Philosophers and artists consider the relevance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy for understanding art and aesthetic experience. This collection of essays brings together diverse but interrelated perspectives on art and perception based on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Although Merleau-Ponty focused almost exclusively on painting in his writings on aesthetics, this collection also considers poetry, literary works, theater, and relationships between art and science. In addition to philosophers, the contributors include a painter, a photographer, a musicologist, and an architect. This widened (...) scope offers important philosophical benefits, testing and providing evidence for the empirical applicability of Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetic writings. The central argument is that for Merleau-Ponty the account of perception is also an account of art and vice versa. In the philosopher’s writings, art and perception thus intertwine necessarily rather than contingently such that they can only be distinguished by abstraction. As a result, his account of perception and his account of art are organic, interdependent, and dynamic. The contributors examine various aspects of this intertwining across different artistic media, each ingeniously revealing an original perspective on this intertwining. (shrink)

In this paper I try to elucidate the differences between theoretical and practical endeavors in philosophy, and then to show that in a sense philosophy has to be theoretical, but— if it claims to be viable—it must be practical as well. First I consider the meaning of the terms theoretical, practical, abstract, and concrete. Then, with the help of Whitehead’s ideas on this topic, I briefly reflect on the method, aims and role of philosophy. I hold that a properly established (...) philosophical approach should have its roots in concrete experience and should include concrete applications. Thus, abstract ideas can be (and indeed often are) transformed into our daily life practices, being applied to solve real problems—personal, social, environmental, etc. The ideas are conveyed from the sphere of philosophy to that of ordinary life. In the next stage I demonstrate this principle using a concrete example, Whitehead’s philosophical system and how it can be fruitfully applied to the sphere of deep ecology. There are many other examples that could be mentioned, but giving a proper demonstration of this application principle requires more space and so I concentrate only on one of these examples. (shrink)

In March 1912 A. N. Whitehead wrote a letter which sheds new and important light on his own view of his mathematical goals. In this article I publish the letter for the first time and relate its contents not only to his mathematical career but also to his scientific, philosophical and educational interests.

Lorsqu'on examine la vie de Alfred North Whitehead, on est frappé par le nombre d'activités qui l'ont occupé successivement à diverses époques. D'abord on remarque deux grandes périodes: la première, entièrement consacrée aux mathématiques, qui s'étend de 1880 à 1924 et qui culmine dans la publication de Principia Mathematica,œuvre écrite conjointement avec Bertrand Russell; la deuxième consacrée à la philosophic et qui couvre la période allant de 1916 à 1947, année de sa mort. Comme on le voit done, la première (...) période chevauche la deuxième puisque, de 1916 à 1924, Whitehead fait oeuvre, à la fois, de mathématicien et de philosophe. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to show that Whitehead had a very important philosophy of education both on the formal level. The consistency found is well worth noting. I researched many of Whitehead's major works for his formal views and Lucian Price's Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead. In my opinion Price's book is the best available for the purpose of getting Whitehead's candid informal view of education. The paper is divided into sections according to the particular subject matter. Since (...) Whitehead describes education as the study of life and all of its manifestations . It is appropriate to cover some of these areas: the purpose of education, the role of science and speculation, education and civilization, and both the process of education and process education are reviewed. Whitehead's philosophy of education is sweeping in scope. In his philosophy we find the importance of experience, imagination, speculation, generalization, factual knowledge, specialization, relevance, intuition, novelty, curiosity, theory, practice, pleasure, harmony, freedom, discipline, technical and liberal education and unification. He, in fact, unifies all these seemingly different areas into a coherent philosophy of education. (shrink)

En los años veinte del siglo pasado se constituye lo que luego se llamó la escuela de Cambridge en bioquímica. Bajo el liderazgo de Frederick Gowland Hopkins este grupo tenía como objetivo primario la consolidación de la naciente bioquímica. Una característica particular de este grupo fue el intento explícito de vincular el trabajo científico con la discusión filosófica. Sin embargo, algunos historiadores como Nils Roll-Hansen han cuestionado en duros términos la manera en la cual estos científicos apelaban a la filosofía. (...) En particular Roll-Hansen ha sugerido que los aspectos filosóficos del trabajo de estos investigadores tendrían un mero carácter propagandístico vinculado con el proyecto de la constitución de la bioquímica como una disciplina. En este trabajo voy a defender que es posible considerar a los principios filosóficos presentados por la escuela de Cambridge como algo más que una mera propaganda para un proyecto institucional. Para esto voy a comparar la relación entre los principios filosóficos y trabajo metodológico propuesto por la escuela de Cambridge con una propuesta contemporánea: el Análisis de Control Metabólico, una perspectiva en el estudio de la bioquímica cuyo trabajo metodológico se suele defender apelando a “principios filosóficos”. A pesar de la distancia temporal entre ambas escuelas, tanto la actitud de apelar a principios filosóficos como el campo de estudio científico son semejantes.In the twenties of the last century, the Cambridge school in biochemistry was established. Under the leadership of Frederick Gowland Hopkins this group had as its primary objective the consolidation of a new science: biochemistry. A particular feature of this group was the explicit attempt to link scientific work with philosophical discussion. However, some historians like Nils Roll-Hansen have harshly questioned the way in which these scientists appealed to philosophy. In particular Roll-Hansen has suggested that the philosophical aspects of the work of these researchers would have to be considered as propaganda, motivated by attempt stablish the biochemistry as a discipline. In this paper I am going to defend that it is possible to consider the philosophical principles presented by the Cambridge school as something more than a propaganda for an institutional project. To this end I am going to compare the relationship between the philosophical principles and methodological work proposed by the Cambridge school with a contemporary proposal: the Metabolic Control Analysis, a perspective in the study of biochemistry whose methodological work is usually defended by appealing to “philosophical principles”. Despite the temporal distance between the two schools, both the attitude of appealing to philosophical principles and their field of scientific study are similar. Key Words: Philosophy of Biochemistry; Metabolic Control Analysis; Cambridge School ARK: ark:/s18537960/2ak06yaaq. (shrink)