Scientism applies the ideas and methods of the natural sciences to the humanities and social sciences. Herbert Spencer applied the law of the conservation of energy to social questions and arrived at formula answers to the issues of the day. The kind of certitude that Spencer aimed for was possible only by ignoring a system of values. Much as he may have believed that he was above personal beliefs, there are values implicit in Spencer's theories and they are the values (...) of the nineteenth-century British middle class. Reasoning by analogy is as valid in social theory as it is in the natural sciences. Spencer's error was in universally applying the idea of the conservation of energy to social systems by means of identity rather than by analogy. Scientists in Britain, where there was a self-assured scientific community, dismissed Spencer's theories as being unscientific, but he enjoyed a vogue in the United States. (shrink)

William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, played a major role in the nineteenth century in changing scientific theory from the statical view, associated with imponderables, to the dynamical view which conceived of energy as a separate and convertible entity. Thomson's conversion from the statical to the dynamical view of nature was due to the influence of experimentalists, Michael Faraday and James Prescott Joule. It was Thomson's use of mathematical metaphor that enabled him to interpret on a theoretical level the physical explanation (...) given by Faraday and Joule. (shrink)

A course, ‘Physics, history and society’, has been taught primarily to college freshmen since 1972. Disciplinary lines are sharply drawn, thereby teaching the subject in the same fashion as research is done. The course is about the way physics and history became disciplines and how they have developed, as well as about the rhetoric of physics/history. The main topics are the physicist's/historian's personality as it is related to his work. The history of physics is used to show how a scientist's (...) personality is related to his work. The nature of physics and history is taught as a preliminary to other courses in these subjects. (shrink)

The history of science and technology has been a scholarly discipline with little attention given to the special needs of undergraduate teaching. What needs to be done to transform a discipline to an undergraduate subject? Suggestions include using the relation between science and technology as well as the role of interpreters in formulation of the popular world view. Relations with science and history departments are considered. Curriculum materials are surveyed with some recommendations for correcting deficiencies.

What is the self? And how does it relate to the body? In the second edition of Personal Identity, Harold Noonan presents the major historical theories of personal identity, particularly those of Locke, Leibniz, Butler, Reid and Hume. Noonan goes on to give a careful analysis of what the problem of personal identity is, and its place in the context of more general puzzles about identity. He then moves on to consider the main issues and arguments which are the (...) subject of current debate, including the work of Bernard Williams and Derek Parfit, and makes new and challenging interpretations of them. This new edition contains additional material assessing the biological approach which has become increasingly popular in recent years, and extends the treatment of indeterminate identity to take account of the epistemic view of vagueness. This book covers the problem of personal identity from its origin in Locke's work to the most recent debates in the philosophical literature, and will be invaluablereading for any student of the topic. (shrink)

Thats logic. LEWIS CARROLL, Through the Looking Glass 1-1. The fundamental problem of this work is the question of the nature of scientific inference.

My purpose is to explore the possible lines of reply available to a defender of the neo‐Lockean position on personal identity in response to the recently popular ‘animalist’ objection. I compare the animalist objection with an objection made to Locke by Bishop Butler, Thomas Reid and, in our own day, Sydney Shoemaker. I argue that the only possible response available to a defender of Locke against the Butler–Reid–Shoemaker objection is to reject Locke's official definition of a person as a thinking, (...) intelligent thing and replace it with the concept of the self– the object of self‐reference – and that this response is equally obligatory for the neo‐Lockean in replying to the animalist. I explore other possibilities, including the position that there is no sense in talking about personal identity at all. (shrink)

One of three distinct approaches to his famous ‘Trust’ argument, this paper written by Garfinkel in 1960, and never before published, proposed a rethinking of rules, games and linguistic classifications in interactional terms consistent with Wittgenstein’s language games. Garfinkel had been working in collaboration with Parsons since 1958 to craft an approach to culture that would replace conceptual classification with the constitutive expectancies of interaction and systems of interaction. The argument challenged the work of cultural anthropologists influenced by zoology and (...) biology, who called themselves ‘ethnoscientists’ and studied culture in terms of linguistic classification systems. Garfinkel had proposed an alternative sociological ‘ethnoscience’ of culture and language that would focus on how culture was made, on how linguistic events are achieved, and on the rules of their making. This ‘Language Games’ approach followed Wittgenstein in seeking what Garfinkel called a literal description of cultural/linguistic events: meaning by ‘literal’, a step-by-step account of the constitutive and preferred rules participants use to create a recognizable event-in-a-language. Made famous three years later in version associated with Schutz, Garfinkel’s Trust argument also appears in a 1962 text (Parsons’ Primer, published in 2019) in a version built on Parsons. (shrink)

Considered ahead of its time since the first publication in 1981, Medical Choices, Medical Chances provides a telescope for viewing how developments in the fields of medical research, medical technology, and health care organization are likely to influence the doctor-patient relationship in the 21st Century. The book explores this intricate web of relationships among doctors, patients, and families and offers a new framework for mastering the emotional and intellectual challenges of uncertainty, while at the same time providing tools for all (...) concerned to regain control from managed care. It is a must-read for all those interested in medicine and where it is headed in the new millennium. (shrink)

This paper argues that realism issue in the social sciences is not one that can be decided by general philosophical arguments that evaluate entire domains at once. The realism issue is instead many different empirical issues. To defend these claims, I sort issues that are often run together, explicate and criticize several standard realist and antirealist arguments about the social sciences, and use the example of the productive/nonproductive distinction to illustrate the approach to realism questions that I favor.

Personal Identity is a comprehensive introduction to the nature of the self and its relation to the body. Harold Noonan places the problem of personal identity in the context of more general puzzles about identity, discussing the major historical theories and more recent debates. The second edition of Personal Identity contains a new chapter on 'animalism' and a new section on vagueness.

general, abstract situation. On the other side, I know that graduate students and all mathematicians sometimes falter because their intuitive, ..

Coward (religious studies, U. of Calgary) explores the similarities and differences between the language theories of modern French philosopher Jacques Derrida and several traditional Indian schools of thought.

Carnap, R. Empiricism, semantics, and ontology.--Quine, W. V. Two dogmas of empiricism. Meaning and translation.--Sellars, W. Empiricism and the philosophy of mind.--Putnam, H. Brains and behaviour.--Popper, K. R. Science: conjectures and refutations.--Feyerabend, P. K. Science without experience. How to be a good empiricist--a plea for tolerance in matters epistemological.--Kuhn, T. S. Incommensurability and paradigms.--Hesse, M. Duhem, Quine and a new empiricism.--Chomsky, N. Recent contributions to the theory of innate ideas.--Putnam, H. The innateness hypothesis and explanatory models in linguistics.--Goodman, N. The (...) epistemological argument.--Quine, W. V. Linguistics and philosophy.--Edgley, R. Chomsky's theory of innate ideas.--Fodor, J. A. Methodological arguments for behaviorism.--Chomsky, N. Some empirical assumptions in modern philosophy of language.--Annotated bibliography (p. 319-326). (shrink)

Tarrant examines whether the relationship between Socrates and his young followers could ever have been treated by Plato in the same fashion as it is treated in the Platonic Theages, where the terminology of synousia is repeatedly applied to it. In minimizing the part played by knowledge and maximizing the role of the divine and of eros, the work creates a "Socrates" who conforms to the educational ideology of the Academy of Polemo in the period 314-270 BC.

I think it is important to try to make sense of these thoughts concerning the justificatory role of experiences, for I suspect that we are losing the ability to see why philosophers have traditionally been attracted to such thoughts. Coherentism and reliabilism, perhaps the two most currently popular theories of epistemic justification, appear simply to reject the idea that experiences can justify beliefs. Thus according to coherentism, the view that ‘a belief is justified by its coherence with other beliefs one (...) holds,’ it is only other beliefs, not experiences, that can justify beliefs. Although there is little consensus as to how the notion of coherence should be explicated, it is generally agreed that experiences are not the sort of thing that can cohere with beliefs. Reliabilism, by contrast, holds that ‘a belief is justified if and only if it is “well-formed,” i.e., it has an ancestry of reliable and/or conditionally reliable cognitive operations.’ In other words, according to reliabilism beliefs are justified, not by experiences, but by being caused by reliable belief-forming processes. Experiences may be formed in the course of such processes, but they need not be, and even when they are, they make no contribution to the justification of the beliefs that are formed as the result of those processes. What makes a belief-forming process justification-conferring, according to reliabilism, is simply that it is reliable, not that it gives rise to experiences. So neither coherentism nor reliabilism seems to allow any room for the traditional thought that experiences justify beliefs. (shrink)

Mysteries: remains of a hidden life -- Words on paper -- In search of a person behind the words -- A France of broken families -- Families -- Politiques -- Breaking with his father -- Aristocratic Paris -- Libertine Paris -- A political education -- Gearing up for war: mathematical inspirations -- Breda -- Military engineering -- Meeting Isaac Beeckman -- The Holy Roman empire -- Anxious dreams -- Curious meetings -- War and diplomacy in Europe -- Into Bohemia -- (...) To Hungary and disaster -- The Baltic and return to the Netherlands -- Again in France -- Paris and the rosicrucian scare -- The Valtellina and Rome -- The struggle for France -- Problems with the cardinal -- The campaign for La Rochelle -- Confrontation and departure -- The meetings -- Confrontation and conversation -- Becoming a sectarian -- Feeling threatened -- Exile -- Not yet concluded. (shrink)

In recent years empiricism has been under persistent attack, and serious questions have been raised about the ability of empiricism to provide the basis for a viable philosophy of science. The attack has been sufficiently vigorous, and in some quarters sufficiently successful, that many now maintain that empiricism is dead. My aim in this paper is to argue that, rather than being ready for embalmment and emplacement in the museum of philosophic oddities, empiricism is very much alive, and the central (...) thesis of empiricism remains the cornerstone for any viable philosophy of science. This is not to say that the recent attacks on empiricism have been without a point, rather, they have put anyone who would defend empiricism in the position of having to rethink many datails of the empiricist viewpoint. But it is the details, the way in which empiricism has been elaborated by its proponents, not the central empiricist insight, that must be reconsidered. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is still, in the minds of many, identified with positivism. This is understandable since twentieth century philosophy of science originates with the work of the Vienna Circle. Positivism is most famous for the verification theory of meaning, the doctrine that the meaning of any proposition is the method by which it is verified, and that any nonanalytic locution which cannot be proven or disproven by some empirical test has no cognitive significance. Positivism is an attempt to construct (...) a “scientific philosophy” in the worst sense: it is maintained that (with the exception of propositions which are analytic and thus vacuous) only those propositions which occur in the sciences are meaningful, all other discourse having at best some emotive value, but no cognitive content, and all of this is maintained within the confines of an exceedingly narrow notion of scientific knowledge. This notion is so narrow that its advocates found themselves in danger of having to relegate most of physics to the realm of nonsense since physics contains many statements which are strictly universal and thus cannot be conclusively verified. (shrink)

A belief must have justification if it is to count as knowledge. And it is a commonplace thought that in certain circumstances experiences can serve as justifications for beliefs. Moreover, many have thought that there is something distinctive about the wayin which experiences justify beliefs, and that there is something distinctive about experiences which accounts for the distinctive way in which they justify beliefs. In this paper, I seek to elucidate views about experience and justification that can make sense of (...) these thoughts and that can show us why so many have been attracted to them.I think it is important to try to make sense of these thoughts concerning the justificatory role of experiences, for I suspect that we are losing the ability to see why philosophers have traditionally been attracted to such thoughts. Coherentism and reliabilism, perhaps the two most currently popular theories of epistemic justification, appear simply to reject the idea that experiences can justify beliefs. (shrink)

The novel has always provided a vehicle for commenting on various aspects of human existence. We are familiar with the political novel, the historical novel, or the metaphysical novel, and in this sense Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew, with its running commentary on novels, novelists, critics and publishers, may be viewed as a critical novel. A critical novel, however, has a striking feature which it does not share with the other sorts of novels mentioned above in that a critical novel is itself (...) a novel, and a member of the class of objects on which it is commenting. This is a structure that logicians call “self-reference” and the phenomenon of self-reference has provided a central theme in twentieth century logic and philosophy. (shrink)

“There is, in addition, a second reason for doubting that scientists reject paradigms because confronted with anomalies or counterinstances. In developing it my argument will itself foreshadow another of this essay's main theses. The reasons for doubt sketched above were purely factual; they were, that is, themselves counterinstances to a prevalent epistemological theory. As such, if my present point is correct, they can at best help to create a crisis or, more accurately, to reinforce one that is already very much (...) in existence. By themselves they cannot and will not falsify that philosophical theory, for its defenders will do what we have already seen scientists doing when confronted by anomaly. They will devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory in order to eliminate any apparent conflict. Many of the relevant modifications and qualifications are, in fact, already in the literature. If, therefore, these epistemological counterinstances are to constitute more than a minor irritant, that will be because they help to permit the emergence of a new and different analysis of science within which they are no longer a source of trouble. Furthermore, if a typical pattern, which we shall later observe in scientific revolutions, is applicable here, these anomalies will then no longer seem to be simply facts. From within a new theory of scientific knowledge, they may instead seem very much like tautologies, statements of situations that could not conceivably have been otherwise.”. (shrink)