The complexity and the technical obscurity of the scientific method have rendered science ever likely to be misunderstood both by scientists themselves and by the general public. Difficulties which remain unrecognized constitute the most formidable obstacles to success in any field. There are such difficulties lurking in the treatment which the scientific method accords its subject-matter. In this essay, I propose to point to one such pitfall in the path of the progress of science. By exposing it, something will already (...) be accomplished toward its avoidance and elimination, and the vast public of uninstructed persons will be able to skirt one more confusion in the effort to understand what the scientists are trying to do. (shrink)

In Plato’s _Laws_ is the earliest surviving fully developed cosmological argument. His influence on the philosophy of religion is wide ranging and this book examines both that and the influence of religion on Plato. Central to Plato’s thought is the theory of forms, which holds that there exists a realm of forms, perfect ideals of which things in this world are but imperfect copies. In this book, originally published in 1959, Feibleman finds two diverse strands in Plato’s philosophy: an (...) idealism centered upon the Forms denying full ontological status to the realm of becoming, and a moderate realism granting actuality equal reality with Forms. For each strand Plato developed a conception of religion: a supernatural one derived from Orphism, and a naturalistic religion revering the traditional Olympian deities. (shrink)

A system of philosophy of the sort presented in this and the following volumes begins with logic. Philosophy properly speaking is characterized by the kind oflogic it employs, for what it employs it assumes, however silently; and what it assumes it presupposes. The logic stands behind the ontology and is, so to speak, metaphysically prior. One word of caution. The philosophical aspects of logic have lagged behind the mathematical aspects in point of view of interest and develop ment. The work (...) of N. Rescher and others have gone a long way to correct this. However, their work on philosophical logic has been more concerned with the logical than with the philosophical aspects. I have in mind another approach, one that would call attention to the ontological (systematic meta physics) or metaphysical (critical ontology) aspects, whichever term you prefer. It is this approach which I have pursued in the following chapters. Since together they stand at the head of a system of philosophy which has been developed in some seventeen books, a system which ranges over all of the topics of philosophy, the chosen approach can be seen as the necessary one. But I have not written any logic, I have merely indicated the sort of logic that has to be written. (shrink)

The religiously inclined have always rejected materialism. The thesis of this study is that there may have been good reasons for them to do so until comparatively recent times but that the same reasons no longer exist. Our knowledge of matter has not only increased, it has also been altered so completely that there is no more justification for disapproving of materialism on religious grounds.

The problem is that of how to relate reality to the categories of dyadic ontology. We shall understand by "reality" the immediate object of that which is true. We shall understand by "dyadic ontology" one which assumes a pair of ontological categories as the real. The categories chosen will be those of a class of constants characterized by persistence and a class of variables characterized by change. As one philosophical tradition succeeds another in history, the names will be altered. Again, (...) sometimes the class will be specified and sometimes its elements. The relation between reality and the categories can take any one of the following forms. Persistence is alone real, change is alone real, they are equally real, neither is real. The first will be called idealism, the second nominalism and the third realism. The fourth has no historic tradition in the West. (shrink)

RésuméPour les Grecs en général et pour Platon en particulier, il y avait trois sujets principaux d'intérět: la nature, Dieu et l'homme. Pour Platon, Dieu était l'intermédiaire entre le monde naturel des apparences et celui des ětres; et pour Aristote, Dieu se trouvait aux deux extrémités d'un monde naturel unique en devenir. Le Moyen Age s'est occupé uniquement de Dieu et de l'homme. Les œuvres scientifiques grecques émigrèrent vers l'est dans la période hellénistique où elles furent reprises par les Arabes (...) et elles ne retournèrent en Europe que pour rejoindre la joie de la nature qui se manifeste dans l'art grec et dans celui de la Renaissance. La Réformation ébranla la théologie si violemment que l'homme seul devint le sujet de l'étude philosophique. Les deux traditions empiristes étaient nées: l'empirisme scientifique qui s'occupe de la nature et l'empirisme philosophique qui s'occupe de l'homme. Le premier devint objectif dans ses intérěts, le second subjectif. Ils ne se rencontrèrent pas, et ainsi la philosophie ne représenta jamais correctement l'empirisme scientifique. Chacun des deux a sa propre place, mais leur confusion a retardé le développement des sciences sociales et a empěché la compréhension de ce qu'est la science en général. Pour rétablir l'importance des deux types d'empirisme dans l'opinion commune, il faudra les distinguer et développer chaque théorie sur des bases différentes. La philosophie des sciences comme branche spéciale de la philosophie devra apprendre à observer ce que les hommes de science font et non à écouter ce qu'ils pensent que signifie ce qu'ils font.For the Greeks generally and for Plato in particular there were three absorbing interests: nature, God and man. For Plato, God was the intermediary in a two‐storeyed natural world of being and appearance; and for Aristotle, God stood at both ends of a single natural world of becoming. The Middle Ages were concerned exclusively with God and man. Greek scientific works went east in the Hellenistic Age, where they were taken over by the Moslems; and only returned to Europe in time to join the rediscovery of the joy of nature as displayed in the Greek art of the Renaissance. The Reformation shook theology so badly that man alone became the object of philosophical study. Thus two traditions of empiricism were born: scientific empiricism, concerned with nature; and philosophical empiricism, concerned with man. The former became objective in its interests, and the latter subjective. They did not meet, and so philosophy has never correctly represented scientific empiricism. Each has its proper place, but the confusion has retarded the development of the social sciences and hampered the general understanding of what science is. In order to restore the importance of both types of empiricism in the common comprehension, they will have to be distinguished, and each theory developed on different grounds. The philosophy of science, as a special branch of philosophy, will have to learn how to watch what the scientists do and not listen to what they say what they are doing means. (shrink)

In the introduction to his Human Knowledge, Bertrand Russell wrote: «If I believe that there is such a place as Semipalatinsk, I believe it because of things that have happened to me; and unless certain substantial principles of inference are accepted, I shall have to admit that all these things might have happened to me without there being any such place.» Beginning with an examination of belief, the argument turns on the nature of evidence, and it is shown that Russell (...) is in a contradictory position with respect to substance which he both rejects and assumes. A new definition of substance, one which will include a dynamic phase and also the objective existence of the irrational, is called for and offered. The new viewpoint involves us finally in the search for adequate descriptions, and here some notions of Wittgenstein and Russell seem to meet. (shrink)

The term science is used to cover three separate categories, to which throughout this paper we shall give three separate names. There is the field in which science operates. This is the external world of natural phenomena, partly uniform and partly chance. There is the science itself. This is the laboratory of instruments, techniques, operations, the method by which the field is studied. Finally, there is the laws. This is the level of abstractions, of causal laws or of statistical probability (...) averages, invariant or approaching invariance, mathematically expressed. The three, of course, belong together. Science carries the activity; it studies the field to find the laws. (shrink)