Reprint of the 1882 ed. published by Williams and Norgate, London.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:242 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY his political and religious predispositions prodded him to demonstrate that the roots of modern science were in the Christian Middle Ages. Sarton's particular foibles are best understood by referring them to his pacifist commitments and the moralistic assumption that the values of science are transferable to other human endeavors. Categories such as inductivism, conventionalism and Popperianism are of little help in gaining historical understanding. For (...) this, they are in fact Platonic ideals which have little heuristic value. I would venture that a truly historical historiography of science would aid us in spotting errors in the past and help us in the future. My guess is that a good analysis would reveal a major source of trouble to have stemmed from preconceived notions which the history of science was meant to illustrate. Surely some of them have been philosophical in character, and even Baconian or conventionalist. But until recent times, most of these preconceptions have stemmed from religious, nationalistic, or personal motivations, or from scientists who wanted support for a particular concept. I agree with Agassi only in the suggestion that a parti pris was at the root of our troubles. Why, then, substitute a Popperian preconception for a conventionalist one? Why not, on the contrary, combat their distorting influence and reduce their impact? This is in fact what has happened in recent times. As the history of science has fallen into the hands of a gradually organized profession, the blatant motivations --of any type--which colored past historical writings have slowly receded. By a constant and critical confrontation of opposing views among specialists, the purpose for examining the history of science has slowly been transformed. The older external motivations have given way to an interest in the subject for its own sake and a gradual transformation has been in the making for the last few decades. As happens in other human endeavors, professionalization has already raised the standards in the discipline and there is every reason to think it will continue to do so in the future. We need not really be as pessimistic as Agassi, nor embrace his particular salvation. ROGEa HAm~ University o] Cali]ornia, Berkeley A MEDIEVAL ANALYSIS OF INFINITY IN THE COURSEof arguing that time must have had a beginning, St. Bonaventure (1221-74) put forward a demonstration which in some ways seems to anticipate Cantor's definition of infinity.1 Bonaventure pointed out that, if the world were infinitely old, then there would have been an infinite number of annual revolutions of the sun around the ecliptic. But during each such period there occur (roughly) twelve revolutions of the moon, i.e. lunar months or lunations. Thus there would be one infinity which was twelve times another--which, says Bonaventure, is impossible. This attempted proof might be formulated as the following For other adumbrationsof this definition,see I. Thomas,"A TwelfthCentury Paradoxof the Infinite,"Journal o] Symbolic Logic, XXIII (1958), 133-134, and W. & M. Kneale, The Development of Logic (Oxford,1962),p. 440. NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 243 reductio ad absurdum, in which a revolution of the sun is specified as the period between successive vernal equinoxes. If there could be an infinite set of past lunations, then clearly it could be put in a one-to-one correspondence with a proper sub-set of itself--viz., with the set of past lunar months during which vernal equinoxes occurred. But this consequence is preposterous; no set could be so correlated with its own sub-set. Therefore the set of past lunar months cannot be infinite, and the world must have had a beginning. The passage, which is found in Bonaventure's commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, reads as follows :2 Si mundus est aeternus, revolutiones solis in orbe suo sunt infmitae ; rursus, pro una revolutions solis necesse est fuisse duodecim ipsius lunae: ergo plus revoluta est luna quam sol; et sol infinities: ergo infinitorum ex ea parle, qua infinita sunt, est reperire excessum. Hoe autem est impossibile : ergo etc. PA~-r~asoN BROWN Harpur College, State University o] New York Sententiarum L/b. H, Dist. I, P.I, Art. I, Quaest. II, as found in S. Bonaventurme, Opera Omnla... (shrink)

First, a paradox, a problem in the problem of evil. I shall call it ‘the paradox of evil’. On the one hand it is of course widely held that the evils in the world present an insuperable difficulty for Judeo-Christian theism. Russell, to take a conspicuous example, challenges any orthodox believer to visit the bedside of a child terminally ill with cancer and yet to retain his faith without hypocrisy . No paradox here; just the familiar problem of evil.

In their scoping review of the literature on artificial womb technology (AWT), De Bie et al. report that “complete ectogenesis has been hailed as an alternative to abortion,” (De Bie et al. 2023, 7...

Recent scholarship interprets Leviathan as subtly revealing Thomas Hobbes’s allegiance to Cromwell, the Rump Parliament and the Commonwealth. I, however, argue that Hobbes’s Leviathan intends to smash the religious principles underwriting Cromwell, the Rump and the new regime. I begin by situating Leviathan alongside the popular religious rhetoric favoring Cromwell, the Rump and their allies. I then proceed to reveal how Hobbes’s Leviathan subverts the popular religious opinions justifying their claims to authority. Hobbes’s politically subversive arguments are important because de (...) facto power ultimately rests on the legitimizing public opinions that lead men to consent to obey and to support a particular man or an assembly of men. That is, right makes might, according to Hobbes. By subverting the powerful religious opinions legitimizing Cromwell’s and the Rump’s rise, Hobbes intends Leviathan to disempower Cromwell and the Rump Parliament. (shrink)

In this book, Anthony R. D'Augelli and Charlotte J. Patterson bring together top experts to offer a comprehensive overview of what we have discovered--and what we still need to learn--about lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities.

The Problem of Evil, the idea that inexplicable human and non-human suffering is inconsistent with the existence of a benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent God, stands as one of the greatest challenges to classical theism. Many philosophers and theologians have offered theodicies, defense of God, in an attempt to blunt the force this problem. Others, however, believing that those theodicies have been effective have abandoned the classical definition of God and have embraced more liberal theologies, including deism, pantheism, process theology, and (...) alterity theism. Theists of this sort argue that their theologies are immune from the POE. This is so because the POE derives its force from the supposed attributes of God. If God is not omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, the problem disappears. So rather than seek to resolve the POE, theists who hold one or the other of these non-classical positions seek to walk around it altogether. The problem simply dissolves, it is claimed, when these alternative theologies are embraced. This article critiques the most prominent liberal responses to the POE and demonstrates how they fail. (shrink)

English royalists with absolutist leanings developed a specific discourse of honouring during the English civil wars. The discourse directed men to engage in active obedience and to become political activists for the king. As a theory of praxis, it is distinguishable from accounts offered by scholars who emphasize aristocratic honour and its role in the civil wars. The discourse of honouring also differs from accounts offered by social historians who emphasize the ways in which honouring was contested. Moreover, the author (...) distances the discourse of honouring not only from those who construe it as a passive acquiescence but also from those who see it as flattery. Active honouring is divided into two inward and outward honouring. The former refers to love and will, understanding and motivation, which reflect inner reverence. The latter includes such actions as obedience to the King's commandments, helping him financially, engaging for him in battle, and praising him in speech. In this last form of honouring, the subject is specifically asked to hide and cover royal infirmities and weaknesses. (shrink)

This book critically reviews all principal contributions to the American animal rights debate by activists, campaigners, academics, and lawyers, while placing animal rights in context with other related and competing movements.

The reissue of Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death provides an opportunity to reflect on developments in studies of slavery, postcolonial sociology, and comparative-historical sociology since the book’s initial release in 1982. In this special issue of Theory and Society, contributors from ancient history, anthropology, and sociology examine the book’s broader intellectual significance by situating it in Patterson’s corpus, covering a range of works including his fiction and scholarly publications, early work on Jamaican slave revolts, and private correspondence (...) with key thinkers. The volume’s ambit, then, is not a single book but rather a broader field of social thought. As the articles in this issue demonstrate, the concepts and theories introduced by Patterson are still vital. In some ways, we argue, a Pattersonian sociology has only recently come to its full fruition, thanks to ongoing developments in postcolonial studies, critical race studies, anthropological and historical study of slavery, globalization studies, and feminist theory. (shrink)

This is a critical review of David Patterson's book Anti-Semitism and Its Metaphysical Origins (2015). In this review, I present the author's new explanation of the roots of anti-Semitism, which he finds in the anti-Semite's desire to become like God himself. Patterson's explanation makes an anti-Semite of all those who partake in the "Western rationalist project," especially philosophers (including Jewish philosophers such as Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, and Marx), but also Islamists and anti-Zionist Jews. I criticize Patterson on (...) two fronts: First, his "metaphysical" explanation relies on a petitio principii. Second, he should have argued his stance against that of Zeev Sternhell's thesis, according to which Western anti-Semitism is rooted, not in Western rationalism, but rather in the Western anti-rationalist (anti-Enlightenment) movement. (shrink)