Am Wiener Kreis scheiden sich die Geister, trat er doch mit dem dezidierten Anspruch auf, mit den Mitteln der modernen Logik den metaphysischen Schutt von Jahrtausenden aus dem Weg zu räumen. Statt einer homogenen Bewegung, die sich empiristischen Dogmen verschrieb, erscheint der Wiener Kreis in der philosophischen Forschung jedoch heute als eine heterogene Gruppe von eigenständigen Denkern, die gemeinsam die Grundlagen der modernen Wissenschaftstheorie legten. In jeweils spezifischer Weise setzten sie sich von der philosophischen Tradition ab oder versuchten, einzelne Teile (...) davon in die wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung zu integrieren. Der Band enthält eine repräsentative Auswahl von Aufsätzen der Mitglieder des Wiener Kreises. Sie beschränkt sich mit Ausnahme dreier Frühschriften der Gründer bewußt auf die Jahre des historischen Kreises vom Beginn der Treffen 1924 bis zur Ermordung Schlicks 1936, obwohl einige der Hauptideen erst in den USA ihre volle Wirkung entfalteten und von dort Ende der sechziger Jahre wieder in die deutschsprachige Philosophie zurückwirkten. In ihrer Einleitung skizzieren die Herausgeber die historische Entwicklung des Kreises und erläutern die zentralen thematischen Fragestellungen. Die Anmerkungen identifizieren die internen wie externen Opponenten und erklären den Kontext der zeitgenössischen Wissenschaft. (shrink)

Was ist Natur oder was könnte sie sein? Diese und weitere Fragen sind grundlegend für Naturdenken und -handeln. Das Lehr- und Studienbuch bietet eine historisch-systematische und zugleich praxisbezogene Einführung in die Naturphilosophie mit ihren wichtigsten Begriffen. Es nimmt den pluralen Charakter der Wahrnehmung von Natur in den philosophischen Blick und ist auch zum Selbststudium bestens geeignet.

Working on a biography of his predecessor Erwin Rohde, Otto Crusius approached historical theologian Franz Overbeck, who was one of Rohde’s best friends. Overbeck sent Crusius copies of most of the letters he had received from Rohde, and Crusius used them for his book, which was published early 1902 and still is the best biographical work on Rohde. In the spring of 1902 Crusius visited Overbeck in Basel, and Overbeck in particular came to value their acquaintance. Their correspondence, stretching (...) from 1901 until Overbeck’s death in 1905, contains important personal and substantial views on Rohde, his relationship with Nietzsche, as well as on philological and literary topics, including Overbeck’s feud with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s sister. (shrink)

Einleitung 1. KULTURPOLITISCHE IMPULSE IN RESTAURATIVER ZEIT. Hermann Lübbe. Deutscher Idealismus als Philosophie Preußischer Kulturpolitik - Walter Jaeschke. Politik, Kultur und Philosophie in Preußen - Kurt Rainer Meist. Zur Rolle der Geschichte in Hegels System der Philosophie - Karlheinz Stierle. Zwei Hauptstädte des Wissens; Paris und Berlin 2. KUNSTTHEORIE UND ÄSTHETIK IN BERLIN. Beat Wyss. Klassizismus und Geschichtsphilosophie im Konflikt. Aloys Hirt und Hegel - Gunter Scholtz. Schleiermachers Theorie der modernen Kultur mit vergleichendem Blick auf Hegel - Frank Jolles. August (...) Wilhelm Schlegel und Berlin: Sein Weg von den Berliner Vorlesungen von 1801-04 zu denen vom Jahre 1827 - Frithjof Rodi. Die Romantiker in der Sicht Hegels, Hayms und Diltheys - Wolfhart Henckmann. Solger und die Berliner Kunstszene - Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert. H. G. Hotho: Kunst als Bildungserlebnis und Kunsthistorie in systematischer Absicht, oder die entpolitisierte Version der ästhetischen Erziehung des Menschen - Gregor Stemmrich. C. Schnaase; Rezeption und Transformation Berlinischen Geistes in der kunsthistorischen Forschung 3. AKTUALITÄT DES LITERARISCHEN UND KÜNSTLERISCHEN ERBES - Hellmut Flashar. Die Entdeckung der griechischen Tragödie für die Deutsche Bühne - Siegfried Grosse. Die Rezeption des Nibelungenliedes im 19. Jahrhundert - Carl Dahlhaus. Hegel und die Musik seiner Zeit - Otto Pöggeler. Der Philosoph und der Maler. Hegel und Christian Xeller - Barbara Stemmrich-Köhler. Die Rezeption von Goethes West-östlichem Divan im Umkreis Hegels. (shrink)

Inhalt: K.-O. Apel: Vorwort - G. Calabro: Gesprach uber Hobbes mit Karl-Heinz Ilting - I. Grundfragen der praktischen Philosophie: H.-G. Gadamer: Die Gegenwart der sokratischen Frage in Aristoteles - P. Lorenzen: Politische Ethik - J. D'Hondt: Die Ethik und der Weltlauf - K.-O. Apel: Faktische Anerkennung oder einsehbar notwendige Anerkennung? - H. Schnadelbach: Rationalitat und Normativitat - F. W. Veauthier: Vom sozialen Verantwortungsapriori im phanomenologischen Denken - K. Lorenz: Der Antagonismus von Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit - P. Rohs: Moralische Praferenzen - (...) H. Hoppe: Normenbegrundung ohne naturalistischen Fehlschluss? - W. Kuhlmann: Solipsismus in Kants praktischer Philosophie und die Diskursethik - R. Maliandi: Anerkennung oder Argumentation? - L. H. Meyer: Anerkennung, Zumutbarkeit und Diskussion als praktische Prinzipien - A. Cortina: Substantielle Ethik oder wertfreie Verfahrensethik? - R. Zimmer: Der Selbstbezug des asthetischen Zeichens - II. Zur Geschichte der praktischen Philosophie: P. R. Franke: Zu einem Munzbildnis des Stoikers Chrysippos - V. Hosle: Recht und Geschichte bei Giambattista Vico - M. Riedel: Imputation der Handlung und Applikation des Sittengesetzes - A. Buha: Moral und Geschichte - C. Cesa: Zum Begriff des Praktischen bei Fichte - N. Bobbio: Hegel und das Recht - L. W. Beck: Reformation, Revolution und Restauration in Hegels politischer Philosophie - D. Losurdo: Moralisches Motiv und Primat der Politik bei Hegel - P. Becchi: Die Wurzeln der Ethik der Uberzeugung - R. Pozzo: 'Bourgeois' oder 'citoyen'? Zu Hegels Begriff der burgerlichen Gesellschaft - Die Veroffentlichungen K.-H. Iltings von P. Becchi - Personenregister - Sachregister. (shrink)

In this controversial and provocative book, Mary Anne Franks examines the thin line between constitutional fidelity and constitutional fundamentalism. The Cult of the Constitution reveals how deep fundamentalist strains in both conservative and liberal American thought keep the Constitution in the service of white male supremacy. Constitutional fundamentalists read the Constitution selectively and self-servingly. Fundamentalist interpretations of the Constitution elevate certain constitutional rights above all others, benefit the most powerful members of society, and undermine the integrity of the document as (...) a whole. The conservative fetish for the Second Amendment (enforced by groups such as the NRA) provides an obvious example of constitutional fundamentalism; the liberal fetish for the First Amendment (enforced by groups such as the ACLU) is less obvious but no less influential. Economic and civil libertarianism have increasingly merged to produce a deregulatory, "free-market" approach to constitutional rights that achieves fullest expression in the idealization of the Internet. The worship of guns, speech, and the Internet in the name of the Constitution has blurred the boundaries between conduct and speech and between veneration and violence. But the Constitution itself contains the antidote to fundamentalism. The Cult of the Constitution lays bare the dark, antidemocratic consequences of constitutional fundamentalism and urges readers to take the Constitution seriously, not selectively. (shrink)

The main topic of this article is Otto Frank's forgotten notion of the pressure-volume diagram of the cardiac ventricle as a means to assess the external mechanical work of the heart. Developed by Frank at the end of the 19th century, this idea was reenvisioned as pressure-volume area about 70 to 80 years later by Hiroyuki Suga. This notion now serves as a perspective for defining cardiac contractility and thus enabling the controlled clinical application of cardiac assist devices. We (...) begin our discussion, however, with the work of Ernest H. Starling, whose dominant influence on the thinking of cardio-physiologists led to a neglect of some of the fundamental insights of Frank's... (shrink)

After the death of Otto Neurath in 1945, Philipp Frank appeared to be the most talented organizer of the Vienna Circle in exile. From his new position at Harvard he organized many of the Unity of Science meetings and served from 1947 on as president of the Institute for the Unity of Science. It is well known that in 1929 he had organized the famous first meeting on Erkenntnislehre der exakten Wissenschaften in Prague, at which the Vienna Circle went (...) public. Frank later wrote on this:We wanted to reach a large audience. The ordinary regular philosophy meetings followed the traditional lines and would hardly have given us enough scope. By a happy coincidence I was just in 1929 arranging a meeting of the physicists and mathematicians from the German-speaking regions in Central...The German Physical Society, which was the official sponsor of this meeting, did not particularly like the idea of combining this serious meeting with such a foolish thing as philosophy. However, I was the chairman of the local committee in Prague and they could not refuse my serious...Some scientists wanted to minimize our program and predicted that they would have no audience from the ranks of exact scientists. As a matter of fact, our addresses had a larger audience than papers on special scientific problems. I had prepared an elaborate paper that was intended to give the scientists a kind of preview of our ideas and to prove that the new line in philosophy is the necessary result of the new trends in physics, particularly the theory of relativity and the quantum...Some friends cautioned me not to speak too bluntly. The audience, which consisted mostly of German scientists, knew litte about...My wife said to me after the lecture: “It was weird to...Everything seemed to vanish without a trace.”There is no doubt that quite a few people in the audience were shocked by my blunt statements that modem science is incompatible with the traditional systems of philosophy. Probably, most of the scientists had not been accustomed to thinking of philosophy and science as a coherent system of thought...After the meeting, however, our committee received a great many letters from scientists who expressed their great satisfaction that an attempt has been made toward a coherent world conception without contradictions between science and philosophy. (shrink)

Der Logische Empirismus hat in der intellektuellen Welt Frankreichs fast keine Spuren hinterlassen, obwohl die Gruppe sich bei zwei Kongressen 1935 und 1937 der intellektuellen Ôffentlichkeit in Paris prasentierte. Otto Neurath, prominentes Mitglied des «Wiener Kreises », bereitete die Auftritte der Logischen Empiristen in Paris vor. In seiner umfangreichen Korrespondenz manifestieren sich zahlreiche Spannungen sowohl innerhalb der Gruppe ais auch mit ihren Kooperationspartnem in Paris. Der Physiker Philipp Frank war mit der wissenschaftlichen Landschaft in Frankreich viel besser vertraut ais (...) Neurath. Er hat Neurath schon damais darauf aufmerksam gemacht, dass die Rolle Louis Rougiers ais « Botschafter » des Empirismus für die Rezeption in Frankreich problematisch sein konnte. Er driingte Neurath, die Verbindung mit anderen Wissenschaftlem und Philosophen, vor allem mit Henri Berr und dem Centre de synthèse zu verstlirken. (shrink)

While the Vienna Circle had virtually no impact on the Czech-speaking philosophical community during the 1930s, one can find a curious meeting point in the field of theory of architecture. There is now a growing literature on Otto Neurath as a theorist of architecture and urbanism, who emphasized the social aspects of modern building and approached architecture from his idiosyncratic viewpoint of Marxism interpreted as a physicalistic social science. It is less well known that a young Czech architecture critic (...) and theorist, Karel Teige, cultivated strikingly similar views during the same period—from 1920s to 1930s—albeit without any knowledge of Neurath’s thought in particular, or for that matter the Vienna Circle in general. The chapter reveals similarities as well as differences between Neurath and Teige on Marxism, science and architecture, and the Bauhaus, as well as a discussion of the relations of both to the contemporaries, most importantly Adolf Loos, Josef Frank and Hannes Meyer. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Logical Empiricism is commonly regarded as uninterested in, if not hostile to sociological investigations of science. This paper reconstructs the views of Otto Neurath and Philipp Frank on the legitimacy and relevance of sociological investigations of theory choice. It is argued that while there obtains a surprising degree of convergence between their programmatic pronouncements and the Strong Programme, the two types of project nevertheless remain distinct. The key to this differences lies in the different assessment of a supposed dilemma (...) facing post-Mertonian sociologists of science. (shrink)

Frank Ramsey was the greatest of the remarkable generation of Cambridge philosophers and logicians which included G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maynard Keynes. Before his tragically early death in 1930 at the age of twenty-six, he had done seminal work in mathematics and economics as well as in logic and philosophy. This volume, with a new and extensive introduction by D. H. Mellor, contains all Ramsey's previously published writings on philosophy and the foundations of mathematics. The latter (...) gives the definitive form and defence of the reduction of mathematics to logic undertaken in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica; the former includes the most profound and original studies of universals, truth, meaning, probability, knowledge, law and causation, all of which are still constantly referred to, and still essential reading for all serious students of these subjects. (shrink)

This article rebuts Ramsey's earlier theory, in 'Universals of Law and of Fact', of how laws of nature differ from other true generalisations. It argues that our laws are rules we use in judging 'if I meet an F I shall regard it as a G'. This temporal asymmetry is derived from that of cause and effect and used to distinguish what's past as what we can know about without knowing our present intentions.

We attempt to extend the nominalistic project initiated in Hartry Field's Science Without Numbers to modern physical theories based in differential geometry.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Space, Time, and Stuff is an attempt to show that physics is geometry: that the fundamental structure of the physical world is purely geometrical structure. Along the way, he examines some non-standard views about the structure of spacetime and its inhabitants, including the idea that space and time are pointless, the idea that quantum mechanics is a completely local theory, the idea that antiparticles are just particles travelling back in time, and the idea that time has no structure whatsoever. The (...) main thrust of the book, however, is that there are good reasons to believe that spaces other than spacetime exist, and that it is the existence of these additional spaces that allows one to reduce all of physics to geometry. Philosophy, and metaphysics in particular, plays an important role here: the assumption that the fundamental laws of physics are simple in terms of the fundamental physical properties and relations is pivotal."--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

The Metaphysical Club, a gathering of intellectuals in the 1870s associated with Harvard, is widely recognized as the crucible where pragmatism, America's distinctively original philosophy, was refined and proclaimed. Louis Menand's bestseller about the group was a dramatic publishing success. However, only three actual members - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Charles S. Peirce, and William James - appear in this book, alongside other thinkers such as John Dewey who were never in the Club. The Real Metaphysical Club tells the full (...) story of how this influential group shifted the course of philosophy in America. In addition to pioneering pragmatism, the group explored radical empiricism and idealism, and formulated personalism and process philosophy, equally important developments. This volume contains thirty-seven important writings dating from 1870 to 1885 by the real members of the Metaphysical Club. The first section centers on pragmatism and science; the second part collects writings of the lawyers; and the third part covers idealist and personalist philosophers. Many of these writings have never been reprinted before, and nothing like this impressive collection has ever been attempted. A general introduction provides a narrative history, and the editors' three introductions to the volume's sections vividly bring to life the intense meetings, sustained debates, and pioneering thought from the Metaphysical Club. (shrink)

I argue that it may well be the case that space and time do not consist of points, indeed that they have no smallest parts. I examine two different approaches to such pointless spaces : a topological approach and a measure theoretic approach. I argue in favor of the measure theoretic approach.

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

Suppose that two geysers, about one mile apart, erupt at irregular intervals, but usually erupt almost exactly at the same time. One would suspect that they come from a common source, or at least that there is a common cause of their eruptions. And this common cause surely acts before both eruptions take place. This idea, that simultaneous correlated events must have prior common causes, was first made precise by Hans Reichenbach (Reichenbach 1956). It can be used to infer the (...) existence of unobserved and unobservable events, and to infer causal relations from statistical relations. Unfortunately it does not appear to be universally valid, nor is there agreement as to the circumstances in which it is valid. (shrink)

This note is a postscript to Ramsey's 'Truth and Probability'. It replaces that article's psychological reading of subjective probability with a reading of it as a consistency condition on the theory that we act to maximise expected utility.

The common cause principle states that correlations have prior common causes which screen off those correlations. I argue that the common cause principle is false in many circumstances, some of which are very general. I then suggest that more restricted versions of the common cause principle might hold, and I prove such a restricted version.

The pre-1932 writings of Otto Kirchheimer are often described by researchers as the work of a young ‘left-Schmittian’, a radical Marxist who gave the anti-liberal critique and theoretical apparatus of his Doktorvater Carl Schmitt a new purpose for different ‘political ends’. The danger of this approach is that fundamental divisions between the societal conceptualizations of both theoreticians are ignored in lieu of apparent terminological similarity. Through the lens of economy, it is therefore the intent of this article to continue (...) in the tradition of Alfons Söllner and Frank Schale, pushing against this assumed affinity and highlighting Otto Kirchheimer’s unique defense of liberal democracy. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.