The title of my thesis may lead the reader to expect to find in it rather more and different things than there actually are. Because of this I think it advisable to outline some of the restrictions which have been imposed upon it and some of the reasons which explain these. The first and most important restriction lies in the fact that it is mainly confined to the exposition and elucidation of Vico's theories. There is little philosophical discussion of the (...) tenability and value of his ideas and such as I have been able to include i3 largely to be found in the brief concluding section. I have found it necessary to omit altogether any comparisons of Vico with latter-day thinkers of his type, e.g. Hegel, Spengler and Toynbee. A variety of reasons have contributed towards this. Hie first is the obscure, diffuse and often muddled nature of "Hie New Science", which is notoriously difficult to understand. In part this problem arises not so much from the difficulty of the ideas as from the fact that there are so many of them. But this alone would not be a reason for puzzlement. It becomes so when allied to a second factor: the difficulty of understanding the meaning of some of Vico's principal pronouncements about the nature of the enterprise carried out in "The New Science" and about the relationships between at least some of its main theories. It is admitted on all hands that Vico's language is obscure. I should not want to dispute this and, indeed, have had to go to some lengths to try to clear up a few of these obscurities. It is also alleged sometimes that some of the difficulties of understanding 'The Now Science" arise from philosophical confusions. This is a much more disputable claim, it will become clear in the following work that I hold that Vico was by no means so confused in his grasp of his own doctrines as the general obscurity of "The New Science" might suggest. Certainly I do not think that he was guilty of one or two basic philosophical confusions which, if located, would provide the clue to the unravelling of most of the difficulties of his work. Nor do I think that those mistakes which he does make are so fundamental that he is left with nothing of importance to say once they have been rectified. (shrink)

Indeed, this is the first serious book-length study of the subject by a philosopher of science.

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

The Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science was held at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 27 August to 2 September 1975. The Congress was held under the auspices of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, and was sponsored by the National Research Council of Canada and the University of Western Ontario. As those associated closely with the work of the Division (...) over the years know well, the work undertaken by its members varies greatly and spans a number of fields not always obviously related. In addition, the volume of work done by first rate scholars and scientists in the various fields of the Division has risen enormously. For these and related reasons it seemed to the editors chosen by the Divisional officers that the usual format of publishing the proceedings of the Congress be abandoned in favour of a somewhat more flexible, and hopefully acceptable, method of pre sentation. Accordingly, the work of the invited participants to the Congress has been divided into four volumes appearing in the University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science. The volumes are entitled, Logic, Foundations of Mathematics and Computability Theory, Foun dational Problems in the Special Sciences, Basic Problems in Methodol ogy and Linguistics, and Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

(1994). Annex: The survey questionnaires. World Futures: Vol. 39, The Evolution of European Identity: Surveys of the Growing Edge A Report by the European Culture Impact Research Consortium (EUROCIRCON), pp. 161-164.

Philologus, founded in 1846, is one of the oldest and most respected periodicals in the field of Classics. It publishes articles on Greek and Latin literature, historiography, philosophy, history of religion, linguistics, reception, and the history of scholarship. The journal aims to contribute to our understanding of Greco-Roman culture and its lasting influence on European civilization. The journal Philologus, conceived as a forum for discussion among different methodological approaches to the study of ancient texts and their reception, publishes original scholarly (...) contributions with a strong international focus. Publications languages are: German, English, Italian, French. As of 2014 the publication of supplementary volumes will be resumed. The series Philologus. Supplemente / Philologus. Supplementary Volumes will publish monographs and edited volumes pertaining to all aspects of the study of ancient literature and its reception, with a special focus on topics concerning literary theory, philosophy and the history of scholarship from an interdisciplinary perspective. (shrink)

Had more philosophers of science come from chemistry, their thinking would have been different. I begin by looking at a typical chemical paper, in which making something is the leitmotif, and conjecture/refutation is pretty much irrelevant. What in fact might have been, might be, different? The realism of chemists is reinforced by their remarkable ability to transform matter; they buy into reductionism where it serves them, but make no real use of it. Incommensurability is taken without a blink, and (...) actually serves. The preeminence of synthesis in chemistry could have led philosophers of science to take more seriously questions of aesthetics within science, and to find a place in aesthetics for utility. The necessary motion twixt macroscopic and microscopic views of matter in modern chemistry leads to the coexistence of symbolic and iconic representations. And in another way to the deliberate, creative violation of categories. (shrink)

Philosophy lost its traditional subject-matter when other disciplines became socio-culturally and epistemologically differentiated. It does not have its unique methods as doing philosophy resembles the features, stages and steps of theorizing and will be present in any significant research, the writing of articles, books, dissertations, etc. Attempts to usurp philosophy and philosophical methods by the new science of Habermas and followers of Critical Theory and other Continental approaches attempt to do philosphy by using terms and ideas from philosophy (...) (eg ontology, epistemology, methodology, transcendentals, pre-suppostions, assumptions etc). These are not uniquely philosophical terms but nowadays they are employed by all disciplines, articles, books etc (all these things have ontologies, epistemologies, do theorizing, etc). (shrink)

This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)

Explores some steps toward non-assimilative encounters in the "global village.".