did roger bacon and peter john olivi ever meet? We suggest a positive answer to this question. After he became a Franciscan in 1257, Roger Bacon spent ten years at the Franciscan Paris convent. In those years he wrote the De multiplicatione specierum —his most thought-out piece—the Opus majus, Opus minus, and Opus tertium, which he completed by early 1268. It is not clear whether Bacon returned to England after 1268, or remained in Paris until 1280.1 Peter John Olivi wrote (...) the Summa questions in several phases.2 According to Sylvain Piron's chronology, Olivi's questions on Physics should be dated before 1270, and his theory of... (shrink)

In some passages of the Opus maius and the Opus tertium, Roger Bacon holds that mathematical objects are the immediate and adequate objects of human’s intellect: in our sensible life, the intellect develops mostly around quantity itself. We comprehend quantities and bodies by a perception of the intellect because their forms belong to the intellect, namely, an understanding of mathematical truths is almost innate within us. A natural reaction to these sentences is to deduce a strong Pythagorean or Platonic influence (...) in Roger Bacon’s theory of mathematical knowledge. However, Bacon has always followed Aristotle’s view according to which numbers and figures have no real existence apart from the sensible substances, and universal knowledge comes from sensory experience as well. It appears that Bacon’s claim that quantity is the first object of human's intellect comes from an original reading of a passage of Aristotle’s On Memory and Reminiscence. In this paper, we try to clarify Bacon’s views about mathematical abstraction and intellectual perception of mathematical forms in his Parisian questions on Physics and Liber De causis, the Perspectiva, Opus maius, Opus tertium, the Communia mathematica and the Geometria speculativa. We conclude that Bacon considered mathematical abstraction as a mode of perception of the internal structure of the physical world: mathematical abstraction does not mean for Bacon an act of separation of ideal forms from the sensible matter, but a possibility of intuition of the internal structure of the sensible world itself, a faculty which is necessary for human’s perception of space and time. (shrink)

La vision sensible – la vision des yeux – a toujours exercé un pouvoir singulier sur la philosophie. Comment s’opère la vision oculaire? Quels sont les mécanismes physiques, physiologiques, psychologiques en jeu? Comment ces mécanismes produisent-ils une connaissance du monde? Quelle est la nature et la fiabilité d’une telle connaissance? Quel rapport l’œil vient-il créer entre l’homme et le monde? Peut-on imaginer ce qu’aurait produit l’humanité (quelles techniques, quelles sciences, qu...

A quelle certitude puis-je pretendre dans la connaissance des phenomenes naturels? De quelle nature sont les premiers principes de la connaissance, et comment les connait-on? Comment une proposition scientifique, en se rapportant a un objet de connaissance, atteste-t-elle ainsi de sa verite objective? Qu'est-ce qui fait l'unite d'une science en general, au-dela de la multiplicite des connaissances qui la constituent? Sur quel fondement se definissent et se separent les sciences speculatives reelles (metaphysique, physique, mathematique)? En vertu de quelle structure la (...) logique et la metaphysique sont-elles articulees? Telles sont quelques unes des questions fondamentales qui innervent la theorie du savoir de Jean Duns Scot et manifestent l'importance et l'acuite de sa speculation epistemologique. A ne pas se focaliser sur la seule dimension metaphysique de la pensee du Docteur Subtil, et a la reinscrire bien plutot a l'interieur de sa theorie de la connaissance, de ses concepts et de ses problemes, on pourra s'apercevoir alors qu'au-dela de la refondation de la metaphysique par l'univocite de l'etant, un geste plus important encore s'est produit chez Duns Scot: une autonomisation des principes de la connaissance objective sur la metaphysique, autonomisation qui ouvre un espace metaphysiquement neutre: celui de la pure possibilite objective en general. (shrink)

La question posée dans cet article est de savoir dans quelle mesure et selon quels schémas il est possible de parler de la vision sensible comme d’une représentation psychique avant la nouvelle optique inaugurée par Johannes Kepler dans ses célèbres Paralipomena ad Vitellionem (1604). L’article part du point de vue suivant : c’est seulement à l’intérieur de ce nouveau paradigme, qui dissocie le processus physique de la vision de son traitement psychique, qu’il serait légitime de parler de la vision comme (...) une construction mentale, comme une représentation. En examinant cette question à la lumière de plusieurs théories anciennes et médiévales, l’article aboutit à une conclusion différente. C’est depuis Aristote que la question de la vision comme représentation mentale est posée, du fait de la fonction majeure qui est conférée aux sens internes (phantasia, sens commun) dans l’élaboration du contenu de perception, et certaines théories sous influence néo-platonicienne, comme celles d’Augustin ou Avicenne, conçoivent clairement la vision directe comme une représentation psychique. Dans les Paralipomena ad Vitellionem, Kepler sépare l’optique comme science physique de la lumière de la psychologie de la perception ; mais cette dernière a déjà une longue histoire, tout comme l’idée de la vision comme représentation mentale. (shrink)

'This book is a masterpiece of theoretical thought. It anticipates the actual achievements of much of what we now call sociolinguistics.

Things and Their Place in Theories Our talk of external things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and ...

In this article, cognitivism is understood as the view that the engine of human (individual and collective) action is the intentional, dispositional, or other mental capacities of the brain or the mind. Cognitivism has been criticized for considering the essence of human action to reside in its alleged source in mental processes at the expense of the social surroundings of the action, criticism that has often been inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy. This article explores the logical extent of the (...) critique of cognitivism, arguing that by positing collectively shared knowledge of criteria as the engine of human action many such critiques themselves display latent cognitivism. (shrink)

In this article, cognitivism is understood as the view that the engine of human action is the intentional, dispositional, or other mental capacities of the brain or the mind. Cognitivism has been criticized for considering the essence of human action to reside in its alleged source in mental processes at the expense of the social surroundings of the action, criticism that has often been inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy. This article explores the logical extent of the critique of cognitivism, (...) arguing that by positing collectively shared knowledge of criteria as the engine of human action many such critiques themselves display latent cognitivism. (shrink)

Ocherk 1. Voprosy ontologii -- Ocherk 2. Voprosy ėtiki i ėstetiki -- Ocherk 3. Voprosy gnoseologii i aksiologii.

Because the techno-economic paradigm of contemporary conceptualizations of innovation is often taken for granted in the literature, this chapter opens up this self-evident notion. First, the chapter consults the work of Joseph Schumpeter, who can be seen as the founding father of the current conceptualization of innovation as technological and commercial. Second, we open up the concept by reflecting on two aspects of Schumpeter’s conceptualization of innovation, namely its destructive and its constructive aspect, based on findings in the history of (...) innovation. Finally, we synthesize our findings and propose an ontic-ontological conceptualization of innovation as ontogenetic process and outcome with six dimensions—newness, political dimension, economic dimension, temporal dimension, human dimension and risk—that moves beyond its technological and commercial orientation. (shrink)

Research on brain or cognitive/affective processes, culture, social interaction, and structural analysis are overlapping but often independent ways humans have attempted to understand the origins of their evolution, historical, and contemporary development. Each level seeks to employ its own theoretical concepts and methods for depicting human nature and categorizing objects and events in the world, and often relies on different sources of evidence to support theoretical claims. Each level makes reference to different temporal bandwidths (milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, (...) years, decades, and centuries) and focuses on different spatio-temporal activities and controlled and non-controlled stimulus conditions. Biological mechanisms and environmental pressures for survival simultaneously created a gradual intersection and enhancement of cognitive/affective skills, cultural practices, and changes in collaborative social interaction and communicative skills. The evolution of a given level of analysis is assumed to have been incremental and overlapping. These innovative and independent ways humans have learned to characterize their brain or cognitive/affective and social/economic/political life often depend on unexamined, representational re-descriptions or cognitive/affective and socio-cultural devices and forms of communication that facilitate the depiction of practices and beliefs we attribute to respondents or subjects and research colleagues. (shrink)

The robustness of the classical tests on means (Z, t, and F) and variances (chi square and F) was investigated by obtaining 30,000 (or, sometimes, 10,000 or 150,000) values of the test statistic under assumption-violating conditions and comparing the actual proportion of Type I errors with the proportion expected when all assumptions are met. The sampling and testing conditions investigated were: population shape (L-shape or bell-shape), relative population variance (1 or 4), sample size (8, 16, or 24), nominal significance level (...) (.05,.01, or.001), and location of rejection region (left-tailed, right-tailed, or two-tailed). All tests on means were nonrobust under most of the investigated conditions, and one was nonrobust under all of them. Both tests on variances were extremely nonrobust under virtually all conditions. The worst nonrobustness of the one- and two-independent-sample Z and t tests rivaled or exceeded that of the notoriously nonrobust chi-square and F tests on variances. (shrink)