Introduction: a Brief History of Philosophy of Science
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Philosophy of Science -----Paulk
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE -----PAULK. FEYERABEND----- However, it has also a quite decisive role in building the new science and in defending new theories against their well-entrenched predecessors. For example, this philosophy plays a most important part in the arguments about the Copernican system, in the development of optics, and in the Philosophy ofScience: A Subject with construction of a new and non-Aristotelian dynamics. Almost every work of Galileo is a mixture of philosophical, mathematical, and physical prin~ a Great Past ciples which collaborate intimately without giving the impression of in coherence. This is the heroic time of the scientific philosophy. The new philosophy is not content just to mirror a science that develops independ ently of it; nor is it so distant as to deal just with alternative philosophies. It plays an essential role in building up the new science that was to replace 1. While it should be possible, in a free society, to introduce, to ex the earlier doctrines.1 pound, to make propaganda for any subject, however absurd and however 3. Now it is interesting to see how this active and critical philosophy is immoral, to publish books and articles, to give lectures on any topic, it gradually replaced by a more conservative creed, how the new creed gener must also be possible to examine what is being expounded by reference, ates technical problems of its own which are in no way related to specific not to the internal standards of the subject (which may be but the method scientific problems (Hurne), and how there arises a special subject that according to which a particular madness is being pursued), but to stan codifies science without acting back on it (Kant). -
A Rhetorical Analysis of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia A
A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S PRINCIPIA A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE TEXAS WOMAN’S UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, SPEECH, AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES BY GIRIBALA JOSHI, B.S., M.S. DENTON, TEXAS AUGUST 2018 Copyright © 2018 by Giribala Joshi DEDICATION Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night: God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light. ~ Alexander Pope Dedicated to all the wonderful eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers and philosophers! ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the continuous support and encouragement that I received from the Department of English, Speech and Foreign Languages. I especially want to thank my thesis committee member Dr. Ashley Bender, and my committee chair Dr. Brian Fehler, for their guidance and feedback while writing this thesis. iii ABSTRACT GIRIBALA JOSHI A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S PRINCIPIA AUGUST 2018 In this thesis, I analyze Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in the framework of Aristotle’s theories of rhetoric. Despite the long-held view that science only deals with brute facts and does not require rhetoric, we learn that science has its own special topics. This study highlights the rhetorical situation of the Principia and Newton’s rhetorical strategies, emphasizing the belief that scientific facts and theories are also rhetorical constructions. This analysis shows that the credibility of the author and the text, the emotional debates before and after the publication of the text, the construction of logical arguments, and the presentation style makes the book the epitome of scientific writing. -
Dossier Pierre Duhem Pierre Duhem's Philosophy and History of Science
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science , 2 (201 7) 03 -06 ISSN 2526 -2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © The Author s 201 7 — This is an open access article Dossier Pierre Duhem Pierre Duhem’s Philos ophy and History of Science Introduction Fábio Rodrigo Leite 1 Jean-François Stoffel 2 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.02 _____________________________________________________________________________ We are pleased to present in this issue a tribute to the thought of Pierre Duhem, on the occasion of the centenary of his death that occurred in 2016. Among articles and book reviews, the dossier contains 14 contributions of scholars from different places across the world, from Europe (Belgium, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Sweden) to the Americas (Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the United States). And this is something that attests to the increasing scope of influence exerted by the French physicist, philosopher and 3 historian. It is quite true that since his passing, Duhem has been remembered in the writings of many of those who knew him directly. However, with very few exceptions (Manville et al. 1927), the comments devoted to him exhibited clear biographical and hagiographic characteristics of a generalist nature (see Jordan 1917; Picard 1921; Mentré 1922a; 1922b; Humbert 1932; Pierre-Duhem 1936; Ocagne et al. 1937). From the 1950s onwards, when the studies on his philosophical work resumed, the thought of the Professor from Bordeaux acquired an irrevocable importance, so that references to La théorie physique: Son objet et sa structure became a common place in the literature of the area. As we know, this recovery was a consequence of the prominence attributed, firstly, to the notorious Duhem-Quine thesis in the English- speaking world, and secondly to the sparse and biased comments made by Popper that generated an avalanche of revaluations of the Popperian “instrumentalist interpretation”. -
The Relationship Between Science and Religion in the Early Modern Period
Gennady P. Otyutskiy The relationship between science and religion in the Professor, Doctor of Philosophical Science, Professor of early modern period tends to be regarded one- the Department of political Science and international Relations Russian State Social University, Moscow, sidedly, with the Church as an oppressor and Russian Federation. persecutor of science. To prove this view, scholars ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9680-1918 usually cite the execution of Giordano Bruno and the E-mail: [email protected] trial of Galileo, and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum Received in: Approved in: 2021-01-15 2021-02-02 that included the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, DOI: https://doi.org/10.24115/S2446-6220202172682p.42-49 Descartes and others. At the same time, the so called “true science” is regarded as immanently disassociating itself from religion. Yet, first, one should not confuse the influence of the Church as a social institution with religion as the worldview framework for scientific creativity, while the Church can be an obstacle to scientific research, religion can be a stimulus for it. Second, it should be noted that the concept of God has played the role of a scientific hypothesis; therefore, the “God hypothesis” may be fairly regarded as a specific methodological tool. Third, it may prove useful to identify the methodological functions that such a hypothesis is able to perform based on the works of two scientific rivals, Leibniz and Newton. The content analysis method that is adopted in this work to study the texts of the two thinkers allowed us to identify ideas related to the specific functions of God within the naturalistic- scientific worldview. -
Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality
Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Holton, Gerald. 1968. Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality. Daedalus 97 (2), Historical Population Studies (Spring, 1968): 636-673 Published Version https://www.jstor.org/stable/20023833 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:37902464 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA ANTICIPATIONS GERALD HOLTON Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality In the history of ideas of our century, there is a chapter that might be entitled "The Philosophical Pilgrimage of Albert Einstein," a pilgrimage from a philosophy of science in which sensationism and empiricism were at the center, to one in which the basis was a rational realism. This essay, a portion of a more extensive study,1 is concerned with Einstein's gradual philosophical reorientation, particularly as it has become discernible during the work on his largely unpublished scientific correspondence.2 The earliest known letter by Einstein takes us right into the middle of the case. It is dated 19 March 1901 and addressed to Wilhelm Ostwald.3 The immediate cause for Einstein's letter was his failure to receive an assistantship at the school where he had recently finished his formal studies, the Polytechnic Institute in Z?rich; he now turned to Ostwald to ask for a position at his laboratory, partly in the hope of receiving "the opportunity for further education." Einstein included a copy of his first publica tion, "Folgerungen aus den Capillarit?tserscheinungen" (Annalen d. -
``Mathematics'' and ``Physics'' in the Science of Harmonics
NISSUNA UMANA INVESTIGAZIONE SI PUO DIMANDARE VERA SCIENZIA S’ESSA NON PASSA PER LE MATEMATICHE DIMOSTRAZIONI LEONARDO DA VINCI vol. 4 no. 3-4 2016 Mathematics and Mechanics of Complex Systems STEFANO ISOLA “MATHEMATICS” AND “PHYSICS” IN THE SCIENCE OF HARMONICS msp MATHEMATICS AND MECHANICS OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS Vol. 4, No. 3-4, 2016 dx.doi.org/10.2140/memocs.2016.4.213 ∩ MM “MATHEMATICS” AND “PHYSICS” IN THE SCIENCE OF HARMONICS STEFANO ISOLA Some aspects of the role that the science of harmonics has played in the history of science are discussed in light of Russo’s investigation of the history of the concepts of “mathematics” and “physics”. 1. The rambling route of the ancient scientific method In several places in Russo’s writings on the history of science, one can find en- lightening discussions about the meanings of the concepts of “physics” and “math- ematics”, along with the particular notions of truth involved in them; see, e.g., [58, Chapter 6.6; 60, Chapter 15; 56; 57]. Both terms derive from the Greek: the original meaning of the former was the investigation of everything that lives, grows or, more generally, comes into existence, whereas the latter referred to all that is studied, thus deriving its meaning not from its content but from its method. In the Hellenistic period, the term “physics” continued to be used to indicate that sector of philosophy that addressed nature (the other sectors being ethics and logic), thus corresponding to what came to be called “natural philosophy” in modern times. On the other hand, the term “mathematics” was used to indicate all the disciplines (including geometry, arithmetic, harmonics, astronomy, optics, mechanics, hydro- statics, pneumatics, geodesy and mathematical geography) that shared the same method of investigation, based on the construction of theories by which “theorems” are proved, leaning on explicitly stated initial assumptions. -
Newton As Philosopher
This page intentionally left blank NEWTON AS PHILOSOPHER Newton’s philosophical views are unique and uniquely difficult to categorize. In the course of a long career from the early 1670s until his death in 1727, he articulated profound responses to Cartesian natural philosophy and to the prevailing mechanical philosophy of his day. Newton as Philosopher presents Newton as an original and sophisti- cated contributor to natural philosophy, one who engaged with the principal ideas of his most important predecessor, René Descartes, and of his most influential critic, G. W. Leibniz. Unlike Descartes and Leibniz, Newton was systematic and philosophical without presenting a philosophical system, but, over the course of his life, he developed a novel picture of nature, our place within it, and its relation to the creator. This rich treatment of his philosophical ideas, the first in English for thirty years, will be of wide interest to historians of philosophy, science, and ideas. ANDREW JANIAK is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Duke University. He is editor of Newton: Philosophical Writings (2004). NEWTON AS PHILOSOPHER ANDREW JANIAK Duke University CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521862868 © Andrew Janiak 2008 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. -
ST, Phd Masterdoc, 14.02.2016
Bilderverbot: Adorno & the Ban on Images Sebastian Truskolaski Goldsmiths College, University of London PhD in Visual Cultures February 2016 1 Declaration: I, Sebastian Truskolaski, hereby confirm that the content of this thesis is entirely my own. Signature:_______________________________________ Date:_______________ 2 Acknowledgments: I’d like to thank my family, my supervisors and my friends who generously commented on sections of this thesis. Vielen Dank. 3 Abstract: My thesis examines the significance of Theodor W. Adorno’s recurrent reference to the Old Testament ban on making images of God: the ‘Bilderverbot’. In particular I focus on three facets of this figure that occur at prominent junctures of Adorno’s work: his ‘imageless materialism’ (Chapter One), his ‘inverse theology’ (Chapter Two) and his ‘negative aesthetics’ (Chapter Three). In each case I argue that Adorno strips the image ban of its religious associations and enlists it in the service of a broadly Marxian critique of capitalist modernity. The ban on picturing the absolute is rendered as a ban on pre-determining a future in which all historical antagonisms are reconciled. As Adorno argues, only an unflinching criticism of the present can throw into relief the contours of an ‘imageless’ Utopia. I approach Adorno’s writings with a view to his sources, many of which contain notable references to the image ban that span the history of modern German thought. They include: Marx and Lukács, Benjamin and Bloch, Kant and Hegel, as well as Hölderlin, Kafka and Schoenberg. By emphasising these elective affinities, I aim to shed light on Adorno’s singular application of the figure of the image ban to his critical project. -
Entropic Dynamics (ED) Provides a Framework for Deriving Dynamical Laws As an Application of Entropic Methods [14]-[17]
Entropic Dynamics: Mechanics without Mechanism Ariel Caticha Physics Department, University at Albany-SUNY, Albany, NY 12222, USA. Abstract Entropic Dynamics is a framework in which dynamical laws such as those that arise in physics are derived as an application of entropic meth- ods of inference. No underlying action principle is postulated. Instead, the dynamics is driven by entropy subject to constraints reflecting the information that is relevant to the problem at hand. In this chapter I re- view the derivation of of three forms of mechanics. The first is a standard diffusion, the second is a form of Hamiltonian mechanics, and finally, an argument from information geometry is used to motivate the particular choice of Hamiltonian that leads to quantum mechanics. Law without Law: “The only thing harder to understand than a law of sta- tistical origin would be a law that is not of statistical origin, for then there would be no way for it — or its progenitor principles — to come into being.” Two tests: “No test of these views looks like being someday doable, nor more interesting and more instructive, than a derivation of the structure of quantum theory... No prediction lends itself to a more critical test than this, that every law of physics, pushed to the extreme, will be found statis- tical and approximate, not mathematically perfect and precise.” J. A. Wheeler [1] arXiv:1704.02663v2 [quant-ph] 21 Feb 2018 1 Introduction The drive to explain nature has always led us to seek the mechanisms hidden behind the phenomena. Descartes, for example, claimed to explain the motion of planets as being swept along in the flow of some vortices. -
Passmore, J. (1967). Logical Positivism. in P. Edwards (Ed.). the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Vol. 5, 52- 57). New York: Macmillan
Passmore, J. (1967). Logical Positivism. In P. Edwards (Ed.). The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Vol. 5, 52- 57). New York: Macmillan. LOGICAL POSITIVISM is the name given in 1931 by A. E. Blumberg and Herbert Feigl to a set of philosophical ideas put forward by the Vienna circle. Synonymous expressions include "consistent empiricism," "logical empiricism," "scientific empiricism," and "logical neo-positivism." The name logical positivism is often, but misleadingly, used more broadly to include the "analytical" or "ordinary language philosophies developed at Cambridge and Oxford. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The logical positivists thought of themselves as continuing a nineteenth-century Viennese empirical tradition, closely linked with British empiricism and culminating in the antimetaphysical, scientifically oriented teaching of Ernst Mach. In 1907 the mathematician Hans Hahn, the economist Otto Neurath, and the physicist Philipp Frank, all of whom were later to be prominent members of the Vienna circle, came together as an informal group to discuss the philosophy of science. They hoped to give an account of science which would do justice -as, they thought, Mach did not- to the central importance of mathematics, logic, and theoretical physics, without abandoning Mach's general doctrine that science is, fundamentally, the description of experience. As a solution to their problems, they looked to the "new positivism" of Poincare; in attempting to reconcile Mach and Poincare; they anticipated the main themes of logical positivism. In 1922, at the instigation of members of the "Vienna group," Moritz Schlick was invited to Vienna as professor, like Mach before him (1895-1901), in the philosophy of the inductive sciences. Schlick had been trained as a scientist under Max Planck and had won a name for himself as an interpreter of Einstein's theory of relativity. -
Review of William L. Harper, Isaac Newton's Scientific Method
REVIEW OF WILLIAM L. HARPER, ISAAC NEWTON'S SCIENTIFIC METHOD ROBER RYNASIEWICZ William L. Harper, Isaac Newton's Scientific Method: Turning Data into Evidence about Gravity and Cosmology, Oxford University Press, 2011, 424pp., $80.00, ISBN 9780199570409. The title and dust jacket portrait of Newton eliciting the celebrated phenomenon of col- ors may lead one to think this is a comprehensive work on Newton's scientific method, including his experimental work in optics. The scope is narrower. In the preface to the first edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, New- ton writes, \For the whole difficulty of philosophy appears to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces." This program, for at least one force, is carried out in Book III of the Principia wherein Newton claims to establish the law of universal gravity primarily from Keplerian features of planetary and lunar motion and then to derive from this force the tides, the shape of the earth, the precession of the equinoxes, lunar anomalies and other phenom- ena. Harper's book focuses on the first half of this project, giving for the most part a running commentary with appendices on the first thirteen propositions of Book III and their corollaries, together with the three laws of motion. This is a serious and learned work that will set a standard for future philosophical analyses of Newton's argument for universal gravitation. However, though it is extensively researched and filled with a wealth of historical detail, it will not set a new standard for Newton scholarship in the stricter sense; for it fails to contextualize its subject. -
Epistemologia Testării Teoriilor Gravitației
Nicolae Sfetcu: Epistemology of Newtonian Gravity Epistemology of Newtonian Gravity Nicolae Sfetcu 17.08.2019 Sfetcu, Nicolae, "Epistemology of Newtonian Gravity", SetThings (August 17, 2019), URL = https://www.setthings.com/en/epistemology-of-newtonian-gravity/ Email: [email protected] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/. A partial translation of Sfetcu, Nicolae, "Epistemologia gravitației experimentale – Raționalitatea științifică", SetThings (1 august 2019), MultiMedia Publishing (ed.), ISBN: 978-606-033-234-3, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.15421.61925, URL = https://www.setthings.com/ro/e-books/epistemologia- gravitatiei-experimentale-rationalitatea-stiintifica/ BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................ 10 Nicolae Sfetcu: Epistemology of Newtonian Gravity In certain research programs, such as the mechanistic theory of the universe according to which the universe is a huge clock (and a system of vortices) with the push as the sole cause of movement, the particular Cartesian metaphysics functioned as a powerful heuristic principle: it discouraged scientific theories, such as the "essentialist" version of Newton's action at a distance, which were incompatible with it (negative heuristics). And it encouraged the auxiliary hypotheses that could have saved it from apparent contradictions, such as the Keplerian ellipses (positive heuristics). The first edition of Newton's Principia contains only two additional comments on the methodology: the notification that the purpose of the paper is to explain "how to determine the true motions from their causes, effects, and apparent differences, and, conversely, how to determine from motions, whether true or apparent, their causes and effects"1; and, in the Scholium at the end of Book 1, Section 11, Newton asserts that his distinctive approach makes possible a safer argumentation in natural philosophy.