Ideal interpretation is understanding a text in the best possible way. It is usually used when the text has a canonical status, such as the Bible or the U.S. Constitution. We argue that Zhu Xi’s view about interpreting the Four Books and Ronald Dworkin’s view about constitutional interpretation are examples of ideal interpretation and that their basic principles are similar. Each holds, roughly, that their target text contains moral truth; that the author’s mind requires the mediation of learning; that the (...) purpose of interpretation is not only to lead the reader to the moral truth but to become a better person; that all propositions are about the same moral truth or about political justice; that the interpretation ultimately must come from oneself, purged of prejudices; and that the only correct interpretation is one that captures the original meaning. (shrink)

In this book, Nuttall traces the development of "solipsistic fear... the fear that the external world... may not exist at all," in philosophy and literature, mainly English, from the late seventeenth century to the present. His method is first to trace some aspect of the philosophical discussion about the reality of the external world, and then to examine works of literature from the same period in which the same or similar views on the problem are expressed. In philosophy, Nuttall’s attention (...) centers on Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Bradley, and Wittgenstein, while in literature he focuses primarily on Sterne, Wordsworth, Sartre, and Eliot. Nuttall argues that Wittgenstein’s private language argument in the philosophical realm, and Eliot’s poetry in the literary, decisively counteract the solipsistic fear which the empiricist and idealist philosophers and their literary counterparts had developed. (shrink)

Taking the position that scientific hypotheses explain the world and do not merely classify data, the author describes the decline of the Newtonian world picture and the development of a new, "ether-theoretical" view. The nineteenth century founders of electromagnetism—Faraday, Maxwell, Hertz, Lorentz—all tendered theories of a medium, usually called the "ether," which filled the space between any two noncontiguous bodies and transported electromagnetic actions from one to the other. After Einstein profoundly reinterpreted the concept of medium, it came to be (...) called the "field." In giving this history, William Berkson explains what problems each scientist faced and how the process of solving them led to new discoveries. He also draws out the philosophical consequences of the history, especially for the positions of Popper, Meyerson, Agassi and Kuhn. (shrink)

This volume "contains eight articles dealing with the intellectual and institutional developments in physics from the mid-1840’s to the mid-1920’s. The primary focus is on the quantum and relativity theories and Einstein’s contributions to these theories. The secondary focus is on thermodynamics and its kinetic theory basis in the nineteenth century." Slightly more than one third of the book is devoted to various aspects of Einstein’s work: M. J. Klein analyzes his difference with Bohr in 1923-1925; R. McCormmach traces the (...) problem area which he extracted from Lorentz’ electron theory in about the first decade of this century; and S. Goldberg considers the British response to his special theory of relativity in 1905-1911. In the editor’s foreword, McCormmach illustrates from the current investigation of Einstein a general thesis about "the limitations of contemporary writing in the history of science." Thus, this anthology may well become a standard secondary source for Einstein scholarship. A fourth of the book has to do with thermodynamics: Y. Elkana follows Helmholtz’ formulation of its first law ; E. E. Daub looks at the evolution of concepts essential to its second law ; and E. W. Garber delineates Clausius’ contribution to its underpinnings. Just two articles are unrelated to these two foci: P. Forman, in the longest paper in the volume, considers Lande’s search for a theory of the anomalous Zooman effect in 1919-1921; and R. Sviedrys, in an exchange with A. Thackray, examines the rise of physical science at Cambridge University during the Victorian era. (shrink)

This volume, one of the Explorations in Interpretive Sociology series, provides a brief introduction to the sociological work of the French philosopher and sociologist, Lucien Levy-Bruhl. The book includes a short biography of Levy-Bruhl, a chronological list of his principal works, a short essay outlining the development of his sociological theories, 63 pages of extracts from his works, and a short annotated bibliography. The biography notes the wide range of Levy-Bruhl’s interests, which included philosophy, sociology, literature, and politics. The list (...) of his principal works reveals, in addition to the many more well known books on the primitive mind, several works on ethics and the history of philosophy, and volumes on the philosophies of Jacobi and of Comte. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this book "is to analyze and clarify certain fundamental concepts, principles, and procedures in both classical and relativistic mechanics." At the same time, it attempts to provide a grounding in the theory for the philosopher of science who must deal with the sometimes technical literature on the philosophical implications of relativistic mechanics. "This book, then, is an attempt at fundamental philosophic clarification embedded in the format of an introductory work." Its first six chapters deal with the (...) methodological foundations of classical mechanics and electrodynamics, as conceived prior to Einstein. Thus, the next six chapters introduce special relativity in such a way that it is connected with the tradition from which it arose. Although the book is not primarily a historical treatment of the theory, this added perspective is welcome because almost invariably philosophers of relativity portray the theory as if it arose without the intermediary of electrodynamics. (shrink)

The author holds that the enduring achievement of the modern mind is the recognition of a sharp distinction between fact and value; this work is a history of that distinction. In separate sections devoted to the history of scientific method and the history of value theory, Hall covers the ground from the medieval period to the present. His conclusion strikes a pessimistic note; modernity, after distinguishing fact and value, has had marvelous success with the former but is in danger of (...) losing the latter altogether. Towards resolution of this difficulty, he suggests, with tantalizing brevity and obscurity, that though value statements may be emotive, we may perhaps regard emotion as a genuinely cognitive state somehow putting us in touch with real features of the world. While he writes with a pleasant down-to-earth directness, Hall never makes clear precisely what this basic cleavage between fact and value amounts to. And his history, though illuminating, is not always well-balanced; Kant as a value theorist, gets less space than either Locke or Machiavelli and only a third as much as Hobbes. Yet the book as a whole is stimulating, lively, and important.--A. C. P. (shrink)

This massive, expensive tome comprises all the proceedings of the 1970 biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Beyond the selection of the papers to be presented at the meeting, there has been no winnowing of the good from the bad. Further, there is no indexing. Thus, the technical philosopher of science, to whose interest the contributed papers in this anthology will appeal, faces the prospect of doing these jobs himself. The symposium papers, which account for a relatively small (...) fraction of this volume, will interest readers of this journal the most. These papers investigate three topics: theoretical entities in statistical explanation; capacities and natures; history of science and its rational reconstruction. (shrink)

In this book, Dean attempts both to interpret and to contribute to the ongoing Marxist-Christian dialogue. The author describes the book as a thought-experiment in which "Heidegger’s finitist ontology, Marx’s social critique, and a type of Christian thinking which is post-theistic" are to be brought together in an attempt to show that "radicalism of the death of God demands a corresponding radicalism in the political sphere as well, and that conversely, radicalism in a political sense would be theoretically incomplete if (...) it was not grounded in a radicalism on the level of metaphysics as well". Thus, Dean argues that a merging of traditions has occurred in recent years. The Marxist humanists and the radical Christians, he contends, have both adopted the central insights of Heidegger’s hermeneutic metaphysics as a perspective from which to both carry on their dialogue together and criticize the conservative wings of their own respective camps. The book is a contribution to this dialogue in that it clarifies how this merging has occurred, and tries to put it in a larger perspective within which further stages of the dialogue can be developed. (shrink)

This volume is the fifth in a series by Buchler, and it applies the metaphysics he developed in the preceding volumes to the understanding of the nature of poetry. Although it clearly contains a further development of the fundamental position articulated in the earlier volumes, as a theory of poetry the present volume stands fairly well on its own.

This is a brief, clear, and vigorous reinterpretation of Bergson's philosophy. The author attempts to prove that, far from being an irrationalist, Bergson is a systematic metaphysician firmly committed to the concept of final cause.