and shape‐moving cartoons as related to object‐moving sentences. In Experiment 2, participants viewed the same stimuli, but the cartoons were task‐irrelevant. Event‐related brain potentials revealed an early attentional effect of congruity on cartoons following sentences about space, and a later semantic effect on cartoons following sentences about time. Results are most consistent with accounts that posit differences in the processing of novel and conventional metaphors. (shrink)

In his Poetics, Aristotle articulated certain ideas on the structure of drama that dominated both dramatic literature and theatre practices for the centuries to come. In this article I show how the thorough analysis of his statements leads us to believe that he endorses causality, narrativity, and temporal linearity as primary factors in the organization of dramatic and stage texts. Tracing various modifications of causality throughout theatre history, I use the work of the two prominent contemporary directors, Eimuntas Nekrosius and (...) Anatoly Vasilyev, to demonstrate how postmodernist theatre has arrived at non-Aristotelian theatrical model based on the unity of a time–space continuum rather than temporal development. (shrink)

The articles that comprise this special issue of Intellectual History Review are briefly described.

In the dissertation we study the complexity of generalized quantifiers in natural language. Our perspective is interdisciplinary: we combine philosophical insights with theoretical computer science, experimental cognitive science and linguistic theories. -/- In Chapter 1 we argue for identifying a part of meaning, the so-called referential meaning (model-checking), with algorithms. Moreover, we discuss the influence of computational complexity theory on cognitive tasks. We give some arguments to treat as cognitively tractable only those problems which can be computed in (...) polynomial time. Additionally, we suggest that plausible semantic theories of the everyday fragment of natural language can be formulated in the existential fragment of second-order logic. -/- In Chapter 2 we give an overview of the basic notions of generalized quantifier theory, computability theory, and descriptive complexity theory. -/- In Chapter 3 we prove that PTIME quantifiers are closed under iteration, cumulation and resumption. Next, we discuss the NP-completeness of branching quantifiers. Finally, we show that some Ramsey quantifiers define NP-complete classes of finite models while others stay in PTIME. We also give a sufficient condition for a Ramsey quantifier to be computable in polynomial time. -/- In Chapter 4 we investigate the computational complexity of polyadic lifts expressing various readings of reciprocal sentences with quantified antecedents. We show a dichotomy between these readings: the strong reciprocal reading can create NP-complete constructions, while the weak and the intermediate reciprocal readings do not. Additionally, we argue that this difference should be acknowledged in the Strong Meaning hypothesis. -/- In Chapter 5 we study the definability and complexity of the type-shifting approach to collective quantification in natural language. We show that under reasonable complexity assumptions it is not general enough to cover the semantics of all collective quantifiers in natural language. The type-shifting approach cannot lead outside second-order logic and arguably some collective quantifiers are not expressible in second-order logic. As a result, we argue that algebraic (many-sorted) formalisms dealing with collectivity are more plausible than the type-shifting approach. Moreover, we suggest that some collective quantifiers might not be realized in everyday language due to their high computational complexity. Additionally, we introduce the so-called second-order generalized quantifiers to the study of collective semantics. -/- In Chapter 6 we study the statement known as Hintikka's thesis: that the semantics of sentences like ``Most boys and most girls hate each other'' is not expressible by linear formulae and one needs to use branching quantification. We discuss possible readings of such sentences and come to the conclusion that they are expressible by linear formulae, as opposed to what Hintikka states. Next, we propose empirical evidence confirming our theoretical predictions that these sentences are sometimes interpreted by people as having the conjunctional reading. -/- In Chapter 7 we discuss a computational semantics for monadic quantifiers in natural language. We recall that it can be expressed in terms of finite-state and push-down automata. Then we present and criticize the neurological research building on this model. The discussion leads to a new experimental set-up which provides empirical evidence confirming the complexity predictions of the computational model. We show that the differences in reaction time needed for comprehension of sentences with monadic quantifiers are consistent with the complexity differences predicted by the model. -/- In Chapter 8 we discuss some general open questions and possible directions for future research, e.g., using different measures of complexity, involving game-theory and so on. -/- In general, our research explores, from different perspectives, the advantages of identifying meaning with algorithms and applying computational complexity analysis to semantic issues. It shows the fruitfulness of such an abstract computational approach for linguistics and cognitive science. (shrink)

. The concepts of space and time are important in physics and geometry, but their definition is not the exclusive prerogative of those sciences. Space and time are important for ordinary human experience, as well as for philosophy and theology. Samuel Clarke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Immanuel Kant, and Albert Einstein are important figures in shaping our understandings of space, time, and eternity. The author subjects their arguments to critical examination. Space is (...) neither an infinite and empty receptacle nor a system of relations in the mind . Infinite space and time can be interpreted as expressing God's eternity and omnipresence in relating to the creation , but such an interpretation is enhanced by Kant's thinking, to clarify that even though time and space are differentiated in individual events, the whole is at the same time present. Even human experience recognizes this wholeness, and for God eternity is the simultaneous presence and possession of the wholeness. The temporal existence of finite entities is also related to a future participation in God's eternal life. Concepts of contingency are brought into the discussion as well. (shrink)