Abstract

This collection of six essays centers on Professor Koyre's great theme: the relative importance of metaphysics and observation, with controlled experiment a kind of marriage between the two. Professor Koyre's thesis might be summed up as a claim that when one is seeking to explain the scientific revolution, attention must be concentrated on the philosophical outlook of the scientist and away from speculative theories. At the time of his death, Alexandre Koyre was a professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne) and a memeber of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.