Abstract

This volume concludes a series dedicated to the understanding of nature by philosophers, scientists, and technicians from antiquity to today. This understanding is an issue largely debated today by philosophers as well as nonphilosophers. Being the fourth and the last, this volume includes also an index rerum of the items dealt with in this as well as in the preceding three volumes. The seven essays it presents are primarily concerned with the positions of Newton, Kant, and Einstein. In fact, the volume begins with a paper by Andreas Bartels on the understanding of nature according to the theory of relativity. Basing his essay on Michael’s Friedman interpretation of Kant’s reconstruction of Newtonian physics, Bartels points out that it is not correct to see in Einstein the accomplishment of the relational theory of space. Such an interpretation would require the following two assumptions: first, that Leibniz’s theory of space is the expression of a physical principle of relativity; second, that Einstein’s relativity implies the most complete form of relativity of movement. According to Bartels, one can debate about Leibniz, but the second assumption is surely false because Einstein’s theory does not imply a complete relativity of movement. On the contrary, Einstein maintains that it is matter, as a whole, that is in motion; and this is not far from what Aristotle said about matter’s essential, natural tendency to move. The Copernican cosmos was governed by fundamental laws, Newton transformed it into a contingent world of gravitational islands, and Einstein pushed further the transformation into a wider frame of possible spacetime experience. Manfred Stöckler’s paper deals with quantum theory. With regard to the debate on realism, that is, on the scope and validity of physical theories, Stöckler remarks that it is not true that quantum physics would give any further reason against realism that is not already given by classical physics and by everyday life. Michael Drieschner refers himself first to Kant’s concepts of “nature in material significance” and “nature in formal significance,” the former for the whole of the object in reality and the latter for the essences of things, and shows that in today’s physics the rigor of this distinction has faded. In fact, today’s science declares it impossible to identify anything like a whole of all objects. The ontology of classical physics has to give place to flexible concepts such as mesocosmos, that is, something between the microcosmos and the macrocosmos. In fact, scientists like Franco Selleri have recently advocated a new form of realism with regard to quantum theory, according to which the validity of quantum physics rests upon a very defined scope of local reciprocal actions, so that everything going beyond that must be doubted. Alfred Gierer turns to biology and especially to the question of biology’s reduction to physics. Against the reductionists, Gierer proves that, on the contrary, biology is founding not only all social behaviors, but also all forms of consciousness, that is, all forms of awareness of limits, therefore also man’s answer to the ecological crisis. Elisabeth Ströcker writes on nuclear scission as possibly inaugurating a new age of nature dominance, pointing out that the evaluation of the consequences of technical application proves rather the contrary. In the concluding paper, Lothar Schäfer sketches a new idea of nature as something to be taken care of. Referring himself to Husserlian phenomenology, Schäfer invites us to reconsider the standpoint of corporeity. What eventually counts for man’s understanding of nature is its physiological relevance.