Our Knowledge of the External World As a Field for Scientific Method In
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Foucault's Darwinian Genealogy
genealogy Article Foucault’s Darwinian Genealogy Marco Solinas Political Philosophy, University of Florence and Deutsches Institut Florenz, Via dei Pecori 1, 50123 Florence, Italy; [email protected] Academic Editor: Philip Kretsedemas Received: 10 March 2017; Accepted: 16 May 2017; Published: 23 May 2017 Abstract: This paper outlines Darwin’s theory of descent with modification in order to show that it is genealogical in a narrow sense, and that from this point of view, it can be understood as one of the basic models and sources—also indirectly via Nietzsche—of Foucault’s conception of genealogy. Therefore, this essay aims to overcome the impression of a strong opposition to Darwin that arises from Foucault’s critique of the “evolutionistic” research of “origin”—understood as Ursprung and not as Entstehung. By highlighting Darwin’s interpretation of the principles of extinction, divergence of character, and of the many complex contingencies and slight modifications in the becoming of species, this essay shows how his genealogical framework demonstrates an affinity, even if only partially, with Foucault’s genealogy. Keywords: Darwin; Foucault; genealogy; natural genealogies; teleology; evolution; extinction; origin; Entstehung; rudimentary organs “Our classifications will come to be, as far as they can be so made, genealogies; and will then truly give what may be called the plan of creation. The rules for classifying will no doubt become simpler when we have a definite object in view. We possess no pedigrees or armorial bearings; and we have to discover and trace the many diverging lines of descent in our natural genealogies, by characters of any kind which have long been inherited. -
Evolutionary Epistemology in James' Pragmatism J
35 THE ORIGIN OF AN INQUIRY: EVOLUTIONARY EPISTEMOLOGY IN JAMES' PRAGMATISM J. Ellis Perry IV University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth "Much struck." That was Darwin's way of saying that something he observed fascinated him, arrested his attention, surprised or puzzled him. The words "much struck" riddle the pages of bothhis Voyage ofthe Beagle and his The Origin of Species, and their appearance should alert the reader that Darwin was saying something important. Most of the time, the reader caninfer that something Darwin had observed was at variance with what he had expected, and that his fai th in some alleged law or general principle hadbeen shaken, and this happened repeat edly throughout his five year sojourn on the H.M.S. Beagle. The "irritation" of his doubting the theretofore necessary truths of natu ral history was Darwin's stimulus to inquiry, to creative and thor oughly original abductions. "The influence of Darwinupon philosophy resides inhis ha ving conquered the phenomena of life for the principle of transi tion, and thereby freed the new logic for application to mind and morals and life" (Dewey p. 1). While it would be an odd fellow who would disagree with the claim of Dewey and others that the American pragmatist philosophers were to no small extent influenced by the Darwinian corpus,! few have been willing to make the case for Darwin's influence on the pragmatic philosophy of William James. Philip Wiener, in his well known work, reports that Thanks to Professor Perry's remarks in his definitive work on James, "the influence of Darwin was both early and profound, and its effects crop up in unex pected quarters." Perry is a senior at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmoltth. -
Early Buddhist Metaphysics: the Making of a Philosophical Tradition
EARLY BUDDHIST METAPHYSICS This book provides a philosophical account of the major doctrinal shift in the history of early Theravada tradition in India: the transition from the earliest stratum of Buddhist thought to the systematic and allegedly scholastic philosophy of the Pali Abhidhamma movement. Conceptual investigation into the development of Buddhist ideas is pursued, thus rendering the Buddha’s philosophical position more explicit and showing how and why his successors changed it. Entwining comparative philosophy and Buddhology, the author probes the Abhidhamma’s shift from an epistemologically oriented conceptual scheme to a metaphysical worldview that is based on the concept of dhamma. She does so in terms of the Aristotelian tradition and vis-à-vis modern philosophy, exploiting Western philo- sophical literature from Plato to contemporary texts in the fields of philosophy of mind and cultural criticism. This book not only demonstrates that a philosophical inquiry into the conceptual foundations of early Buddhism can enhance our understanding of what philosophy and religion are qua thought and religion; it also shows the value of fresh perspectives for traditional Buddhology. Combining philosophically rigorous investigation and Buddhological research criteria, Early Buddhist Metaphysics fills a significant gap in Buddhist scholar- ship’s treatment of the conceptual development of the Abhidhamma. Noa Ronkin received her PhD from the University of Oxford. She is currently a lecturer in the Introduction to the Humanities Programme and a Research Fellow at the Center for Buddhist Studies, Stanford University. Her research interests include a range of issues associated with Indian Theravada Buddhist philosophy and psychology, the Abhidhamma tradition and comparative Indian philosophy. -
Evolutionism and Holism: Two Different Paradigms for the Phenomenon of Biological Evolution
R. Fondi, International Journal of Ecodynamics. Vol. 1, No. 3 (2006) 284–297 EVOLUTIONISM AND HOLISM: TWO DIFFERENT PARADIGMS FOR THE PHENOMENON OF BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION R. FONDI Department of Earth Sciences, University of Siena, Italy. ABSTRACT The evolutionistic paradigm – the assumption that biological evolution consists in a mere process of ‘descendance with modification from common ancestors’, canonically represented by means of the phylogenetic tree model – can be seen as strictly connected to the classical or deterministic vision of the world, which dominated the 18th and 19th centuries. Research findings in palaeontology, however, have never fully supported the above- mentioned model. Besides, during the 20th century, the conceptual transformations produced by restricted and general relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology, information theory, research into consciousness, chaos– complexity theory, evolutionary thermodynamics and biosemiotics have radically changed the scientific picture of reality. It is therefore necessary to adopt a more suitable and up-to-date paradigm, according to which nature is not seen anymore as a mere assembly of independent things, subject to the Lamarckian-Darwinian dialectics of ‘chance and necessity’, but as: (1) an extremely complex system with all its parts dynamically coordinated; (2) the evolution of which does not obey the logic of a deterministic linear continuity but that of an indeterministic global discontinuity; and (3) in which the mind or psychic dimension, particularly evident in semiotic aspects of the biological world, is an essential and indissoluble part. On the basis of its characteristics, the new paradigm can be generically named holistic, organicistic or systemic. Keywords: biological evolution, biostratigraphy, evolutionism, holism, palaeontology, systema naturae, taxa. -
PRAGMATISM AS a PHILOSOPHY of ACTION (Paper Presented at the First Nordic Pragmatism Conference, Helsinki, Finland, June 2008)
1 PRAGMATISM AS A PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION (Paper presented at the First Nordic Pragmatism Conference, Helsinki, Finland, June 2008) Erkki Kilpinen University of Helsinki When I gave the doctrine of pragmatism the name it bears, – and a doctrine of vital significance it is, – I derived the name by which I christened it from pragma, – behaviour – in order that it should be understood that the doctrine is that the only real significance of a general term lies in the general behaviour which it implies. Charles S. Peirce, May 1912 cited by Eisele (1987:95).1 Introduction: Action ahead of knowledge on pragmatism’s philosophical agenda Although the very founder of the pragmatic movement is adamant that this philosophy is inherently related to action – or behaviour as Peirce laconically says here – philosophers have been curiously reluctant to recognize this. Of course one finds in the literature comments about how pragmatists often talk about action, and some commentators feel that they talk about it too often, at the expense of traditional philosophical problems. To see this is not yet, however, to see the essential pragmatist point; in what sense they talk about action. Their usage of this term and the underlying idea differ from what is customary in other philosophical approaches. Pragmatism namely approaches all theoretical and philosophical problems as problems that in final analysis are related to action. In mainstream philosophy, both in its positivist-analytic and phenomenological versions, action is a contingent empirical phenomenon demanding an explanation. In pragmatism, action is a universal phenomenon which in itself begs no explanation but rather makes the starting point for explanations. -
Causality and Freedom 2012
FREEDOM AND CAUSALITY IN CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC & WESTERN PHILOSOPHY Mohsen Mohammadi Araghi CAUSALITY AND FREEDOM 2012 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................. 3 PART (1) THE BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM IN ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY .................... 22 1. CAUSE ................................................................................................................................................... 26 2. NECESSITY OR THE NECESSITY OF EXISTENCE .............................................................. 32 3. FREEDOM ........................................................................................................................................... 35 A BRIEF HISTORY of ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATES ................................................... 39 1. Divine Essence Monotheism (Unity In God’s Essence) .................................................. 43 2. Divine Attribute Monotheism (Unity In God’s Attributes) ........................................... 44 3. Divine Act Monotheism (Unity Of Divine Act) .................................................................... 48 PART (2) FREEWILL AND CAUSALITY in THE CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY .................................................................................................................................................... 66 A. THE THEORY OF NECESSITY ......................................................................................................... -
By Jacques Loeb [1]
Published on The Embryo Project Encyclopedia (https://embryo.asu.edu) The Mechanistic Conception of Life (1912), by Jacques Loeb [1] By: Elliott, Steve Keywords: Mechanism [2] Jacques Loeb [3] published The Mechanistic Conception of Life in 1912. Loeb’s goal for the book was to further disseminate his explanations of organic processes—such as embryonic development and organisms’ orientations to their environments—which relied on physics and chemistry. Loeb also wanted to provide an alternative explanatory framework to vitalism [4] and what he called romantic evolutionism [5], then both widespread. Loeb mined his work on tropisms [6] and artificial parthenogenesis [7], both of which he considered central to biology, to show that physicochemical explanations accounted for some of the most perplexing organic phenomena. Thus, for those processes, anyone who appealed to vitalism [4] or romantic evolutionism [5] offered only impotent explanations. The Mechanistic Conception of Life established Loeb’s widespread reputation as a mechanist, both to the public and to generations of biologists. In The Mechanistic Conception of Life ten popular lectures were presented, each originally published elsewhere beginning in 1893. The University of Chicago Press [8] published the first edition in 1912. In 1964 Donald Fleming [9] edited a second edition through the Harvard University Press [10]. Fleming’s edition included his biography of Loeb as well as notes appended to each essay relating its contents to contemporary biology. In the opening and closing essays, Loeb discussed what biologists studied and the nature of their explanations. In the first essay, the book’s title piece, Loeb promulgated two principles that ground biology, make it a rigorous discipline, and by which biologists explain phenomena. -
AR Wallace's Approach
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Apollo Volume 5, No. 4 16 Evolutionism Combined with Spiritualism: A. R. Wallace’s Approach ∗ Li LIU Peking University Abstract: A. R. Wallace was the co-founder of the theory of natural selection and a solid supporter of Darwin, but he combined evolutionism with spiritualism, and tried to understand human evolution and evolutionary ethics with a spiritualistic teleology. This teleological version is a typical example of non-Darwinian evolutionism , which was rooted in the ideology of Victorian progressionism, and was used to avoid the materialism implicated in Darwinism. Through investigating Wallace's approach, we may realize how progressionism had worked as the bridge between science and religion in Victorian Age. Key Words: A. R. Wallace, evolutionism, spiritualism, Victorian progressionism ∗ Department of Philosophy, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China. E-mail: [email protected] Journal of Cambridge Studies 17 1. INTRODUCTION Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Robert Darwin independently discovered the principle of natural selection and their articles were announced to scientific community by a joint publication, on 1st July 1858. It’s the starting point of the Darwinian revolution or as Peter Bowler put in his book, “the non-Darwinian revolution”. Stimulated by Wallace, Darwin finally finished and then published his Origin of Species, and got “the whole credit for one of the most liberating advances in scientific thought”, as Wallace “agreed of his own free will to play moon to Darwin’s sun.”1 Considered as a Darwinist, Wallace positively defended Darwinism in his time, and published a book named Darwinism (1889). -
Essay on Robert Brandom, Making It Explicit Daniel Dennett July 31, 2006
Essay on Robert Brandom, Making it Explicit Daniel Dennett July 31, 2006 The Evolution of AWhy?@ 1. The descent of content. Which way is up? I have recently completed the bracingBand long overdueBexperience of reading Making it Explicit, and trying to superimpose my own views on it to see where the disagreements stand out. Mainly, there is agreement. Claim after claim, page after page, I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Brandom, and this is not just on matters about which philosophers in general agree. Brandom and I are on the same page about many issues that divide the profession. Moreover, on a few points where Brandom explicitly objects to positions I have maintained, I think he is, in the main, right, and I will acknowledge this in more detail below. What then is left to argue about? There is a fundamental difference of direction in our work. But I will try to show that our residual disagreementsBwhich at first make us appear poles apart on some very central thesesBmight quite easily be nudged into consonance if Brandom can take on what I view as a few friendly amendments. We both learned a lesson from Wilfrid Sellars that still hasn=t sunk in with many of our colleagues. I quote, not for the first time, what I consider to be the pithiest expression of it in Sellars: My solution is that A>. .= means - - -@ is the core of a unique mode of discourse which is as distinct from the description and explanation of empirical fact, as is the language of prescription and justification. -
Modern French Philosophy
Modern French Philosophy J. Alexander Gunn Modern French Philosophy Table of Contents Modern French Philosophy......................................................................................................................................1 J. Alexander Gunn..........................................................................................................................................1 FOREWORD.................................................................................................................................................2 PREFACE......................................................................................................................................................3 CHAPTER I. ANTECEDENTS....................................................................................................................4 CHAPTER II. MAIN CURRENTS.............................................................................................................13 CHAPTER III. SCIENCE............................................................................................................................37 CHAPTER IV. FREEDOM.........................................................................................................................52 CHAPTER V. PROGRESS.........................................................................................................................65 CHAPTER VI. ETHICS..............................................................................................................................83 -
History of Evolutionary Theory - Barbara Continenza
BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE FUNDAMENTALS AND SYSTEMATICS – Vol. I - History of Evolutionary Theory - Barbara Continenza HISTORY OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY Barbara Continenza Dipartimento di Ricerche Filosofiche, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università di Roma "Tor Vergata", Roma, Italia Keywords: Evolution, development, species, creationism, essentialism, fixism, transformism, scala naturae, systematics, natural history, biology, inheritance of acquired characters, use and disuse of the organs, organization plan, catastrophism, uniformism. Contents 1. Introduction 2. Scientific Historiography and the Analysis of the Theoretical Concepts 3. The Definition of "Species" 4. The Problem of Classification 5. Linneus, the "System" and the "Methods" 6. Buffon and the nuance of Nature 7. The Historical Dimension and the Re-orientation of Natural History 8. Lamarck and Transformism 9. Paleontology and Geology Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketch Summary The term "evolution" is linked to the idea of development in the sciences of life, and only subsequently did it acquire the present meaning of diversification and origin of new species. The dominant image of the scala naturae, strictly related to the creationist, static and essentialistic positions, was substituted by the image of the tree that characterizes the transformist theories, and that represents the process of transformation over long periods of time. UNESCO – EOLSS 1. Introduction "Evolution" is a term rich in suggestions. It penetrates the current lexicon that we are accustomed to useSAMPLE in the most disparate occasions, CHAPTERS with meanings that are sometimes very distant from the scientific theory that decreed its success, or that are only vaguely allusive to the Darwinian theory of evolution. The term "evolution" has also historically assumed different meanings in specific studies of life. -
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy XI-2 | 2019 Pragmatism and Theories of Emergence Pragmatism and Emergentism In Chauncey Wright’s Evolutionary Philosophy Andrea Parravicini Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1623 DOI: 10.4000/ejpap.1623 ISSN: 2036-4091 Publisher Associazione Pragma Electronic reference Andrea Parravicini, « Pragmatism and Emergentism », European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy [Online], XI-2 | 2019, Online since 24 December 2019, connection on 15 June 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1623 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ejpap.1623 This text was automatically generated on 15 June 2020. Author retains copyright and grants the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Pragmatism and Emergentism 1 Pragmatism and Emergentism In Chauncey Wright’s Evolutionary Philosophy Andrea Parravicini AUTHOR'S NOTE The author thanks the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments. 1. Introduction 1.1 Current Debates on the Notion of “Emergence” During the last twenty-five years, the notion of “emergence” has gained renewed attention in different fields, from evolutionary biology to cognitive sciences, from social sciences to philosophy of mind.1 This interest is connected to the possible application of the notion of emergence in the study of complex systems and to the possibility of developing a “non-reductive physicalism” (Crane 2001: 207). Emergence generally describes a new property or entity appearing when a system reaches a certain threshold of complexity. Although the emergent element must be connected to the system from which it emerges, it must also be novel (Bennett-Hunter 2015).