Fiester and Yuan discuss important ethical concerns regarding the use of behavior contracts in addressing conflict with patients and families labeled as “difficult” (Fiester and Yuan 2023). We agre...

What is the relation between things and theories, the material world and its scientific representations? This is a staple philosophical problem that rarely counts as historically legitimate or fruitful. In the following dialogue, the interlocutors do not argue for or against realism. Instead, they explore changing relations between theories and things, between contested objects of knowledge and less contested, more everyday things. Widely seen as the life sciences' first general theory, the cell theory underwent dramatic changes during the nineteenth century. (...) The dialogue establishes that each successive version of the cell theory was formulated -- each identity of the object cell was formed -- around a different material : cork, cartilage, eggs in cleavage, muscle. Such things thus serve as exemplary materials, in ways not described by standard concepts like induction, theory -testing, theory -laden observation, and construction. Still, how can theories and perspective possibly be honed on things if these are apprehended differently by different observers according to their interests, training, culture, or indeed theories? The second part of the dialogue addresses this problem, partly through the verbal and visual schemata that were used by nineteenth-century microscopists and that are comparable to schemata in the visual arts. The third part of the dialogue considers the exemplary materials as a historical sequence, itself needing explanation. Theoretical change devolved partly from wider histories and geographies of the prevalence, availability, or scientific and cultural status of materials such as plants, animals, and muscle. (shrink)

It is no accident that the book Benjamin wrote as a reader of himself, A Berlin Childhood, also begins with the description of a park, that of the Tiergarten zoo. However great the difference may seem between this collection of short prose pieces and Proust's three-thousand-page novel when viewed from the outside, Benjamin's book illustrates [his] fascination... A sentence in his book points to the central experience of Proust's work: that almost everything childhood was can be withheld from a person (...) for years, suddenly to be offered him anew as if by chance. "Like a mother who holds the new-born infant to her breast without waking it, life proceeds for a long time with the still tender memory of childhood" . Also reminiscent of Proust is the description of the mother who, on evenings when guests are in the house, comes in to see her child only fleetingly to say good night; so, too, is that of the boy attentively listening to the noises which penetrate into his room from the courtyard below and thus from a foreign world. The studied elevation of the newly invented telephone to the level of a mythical object is anticipated in Proust as well. And the relationship to and influence of the earlier work can be demonstrated even in the use of metaphor. But little is gained by this approach, and it would not be easy to refute the objection that such similarities lie in the authors' common raw material: childhood, the fin de siècle epoch, and the attempt to bring them both into the present. Peter Szondi was professor of comparative literature at the Free University of Berlin at the time of his death in 1971. His many influential works include Theorie des modernen Dramas , Versuch über das Tragische , and a five-volume collection of his lectures. Harvey Mendelsohn is the principle translator of the fourteen-volume Dictionary of Scientific Biography; he is currently working on translations of a French commentary on Heraclitus and a selection of Szondi's essays to be published by Yale University Press. (shrink)

A collection of essays on the development of science and the history of ideas.

not lie in the conceptual distinctions but in the perceived functions of metaphors and whether in the concrete case they are judged positive or negative. The ongoing debates reflect these concerns quite clearly~ namely that metaphors are judged on the basis of supposed dangers they pose and opportunities they offer. These are the criteria of evaluation that are obviously dependent on the context in which the transfer of meaning occurs. Our fundamental concern is indeed the transfer itself~ its prospects and (...) its limits. Looking at possible functions of metaphors is one approach to under standing and elucidating sentiments about them. The papers in this volume illustrate, by quite different examples, three basic functions of metaphors: illustrative, heuristic~ and constitutive. These functions rep resent different degrees of transfer of meaning. Metaphors are illustrative when they are used primarily as a literary device, to increase the power of conviction of an argument, for example. Although the difference between the illustrative and the heuristic function of metaphors is not great, it does exist: metaphors are used for heuristic purposes whenever "differences" of meaning are employed to open new perspectives and to gain new insights. In the case of "constitutive" metaphors they function to actually replace previous meanings by new ones. Sabine Maasen in her paper introduces the distinction between transfer and transforma tion. (shrink)

Essays examining science as a cultural enterprise.

This analysis of Frege's views on language and metaphysics in On Sense and Reference, arguably one of the most important philosophical essays of the past hundred years, provides a thorough introduction to the function/argument analysis and applies Frege's technique to the central notions of predication, identity, existence and truth. Of particular interest is the analysis of the Paradox of Identity and a discussion of three solutions: the little-known Begriffsschrift solution, the sense/reference solution, and Russell's 'On Denoting' solution. Russell's views wend (...) their way through the work, serving as a foil to Frege. Appendices give the proofs of the first 68 propositions of Begriffsschrift in modern notation. This book will be of interest to students and professionals in philosophy and linguistics. (shrink)

SynopsisThe response to physics and chemistry which characterized mid-nineteenth century physiology took two major directions. One, found most prominently among the German physiologists, developed explanatory models which had as their fundamental assumption the ultimate reducibility of all biological phenomena to the laws of physics and chemistry. The other, characteristic of the French school of physiology, recognized that physics and chemistry provided potent analytical tools for the exploration of physiological activities, but assumed in the construction of explanatory models that the organism (...) involved special levels of organization and that there must, in consequence, be special biological laws.The roots of this argument about concept formation in physiology are explored in the works of Theodor Schwann, Johannes Müller, François Magendie and Claude Bernard among others. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn Merton's early work in the sociology of science three theses are identified: economic and military influence in shaping early modern science; the “Puritan spur” to scientific activity; the critical role of a democratic social order for the support of science. These themes are located in the contemporary economic crisis of the 1930s, the rise of Nazism and fascism, and the emerging radical and Marxist political activism of scientists in the United States and the United Kingdom. Merton's interaction with (...) this context is critical for understanding his choice of problems and issues for the nascent sociology of science. The enunciation of the four-part normative structure of science is closely identified with the political ideals of this context. Merton's transition from an interest in problems of science in society to his postwar concern with the social and organizational structures of science and the social behavior of scientists is framed against the anticommunist and anti-Marxist thrust of immediate postwar politics in the United States. The implications of this change for the paradigms of the sociology of science are noted. (shrink)

Aristotle: Epistemology For Aristotle, human life is marked by special varieties of knowledge and understanding. Where other animals can only know that things are so, humans are able to understand why they are so. Furthermore, humans are the only animals capable of deliberating in a way that is guided by a conception of a flourishing … Continue reading Aristotle: Epistemology →.

In a series of recent papers, Emily Katz has argued that on Aristotle's view mathematical sciences are in an important respect no different from most natural sciences: They study sensible substances, but not qua sensible. In this paper, I argue that this is only half the story. Mathematical sciences are distinctive for Aristotle in that they study things ‘from’, ‘through’ or ‘in’ abstraction, whereas natural sciences study things ‘like the snub’. What this means, I argue, is that natural sciences must (...) study properties as they occur in the subjects from which they are originally abstracted, even where they reify these properties and treat them as subjects. The objects of mathematical sciences, on the other hand, can be studied as if they did not really occur in an underlying subject. This is because none of the properties of mathematical objects depend on their being in reality features of the subjects from which they are abstracted, such as bodies and inscriptions. Mathematical sciences are in this way able to study what are in reality non-substances as if they were substances. (shrink)

The essays in this volume all ask what it means for human beings to be embodied as desiring creatures—and perhaps still more piercingly, what it means for a philosopher to be embodied. In taking up this challenge via phenomenology, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of literature, the volume questions the orthodoxies not only of Western metaphysics but even of the phenomenological tradition itself. We miss much that has philosophical import when we exclude the somatic aspects of human life, and it (...) is therefore the philosopher’s duty now to rediscover the meaning inherent in desire, emotion, and passion—without letting the biases of any tradition determine in advance the meaning that reveals itself in embodied desire. Continental philosophers have already done much to challenge binary oppositions, and this volume sets out a new challenge: we must now also question the dichotomy between being at home and being alienated. Alterity is not simply something out there, separate from myself; rather, it penetrates me through and through, even in my corporeal experience. My body is both my own and other; I am other than myself and therefore other than my body. Additionally, this book is a conversation, not a presentation of a new orthodoxy. Thus, the hope is that these essays will open the way for further dialogue that will continue to radically rethink our understanding of embodied desire. Gathered together here are twelve essays that address these issues from deeply interrelated albeit unique perspectives from within the field. (shrink)

This book highlights not only aspects of the career of Everett Mendelsohn, one of the premier historians of biology of our age, but also a wide range of topics that are now grouped under the general heading of science studies. This broad collection includes articles on the relations between science and the military, science as narrative, natural history and conservation, Marxism and science, the Human Genome Project, and the relation of philosophy to the study of embryonic development in the (...) 18th century. This book is essential not only for those who admire Professor Mendelsohn's work but also for those who want a slice of the current field of science studies. Audience: The main readership of this volume consists of historians of science, technology, and medicine, and sociologists of science. The book will also appeal to philosophers of science and biologists. Those interested in Middle Eastern studies will find the discussion of Professor Mendelsohn's political work in this area, as well as the article dealing with his activism in general, of considerable interest. (shrink)

This book uses clear language, modern contexts, and key psychoanalytic concepts to exemplify how Sigmund Freud's thinking and legacy is directly relevant to contemporary therapists. Interweaving theory with history, Freudian Thought for the Contemporary Clinician allows readers to take a walk in Freud's shoes, offering a new framework for understanding his arcane language and the cultural mores of the early 20th century. Robert Mendelsohn explores topics including sexuality and gender, racial injustices, and cultural differences with direct reference to Freud's (...) cases, demonstrating how traditional psychoanalytic ideas may inform solutions to issues we face today. Featuring clinical examples and philosophical explorations delivered in an accessible style, Freudian Thought for the Contemporary Clinician will be a key text for psychoanalytic clinicians in practice and in training. It will also be of great interest to academics and scholars of psychoanalytic studies, the history of psychology and the history of ideas. (shrink)

The philosophy of biology should move to the center of the philosophy of science - a place it has not been accorded since the time of Mach. Physics was the paradigm of science, and its shadow falls across con temporary philosophy of biology as well, in a variety of contexts: reduction, organization and system, biochemical mechanism, and the models of law and explanation which derive from the Duhem-Popper Hempel tradition. This volume, we think, offers ample evidence of how good contempo (...) rary work in the philosophical understanding of biology has become. Marjorie Grene and Everett Mendelsohn aptly combine a deep philo sophical appreciation of conceptual issues in biology with an historical understanding of the radical changes in the science of biology since the 19th century. In this book, they present essays which probe such historical and methodological questions as reducibility, levels of organization, function and teleology, and the range of issues emerging from evolution ary theory and the species problem. In conjunction with Professor Grene's collection of essays on the philosophy of biology, The Under standing of Nature (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. XXIII) and the occasional essays on these topics which we have published in other volumes (listed below), this volume contributes to bringing biology to the center of philosophical attention. Everett Mendelsohn, 'Explanation in Nineteenth Century Biology' (Boston Studies, Vol. II, 1965). David Hawkins, 'Taxonomy and Information', (Boston Studies, Vol. III, 1967). (shrink)

This is a thorough treatment of first-order modal logic. The book covers such issues as quantification, equality (including a treatment of Frege's morning star/evening star puzzle), the notion of existence, non-rigid constants and function symbols, predicate abstraction, the distinction between nonexistence and nondesignation, and definite descriptions, borrowing from both Fregean and Russellian paradigms.

There is a core to the referential/attributive distinction that reveals a propositional ambiguity that is scope-related and rooted in syntax.