It is becoming clear that many of today’s management theories are inadequate theoretically and practically to move understanding, scholarship, and practice to where it needs to be for scholars, business leaders, and policy makers to cope with an increasing fraught world. This Special Issue’s focus is on sustainability. Sustainability challenges need to incorporate multidisciplinary interventions and the trans- and interdisciplinary nature of solutions. To actively seek transformation toward sustainability, fundamental and innovative short-term as well as long-term efforts are required in (...) society, economy, technology, and education, including our understanding of human behavior and attitudes toward the management of the environment. This introductory piece presents natural science theories as a promising approach for achieving progress toward transformation for sustainability. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to discuss E. J. Lowe's view of the synergy between metaphysics and natural science. In doing so, I will extend Lowe’s synergistic model to develop a realist account of theological claims thereby responding to Byrne’s strong form of eliminativism and agnosticism about theological claims. The paper is divided up as follows. In section 1, I will discuss Lowe’s view of metaphysics. In section 2, I will explain how Lowe thinks metaphysics and natural science (...) are related. In section 3, I will respond to objections against Lowe’s conception of metaphysics. In section 4, I will discuss the implications of Lowe’s conception of metaphysics for a realist account of theological claims. In section 5, I will conclude this paper by claiming that there are excellent reasons to extend the synergy between metaphysics and natural science to that of theology as well. (shrink)

Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences contains a series of explorations of the different ways in which the social sciences have interacted with the natural sciences. Usually, such interactions are considered to go only `one way': from the natural to the social sciences. But there are several important essays in this volume which show how developments in the social sciences have affected the natural sciences - even the `hard' science (...) of physics. Other essays deal with various types of interaction since the Scientific Revolution. In his general introductory chapter, Cohen sets some general themes concerning analogies and homologies and the use of metaphors, drawing specific examples from the use of concepts of physics by marginalist economists and of developments in the life sciences by organismic sociologists. The remaining chapters, which explore the different ways in which the social sciences and the natural sciences have actually interacted, are written by leaders in the field of history of science, drawn from a wide range of countries and disciplines. The book will be of great interest to all historians of science, philosophers interested in questions of methodology, economists and sociologists, and all social scientists concerned with the history of their subject and its foundations. (shrink)

(2005). Natural Science and the Experience of Nature. Angelaki: Vol. 10, continental philosophy and the sciences the german traditionissue editor: damian veal, pp. 187-199.

Through an exploration of theoretical physics, this paper suggests the need for regrounding natural science in phenomenological philosophy. To begin, the philosophical roots of the prevailing scientific paradigm are traced to the thinking of Plato, Descartes, and Newton. The crisis in modern science is then investigated, tracking developments in physics, science's premier discipline. Einsteinian special relativity is interpreted as a response to the threat of discontinuity implied by the Michelson-Morley experiment, a challenge to classical objectivism that Einstein sought to (...) counteract. We see that Einstein's efforts to banish discontinuity ultimately fall into the “black hole” predicted in his general theory of relativity. The unavoidable discontinuity that haunts Einstein's theory is also central to quantum mechanics. Here too the attempt has been made to manage discontinuity, only to have this strategy thwarted in the end by the intractable problem of quantum gravity. The irrepressible discontinuity manifested in the phenomena of modern physics proves to be linked to a merging of subject and object that flies in the face of Cartesian philosophy. To accommodate these radically non-classical phenomena, a new philosophical foundation is called for: phenomenology. Phenomenological philosophy is elaborated through Merleau-Ponty's concept of depth and is then brought into focus for use in theoretical physics via qualitative work with topology and hypercomplex numbers. In the final part of this paper, a detailed summary is offered of the specific application of topological phenomenology to quantum gravity that was systematically articulated in The Self-Evolving Cosmos (Rosen 2008a). (shrink)

Prior to the nineteenth century, those who are now regarded as scientists were referred to as natural philosophers. With empiricism, science was claimed to be a superior form of knowledge to philosophy, and natural philosophy was marginalized. This claim for science was challenged by defenders of natural philosophy, and this debate has continued up to the present. The vast majority of mainstream scientists are comfortable in the belief that through applying the scientific method, knowledge will continue to (...) accumulate, and that claims to knowledge outside science apart from practical affairs should not be taken seriously. This is referred to as scientism. It is incumbent on those who defend natural philosophy against scientism not only to expose the illusions and incoherence of scientism, but to show that natural philosophers can make justifiable claims to advancing knowledge. By focusing on a recent characterization and defense of natural philosophy along with a reconstruction of the history of natural philosophy, showing the nature and role of Schelling’s conception of dialectical thinking, I will attempt to identify natural philosophy as a coherent tradition of thought and defend it as something different from science and as essential to it, and essential to the broader culture and to civilization. (shrink)

Concept formation has recently become a widely discussed topic in philosophy under the headings of “conceptual engineering”, “conceptual ethics”, and “ameliorative analysis”. Much of this work has been inspired either by the method of explication or by ameliorative projects. In the former case, concept formation is usually seen as a tool of the sciences, of formal disciplines, and of philosophy. In the latter case, concept formation is seen as a tool in the service of social progress. While recent philosophical (...) discussions on concept formation have addressed natural sciences such as physics as well as various life sciences, so far there is only little direct engagement with the social sciences. To address this shortcoming is important because many debates about socially relevant concepts such as power, gender, democracy, risk, justice, or rationality, may best be understood as engaging in conceptual engineering. This topical collection addresses the nature and structure of concept formation in the natural, the life, and the social sciences alike, both as a process taking place within science and as an activity that aims at a broader impact in society. This helps to understand how concept formation proceeds not only in the natural sciences but also in disciplines such as psychology, cognitive science, political science, sociology and economics. (shrink)

Investigators of animal behavior since the eighteenth century have sought to make their work integral to the enterprises of natural history and/or the life sciences. In their efforts to do so, they have frequently based their claims of authority on the advantages offered by the special places where they have conducted their research. The zoo, the laboratory, and the field have been major settings for animal behavior studies. The issue of the relative advantages of these different sites has (...) been a persistent one in the history of animal behavior studies up to and including the work of the ethologists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The functional approach to natural language (FANL) emerged in the late 1960s. It focused on the use and the sub-use of language expressions, taking into account role of the language context and the extra-linguistic situation of a given statements. This approach referred, both conceptually and methodologically, to the tradition of British analytical philosophy of language on the one hand, and to the achievements of the Lvov-Warsaw School on the other. It seems that despite the passage of more than half (...) a century since its inception, this approach has lost nothing of its relevance and its cognitive value, and may even provide inspiration for the exploration new research areas concerning the formulation of language utterances. The aim of this article is to show the potential applications of the FANL as a specific semiotic concept in the field of the philosophy of social sciences. The paper points out how the functional conception can be successfully used in methodological analyses of the logical methodology of social sciences. The case studies presented in the article refer to the research practice of social sciences. Examples of the use and sub-uses of terms are discussed in the light of the polyparadigmatic structure of social sciences and the differences in research patterns accepted by given scientific collectives. (shrink)

During the European Renaissance, scholars and members of the bourgeoisie showed a stronginterest in practical philosophy, namely ethics and politics. This shift was expressed in works that described ideal societies, also known as utopias. Meanwhile, the Renaissance philosophy of nature, influenced by Late Ancient philosophy and mysticism, imposed a new worldview, according to which nature was seen as a living entity. Renaissance political thinkers attempted to imbue their socio-political visions with a sense of natural philosophy. A principal idea in (...) utopian literature is the strong presence of science, a key factor in the transformation of nature. In its search for the ideal political order, humanity was not content with maximising nature’s benefits but envisioned creating a new nature, one that better served the socio-political ideals of the Renaissance and the early modern era. I would like to argue that the prominent role of technocracy in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century utopias led gradually to the disruption and perversion of nature. Despite of the intentions of the utopian thinkers, their views on nature –which range from the unconditional respect to nature to its advancement through science – encouraged finally the mastery of nature, because they connected the socio-political progress with the exploitation of nature and the control of natural forces. In particular, a discussion on the relationship between humanity, nature and science in Renaissance utopian thought can shed some light on how early technocracy progressively led to the ravaging of nature. Departing from the major Renaissance philosophers’ all-encompassing perspective, political philosophers of the time, especially those who contributed to utopian literature, predominantly viewed nature as an instrument at the disposal of humanity and its science – a playground for human inventiveness and resourcefulness. With their works, they provided a new rationale, non-religious this time that defended humanity’s full exploitation of nature. (shrink)

This chapter demonstrates how natural theology is both encouraged and challenged by the findings of the physical sciences. The scientific method is committed to finding naturalistic explanations, yet the vision that it gives suggests there is more to it than meets this particular eye: the universe seems to be permeated with signs of ‘mind’. The mysterious quantum world has shown us that new ways of thinking are required to deal with material ‘reality’. Quantum theory has also revealed new (...) forms of matter with ‘miraculous’ properties. These properties are not evidence of supernatural intervention in the normal running of the universe but manifestations of a deeper rationality that lay undiscovered by classical physics. (shrink)

This paper deals with the contention, coming from two main sources in scientific theory (theory of evolution and string theory), that the conclusions of these theories demonstrate the nonexistence of God. In response to this, the author seeks to show that neither of these arguments is sound; he is not particularly concerned here with proving the existence of God. In the course of the paper, a certain amount of confusion concerning the requirements which these two scientific theories would make of (...) believers is cleared up. The cosmological positions of Aquinas, Hume, Leibniz, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Lonergan are mentioned, culminating in the ultimate question: ’why should there be any thing at all?’ Like all questions, it arises upon presuppositions. The author does not attempt to answer it here; but tries rather to elucidate its presuppositions. He points out that from natural science there neither is, nor can there be, evidence either to support or to undermine such presupposition. (shrink)

The scope of this article is feminist philosophical engagement with the natural sciences. As a starting point we can view science as having the objective of “producing general propositions about nature, the physical ‘out there,’ that can be tested empirically where appropriate, and that are rational in character” but we also need to recognize the fluidity of the term “science”; for to term something “scientific” is honorific. It is signaled as something to be trusted and relied on, and (...) there are political as well as intellectual debates concerning what is to be dignified with this title. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate how different views about the vertical and horizontal structure of reality affect the debate between reductive and nonreductive physicalism. This debate is commonly assumed to hinge on whether there are high-level, special-science properties that are distinct from low-level physical properties and whether the alleged multiple realizability of high-level properties establishes this. I defend a metaphysical interpretation of nonreductive physicalismin the absence of both of these assumptions. Adopting an independently motivated, discipline-relative account of natural properties (...) and appealing to a phenomenon I call “multiple determinativity,” in which a single physical property simultaneously realizes different kinds of special-science properties, is sufficient to show that some special-science properties are irreducible to physical properties and that nonreductive physicalism is not merely a terminological variant of reductive physicalism. (shrink)

Christian philosophy provides the form and systematic theology the substance when the church turns its intellectual face toward the wider public. This united front is vital in the context of a global competition between worldviews, where naturalism in the form of aggressive scientism has declared war on all things religious. Through discourse clarification the philosopher should distinguish between genuine science and the naturalistic reductionism that attempts to co-opt it; and through worldview construction the theologian should then demonstrate how nature viewed (...) by science belongs within a picture where all reality is oriented toward the one God of grace. In the battle between competing explanations of reality, the public Christian philosopher along with the public systematic theologian should offer a worldview with greater explanatory adequacy. (shrink)

During the 1870s animal morphologists and embryologists at Cambridge University came to dominate British zoology, quickly establishing an international reputation. Earlier accounts of the Cambridge school have portrayed this success as short-lived, and attributed the school's failure to a more general movement within the life sciences away from museum-based description, towards laboratory-based experiment. More recent work has shown that the shift in the life sciences to experimental work was locally contingent and highly varied, often drawing on and incorporating (...) aspects of museum work. Thus in order to understand the more general changes, studies of particular sites are needed. Here I examine the organisation of teaching at Cambridge, both in terms of the spaces in which it was taught and the ways in which teaching and examining were organised, to bring out the complexities of the 'revolt from morphology' and to show in more detail the institutional aspects that intertwined with intellectual change. Francis Maitland Balfour, as head of the Cambridge school, was able to make use of family connections and his own personal wealth to promote morphology. His successor lacked these resources, and one competition within the natural sciences at Cambridge intensified, morphology was unable to compete properly. (shrink)

The typology of natural sciences is based on the separation of fundamental and applied components. The first form the necessary basis (foundation) of the second. The development of applied research is possible only on the basis of fundamental research. The last 150 years have seen an accelerated development of applied science, which has not diminished the importance of its fundamental component for the overall development of natural science. A different situation has developed in social science. The use (...) of social sciences to serve the interests of the ruling classes since the times of classical capitalism has led to the obstruction of theoretical social science and, at the same time, to a decrease in the level of development of both its applied field and the social sciences in general. The main attention of social scientists began to focus on the study of the technological side of social activity, which relates to natural science. (shrink)

This article explores the proposal offered by Ian Hacking for the distinction between natural and social sciences—a proposal that he has defined from the outset as complex and different from the traditional ones. Our objective is not only to present the path followed by Hacking’s distinction, but also to determine if it constitutes a novelty or not. For this purpose, we deemed it necessary to briefly introduce the core notions Hacking uses to establish his strategic approach to social (...) sciences, under the assumption that they are less well known that the ones corresponding to his treatment of natural sciences. (shrink)

Hegel's early philosophical essay demonstrates the need for a pure empiricism and complete formalism in scientific endeavor.

The more one reads about the topic of natural kinds, the more one is reminded of that famous scene in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in which Deep Thought—after a mere 7.5 million years of doing calculations—reveals that the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything was 42. Faced with bewildered reactions from the eager audience, Deep Thought explains: “I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known (...) what the question is” .In the case of the growing literature on natural kinds, it is easy to get a feeling that something similar is going on. While philosophers keep advancing novel accounts of natural kinds, at the same time there is considerable disagreement about what exactly the problem is that such accounts should solve. To some, natural kinds are real kinds in nature that exist in the world independently of human interests and practices. At the very least, they are human-made kinds that correspon .. (shrink)

Though Kant is best known for his strictly philosophical works in the 1780s, many of his early publications in particular were devoted to what we would call 'natural science'. Kant's Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens made a significant advance in cosmology, and he was also instrumental in establishing the newly emerging discipline of physical geography, lecturing on it for almost his entire career. In this volume Eric Watkins brings together new English translations of Kant's first (...) publication, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces, the entirety of Physical Geography, a series of shorter essays, along with many of Kant's most important publications in natural science. The volume is rich in material for the student and the scholar, with extensive linguistic and explanatory notes, editorial introductions and a glossary of key terms. (shrink)

The notion of 'natural kinds' has been central to contemporary discussions of metaphysics and philosophy of science. In recent years, essentialism has been the dominant account of natural kinds among philosophers, but the essentialist view has encountered resistance. Informed by detailed examination of classification in the natural and social sciences, Prof. Muhammad Ali Khalidi argues against essentialism and for a naturalist account of natural kinds. By looking at case studies drawn from diverse scientific disciplines, from (...) fluid mechanics to virology and polymer science to psychiatry, the author argues that natural kinds are nodes in causal networks. On the basis of this account, he maintains that there can be natural kinds in the social sciences as well as the natural sciences. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is better known as a philosopher but in the pre-critical period he studied in a very deep way many aspects of the natural sciences and that’s why the new volume of the English edition of Kant’s works is devoted to the publications of Kant’s writings on natural science. This massive volume is edited by Erik Watkins and Kant’s writing are translated by Lewis White Back, Jeffrey B. Edwards, Olaf Reinhardt, Martin Schönfeld and Erik Watkins.

The social sciences stand at a strange crossroads. There is a greater need for disciplined inquiry into the issues of policy facing the United States. Yet the incentives in the political system, and in the professional guilds of those performing social research, discourage a close involvement of many prominent social scientists with policy. The political system, fearing an elite imposing its values on society, welcomes the natural scientist who seems to conform to the model of the politically neutral (...) expert who solves problems and addresses “facts”. This model also fits the higher ranks of the civil service, made up of specialists rather than generalist administrators, and the outside advisers serving officials concerned with high policy. Likewise, to protect themselves from changes of partisanship, leading academic social scientists forsake policy concerns for topics within the analytic traditions of Weberian Wertfreiheit. Just as Weber sought to avoid censorship by value neutral scholarship, the modern social scientist disdains the normative concerns of policy in favour of more tractable, morally neutral issues defined as the core of the discipline.The country needs to draw some of the best analytical talent in the social science community into the policy process and advisory roles. Disciplined inquiry cannot be left only to technicians whose professional interests are far removed from political, economic, social and other human sciences. To promote better policy and better social science, we should encourage serious, professionally grounded inquiry into social values, the directions of policy, and the role and proper limits of state power. In the clamour of American politics, there is little danger that policy will be monopolised by an elite group, but considerable danger that debate on policy will be impoverished by the absence of those most knowledgeable about social and economic reality. (shrink)

Though Kant is best known for his strictly philosophical works in the 1780s, many of his early publications in particular were devoted to what we would call 'natural science'. Kant's Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755) made a significant advance in cosmology, and he was also instrumental in establishing the newly emerging discipline of physical geography, lecturing on it for almost his entire career. In this volume Eric Watkins brings together new English translations of Kant's (...) first publication, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1746-1749), the entirety of Physical Geography (1802), a series of shorter essays, along with many of Kant's most important publications in natural science. The volume is rich in material for the student and the scholar, with extensive linguistic and explanatory notes, editorial introductions and a glossary of key terms. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs. By Leon R. Kass.

In the field of natural science, Aristotle recognizes as his forerunners a select group of theorists such as Heraclitus of Ephesus, Empedocles of Acragas, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and Leucippus and Democritus of Abdera. In addition, he mentions in the same contexts some whose claims to be “natural philosophers” are doubtful, yet who deserve notice in the same context, including Parmenides of Elea, Melissus of Samos, the people called Pythagoreans, and Plato as the author of the Timaeus. Aristotle takes (...) seriously almost all of these people, treating them as exemplary pioneers and valuable partners in the enterprise of “natural philosophy.” This article examines earlier opinions on certain fundamental questions about the natural world, as treated in the first three books of the Physics and in the first book of the Metaphysics. In Physics II and III, Aristotle represents most if not all of his predecessors as disastrously misunderstanding, in more than one way, the nature underlying the natural world. (shrink)

Science has uncovered many mistakes that had been hidden for centuries among implicit everyday assumptions. When we make explicit what lies implicit within language, there is no guarantee that we will arrive at truth about the world. Many therefore assume that only science delivers truth. Recent debates on this issue often refer to Wilfred Sellars’s arguments against the pre-conceptual given but conclude that his additional insistence on the exclusivity of the scientific image of the world is unfounded. In this paper (...) I resort to Robert Brandom’s development of these arguments to show that saying a word, understanding a concept and engaging in some practices go together. Both laws of nature and social norms regulate these practices and determine the identity conditions of objects. I argue therefore that the conceptual scheme indeed reflects the nature of things because it results from our successful engagement with the world during the long sweep of evolutionary time. (shrink)

The realism grounding St. Thomas Aquinas’s pre-modern natural science defends the reception of similitudes of the forms of things known by abstraction. Modern natural science challenges this abstractio- nist account by recasting «form» in the leading role of principle of intelligibility—instead of forms, modern science discovers laws. Thomistic realism is prima facie incompatible with this account. Following Charles De Koninck, this essay outlines a rapprochement between the epistemology of pre-modern, Thomistic natural science and its modern successor. I (...) argue that natural forms are noetic limits towards which physical laws tend, and our grasp of this tendency uses a mode of knowledge comparable to what St. Thomas termed universal in repraesentando. (shrink)

In our day, the question of the nature of the scientific world view is of tremendous importance in people's practical activity. The views held in modern science at the present time constitute a most important element of world view as a whole, confirming the materialist nature of the universe and of man. The science of our times, having attained stupendous results in analysis of the laws of the microworld, the cosmos, and the essence of life, and in understanding human beings, (...) provides indisputable proof of the material nature of all things and phenomena. (shrink)

What, for Kant, is the semantic status of the proposition: Water is H2O? Is it analytic or synthetic? The question is not one of merely esoteric import since an answer to it would constitute a statement about the meaningfulness of all our scientific propositions. And, insofar as the Critique is a defense of the possibility of the natural sciences, it seems that we should be able to find in it the answer to our question. Further, we should be (...) able to find an answer to the question of whether or not Kant is a scientific essentialist. I attempt to show that he is not an essentialist despite the fact that his semantics of natural kind terms greatly resembles that of some contemporary authors who are essentialists and take their semantic theories to provide evidence for their views. One way to go about this would be simply to locate Kant's criteria for the analytic/synthetic distinction and then to place the proposition in the category dictated by those criteria. Rather than employ this method, I will examine instead some of Kant's own examples. The hope is that by means of the examples the criteria themselves will achieve a greater degree of clarity and that through this clarification Kant's position will emerge as a genuine alternative to contemporary positions. (shrink)

This article examines some of the contributions to the contemporary debate over the question of whether there is an important distinction to be made between the natural and the human sciences. In particular, the article looks at the arguments that Charles Taylor has put forward for the recognition of a radical discontinuity between these forms of science and then examines Richard Rorty's objections to Taylor's distinction and argues that Rorty misunderstands the reasons for this distinction and thereby misses (...) the political implications of failing to make such a distinction. In this regard, some arguments made by Anthony Giddens and John O'Neill, respectively, around Alfred Schutz's "postulate of adequacy" are used to show how the social sciences must be conceived so as to avoid consequences inimical to the reproduction and maintenance of participatory, democratic institutions. Additionally, the article uses O'Neill's argument that the Schutzian conceptualization of interpretive sciences can be critical in a way that Giddens and Jürgen Habermas require, while including a translation and accountability principle, to demonstrate how we ought to respect participatory, democratic forms. (shrink)

Edited from the author's posthumous works by Agnes von Cranach. Topics incl. natural science & idealistic philosophy, general attempts to define life, vitalism, mechanism, etc.\Here Am I Where Are You?: The Behavior of the Greylag Goose was thought to be Konrad Lorenz's last book. However, in 1991 the "Russian Manuscript" was discovered in an attic, and its subsequent publication in German has become a scientific sensation. Written under the most extreme conditions in Soviet prison camps, the "Russian Manuscript" was (...) the first outline of a large-scale work on behavioral science. This translation contains a synopsis of all the ideas that made Lorenz famous as the founder of ethology, the study of comparative animal behavior. Written just after World War II, while the author was incarcerated in a Soviet prison camp, this so-called "Russian manuscript" was believed lost forever. Its rediscovery in 1991 and, now, its publication represent a major contribution to the history of science and the advancement of the behavioral sciences. This book contains some of the earliest formulations of the discipline that Lorenz called comparative behavioral research (i.e., ethology); its theories also portend the development of sociobiology and the new fields of behavioral and genetic psychology. He writes, "The route to an understanding of humans leads just as surely through an understanding of animals as the evolutionary pathway of humans had led through animal precursors." Lorenz also devotes almost equal attention to the "Philosophical Prolegomena" as to the "Biological Prologomena," arguing, in the process, for a synthesis between the sciences and the humanities as complementary expressions of human cognition. The text, edited by Lorenz's daughter, is full of literary excesses; although comprehensible to the lay reader, it is not particularly enjoyable to read. Still, such a book's value cannot be measured by its popularity alone. Important for any general science collection and indispensable for all academic or history of science collections.-Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib. (shrink)

The article discusses the formal classification of natural sciences, which is based on several propositions: (a) natural sciences can be separated onto independent and dependent sciences based on the gnosiologic criterion and irreducibility criteria (principal and technical); (b) there are four independent sciences which form a hierarchy: physics ← chemistry ← terrestrial biology ← human psychology; (c) every independent science except for physics has already developed or will develop in the future a set of (...) final paradigms formulated in the terms of the science one step above it in the hierarchy; (d) some paradigms in physics will never become final; (e) each independent natural science has dependent sciences with paradigms already expressed in the terms of the respective independent sciences. Existing paradigms of independent natural sciences are listed and discussed with respect to the degree of their approach to the final state. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

How do we understand the agency and significance of material forces and their interface with human bodies? What does it mean to be human in these times, with bodies that are inextricably interconnected with our physical world? Bodily Natures considers these questions by grappling with powerful and pervasive material forces and their increasingly harmful effects on the human body. Drawing on feminist theory, environmental studies, and the sciences, Stacy Alaimo focuses on trans-corporeality, or movement across bodies and nature, which (...) has profoundly altered our sense of self. By looking at a broad range of creative and philosophical writings, Alaimo illuminates how science, politics, and culture collide, while considering the closeness of the human body to the environment. (shrink)

This article proposes a new account of the relation between the sciences and common sense. A debate between Alfred North Whitehead and Arthur S. Eddington highlighted both the tendency of the natural sciences to repudiate commonsense conceptions of the world and the greater closeness of the human sciences to common sense. While analytic writers have mostly regarded these features as self-evident, I offer an explanation of them by appealing to Wilhelm Dilthey and the phenomenological tradition. Dilthey (...) suggested that, whereas the natural sciences could individuate their phenomena purely from empirical data, human sciences were compelled to refer to commonsense understanding in order to individuate mental phenomena. I apply this insight to episodes from the history of science, and use it to contrast the work of Alfred Schutz and Carl G. Hempel in philosophy of social and natural science. In the final section, I argue that Dilthey’s framework also offers resources to challenge present-day reductionism about mental phenomena. (shrink)

This chapter demonstrates the significance of the biological sciences in natural theology. It does so by considering three major topics: the argument from design, the problem of evil, and the place of humans in the cosmic scheme of things. In the light of modern biology, specifically modern Darwinian evolutionary theory, there is little support for definitive proofs of the nature and existence of the Christian God. However, notwithstanding arguments to the contrary, there is nothing in modern Darwinian evolutionary (...) theory that makes impossible a belief in a traditional form of Christianity. (shrink)

The emerging contemporary natural philosophy provides a common ground for the integrative view of the natural, the artificial, and the human-social knowledge and practices. Learning process is central for acquiring, maintaining, and managing knowledge, both theoretical and practical. This paper explores the relationships between the present advances in understanding of learning in the sciences of the artificial (deep learning, robotics), natural sciences (neuroscience, cognitive science, biology), and philosophy (philosophy of computing, philosophy of mind, natural (...) philosophy). The question is, what at this stage of the development the inspiration from nature, specifically its computational models such as info-computation through morphological computing, can contribute to machine learning and artificial intelligence, and how much on the other hand models and experiments in machine learning and robotics can motivate, justify, and inform research in computational cognitive science, neurosciences, and computing nature. We propose that one contribution can be understanding of the mechanisms of ‘learning to learn’, as a step towards deep learning with symbolic layer of computation/information processing in a framework linking connectionism with symbolism. As all natural systems possessing intelligence are cognitive systems, we describe the evolutionary arguments for the necessity of learning to learn for a system to reach humanlevel intelligence through evolution and development. The paper thus presents a contribution to the epistemology of the contemporary philosophy of nature. (shrink)

This chapter, which discusses how the mind sciences can be used in natural theology, identifies two aspects of human mental functioning to consider from a theological point of view. First, there is the theological significance of the general capacity for advanced mental functioning found in humans. Second, there is the theological significance of particular human capacities such as religion.