Un circolo lucreziano -- Furor et voluptas -- Dio, anima, natura -- Virtú e fortuna -- Platonismo e repubblicanesimo -- Pietas et sapientia -- Poeti platonici -- De miseria hominis -- Misteri d'amore -- Del bello, o della grazia -- Immortalità e resurrezione -- Anima mundi -- Il mondo delle immagini -- Sui demoni -- Fatalia -- Medicina del corpo, medicina dell'anima -- Sul male -- Profezia -- Preghiera e sacrificio -- De Trinitate -- Lode al (...) sole. (shrink)

From Plato's Timaeus onwards, the world or cosmos has been conceived of as a living, rational organism. Most notably in German Idealism, philosophers still talked of a 'Weltseele' (Schelling) or 'Weltgeist' (Hegel). This volume is the first collection of essays on the origin of the notion of the world soul (anima mundi) in Antiquity and beyond. It contains 14 original contributions by specialists in the field of ancient philosophy, the Platonic tradition and the history of theology. The topics (...) range from the 'obscure' Presocratic Heraclitus, to Plato and his ancient readers in Middle and Neoplatonism (including the Stoics), to the reception of the idea of a world soul in the history of natural science. A general introduction highlights the fundamental steps in the development of the Platonic notion throughout late Antiquity and early Christian philosophy. Accessible to Classicists, historians of philosophy, theologians and invaluable to specialists in ancient philosophy, the book provides an overview of the fascinating discussions surrounding a conception that had a long-lasting effect on the history of Western thought. (shrink)

This book is a reconsideration of spirituality as a lived experience in the lives of the contributors. The authors speak both as well-informed scholars and as individuals who experienced the lived spirituality they give voice to. The authors do not place themselves above and outside of what they are writing about but within that world. They speak of living psychospiritual traditions of healing both the self and the world; of traditions that have not disembedded the self from the wider world. (...) Those traditions are from indigenous North and South America (5 essays), a Buddhist/ Shakta from Bengal, an Indo-Persian Islamic psychoanalyst, a mystical Jewish feminist rabbi, and a historical essay about the extermination of the Renaissance worldview of Anima Mundi. (shrink)

About the ‘origins and fortunes’ of World Soul, we have learned a great deal in recent decades, and this emerging field of research continues to open up with the publishing of World Soul – Anima Mu...

The main source of perplexity raised by Leibniz’s (mathematical) argument against the soul of the world stems from the idea that it is the infinity of the universe that precludes it from having a soul. But if this is so, how is it possible that organic bodies, which, having infinitely many parts, are also infinite, are endowed with a soul? The present paper aims to provide a new solution to this puzzle. The solution explains the difference between the body and (...) the universe by looking at how their respective parts are arranged. It is the arrangement of the parts of the body that allows a body to be divided into infinitely many parts whilst, at the same time, having a finite magnitude. By contrast, the way in which the alleged parts of the world are arranged makes it impossible that the world has a finite magnitude: the world cannot be a whole, and so it cannot have a soul. The consequence is that it does not matter how many parts bodies have, but only that they have a finite magnitude. In this case, bodies respect the Part-Whole Principle (the whole is bigger than any of its proper parts) and therefore can be described as finite wholes with parts. (shrink)

From Plato’s Timaeus onwards, the world or cosmos has been conceived of as a living, rational organism. Most notably in German Idealism, philosophers still talked of a ‘Weltseele’ or ‘Weltgeist’. This volume is the first collection of essays on the origin of the notion of the world soul in Antiquity and beyond. It contains 14 original contributions by specialists in the field of ancient philosophy, the Platonic tradition and the history of theology. The topics range from the ‘obscure’ Presocratic Heraclitus, (...) to Plato and his ancient readers in Middle and Neoplatonism, to the reception of the idea of a world soul in the history of natural science. A general introduction highlights the fundamental steps in the development of the Platonic notion throughout late Antiquity and early Christian philosophy. Accessible to Classicists, historians of philosophy, theologians and invaluable to specialists in ancient philosophy, the book provides an overview of the fascinating discussions surrounding a conception that had a long-lasting effect on the history of Western thought. (shrink)

In different versions, from Heraclitus to Plato and from Plotinus to the Romantic poets, many thinkers have put forward the idea that the universe has a soul, the so called anima mundi. If the soul of a human being can be thought as the totality of the traits which form character and personality, that of the universe too can be imagined as a complex of distinct traits and dispositions which can be recognised in the phenomenal world. Then, we (...) may ask ourselves:are there events which suggest the idea of the existence of the soul of the world? In what sense do they differ from other events which drift away into nothing? How do they move us? Can they be captured by a photography? I reflect on these questions intertwining philosophy, travel tales, poetry and photography studies. Molti filosofi hanno sostenuto che l’universo ha un’anima, la cosiddetta anima mundi. Di questa idea sono state proposte diverse versioni a partire dalle cosmologie orientali e dal pensiero di Eraclito e Platone. Se l’anima di un essere umano puo' essere pensata come la totalita' dei tratti che formano la sua personalita', allora anche quella dell’universo puo' essere immaginata come un complesso di tratti distintivi e disposizioni rintracciabili nel mondo dei fenomeni. Ci possiamo allora chiedere: quali sono gli eventi che suggeriscono l’esistenza dell’anima del mondo o rivelano alcuni dei suoi tratti? In che senso differiscono da altri eventi che si perdono nel flusso indistinto e ininterrotto del tempo? Come ci emozionano? Possono essere catturati da una fotografia? Sciortino riflette su queste domande intrecciando filosofia, racconto di viaggio, poesia e critica della fotografia. Ne emerge un avvincente racconto, corredato da bellissime fotografie, di come la bellezza raggiunge i nostri cuori, muove la nostra immaginazione e ci rivela l’essenza delle cose. (shrink)

The question of Voltaire’s belief in (or lack of belief in) God is a vexed one. René Pomeau’s classic study of 1956 argued that Voltaire believed in a God who would punish and reward in the next life. More recently Gerhardt Stenger has shown that, at least after 1764, Voltaire adopted a moderated form of Spinozism. He consistently rejected a materialist atheism on the grounds that the universe showed evidence of intelligent design, and appealed to Spinoza against d’Holbach. This article (...) studies the evolution of Voltaire’s philosophical account of the deity, showing that he moved from a belief in a Newtonian creator God to a Spinozist monopsychism at least by 1756. But, under the influence of Warburton, he had come to reject Bayle’s concept of a society of atheists, and consequently held that the wider public must be encouraged to believe in a providential God, a view he pretended to hold himself. Reading Voltaire after 1756 it is thus essential to understand that he held a double truth theory, so that it is sometimes necessary to ‘read between the lines’ to discover his meaning. (shrink)

Heidegger's notion of dasein, Understood as the pre-Conceptual togetherness of man and world, Is deepened by going back to the "beginnings" of this togetherness in the imaginal (archaic) psyche, Which archetypal psychology, Founded by james hillman, Envisions--In the wake of the platonic tradition--As part of the "anima mundi". As a result the phenomenological call "back to the things themselves" is redefined in the sense of "back to the images themselves." imagination in its fully creative import is seen as (...) equivalent to heidegger's "groundless ground" (or being) which he ultimately equates with dasein. (edited). (shrink)

In the early twenty-first century, we often ask whether there is life (intelligent or otherwise) in the cosmos, but almost never whether the heavens themselves are actually alive or animated, that is, infused somehow with a soul, the anima mundi, or some such entity. This was not the case in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the early modern period. Although Aristotelians normally answered no to this question, Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) took a decidedly Platonic turn when he answered (...) the question positively, insistently, and consistently in a broad range of works over his entire philosophical career. By contrast, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), Ficino’s younger contemporary, began by embracing the new Platonic position but joined the Aristotelian fold in his later works. In this essay, I will briefly compare and contrast Ficino’s solid and consistent position with the changing trajectory of Pico’s views over the course of his short but intense career. This essay is an exploration of central themes and some preliminary reflections thereon. These essentially Platonic views of a living universe provide the conceptual and literary foundations for understanding this issue in the early modern period. (shrink)

Schelling argued that early modern science had discarded the ancient teaching of matter – the world soul (die Weltseele or anima mundi, the unity of soul and body, eternity and time, absolute possibility and existence) – «into the common grave they dug for nature and have brought about the death of all science». In order to put science on a more philosophical tract, Schelling retrieved the work of Giordano Bruno as part of his «handful» of thinkers who in (...) a contemporary context appear on the border between an ancient but still vital sense of philosophy and the emerging scientific study of nature. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta uma exegese do In Physica II, 1, l. 11-14 de Filipono, texto no qual o autor expõe uma compreensão da noção de força como formadora e diretiva da totalidade dos corpos na medida em que os mantém no ser, conferindo, portanto, unidade e ordenação ao cosmo. Nesse contexto, é possível sustentar que a força vinculada com a locomoção natural dos corpos simples tomados em conjunto, o cosmo, é uma anima mundi. Para tanto, a noção de (...) vida, também presente no In Physica II, 1, l. 11-14, é tomada como chave de leitura, uma vez que por ela tem sentido afirmar que o cosmos possui uma forma, esta que, no limite, é a própria alma do cosmo. (shrink)

En la poesía de Ramón López Velarde es fundamental la presencia del corazón y del alma. Ambos conceptos no son simples y únicos, sino complejos y diversos. Hay un corazón confesional e íntimo, llamado “Corazón de San Agustín”; un corazón como órgano del cuerpo, conocido como “Corazón de Harvey”; y un corazón simbólico, el cual recibe el nombre de “Corazón de León”. En correspondencia con estos elementos, hay un alma individual, perteneciente al sujeto lírico; un Anima mundi, relativa (...) a la belleza del mundo; y un Alma Superior, la cual remite al mundo de las ideas platónicas o arquetípicas. Con base en un enfoque propio de la Mitocrítica, se demuestra la importancia de la presencia del símbolo, del mito y del arquetipo en la poesía de López Velarde. Palabras clave: corazón, alma, mitocrítica, poesía, López Velarde. (shrink)

Following Galileo's trial of 1633, the Jesuit theologian Melchior Inchofer, author of the most negative reports used by the Roman Inquisition against Galileo, repudiated the Copernicans for the ‘heresy’ of the soul of the world (anima mundi), in an unpublished manuscript. I show that Inchofer's arguments applied far more to the beliefs of Giordano Bruno than to those of Galileo. Since antiquity, various Christian authorities had repudiated several beliefs about the anima mundi as ‘heretical’, hence I (...) review their critiques against Pythagoras, Origen, and Peter Abelard, for allegedly asserting animistic beliefs about the Earth, or a universal spirit, or that souls move the heavenly bodies. Still, in the Renaissance such beliefs were defended by several advocates of Copernicus, including Bruno, William Gilbert, Johannes Kepler, and Philips Lansbergen, who all claimed that Earth moves because it has a soul. By comparing Inchofer's works and some of the Roman Inquisition's earlier censures against Bruno, I argue that the repudiation by many prominent Catholic theologians of pagan notions of the anima mundi as heretical contributed partly to the later theological opposition to the Copernicans. (shrink)

Este no es un libro de filosofía, ni de astrología, ni de esoterismo. No hay en él ninguna pretensión más allá de la simple expresión de un recorrido intelectual y vital, de una búsqueda y un encuentro. Desde este punto de vista se intentan exponer tres esferas distintas del ser y del conocer, de forma separada pero con las oportunas referencias cruzadas, y manteniendo siempre la jerarquía que las diferencia. La primera de ellas es la que aquí se considera como (...) un tipo de exoterismo, es decir, un ámbito externo de considerar las cosas (en referencia a los dos siguientes): la filosofía; con la razón como facultad analítica y reflexiva por excelencia, pretende buscar las razones de ciertas problemáticas mediante el pensamiento discursivo. El segundo ámbito, el intermedio, definido como el del simbolismo, de la analogía universal o del anima mundi, es tratado aquí en referencia a una ciencia tradicional y sagrada: la astrología. Y el tercero y último es aquel dominio correspondiente a la Metafísica integral, en el sentido profundo que apunta hacia la Trascendencia misma, como núcleo de toda forma espiritual; se presentará aquí desde el esoterismo tradicional en la línea de los trabajos de René Guénon, pero principalmente desde la tradición más reciente (la islámica) y la considerada por muchos más primordial (la hindú). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:François H. Lapointe PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC SURVEY ThL· survey is limited to articles written in English that have appeared in journals published between 1 January 1974 and 31 December 1976. Abbott, Don. "Marxist Influences on the Rhetorical Theory of Kenneth Burke." Philosophy and Rhetoric 7 (1974): 217-33. Abel, Lionel. "Jacques Derrida: His 'Difference' With Metaphysics." Salmagundi no. 25 (1974): 3-21. Adamowski, T. H. "Character and Consciousness: D. (...) H. Lawrence, Wilhelm Reich, and Jean-Paul Sartre." University of Toronto Quarterly 43 (1974): 31 1-34. Adams, D. J. "Style and Social Ideas in Jacques le fataliste." Studies in Voltaire & the Eighteenth Century 124 (1974): 231-48. Adams, Hazard. "Contemporary Ideas of Literature: Terrible Beauty or Rough Beast?" Contemporary Literature 17 (1976): 349-77. Adorno, Theodor W. "Lyric Poetry and Society." Telos no. 20 (1974): 56-71. Ages, Arnold. "Bonald and the Jews." Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa 44 (1974): 32-43. Allen, Diogenes. "The Experience of Existence: Jean-Paul Sartre and Iris Murdoch." International Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1974): 181-87. Allen, Marcus. "Character Development in the Oreste of Voltaire and Les Mouches of Jean-Paul Sartre." CLA Journal 18 (1974): 1-21. Alter, Jean. "A (Terrorist) System of the Novel." Diacritics 6 (1976): 10-15. Altieri, Charles. "Wittgenstein on Consciousness and Language: A Challenge to Derridean Literary Theory." MLN 91 (1976): 1397-1423. Altieri,Charles. "Wordsworth's 'Preface' as Literary Theory." Criticism 18 (1976): 122-146. [On Wordworth and Wittgenstein.] Ames, Van Meter. "Art for Art's Sake Again?" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1975): 303-307. Appleman, Philip. "The Dread Factor: Eliot, Tennyson, and the Shaping of Science." Columbia Forum, N. S. 3 (1974): 32-38. Armstrong, Paul B. " E. M. Forster's Howard's End: The Existential Crisis of the Liberal Imagination." Mosaic 8 (1974): 183-99. Arnold, A. James. "La Condition humaine as Nietzschean Tragedy." Mélanges Malraux Miscellany 6 (1974): 15-24. 366 François H. Lapointe367 Aronson, Ronald. "L'Idiot de la famille: The Ultimate Sartre?" Telos no. 20 (1974): 90-107. Arthos, John. "Du Bartas, Petrarch and the Poetry of Deism." Rice University Studies 60 (1974): 1-17. Artz, Johannes. "Newman as Philosopher." International Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1976): 263-88. Ausmus, Harry J. "Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Language." The Midwest Quarterly 18 (1977): 169-86. Ayala, Francisco. "Ortega y Gasset, Literary Critic." Critical Inquiry 1 (1974): 395-414. Bakalar, H. Nicholas. "The Cartesian Legacy to the Eighteenth-century Grammarians." MLN 91 (1976): 698-721. Barnes, Hazel. "Apotheosis and Deification in Plato, Nietzsche and Huxley." Philosophy and Literature 1 (1976): 3-24. Baron, Dennis E. "Role Structure and the Language of Literature." Journal of Literary Semantics 4 (1975): 43-52. Barooskian, Vahan D. "The Aesthetics of the Russian Revolutionary Theatre 1917-1921." British Journal of Aesthetics 15 (1975): 99-117. Bart, B. F. "Hypercreativity in Stendhal and Balzac." Nineteenth Century French Studies 3 (1974-75): 18-39. Barthes, Roland. "An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative." New Literary History 6 (1975): 237-72. Bashford, Bruce. "The Rhetorical Method in Literary Criticism." Philosophy and Rhetoric 9 (1976): 133-46. Bass, Alan. "Time and the Witch: Femininity, Metapsychology and the Temporality of the Unconscious." MLN 91 (1976): 871-912. Bassett, Sharon. "Towards a Critique of Romanticism: Wordsworth, Pater and the 'Anima Mundi'." Criticism 17 (1975): 262-75. Batchelor, R. "Literature, Society and the Concept of Revolt." European Studies Review 5 (1975): 395-427. Battin, M. Pabst. "Aristotle's Definition of Tragedy in the Poetics, Part 1." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1974): 155-70, and Part II in Ibid. 33 (1975): 293-302. Bauer, George. "Sartre and the 'Sugars' of History." L'Esprit Créateur 15 (1975): 377-86. Baumgarten, Murray. "The Historical Novel: Some Postulates." Clio 4 (1975): 173-82. Beauchamp, Gorman. "Gulliver's Return to the Cave: Plato's Republic and Book IV of Gulliver's Travels." The Michigan Academician 7 (1974): 201-10. Bennett, Jonathan. "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn." Philosophy 48 (1974): 123-34. Benzon, William. "Cognitive Networks and Literary Semantics." MLN 91 (1976): 952-82. Bergonzi, Bernard. "A Grid of Codes: Views of Structuralism." Encounter 45 (1975): 52-58. Berry, Wanda Warren. "The... (shrink)

O presente trabalho pretende delinear a noção de Panpsiquismo no projeto filosófico de Gustav Theodor Fechner, especialmente a partir da análise do livro Über die Seelenfrage, de 1861. Para isso, o artigo repõe em linhas gerais a questão das relações entre seu projeto filosófico e a Psicofísica, uma vez que as interpretações clássicas sobre Fechner geralmente enxergam essas duas competências como separadas. Em segundo lugar, o artigo situa questões históricas sobre Fechner e a Psicologia (e sobre filosofia e ciência), bem (...) como a importância da Naturphilosophie em seu projeto. Finalmente, passa-se à análise dos argumentos de Fechner em defesa do Panpsiquismo e analisam-se novamente as relações entre essa visão e a Psicofísica. *** *** *** *** *** *** *** The present work analyses the concept of Panpsychism considering Gustav Theodor Fechner's philosophical project, especially fo- cusing on his 1861 book Über die Seelenfrage. To accomplish this purpose, the article firstly out- lines the links between his philosophical project and Psychophysics, considering that several classic interpretations of Fechner’s writings often considers these two subjects as separate. Secondly, the article situates some historical questions on Fechner and Psychol- ogy, as well as his perspectives on philosophy and science, and including his interpretation of Naturphilosophie. Finally, the article analyses Fechner’s arguments defending Panpsychism and looks again at the relationships between this view and Psychophysics. (shrink)

Herein, I review the moment in my life when I awoke from the dream of self to find being as part of the living world. It was a sudden, momentous event that is difficult to explain since transcending the self ultimately requires transcending the language structures of which the self consists. Since awakening to the world took place beyond the enclosure of self-speech, it also took place outside our symbolic construction of time. It is strange to place this event and (...) its aftermath as happening long ago in my lifetime, for it is forever present; it surrounds me all the time just as the world seems to do. This fact puts into question the reality of my daily journey from dawn to dusk with all the mundane tasks I must complete (like writing of that which cannot be captured in writing). My linear march to aging and death inexorably continues, yet it seems somehow unreal, the biggest joke of all. Still, I here review the events leading up to my time out of mind and then review the serious repercussions when I was drawn back into the ego-self only to find I did not have the conceptual tools or the maturity to understand what had happened. (shrink)

How one transcends the self depends on the self that experiences it. Is it instigated or sought, does it happen by accident, or by an act of Grace? Is it common or rare? Is it brought on by the ingestion of psychedelic agents or by meditation or by being overcome by fear or merely by caring more about the welfare of others than oneself? Is it transcendence to experience a shift of perspective or dissolution of the self? In the pages (...) that follow, each of these paths is explored in nine ways, each unique unto itself. None of them deal with absolute self-transcendence, which should be no surprise, for, as I’ve indicated, there would no longer a self or person to record or communicate the event. Many of them deal the transcendence of self-consciousness, my own included, but only two describe the ingestion of mind-altering psychedelics to catalyze the event. One sees self-construction from the ground-up, as it were, as a form of transcending a previous self that has disintegrated. One looks to acts of kindness to sidestep the illusion of self-consciousness. Two, at least, look to creative experience in the arts as a way to connect with universal spontaneity, but in very different ways. The others refer to what might be called spiritual experiences that, though thirsted for or sought, arrive unexpectedly, almost like a gift. (shrink)

In the last chapter of De immortalitate animae, Pomponazzi claims that the question of immortality, just like the question of the eternity of the world, is a neutral problem. In this paper I claim that Pomponazzi has usually considered the aeternitas mundi as a probable proposition in the Aristotelian sense, rather than as a problem. Furthermore, I evaluate some analyses that use the former issues (among others) to interpret Pomponazzi’s thought.

Ibn al-Fa's Kitmin, the Book of the Delight of the Believer preserves, in the first part, in at least three of its 100 philosophical and theological problems, passages from the hitherto lost Arabic version of Philoponus' De Aeternitate mundi contra Proclum. All quotations are taken from the refutation of the first proof, one of them from the beginning which is also lost in Greek. For this latter passage a parallel is found in al-Isfiz who draws on the same Philoponus (...) source in his Kit Masil al-umhiyya (Book on Metaphysical Questions). A comparison of the other passages to the extant Greek text suggests that al-Ank's overall accurate use of sources can be gained from his quotations of the extant Arabic versions of the De Anima-paraphrase, Nemesius' De Natura hominis and b. Rabban al-'s Firdaws al-ḥikma (Paradise of Wisdom). (shrink)

Kepler is mainly known among historians of science for his astronomical theories and his approaches to problems having to do with philosophy of science and ontology. This paper attempts to contribute to Kepler studies by providing a discussion of a topic not frequently considered, namely Kepler’s theory of the soul, a general theory of knowledge whose central problem is what makes knowledge possible, rather than what makes knowledge true, as happens in the case of Descartes’s and Bacon’s epistemologies. Kepler’s theory (...) consists of four issues: the theory of the different sorts of soul—that is, the human soul, the animal soul, the vegetable soul, and the Earth soul—concerning their faculties, the differences and the resemblances emerging among them, the relation they maintain with their own bodies and the world, and the distinction soul–world. The paper discusses these issues from a historical perspective, that is, it reconstructs the way they appear in three periods of Kepler’s career: the period prior to the publication of the Mysterium cosmographicum, the period from 1596 to 1611, and the period of the Harmonices mundi libri V. Finally, Kepler’s epistemology is briefly contrasted with Descartes’s and Bacon’s in order to suggest that Kepler’s could be seen as a third way to understand the philosophical origins of Modernity.Keywords: Johannes Kepler; René Descartes; Francis Bacon; Anima; Force; Animism. (shrink)

"Hackett captures 106 species of birds found in Missouri in a collection of 140 color photographs. In his introduction and captions, Hackett gives tips on photographing birds in nature as well as information on the characteristics of specific bird species.

A formal theory of quantity T Q is presented which is realist, Platonist, and syntactically second-order (while logically elementary), in contrast with the existing formal theories of quantity developed within the theory of measurement, which are empiricist, nominalist, and syntactically first-order (while logically non-elementary). T Q is shown to be formally and empirically adequate as a theory of quantity, and is argued to be scientifically superior to the existing first-order theories of quantity in that it does not depend upon empirically (...) unsupported assumptions concerning existence of physical objects (e.g. that any two actual objects have an actual sum). The theory T Q supports and illustrates a form of naturalistic Platonism, for which claims concerning the existence and properties of universals form part of natural science, and the distinction between accidental generalizations and laws of nature has a basis in the second-order structure of the world. (shrink)

The standard coordinate-based formulation of the space-time theory of special relativity (Minkowski geometry) is philosophically unsatisfactory for various reasons. We here present an explicit axiomatic formulation of that theory in terms of primitives with a definitive physical interpretation, prove its equivalence to the standard coordinate formulation, and draw various philosophical conclusions concerning the physical content and assumptions of the space-time theory. The prevalent causal interpretation of physical Minkowski geometry deriving from Reichenbach is criticised on the basis of the present formulation.

We here present explicit relational theories of a class of geometrical systems (namely, inner product spaces) which includes Euclidean space and Minkowski spacetime. Using an embedding approach suggested by the theory of measurement, we prove formally that our theories express the entire empirical content of the corresponding geometric theory in terms of empirical relations among a finite set of elements (idealized point-particles or events) thought of as embedded in the space. This result is of interest within the general phenomenalist tradition (...) as well as the theory of space and time, since it seems to be the first example of an explicit phenomenalist reconstruction of a realist theory which is provably equivalent to it in observational consequences. The interesting paper "On the Space-Time Ontology of Physical Theories" by Ken Manders, Philosophy of Science, vol. 49, number 4, December 1982, p. 575-590, has significant affinities to this one. We both, in a sense, try to formally vindicate Leibniz's notion of a relational theory of space, by constructing theories of spatial relations among physical objects which are provably equivalent to the standard absolutist theories. The essential difference between our approaches is that Manders retains Leibniz's explicitly modal framework, whereas I do not. Manders constructs a spacetime theory which explicitly characterizes the totality of possible configurations of physical objects, using a modal language in which the notion of a possible configuration occurs as a primitive. There is no doubt that this is a more accurate realization of Leibniz's own conception of space than the embedding-based approach developed here. However, it also remains open to objections (such as those cited here from Sklar) on account of the special appeal to modal notions. Our approach here, by contrast, aims to avoid the special appeal to modal notions by giving directly a set of laws which are satisfied by a configuration individually, if and only if it is one of the allowable ones. One thus avoids the need for reference to possible but not actual configurations or objects, in the statement of the spacetime laws. We may then take this alternative set of laws as the actual geometric theory, and do away with the hypothetical entity called 'space'. Yet at the same time there is no invocation of modality, except in the ordinary sense in which every physical theory constrains what is possible. So that a relationalist is not forced to utilize a modal language (though Leibniz certainly does.). (shrink)

The numerical representations of measurement, geometry and kinematics are here subsumed under a general theory of representation. The standard theories of meaningfulness of representational propositions in these three areas are shown to be special cases of two theories of meaningfulness for arbitrary representational propositions: the theories based on unstructured and on structured representation respectively. The foundations of the standard theories of meaningfulness are critically analyzed and two basic assumptions are isolated which do not seem to have received adequate justification: the (...) assumption that a proposition invariant under the appropriate group is therefore meaningful, and the assumption that representations should be unique up to a transformation of the appropriate group. A general theory of representational meaningfulness is offered, based on a semantic and syntactic analysis of representational propositions. Two neglected features of representational propositions are formalized and made use of: (a) that such propositions are induced by more general propositions defined for other structures than the one being represented, and (b) that the true purpose of representation is the application of the theory of the representing system to the represented system. On the basis of these developments, justifications are offered for the two problematic assumptions made by the existing theories. (shrink)

Minkowski geometry is axiomatized in terms of the asymmetric binary relation of optical connectibility, using ten first-order axioms and the second-order continuity axiom. An axiom system in terms of the symmetric binary optical connection relation is also presented. The present development is much simpler than the corresponding work of Robb, upon which it is modeled.

Extensive measurement theory is developed in terms of theratio of two elements of an arbitrary (not necessarily Archimedean) extensive structure; thisextensive ratio space is a special case of a more general structure called aratio space. Ratio spaces possess a natural family of numerical scales (r-scales) which are definable in non-representational terms; ther-scales for an extensive ratio space thus constitute a family of numerical scales (extensive r-scales) for extensive structures which are defined in a non-representational manner. This is interpreted as involving (...) arelational theory of quantity which contrasts in certain respects with thequalitative theory of quantity implicit in standard representational extensive measurement theory. The representational properties of extensiver-scales are investigated, and found to coincide withweak extensive measurement in the sense of Holman. This provides support for the thesis (developed in a separate paper) that weak extensive measurement is a more natural model of actual physical extensive scales than is the standard model using strong extensive measurement. Finally, the present apparatus is applied to slightly simplify the existing necessary and sufficient conditions for strong extensive measurement. (shrink)

In Mundy [a] I offered an axiomatic analysis of the physical content of the kinematics of special relativity which suggests that, contrary to common belief, there is no incompatibility between special relativity and spacelike (faster-than-light) causation. An anonymous referee pointed out that this conclusion might have some bearing on problems in the interpretation of quantum mechanics such as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen problem, since one line of solution to these problems involves the postulation of spacelike causal processes. The present note will develop (...) this idea. (shrink)