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Philosophy of Nature and of Science Volume I: the Foundations Gianfranco Basti Philosophy of Nature and of Science Volume I: The Foundations Translation by Philip Larrey not revised by the Author For Students Use Only Rome 2012 (Italian Original 2002, Published by Lateran University Press©) Gianfranco Basti Philosophy of Nature and of Science Volume I: The Foundations Translated by Philip Larrey [*Image on the cover*. Capture, occurred about 40 million years ago, of the spiral galaxy (IC2163) into the gravitational field of another one (NGC2207). They are destined, in few billion years to become one only galaxy. (NASA, Hubble Space Telescope Institute© ]. , ) 0. General Introduction Introductory remarks concerning the purpose and struc- ture of this work as well as its contents 0.1 General Framework his book intends to be a manual with the ambitious goal of de- fining a systematic link between two disciplines: the philosophy of T nature and the philosophy of science, in terms of their often prob- lematic relationship with mathematical and natural sciences. The Philosophy of Nature is a special discipline within General Metaphysics, which has as its object the universe of physical beings with their specific structures, properties and causal relationships, examined on the level of their fundamental ontology. The Philosophy of Nature is therefore distinguished from the other natural sciences (physical, biological and cognitive), which, from a modern perspective, are limited to the study of natural phenomena, in as much as they are measurable, and of laws, usually formalized with the help of mathematics, which govern the evolution in time of these phe- nomena. The Philosophy of Science, on the other hand, is recent a discipline within the philosophical panorama, dating from less than a century ago. It is characterized as a special discipline of the Philosophy of Knowledge or Gnose- ology, and has as its object the logical and epistemological foundations of the natural sciences and mathematics. Often, due to the eclipse of the phi- losophy of nature in modern culture, it has come to occupy a vicarious role for the philosophy of nature, dealing with questions of an ontologi- cal nature, if not directly metaphysical, i.e., the origin and destiny of the universe in cosmology; the nature of matter, space and time in the physical sciences; the nature of life in the biological sciences; or the na- ture of knowledge or of the mind in cognitive sciences. Given that the question concerning the foundations is the key to under- stand the complex relations between science and mathematics in mod- ernity, and, today, also between philosophy of science and philosophy of nature, the development of these issues in the first two parts of the book will entail a good part of this work. 6 PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND OF SCIENCE This work is therefore divided into volumes. The First Volume is exclu- sively dedicated to the First and Second part of the treatise, i.e., the defi- nition of the historical and theoretical framework of the issue concern- ing the foundations. The Second Volume is dedicated to the other three parts that deal with the applications of logical and metaphysical princi- ples, discussed in the First Volume, and with the objects of the physical, biological and cognitive sciences. Volume I: Philosophy of Nature and of Science. The Foundations. First Part: Historical Framing of the Issue. – 0. Introduction – 1. Science: from the origins until the Nineteenth Century – 2. The Twentieth Cen- tury and its scientific revolutions – 3. The search for foundations in the Twentieth Century. Second Part: Theoretical Framing of the Issue. – 4. Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Science. – 5. Classical metaphysics and modern thought. – 6. Highlights concerning a metaphysics of physical being. Volume II. Philosophy of Nature and of Science. Physical, Biological and Cognitive Sciences. Third Part: Physical Sciences and their Objects – 1. The structure of matter and its complexity – 2. Scientific cosmology and the origin of the universe. Fourth Part: Biological Sciences and their Objects. – 3. Different ontologies about living beings and the biological sciences. – 4. Scientific hypothesis concerning evolution and the origins of life. Fifth Part: Cognitive Sciences and their Objects – 5. Cognitive functions and their neurophysiological bases – 6. Freedom and psycho-physical de- terminisms – 7. Psychophysical unity of the person and the origins of human life. 0.2 Contents of this volume 0.2.1 Advice on how to read this book Three suggestions for reading this The vastness and complexity of this first volume of the complete work book may appear to be in contradiction of the desire to construct a ‘manual’. In order to make reading easier, aside from the indexes and the glossary of scientific terms at the end of the book, chapters summaries have been introduced to synthesize the content of each one. INTRODUCTION 7 What we recommend to the reader and especially to students is to pro- ceed step-by-step while reading this book. 1. Above all, read this introduction carefully which will clarify the aims of the whole treatise, placing it within the modern and contemporary de- bate concerning the issue, and summarizing the logical develop- ment of the entire work. For this reason, frequent allusions are made to different parts of the book which deal with the same ar- guments in a more complete way. An attentive reader will be able to locate those areas of the book which interest him the most. 2. Secondly, read the chapter summaries. From this second level of under- standing, one can obtain a clear idea of the different parts of the treatise while at the same time retaining a clear vision of its unity. 3. Thirdly, start reading the contents of each chapter, understanding the subject of the entire work by way of concentric circles. 0.2.2 Truth and causality in Science Three basic In this first volume, dedicated to the «foundations», we will examine questions of this some basic questions concerning the problem of the relation between Volume philosophy of nature on the one hand, and between philosophy of na- ture and philosophy of science on the other hand. There are two ques- tions of immediate metaphysical importance which will occupy our at- tention and which are particularly relevant for modern thinkers: 1. Truth and realism The problem concerning the truth and realism of scientific construc- of scientific tions within the natural sciences, with particular reference (from knowledge within the hypothetical-deductive method) to the question of the real foundation of the hypotheses that are at the base of different sci- entific theories; against the thesis (common to both logical neo- positivism and Popperian falsificationism) of the non rational char- acter of invention and of the construction of the same theories. 2. Logical necessity, The problem of causality and its foundation in the natural sciences in causal necessity relation to the problem of the logical necessity of demonstrations and and their relation of its foundation. Notice that classical thought and modern thought are at opposite ends of the debate concerning this issue. While for classical thought, especially Aristotelian-thomistic, it was the neces- sity of real relations (causal) – those that determine the existence (or common being) and the being (or being of the essence) of the in- dividual natural beings – that through abstraction grounded the ne- 8 PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND OF SCIENCE cessity of logical relations, for modern thought after Kant, the exact opposite is true. It is the necessity of the self-evidence of the logical a priori, of the formal relation between logical antecedent and conse- quent that grounded the necessity of the causal relation between predecessor and empirical successor, placed in temporal succession and made evident by experimental knowledge. In such a way, Kant intended to solve Hume’s famous “problem of induction”. Such a solution was derived from two tacit suppositions: Critique of the a. One supposition that tied the causal relation exclusively to the Humian-Kantian temporal relation between predecessor and successor of the model of causality in the sciences: process, because the paradigm used was that of Newtonian me- a. Causal relation chanics*1 of dynamic integrated systems, where the final state of grounded by time the process depends univocally on the initial conditions. In this and therefore by way, for the first time causality was tied to the knowledge of consciousness the phenomenon, instead of to the being of the thing, since without the mind there can not be even time. b. Apodictic b. A second supposition dealt with a apodictic foundation of the Foundation of logical a priori, a foundation based on the Cartesian principle of necessity based on evidence, evidence not only of the first principles of formal evidence and therefore on logic (principle of non-contradiction, of identity, etc.) and of consciousness their application to «being in terms of being» of metaphysics, as it was for classical thought, but also of the postulates of the different sciences. Above all, the postulates of Euclidean geome- try* in its «algebraic» or «analytical» form as proposed by Des- cartes were considered self-evident and therefore apodictic. However, after Newton, the three fundamental postulates (laws) of mechanics were also considered in this manner. In this way, we see an abandoning of the classical distinction be- tween self-evident axioms (or «first principles» of logics and metaphysics) and postulates (or «first principles» of the various scientific, physical and mathematical disciplines), anything but self evident for classical thought – one need think only of the difficulties that the famous fifth postulate of Euclid caused the ancient mathematicians -- , given that they did not deal with the common being (existence) of any being as with general 1 The terms indicated with an asterisk «*» are defined in the «Glossary», added as an Ap- pendix at the end of the book, because they are terms which are not defined and ex- plained within the treatise itself.
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