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 (...) class='Hi'>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)

An effort is made in this essay to show the intrinsic hermeneutic nature of the natural sciences by means of a critical reflection on data taken from the history of classical mechanics and astronomy. The events which eventually would lead to the origin of Newton's mechanics are critically analyzed, with the aim of showing that and in what sense the natural sciences are essentially interpretive enterprises.

Applied Natural Science: Environmental Issues and Global Perspectives will provide the reader with a complete insight into the natural-scientific pattern of the world, covering the most important historical stages of the development of various areas of science, methods of natural-scientific research, general scientific and philosophical concepts, and the fundamental laws of nature. The book analyzes the main scientific trends and developments of modern natural science and also discusses important aspects of environmental protection. (...) Topics include: the problem of "the two cultures": the mathematization of natural sciences and the informatization of society; the non-linear nature of the processes occurring in nature and society; application of the second law of thermodynamics to describe the development of biological systems; global problems of the biosphere; theory and practice of stable organic paramagnetic materials; polymers and the natural environment. Key features include: an interdisciplinary approach in considering scientific and technical problems; a discussion of general scientific trends in modern natural science, including globalization challenges in nature and society, the organic chemistry of stable paramagnetic materials, the fundamentals of the environmental chemistry of polymeric materials, etc.; a justification of applying classical (non-equilibrium) thermodynamics to studying the behavior of open (including biological) systems. (shrink)

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)

The seventeenth century marked a critical phase in the emergence of modern science. But we misunderstand this process, if we assume that seventeenth-century modes of natural inquiry were identical to the highly specialised, professionalised and ever proliferating family of modern sciences practised today.

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)

With a never-before published paper by Lord Henry Cavendish, as well as a biography on him, this book offers a fascinating discourse on the rise of scientific attitudes and ways of knowing. A pioneering British physicist in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Cavendish was widely considered to be the first full-time scientist in the modern sense. Through the lens of this unique thinker and writer, this book is about the birth of modern science.

Throughout the twentieth century calls to modernize natural history motivated a range of responses. It was unclear how research in natural history museums would participate in the significant technological and conceptual changes that were occurring in the life sciences. By the 1960s, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, was among the few university-based natural history museums that were able to maintain their specimen collections and support active research. The MVZ therefore provides a (...) window to the modernization of natural history. This paper concentrates on the directorial transitions that occurred at the MVZ between 1965 and 1971. During this period, the MVZ had four directors: Alden H. Miller (Director 1940–1965), an ornithologist; Aldo Starker Leopold (Acting Director 1965–1966), a conservationist and wildlife biologist; Oliver P. Pearson (Director 1966–1971), a physiologist and mammalogist; and David B. Wake (Director 1971–1998), a morphologist, developmental biologist, and herpetologist. The paper explores how a diversity of overlapping modernization strategies, including hiring new faculty, building infrastructure to study live animals, establishing new kinds of collections, and building modern laboratories combined to maintain collections at the MVZ’s core. The paper examines the tensions between the different modernization strategies to inform an analysis of how and why some changes were institutionalized while others were short-lived. By exploring the modernization of collections-based research, this paper emphasizes the importance of collections in the transformation of the life sciences. (shrink)

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)

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 special reprint, featuring the acclaimed translation by Michael Wilson, is being made available again in response to public demand.Are we free, whether we ...

Since the 19th century many philosophers have argued, that metaphysics will have no more function at all. But the concept of metaphysics has many aspects. It must not only be understood as a system, based on everlasting principles. In the following article it is used in the sense of a philosophical cosmology. The startingpoint are the sciences, which exclude by their method the observer in his subjectivity; their view of the world must remain incomplete. Philosophical cosmology therefore has the task (...) to complete the scientific interpretation of reality by other perspectives and to connect them with one another. The unity of reality as well as that of human experience forbids a side by side of different “Sprachspiele”. A philosophical cosmology therefore develops an interpretation of reality which embraces the scientific view of the world as well as the observer in his subjectivity and those relations, which are determined by it. Already Leibniz has tried to integrate both perspectives; in the 20th century, under new conditions, especially Whitehead has developed a philosopical cosmology. For a modern concept of metaphysics it is characteristic, that it is not a system, but a permanent process, in which all relevant experiences of man in a certain epoch are synthesized. (shrink)

The ongoing research program of process thought meets some of its most crucial tests in efforts towards a comprehensive philosophy of nature. Contributors to the two special focus issues on natural science for the Process Studies journal provide many examples of such tests and commentary that reflect contemporary scientific thought. A core element of modern scientific methodology is the search for invariant, physical relationships that simplify our understanding of complex systems. In addition to a preference for some (...) form of critical realism and intersubjective testability, scientists search for relationships that are both universal and repeatable. Indeed, the very success of this approach has led to more and more frequent use of 'event/process' versus 'substance/thing' language in the sciences. (edited). (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the emergence of modern racist ideology during the nineteenth century. It examines the role played by the Victorian anatomists and anthropologists who constructed classifications of humans according to racial type, and depicted these types as having distinct and certain characteristics determined by their biological inheritance. This ideology of racism is a racial inequality dependent on a biological determinism based on science. From the 1930s to the 1950s, developments in science, specifically in human genetics (...) and anthropology, led to the retreat from scientific racism and biological determinism. In the aftermath of the Second World War, movements such as the international consensus on human rights and equality, decolonization, and civil rights advancement brought new hope to the eradication of racism. Despite initiatives for the abolition of racism, forms of inequality and discrimination persisted. These persistent forms of racism were largely based on institutional or pragmatic racism and deviated from the theoretical racism backed by biological determinism and scientific racism. They posed a great challenge to the empire. Taking the dominant mode of thinking on race as biological determinism, this chapter aims to reconsider this thinking as it misrepresents the Victorian discourse and misconstrues the nineteenth-century legacy on racism and race relations. What follows is an outline of the fault lines surrounding the disputes over the meaning and significance of race. (shrink)

Contents Acknowledgements vii Illustrations ix Preface xi Further Bibliography of A.C. Crombie xiii 1 Designed in the Mind: Western visions of Science, Nature and Humankind 1 2 The Western Experience of Scientific Objectivity 13 3 Historical Perceptions of Medieval Science 31 4 Robert Grosseteste 39 5 Roger Bacon [with J.D. North] 51 6 Infinite Power and the Laws of Nature: A Medieval Speculation 67 7 Experimental Science and the Rational Artist in Early Modern Europe 89 8 (...) Mathematics and Platonism in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy 115 9 Sources of Galileo Galilei’s Early Natural Philosophy 149 10 The Jesuits and Galileo’s Ideas of Science and of Nature [with A. Carugo] 165 11 Galileo and the Art of Rhetoric [with A. Carugo] 231 12 Galileo Galilei: A Philosophical Symbol 257 13 Alexandre Koyré and Great Britain: Galileo and Mersenne 263 14 Marin Mersenne and the Origins of Language 275 15 Le Corps à la Renaissance: Theories of Perceiver and Perceived in Hearing 291 16 Expectation, Modelling and Assent in the History of Optics: i, Alhazen and the Medieval Tradition; ii, Kepler and Descartes 301 17 Contingent Expectation and Uncertain Choice: Historical Contexts of Arguments from Probabilities 357 18 P.-L. Moreau de Maupertuis, F.R.S. : Précurseur du Transformisme 407 19 The Public and Private Faces of Charles Darwin 429 20 The Language of Science 439 21 Some Historical Questions about Disease 443 22 Historians and the Scientific Revolution 451 23 The Origins of Western Science 465 Appendix to Chapter 10: 479 Sources and Dates of Galileos Writings [with A. Carugo] Pietro Redondi, Galileo eretico [with A. Carugo] Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier Corrections to Science, Optics and Music in Medieval and Early Modern Thought 495 Index 497. (shrink)

The various aesthetic phenomena found repeatedly in the scientific enterprise stem from the role of God as artist. If the Creator is an artist, how and why natural scientists study the divine art work can be understood using theological aesthetics and the philosophy of art. The aesthetic phenomena considered here are as follows. First, science reveals beauty and the sublime in natural phenomena. Second, science discovers beauty and the sublime in the theories that are developed to (...) explain natural phenomena. Third, the search for beauty often guides scientists in their work. Fourth, where beauty is perceived, feelings of the sublime often also follow upon further contemplation. This linkage of beauty in science with truth and the sublime runs counter to most aesthetic theory since Kant. Scholarship in theological aesthetics has recently argued that the modern and postmodern elevation of the sublime over beauty is merely a preference that reveals a bias against transcendence—against God. If doing and understanding science can show this sundering of the sublime from the beautiful to be in error, science also gives evidence of transcendence. (shrink)

Stephen Gaukroger presents an original account of the development of empirical science and the understanding of human behaviour from the mid-eighteenth century. During this period science was cut loose from the legitimating culture in which it had had a public rationale as a fruitful and worthwhile form of enquiry. An abrupt but fundamental shift in how the tasks of scientific enquiry were conceived is at the centre of this development, and at its core lies the naturalization of the (...) human: attempts to understand human behaviour and motivations no longer in theological and metaphysical terms, but in empirical terms. Gaukroger explores the variety of forms that this took, in anthropological medicine, philosophical anthropology, the 'natural history of man', and social arithmetic. Each of these disciplines re-formulated basic questions so that empirical investigation could be drawn upon in answering them, but the empirical dimension was conceived very differently in each case, with the result that the naturalization of the human took the form of competing, and in some respects mutually exclusive, projects. (shrink)

Well before the current age of discourse, deconstruction, and multiculturalism, Richard McKeon propounded a philosophy of pluralism showing how "facts" and "values" are dependent on diverse ways of reading texts. This book is a transcription of an entire course, including both lectures and student discussions, taught by McKeon. As such, it provides an exciting introduction to McKeon's conception of pluralism, a central aspect of neo-Pragmatism, while demonstrating how pluralism works in a classroom setting. In his lectures, McKeon outlines the entire (...) history of Western thinking on the sciences. Treating the central concepts of motion, space, time, and cause, he traces modern intellectual debates back to the ancient Greeks, notably Plato, Aristotle, Democritus, and the Sophists. As he brings the story of Western science up to the twentieth century, he uses his fabled semantic schema (reproduced here for the first time) to uncover new ideas and observations about cosmology, mechanics, dynamics, and other aspects of physical science. Illustrating the broad historical sweep of the lectures are a series of discussions which give detail to the course's intellectual framework. These discussions of Plato, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Maxwell are perhaps the first published rendition of a philosopher in literal dialogue with his students. Led by McKeon's pointed questioning, the discussions reveal the difficulties and possibilities of learning to engage in serious intellectual communication. (shrink)

Natural disasters remind us of the capricious power of Nature. This book questions the way that modern science and technology are represented as the means to liberate human beings from the arbitrary natural imposition of forces beyond our control. Modern science is implicated in a societal gamble on the construction of a technological society to replace the natural world with a supposedly better artificial one. The author questions the rationality of this societal gamble (...) and its implications for our lives. (shrink)

This paper investigates how are things on the street methodically displayed to exchibit an aspect of extra-legal ‘ownership'. Harvey Sacks proposed two categories of ownerships, those that one wants and can have and those that one wants but cannot have. Building on this Sacks’ categorizations and on his method of simple observation and on photographic documentation this paper develops an additional typology of informal ownership displayed on the street. Typology is based on the layperson’s unmediated inference of the in situ (...) and in vivo account of the exhibited properties of a thing’s methodic display. Taking from Harold Garfinkel that social order resides in the ordinary practice the author’s layperson’s description of an observed thing accounts for the method of its display as the recognized generality of the ownership type. Such analysis escapes the sociological method of complex analysis of large collections of quantitative data as the only and privileged account of social order. In this regard, Sacks envisioned social analysis as natural science based on simple observations, reporting, and replications that could be done by anybody. (shrink)

In addition to an exceptional readability, these systematic reflections on the logical and explanatory nature of natural science have as their chief merit the well-executed resolve of their author to locate science as a logically structured and confirmed body of knowledge within the broader context of science as a human activity, involving indispensible personal and intersubjective dimensions. Nash combines this sensitivity with an impressive grasp of the history of modern science, and the book as (...) a whole is sprinkled with uniformly apropos quotations from scientists and philosophers of science. Unfortunately, however, natural science becomes uncritically identified with science as such, i.e., our total systematic, rational picture of the world; and Nash has not marshalled anything near the epistemological resources required to support his version of scientific realism. Consequently, the book provides little for the philosopher of science to get excited about, though it might be useful for cross-disciplinary purposes and would provide a good introduction for the educated layman.—E. A. R. (shrink)

My theme is thought experiment in natural science, and its relation to real experiment. I shall defend the thesis that thought experiments that do not lead to theorizing and to a real experiment are generally of much less value that those that do so. To illustrate this thesis I refer to three examples, from three very different periods, and with three very different kinds of status. The first is the classic thought experiment in which Galileo imagined that he (...) had, by pure thought, demolished Aristoteles' dogma that heavier bodies fall more quickly than light ones. I will show that he was mistaken. The second is the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper purporting to show that quantum mechanics must be incomplete in its domain of application. This thought experiment is a very good one, not because its conclusions are correct, but precisely because it was fruitful, leading to theory and, above all, to a real experiment. Finally I discuss the modern string theory of everything, which, while it is regarded as a physical theory by its instigators, shares some properties of the least successful sort of thought experiment. (shrink)

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION (A) Historical Problem Suggested by the Nature of Modern Thought How curious, after all, is the way in which we moderns think about ...

Political philosophy and natural science -- Political and psychological preconditions to recovering Socratic science -- The rediscovery of Socratic dialectic: Strauss on Schmitt's concept of the political 2. the fundamental political predicament: Strauss on Plato's laws, book III -- The origin and nature of philosophy -- The natural frame of reference and the possibility of a comprehensive science -- Natural right and history (ch. III) on the origin and nature of philosophy -- Divine revelation (...) and the possibility of science -- Strauss's introduction to Platonic studies in modern times -- Philosophy and revelation -- The foundations and directions of modern philosophy and science -- Science and politics in Strauss's natural right course -- An irony beyond Machiavelli's irony: a reading of the concluding six paragraphs of thoughts on Machiavelli. (shrink)

Francis Bacon : a new interpretation of nature -- Thomas Hobbes' scientific approach to politics -- John Locke and the origins of political resistance -- The ethic and practice of modern natural science -- Critical theory and the critique of modernity -- Michel Foucault and the postmodern reaction.

Chaos theory not only stretched the concept of chaos well beyond its traditional semantic boundaries, but it also challenged fundamental tenets of physics and science in general. Hence, its present and potential impact on the Western worldview cannot be underestimated. I will illustrate the relevance of chaos theory in regard to modern Western thought by tracing the concept of order, which modern thinkers emphasised as chaos’ dichotomic counterpart. In particular, I will underline how the concern of seventeenth-century (...) natural philosophers with order and conservation oriented the production of their concept of nature. Moreover, I will match this resulting world of natural facts with both the classical construction of the cosmos , and the nineteenth-century physico-chemical structure of conservation laws. Furthermore, I will recall the challenges to the deterministic and determinable modern scientific framework. These challenges arose from within the hard sciences, and they were often understood as a temporary lack of knowledge. I will argue that scientists long failed to acknowledge results that were at odds with their expectations, which were deeply engrained in modern Western thought, and which even harked back to the classical theoretical framework. Finally, I will suggest a link between the cultural earthquake that shook Western societies during the ‘long sixties,’ and the questioning of scientific expectations, which chaos theory defied. (shrink)

What causes winds was regarded as one of the most difficult questions of early modern natural philosophy. Vitruvius, the ancient Roman architectural author, put forth an alternative to Aristotle’s theory by likening the generation of wind to the actions of the aeolipile, which he believed made artificial winds. As Vitruvius’s work proliferated during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, numerous natural philosophers, including Descartes, used the aeolipile as a model for nature. Yet, interpretations of Vitruvius’s text and of (...) the relation of the aeolipile to natural winds varied according to definitions and conceptions of air, wind, rarefaction, condensation, and vapor. (shrink)

The theory of evolution of complex and comprising of human systems and algorithm for its constructing are the synthesis of evolutionary epistemology, philosophical anthropology and concrete scientific empirical basis in modern (transdisciplinary) science. «Trans-disciplinary» in the context is interpreted as a completely new epistemological situation, which is fraught with the initiation of a civilizational crisis. Philosophy and ideology of technogenic civilization is based on the possibility of unambiguous demarcation of public value and descriptive scientific discourses (1), and the (...) object and subject of the cognitive process (2). Both of these attributes are no longer valid. For mass, everyday consciousness and institutional philosophical tradition it is intuitively obvious that having the ability to control the evolutionary process, Homo sapiens came close to the borders of their own biological and cultural identity. The spontaneous coevolutionary process of interaction between the «subject» (rational living organisms) and the «object» (material world), is the teleological trend of the movement towards the complete rationalization of the World as It Is, its merger with the World of Due. The stratification of the global evolutionary process into selective and semantic (teleological) coevolutionary and therefore ontologically inseparable components follows. With the entry of anthropogenic civilization into the stage of the information society, firsty, the post-academic phase of the historical evolution of scientific rationality began, the attributes of which are the specific methodology of scientific knowledge, scientific ethos and ontology. Bioethics as a phenomenon of intellectual culture represents a natural philosophical core of modern post- academic (human-dimensional) science, in which the ethical neutrality of scientific theory principle is inapplicable, and elements of public-axiological and scientific-descriptive discourses are integrated into a single logic construction. As result, hermeneutics precedes epistemology not only methodologically, but also meaningfully, and natural philosophy is regaining the status of the backbone of the theory of evolution – in an explicit form. (shrink)

The biblical sentence “God is Spirit” (John 4:24) occasioned the development of the Christian doctrine about God as Spirit. But since patristic times “spirit” was interpreted in the sense of Nus, which rather means “intellect.” The biblical concept of spirit (pneuma), however, has its root meaning in referring to “air in movement,” as in breath or storm. The similar concept of pneuma in Stoic philosophy has become the “immediate precursor” (Max Jammer) of the field concept in modern physics, so (...) that the conclusion is suggested that God is spirit as something like a field of force rather than as intellect. This essay argues for such a conception by relating the divine eternity and immensity to the concepts of space and time, the basic requirements of any physical field. God's eternity and immensity are interpreted in terms of undivided infinite space (and time) which is presupposed in all concepts of parts of space or time (or space‐time), therefore in all mathematical and physical measurement. (shrink)

This article aims to study the relationship between today’s canonical and noncanonical authors in the domain of early modern natural philosophy through the lens of social network analysis. By studying a massive corpus of letters (Electronic Enlightenment project), we examine the structural relationship between several of today’s canonical authors in natural philosophy and noncanonical women philosophers operating in the same network. We demonstrate the structure of this network and its effects on noncanonical authors. By modeling the case (...) of women philosophers, we show that our model can be used to identify further noncanonical authors who had similar profiles. (shrink)

This volume emphasizes the diversity and fruitfulness of early modern mechanism as a program, as a concept, as a model. Mechanistic study of the living body but also of the mind and mental processes are examined in careful historical focus, dealing with figures ranging from the first-rank (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Cudworth, Gassendi, Locke, Leibniz, Kant) to less well-known individuals (Scaliger, Martini) or prominent natural philosophers who have been neglected in recent years (Willis, Steno, etc.). The volume moves from (...) early modern medicine and physiology to late Enlightenment and even early 19th-century psychology, always maintaining a conceptual focus. It is a contribution to a newly active field in the history and philosophy of early modern life science. It is of interest to scholars studying the history of medicine and the development of mechanistic theories. (shrink)

Harris is not unaware of the problem involved or of the fact that a very large number of philosophers would disagree with his own stand on the matter. He even goes so far as to call it a paradox--though he hastens to make clear that he does not actually regard it as such. "How can a finite and imperfect fragment aspire so to transcend its own limits as to cancel its fragmentary and imperfect character, which yet must be maintained in (...) order that its knowledge should not be defective"? Employing the same argument which Hegel used against Kant's theory of the Thing-in-itself, Harris adds that "to know of limitations is at once to have transcended them". Now there can be no doubt that this is the case. To be aware of finiteness or subjectivity is to be one step beyond it, to recognize it for what it is. And some ideal or idea is required by virtue of which we can assess the limitations of our situation. But, we must inquire, what purchase do we thereby acquire on the absolute? What sort of transcendence do we achieve? Is absolute knowledge always implicit in our imperfect knowledge of the world in such a way that we can hope to put our imperfections behind and achieve a level of thought and knowledge at which being and truth are one? Or is knowledge necessarily infected with a mode of subjectivity which is ineradicable? (shrink)

Princess Diana’s death was a tragedy that provoked mourning across the globe; the death of a homeless person, more often than not, is met with apathy. How can we account for this uneven distribution of emotion? Can it simply be explained by the prevailing scientific understanding? Uncovering a rich tradition beginning with Aristotle, _The Secret History of Emotion_ offers a counterpoint to the way we generally understand emotions today. Through a radical rereading of Aristotle, Seneca, Thomas Hobbes, Sarah Fielding, and (...) Judith Butler, among others, Daniel M. Gross reveals a persistent intellectual current that considers emotions as psychosocial phenomena. In Gross’s historical analysis of emotion, Aristotle and Hobbes’s rhetoric show that our passions do not stem from some inherent, universal nature of men and women, but rather are conditioned by power relations and social hierarchies. He follows up with consideration of how political passions are distributed to some people but not to others using the Roman Stoics as a guide. Hume and contemporary theorists like Judith Butler, meanwhile, explain to us how psyches are shaped by power. To supplement his argument, Gross also provides a history and critique of the dominant modern view of emotions, expressed in Darwinism and neurobiology, in which they are considered organic, personal feelings independent of social circumstances. The result is a convincing work that rescues the study of the passions from science and returns it to the humanities and the art of rhetoric. (shrink)