Este trabalho consiste na apresentação da pioneira e primeira tradução ao português do capítulo 1 “Significado” (Meaning), composto por 3 subcapítulos: Conceitos Científicos Tradicionais, Relatividade Filosófica e Percepção; e oriundo da parte 1 “As Tradições da Ciência” (The Traditions of Science), que integra a obra “Um Inquérito Concernente aos Princípios do Conhecimento Natural” (An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge) – livro escrito pelo matemático e filósofo Alfred North Whitehead (1861 a 1947) nas duas primeiras (...) décadas do século XX e publicado pela Editora da Universidade de Cambridge em 1919 (atualmente em domínio público). A justificativa para esta tradução é dada pela relevância da obra original, o livro que inaugurou a fase filosófica ampla da carreira de Whitehead, até então dedicada especificamente à fundamentação da lógica matemática. É, especificamente, no capítulo aqui traduzido, que Whitehead expõe, pela primeira vez, suas críticas ao tempo absoluto, ao espaço absoluto e ao conceito tradicional de “significado”, bem como estreia seus conceitos de “percepção”, “extensão” e “relatividade”. Tais críticas e conceitos, inaugurados no capítulo cuja tradução este trabalho apresenta, irão guiar e embasar a filosofia de Whitehead até seus últimos dias – sendo o conceito de “extensão” facilmente classificável como a pedra angular de toda a sua filosofia. A fonte do texto original, utilizada para o trabalho de tradução, foi a versão digitalizada e disponibilizada on-line, para livre uso, pela Biblioteca da Universidade da Califórnia. (shrink)

The theory of space-time developed in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science is connected to Leonhard Euler’s proof of invariance under Galilean transformations in the “On Motion in General” of the latter’s 1736 Analytical Mechanics. It is argued that Kant, by using the Principle of Relativity that is the output of Euler’s proof as an input to his own proof of the kinematic parallelogram law, makes essential use of absolute simultaneity. This is (...) why, in the Transcendental Aesthetic, he observes that “our theory of time explains as much a priori knowledge as the general theory of motion displays.” In conclusion, it is shown that the same proof-method, under a different definition of simultaneity, leads to the parallelogram law of the “Kinematic Part” of Einstein’s 1905 “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”. (shrink)

Blind Realism originated in the deeply felt conviction that the widespread acceptance of Gettier-type counterexamples to the classical definition of knowledge rests in a demonstrably erroneous understanding of the nature of human knowledge. In seeking to defend that conviction, Robert F. Almeder offers a fairly detailed and systematic picture of the nature and limits of human factual knowledge.

I defend this claim that some natural essences can be known (only) a pos- teriori against two philosophers who accept essentialism but who hold that essences are known a priori: Joseph LaPorte, who argues from the use of kind terms in science, and E. J. Lowe, who argues from general metaphysical and epistemological principles.

One of the important ways for us to raise our level of philosophical research is to study and summarize the history of natural science. Lenin pointed out that the whole history of thought, including the history of each branch of natural science, is "a realm of knowledge which should establish cognitive theory and dialectics." In indicating philosophical research tasks, Lenin further wrote: "If we want to carry on the enterprises of Hegel and Marx, we should (...) dialectically study the history of man's thought, science, and technology.". (shrink)

A fundamental problem in science is how to make logical inferences from scientific data. Mere data does not suffice since additional information is necessary to select a domain of models or hypotheses and thus determine the likelihood of each model or hypothesis. Thomas Bayes’ Theorem relates the data and prior information to posterior probabilities associated with differing models or hypotheses and thus is useful in identifying the roles played by the known data and the assumed prior information when making (...) inferences. Scientists, philosophers, and theologians accumulate knowledge when analyzing different aspects of reality and search for particular hypotheses or models to fit their respective subject matters. Of course, a main goal is then to integrate all kinds of knowledge into an all-encompassing worldview that would describe the whole of reality. A generous description of the whole of reality would span, in the order of complexity, from the purely physical to the supernatural. These two extreme aspects of reality are bridged by a nonphysical realm, which would include elements of life, man, consciousness, rationality, mental and mathematical abstractions, etc. An urgent problem in the theory of knowledge is what science is and what it is not. Albert Einstein’s notion of science in terms of sense perception is refined by defining operationally the data that makes up the subject matter of science. It is shown, for instance, that theological considerations included in the prior information assumed by Isaac Newton is irrelevant in relating the data logically to the model or hypothesis. In addition, the concepts of naturalism, intelligent design, and evolutionary theory are critically analyzed. Finally, Eugene P. Wigner’s suggestions concerning the nature of human consciousness, life, and the success of mathematics in the natural sciences is considered in the context of the creative power endowed in humans by God. (shrink)

As the work of thinkers such as Michel Foucault, François Jacob, Louis Althusser, and Pierre Bourdieu demonstrates, Georges Canguilhem has exerted tremendous influence on the philosophy of science and French philosophy more generally. In Knowledge of Life, a book that spans twenty years of his essays and lectures, Canguilhem offers a series of epistemological histories that seek to establish and clarify the stakes, ambiguities, and emergence of philosophical and biological concepts that defined the rise of modern biology. How (...) do transformations in biology and modern medicine shape conceptions of life? How do philosophical concepts feed into biological ideas and experimental practices, and how are they themselves transformed? How does knowledge "undo the experience of life so as to help man remake what life has made without him, in him or outside of him?" Knowledge of Life is Canguilhem's effort to explain how the movements of knowledge and life come to rest upon each other. Published at the dawn of the genetic revolution and still pertinent today, the book tackles the history of cell theory, the conceptual moves toward and away from mechanical understandings of the organism, the persistence of vitalism, and the nature of normality in science and its objects. (shrink)

I examine two strands in Locke's thought which seem to conflict with his corpuscularian sympathies: his repeated suggestion that natural philosophy is incapable of being made a science, and his claim that some of the properties of bodies--secondary qualities, powers of gravitation, cohesion and maybe even thought--are arbitrarily "superadded" by God. ;Locke often says that a body's properties flow from its real essence as the properties of a triangle flow from its definition. He is widely read as having (...) thought that if we had ideas of a body's real essence, we would be able to perceive a priori a necessary connection between that body's real essence and its observable properties. I argue that this leaves Locke's skepticism without any rationale, making it depend entirely upon our ignorance of corpuscular structures when in fact he never rules out the possibility of our acquiring ideas of corpuscular structures through improvements in microscopy. I argue that Locke's geometrical analogy is better understood as an endorsement of deductivism about scientific explanation. He thinks that knowledge of corpuscular structures is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for scientific knowledge of bodies. The deeper source of his skepticism is his view that we cannot have universal and certain knowledge of the laws of nature because they are contingent. ;I approach the subject of Locke's attitude toward mechanism by examining his superaddition doctrine. In contrast with M. R. Ayers, I attribute to Locke what I call strong voluntarism: the view that a body's powers to interact with other bodies are not fully determined by the essence of matter, and that they are at least partly determined by the will of God. I argue that Descartes and Boyle are also strong voluntarists, but that Locke's voluntarism differs in that he maintains that bodies have some powers which are not even partly explicable in terms of the motions of matter. Locke's position is thus incompatible with the mechanism of Descartes and Boyle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Argumentative Structure of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations Of Natural ScienceEric Watkinsone of kant’s most fundamental aims is to justify Newtonian science. However, providing a detailed explanation of even the main structure of his argument (not to mention the specific arguments that fill out this structure) is not a trivial enterprise. While it is clear that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781), his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural (...) Science (1786), and his unpublished (and incomplete) Opus postumum should in some way constitute the core of this justification, it is less clear how each of these works does so in detail. In this paper I shall first argue that the standard view of the relationship between the Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (hereafter simply Metaphysical Foundations) is mistaken. I shall then present my own interpretation of how the Metaphysical Foundations contributes to the justification of Newtonian science. Finally, I shall conclude by considering an important interpretation of the argument of the Metaphysical Foundations developed by Michael Friedman. However, it is first necessary to present briefly Kant’s conception of science (in particular what conditions a body of knowledge must satisfy for Kant in order to be considered science proper) as well as Kant’s own understanding of the relevant differences between his projects in the first Critique, the Metaphysical Foundations, and the Opus postumum.Kant’s conception of science is rather strict if measured by contemporary standards. For in the preface to the Metaphysical Foundations Kant establishes three substantive conditions that a body of knowledge must satisfy in order to be considered science proper.1 (1) It must not consist in empirical principles, [End Page 567] but rather must be obtained solely from pure, a priori principles;2 (2) It must be apodictically certain;3 (3)4 It must be a systematically ordered whole (which means that its various propositions must be related as, for example, antecedents and consequents).5 After stating these conditions, Kant then argues that all natural science proper requires a pure part upon which its apodictic certainty is based. In other words, satisfaction of the first condition immediately implies satisfaction of the second condition as well.6 Accordingly, these three conditions (and the first one in particular) imply that natural science proper requires (or rather presupposes) a justification by something distinct from it that Kant calls a metaphysics of nature.7 But what exactly does a metaphysics of nature encompass? Kant distinguishes two different parts of the metaphysics of nature: a transcendental part and a special part. A metaphysics of nature [End Page 568] is transcendental insofar as it concerns “the laws that make the concept of nature in general possible, even without relation to any determinate object of experience, and [insofar as it is] thus indeterminate with respect to the nature of this or that thing in the sensible world,” whereas a metaphysics of nature is special to the extent that “it is concerned with a special nature of this or that kind of thing of which an empirical concept is given, but so that except for what lies in this concept no other empirical principle is used for knowledge thereof.”8 In short, a transcendental metaphysics, revealing how experience in general is possible, is not supposed to presuppose an empirical concept, whereas a special metaphysics does make such an assumption insofar as it is concerned with the special natures of things.How do the three works cited above relate to Kant’s distinction between a transcendental and a special metaphysics of nature? In the preface to the Metaphysical Foundations Kant clearly indicates that he intends the Metaphysical Foundations to constitute the special metaphysics of nature. Although he does not explicitly refer to the first Critique in the preface, it is also relatively clear that he sees it (or at least the ‘System of Pure Reason’ that Kant foresees as following upon it and as incorporating its fundamental results)9 as constituting [End Page 569] the transcendental part of a metaphysics of nature.10 The Principles of Pure Understanding (‘Grundsätze des reinen Verstandes’) in the Transcendental Analytic argue for what could naturally be described as “laws... (shrink)

This article is devoted to Roger Bacon’s understanding of perspectiva as “the first of all natural sciences.” After considering a few alternative medieval definitions and classifications of this discipline – such as al-Fārābī’s, Grosseteste’s and Kilwardby’s – the author turns to Bacon’s arguments for according to perspectiva so exceptional a role. He shows that Bacon’s arguments are grounded in his peculiar understanding of the visual process: according to Bacon, vision is indeed the only sense in which perception takes place (...) “by reasoning”. The author argues that this theory of perception also lays the foundations for Bacon’s – prima facie amiss – claim that “concerning vision alone, and no other sense, have philosophers developed a separate science.” The author explores this point by contrasting with one another Bacon’s conception of perspectiva and of music, and closes with some more general remarks on the implications of Bacon’s account of the visual process for his theory of knowledge. Based on his theory of a “vision by reasoning,” the author concludes that Bacon came to reinterpret perspectiva as the organon of visual knowledge. (shrink)

The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science was conceived by Kant as an application of the positive conclusions or "general metaphysics" demonstrated in the Analytic of Principles of the Critique of Pure Reason to the specialized objects of knowledge that fall under the concept of matter. The application was meant to provide a metaphysical foundation for natural science, capable of explaining, among other things, how mathematics as an a priori discipline is necessarily applicable to the empirical (...) objects encountered in nature. How to understand the precise meaning of this application has, however, been a recurring problem for students of Kant's thought. First published in 1965 as "an interpretation of the Preface of MF," Peter Plaass' Kants Theorie der Naturwissenschaft attempts to resolve this problem by clarifying the meaning of "metaphysical construction," Kant's term for the method introduced and employed in the MF alone. As Plaass construes it, the method consists in constructing the specific, pure concepts required to entertain the existence of a special kind of objects. More precisely, the metaphysical construction specifies the system of pure concepts of the understanding in terms of the content of the empirical concept of matter, namely, "the movable in space." That empirical character applies only to the objective reality of the concept, leaving the way open for the determination of the content of the concept insofar as it is thought in terms of the categories, a determination purportedly conducted in the MF and resulting in the a priori foundations of natural science. (shrink)

This volume combines two of Kant's key works on the metaphysics of nature--the _Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science_--in the preeminent translations of James W. Ellington. Each work is preceded by an expert Introduction by Ellington and is followed by a German-English List of Terms and an Index.

Bien, Victor This article addresses the importance of science to Humanists, as expressed in an object of the Humanist Society of NSW, namely 'to promote the fullest use of science for human welfare'. Similarly, Humanist support for science is expressed in the Amsterdam Declaration endorsed by the 50th Congress of the International Humanist and Ethical Union in 2002. Paragraph 2 reads: Humanism is rational. It seeks to use science creatively, not destructively. Humanists believe that the solutions (...) to the world's problems lie in human thought and action rather than divine intervention. Humanism advocates the application of the methods of science and free inquiry to the problems of human welfare. But Humanists also believe that the application of science and technology must be tempered by human values. Science gives us the means but human values must propose the ends. (shrink)

In this study, we sorted out the research hotspots in sports science by bibliometric method and also used social network analysis to explore the relationship between knowledge networks and their scientific performance. We found 38 high-frequency keywords with obvious curricular nature or classical direction of sports science research and 4 high-frequency research groups. The topics of hotspots covered the secondary disciplines of sports science: physical education and training, national traditional sports, sports human science, and sports (...) humanities and sociology. However, sports human science research is less; therefore, accelerating the research of sports human science is the focus of future research. Meanwhile, we use social network structure analysis to study the relationship between knowledge elements in knowledge networks and their scientific performance. In addition to betweenness centrality, the closeness centrality, clustering coefficient, and structural holes of knowledge elements are significantly and positively related to their influence. In the relationship between knowledge elements and productivity, betweenness centrality and closeness centrality show significant positive correlations, and clustering coefficient and structural hole show significant negative correlations. Therefore, knowledge networks can be used to predict the scientific performance of knowledge elements. (shrink)

Ever since Greek antiquity "disembodied knowledge" has often been taken as synonymous with "objective truth." Yet we also have very specific mental images of the kinds of bodies that house great minds--the ascetic philosopher versus the hearty surgeon, for example. Does truth have anything to do with the belly? What difference does it make to the pursuit of knowledge whether Einstein rode a bicycle, Russell was randy, or Darwin flatulent? Bringing body and knowledge into such intimate contact (...) is occasionally seen as funny, sometimes as enraging, and more often just as pointless. Vividly written and well illustrated, Science Incarnate offers concrete historical answers to such skeptical questions about the relationships between body, mind, and knowledge. Focusing on the seventeenth century to the present, Science Incarnate explores how intellectuals sought to establish the value and authority of their ideas through public displays of their private ways of life. Patterns of eating, sleeping, exercising, being ill, and having (or avoiding) sex, as well as the marks of gender and bodily form, were proof of the presence or absence of intellectual virtue, integrity, skill, and authority. Intellectuals examined in detail include René Descartes, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Ada Lovelace. Science Incarnate is at once very funny and deeply serious, addressing issues of crucial importance to present-day discussions about the nature of knowledge and how it is produced. It incorporates much that will interest cultural and social historians, historians of science and medicine, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists. (shrink)

Are scientific discoveries coming to an end? At what cost isscientific research undertaken? Priceless Knowledge? argues that perfecting natural science is impracticable, not on theoretical terms, but on strictly economic grounds. This is a rare philosophical examination of the economics of natural science. Nicholas Rescher argues that while there are no theoretical limits to natural science, we are limited by what we can afford to do. Rescher explores th exponential increase in resources necessary (...) to accomplish growth in knowledge. Priceless Knowledge? conveys an important message that philosophers of science, scientists, and those interested in scientific inquiry cannot ignore. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions concerning the possibility of human knowledge of the external world have been largely influenced by the following picture.

The Socratic Turn addresses the question of whether we can acquire genuine knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong. Reputedly, Socrates was the first philosopher to make the attempt. But Socrates was a materialistic natural scientist in his youth, and it was only much later in life--after he had rejected materialistic natural science--that he finally turned, around the age of forty, to the examination of ordinary moral and political opinions, or to moral-political philosophy so understood. (...) Through a consideration of Plato's account of Socrates' intellectual development, and with a view to relevant works of the pre-Socratics, Xenophon, Aristotle, Hesiod, Homer, and Aristophanes, Dustin Sebell reproduces the course of thought that carried Socrates from materialistic natural science to moral-political philosophy. By doing so, he seeks to recover an all but forgotten approach to the question of justice, one still worthy of being called scientific.--Book jacket. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the notions of ‘ruins’, ‘savage knowledge’, and ‘American race’ in the works of the German naturalist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868). A somewhat neglected figure in the history of anthropology and of natural history, Martius was regarded by scholars from Europe and the Americas as a leading figure in botany and ethnology in the nineteenth century. In this article, I discuss how Martius articulated: (1) the notion of American race, that is, a (...) broad characterization of the native peoples of the Americas rooted in a complex natural history which brought together seemingly disparate fields of knowledge, such as medicine, botany, theology, philology, and mythology; (2) having ruins as a guiding concept, which helped him to make sense of American natives; and (3) savage knowledge – a concept semantically aligned to that of ruins, and among whose principal modes of expression was shamanic practice. (shrink)

[from the publisher's website] Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De (...) Cruz and Johan De Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. -/- De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality. (shrink)

Blind Realism originated in the deeply felt conviction that the widespread acceptance of Gettier-type counterexamples to the classical definition of knowledge rests in a demonstrably erroneous understanding of the nature of human knowledge. In seeking to defend that conviction, Robert F. Almeder offers a fairly detailed and systematic picture of the nature and limits of human factual knowledge.

The epistemological status of health science, natural science, and clinical knowledge is explored. It is shown that ‘health science’, a term increasingly used in association with the clinical knowledge of the therapies, nursing, and other health occupations, is not fully a science in the sense of the natural sciences. It is rather a hybrid which relates applications of natural science, behavioral science, and the humanities to problems in health. The (...) same may be said of clinical knowledge which entails, as essentials, humanistic considerations involving the personal concerns of the patient, in addition to the more evident external aspects of diagnosis and treatment. The recent introduction of the term ‘health science’ reflects scientism in its approach to health issues. It also reflects confusion about the nature of clinical knowledge. Keywords: health science, clinical knowledge, natural science, behavioral science, humanism CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The question of contacts between philosophers and historians of natural science, of mutual assistance and collaboration in their work, is an exceptionally important one from both the theoretical and practical points of view. This constitutes an organic component of the overall task, posed by Lenin, of strengthening the alliance between the leading natural scientists and Marxist philosophers. Here a businesslike approach is particularly needed. Lenin's behests lay in two directions. First, they have to do with the treatment (...) of problems in the history of knowledge from the standpoint of philosophy, and, second, they deal with the treatment of problems of dialectical philosophy on the basis of generalization from the data of the history of natural science. The two problems are interrelated, but they can also be considered as relatively independent. The common dialectical foundation of both sets of problems is the idea of the unity, the interconnection, of the historical and the logical. What are the behests of Lenin, and how are they being carried out? (shrink)

Rather than being in inherent conflict with religion or operating on planes that do not intersect, the cognitive science of religion (CSR) can be used to renovate a religious understanding of the world. CSR allows one to reshape the perspectives of Aquinas and Calvin on the natural knowledge of God. The Christian tradition affirms that all human beings have available to them some knowledge of God. This claim has empirical import and thus invites scientific investigation and (...) clarification. A CSR-inspired lens allows one’s theological reflections to move from paradigms that focus on the cognitive reach of a domain-general power of human thought to a paradigm focused on different ways of relating to another person. The case study of the natural knowledge of God presented here models a productive way of relating CSR and religious perspectives from within a faith tradition. (shrink)

Research on the public understanding of science has measured knowledge as acquaintance with scientific facts and methods and attitudes as evaluations of societal consequences of science and technology. The authors propose alternative concepts and measures: knowledge of the workings of scientific institutions and attitudes to the nature of science. The viability, reliability, and validity of the new measures are demonstrated on British and Bulgarian data. The instrument consists of twenty items and takes ten to fifteen (...) minutes to apply. Differences in the representation of science are reported between the British and Bulgarian young elite, between the elite and the public in Bulgaria, between natural and social science students, and between beginners and advanced students in Britain. The use of these measures will extend the scope of science indicator measures used by the European Commission and the National Science Foundation, help the assessment of the socialization in university training, and may even contribute to the peace process in the “science wars.”. (shrink)

Scientists are rapidly mapping the chemical and physical pathways that constitute biological systems, making the complexity of processes such as inheritance, development, evolution, and even the origin of life increasingly tractable. Through genetics and neuroscience, biological understanding is now being extended deeply into the human sciences and has begun to transform our understanding of behavior, mind, culture, and values. The idea of a science-driven unity of knowledge has reemerged in several forms in both reductionist and nonreductionist frameworks. This (...) volume examines some of the extraordinary empirical discoveries that have caused a revival of this idea and presents theories from thinkers in a variety of disciplines, including E. O. Wilson, Eric Kandel, and Elaine Scarry. (shrink)

This book argues that we can only understand transformations of nature studies in the Scientific Revolution if we take seriously the interaction between practitioners and scholars. These are not in opposition, however. Theory and practice are end points on a continuum, with some participants interested only in the practical, others only in the theoretical, and most in the murky intellectual and material world in between. It is this borderland where influence, appropriation, and collaboration have the potential to lead to new (...) methods, new subjects of enquiry, and new social structures of natural philosophy and science. The case for connection between theory and practice can be most persuasively drawn in the area of mathematics, which is the focus of this book. Practical mathematics was a growing field in early modern Europe and these essays are organised into three parts which contribute to the debate about the role of mathematical practice in the Scientific Revolution. First, they demonstrate the variability of the identity of practical mathematicians, and of the practices involved in their activities in early modern Europe. Second, readers are invited to consider what practical mathematics looked like and that although practical mathematical knowledge was transmitted and circulated in a wide variety of ways, participants were able to recognize them all as practical mathematics. Third, the authors show how differences and nuances in practical mathematics typically depended on the different contexts in which it was practiced: social, cultural, political, and economic particularities matter. Historians of science, especially those interested in the Scientific Revolution period and the history of mathematics will find this book and its ground-breaking approach of particular interest. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead was a prominent English mathematician and philosopher who co-authored the highly influential Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell. Originally published in 1919, and first republished in 1925 as this Second Edition, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge ranks among Whitehead's most important works; forming a perspective on scientific observation that incorporated a complex view of experience, rather than prioritising the position of 'pure' sense data. Alongside companion volumes The Concept of Nature and The Principle (...) of Relativity, it created a framework for Whitehead's later metaphysical speculations. This is an important book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the relationship between science and philosophy. (shrink)

[EN]In recent decades, problems related to the accessibility and sustainability of science have increased, both in terms of the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge and its generation. Policymakers, academics, and, increasingly, citizens themselves have developed various approaches to this issue. Among them, citizen science is distinguished by making possible the generation of scientific knowledge by anyone with an interest in doing so. However, participation alone does not guarantee knowledge generation, which represents an epistemological challenge for (...) citizen science. Simultaneously, economic and socio-institutional difficulties in science governance and maintenance have grown. To solve those problems, several market elements have been introduced, a solution rejected by those who consider science as a public good that states must guarantee. Alternatively, research and work on the commons are growing worldwide, the concept being extended from natural resources to knowledge resources. In this chapter, we propose science as a commons, underlining the essential role of citizen science. Difficulties also apply to citizen science itself, but the increasing development of a multitude of projects based on cooperation favours the conditions required for its sustainability and quality. Our philosophical proposal is based on empirical knowledge about citizen science coupled with socio-economic concepts, according to a sociopolitical epistemology. (shrink)

This article examines the philosophical implications underlying Bacon's views on historical knowledge, paying special attention to that variety of historical knowledge described by Bacon as “natural.” More specifically, this article explores the interplay of history and fable. In the sphere of thought, fabula is the equivalent to materia in nature. Both are described by Bacon as being “versatile” and “pliant.” In Bacon's system of knowledge, philosophy, as the domain of reason, starts from historiae and fabulae, once (...) memory and the imagination have fulfilled their cognitive tasks. This means that, for Bacon, there is no such thing as a pure use of reason. He advocates a kind of reason that, precisely because it is involved with matter's inner motions, is constitutively 'impure'. The article shows how the terms historia and fabula cover key semantic areas in defining Bacon's philosophy: historia may mean “history” as well as “story,” fabula “myth” as well “story.” In both cases, we can see significant oscillations from a stronger meaning to a weaker one, as if the power of nature decreases moving from histories and myths to stories. On the other hand, there are cases in which Bacon seems to stick to a diachronic view of the meaning of fables and histories, such that the transition from myths to history, especially natural history, is described as a collective effort towards reality and enlightenment. (shrink)

Philosophers have not taken the evolution of human beings seriously enough. If they did, argues Peter Munz, many long standing philosophical problems would be resolved. One of philosophical concequences of biology is that all the knowledge produced in evolution is a priori, i.e., established hypothetically by chance mutation and selective retention, not by observation and intelligent induction. For organisms as embodied theories, selection is natural and for theories as disembodied organisms, it is artificial. Following Popper, the growth of (...) knowledge is seen to be continuous from the amoeba to Einstein'. Philosophical Darwinism throws a whole new light on many contemporary debates. It has damaging implications for cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and questions attempts from within biology to reduce mental events to neural processes. More importantly, it provides a rational postmodern alternative to what the author argues are the unreasonable postmodern fashions of Kuhn, Lyotard and Rorty. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the conceptual changes that occurred in the structure of physical knowledge during the second half of the 19th century, are reflected by the concept of the “primary ideal object” and its implicit definition within appropriate systems of statements, called a “nucleus of a branch of physics”. Within an NBP focus shifts away from discovering “laws of nature” to observations of a physical object and its states, while the distinct notion of “measurable” replaces the (...) vague notion “observable”. On the basis of this notion, the roles of physical models and measurements within physics, different kinds of work, experiments, and laws are discussed. Next follows a discussion of different levels of change in science, after which this distinction is compared to Kuhn’s model. Finally, I present a new combination of “realism” and “constructivism”, which differs from both the “constructive empiricism” of van Fraassen and from different “empirical realisms”. (shrink)

Discussions on the concept of Marifatullah as the foundation of belief hold a significant place in theology. There are different opinions among schools of theology regarding whether those who do not receive divine messages must know God. The majority of scholars belonging to the Mu'tazila and Māturīdī schools, including Imam Māturīdī, state that human beings must know God. Although al-Ashʿarī accepts that the most prominent obligatory duties are the methods of reasoning that lead to marifatullah, he states that responsibility in (...) this matter is formed by transmission. However, we can say that whether the human mind is sufficient to reach the knowledge of God, the method of reasoning has reached a different dimension today from the sciences of psychology, genetics, and neurobiology. This study explored whether individuals can achieve marifatullah from a holistic perspective. Whether human beings can be held responsible for this issue has been evaluated through the sciences of psychology, genetics, and neurobiology, and the opinions of schools of theology on this issue have been criticized. When we think in terms of Marifatullah, we can say that man’s psychological sense of obligation to adapt to society leaves him intellectually under the influence of society. In terms of genetic determinism, human personality, behavior, and intellectual adventure are completely determined by genes. Therefore, it is impossible for men to reach marifatullah in the context of their mental abilities. From an epigenetic perspective, we see that human thought structure, behavior, and personality are formed as a result of interactions with the environment. Serious hesitation arises in this idea in terms of intellect being a source of responsibility. Humans are genetically influenced by the environment and society, and they have a suitable nature for this, revealing that their genetic structure is open to environmental influences. In terms of brain plasticity, factors such as the society, environment, and family in which people live can change their brains and enable them to live accordingly. Although life adventures appear to be within the framework of social harmony, there must also be intellectual and religious harmony within social harmony. This reinforces the idea that individuals tend to align more with the thoughts and beliefs instilled by culture given the adaptable nature of the human brain influenced by cultural factors. When the views of the schools of theology are considered considering these evaluations, it becomes clear that the Mu'tazilites and Māturīdīs' belief that the source of the wujūb of marifatullah is intellect is at a point that needs to be reconsidered in terms of human biology and psychology. Although the Asharites emphasize human beings attaining knowledge of God through intellect, their focus on prophethood indicates that a revelation offer appears more accurate concerning human nature in the context of Marifatullah. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hume’s Natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Physical Science by Matias SlavovKrisztián PeteMatias Slavov. Hume’s Natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Physical Science. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Pp. 216. Hardcover. ISBN 9781350087866, £95.Although the relationship between Hume and Newton is a recurring theme in the Hume literature, Matias Slavov’s book does not seek to contribute to the debate between the traditional (Hume imitated Newton’s natural (...) philosophy) and the critical (Hume intended his “science of Man” as the foundation of all other sciences) approaches regarding the nature of this relation. The book is intended to be a summary of Hume’s natural philosophy—or rather an aggregation of his comments on natural philosophical topics—pursued by exploring and analysing themes and issues that were prominent in the natural philosophy of the early modern period. In this respect it is a pioneering undertaking.Of course, Slavov does not claim in his book that Hume is a natural philosopher. “[F]irst and foremost... [h]e is not; for his main objective is to establish a new science of human nature” (1). But Slavov does claim that Hume’s natural philosophical views can be understood and valued in themselves and in the philosophical-scientific context of his time as well. The book is not a discussion of the natural philosophical dimensions of the “science of human nature,” but rather, of the natural philosophical views which are reconcilable with his main objective. In this respect, the book is not a methodological approach to Hume’s supposed natural philosophy, but a synthesis of certain elements of Hume’s philosophy that can feature in a consistent natural philosophy. Although his arguments are generally indirect and are more about what Hume seems to be committed to and what follows from his epistemological position rather than his actual positions, Slavov’s conclusions seem mostly convincing.Thus, Slavov’s point is not that the empiricist method is compatible in every detail with Newtonian mechanics, but rather that Hume seems to be committed more to a Cartesian natural philosophy. Slavov does not write about the possibility and significance of applying natural philosophical methods to moral philosophy; rather, he wants to build a complete philosophy of nature around some of Hume’s basic ideas to “fill the gap for a book on Hume’s relation to natural philosophy and philosophy of physical science” (2).The book has two “equally important aims” (ix): to shed more light onto Hume’s relationship to natural philosophy, and to demonstrate that physics and philosophy have overlapping domains. Hume was hardly concerned with physics, so Slavov’s strategy of defining natural philosophy as an overlap between physics and philosophy (chapter 1) does, to some extent, explain the lack of textual evidence in this area. The definition of natural philosophy chosen by Slavov is also intended to ensure [End Page 170] that these two goals are intertwined, since according to Slavov’s definition, natural philosophy is “a grey area between philosophy and physics” (12).Personally, I do not feel comfortable with this definition because it is not informative enough; it says that natural philosophy is more than modern physics (mathematized natural science), but it is not quite philosophy. While the first implication is very agreeable, and a number of scholars have addressed the issue, to assess the second implication, we would need to know exactly what philosophy is in this context. Perhaps the best candidate is metaphysics, even if Slavov keeps the reader somewhat in the dark on this point, despite the fact that chapter 2 is intended to establish precisely that point. Yet, the metaphysics of this period was usually (with the possible exception of Spinoza) used to support natural scientific explanations. I believe that natural philosophy is more than a “grey area” (9, 12, 22), or a contact zone; it is a complex enterprise that evolved in different forms with different emphases: Cartesian mechanics still sought to understand nature, pursuing the Aristotelian ideal of knowledge, albeit rejecting Aristotelian methods, while empiricists increasingly envisaged a more instrumentalist role for natural explanations. Newton himself was caught between the two.In this context it is intriguing whether Hume carries forward Berkeley... (shrink)

The initial obstacle to the development of a hermeneutics of the natural sciences has been the inadequate translation, and thus misunderstanding, of the basic terms of Heidegger's ontological analysis ofthe protopractical human situation and its progressive technicization. Pragmatism's parallel analyses of the problem situation of scientists has promoted a more idiomatically English vocabulary. But 1) Gadamer's exclusion of domains and disciplines working with technical methods from his universal hermeneutics continues to be influential, this in spite of the genesis of (...) his project in Helmholtz's insights into the process of scientific discovery. 2) Markus thus depicts a distinctly different style of production, transmission, and reception of the technological texts of natural science. 3) Rouse's 1987 extension of pragmatic hermeneutics into the incipient politics of knowledge/power relations in laboratory science presents the usual frightening prospects connected with laboratory experimentation impacting on disciplinary social institutions. 4) Rouse's 1996 analysis of scientific practices in local narrative situations eschews the banner of hermeneutics and instead proposes to examine scientific-technological work by way of interdisciplinary ’ cultural studies, once the traditional loci of hermeneutic methodology. 5) A hermeneutic phenomenology of the natural sciences thus finds itself fundamentally challenged with respect to its rightful topics and roles in the analysis of increasingly technicized disciplines and domains. (shrink)

Scientific cognitivism, a main position in Western environmental aesthetics, claims scientific knowledge plays a major role in the aesthetic appreciation of nature. However, the claim is controversial. This study reexamines the history of United States environmental attitudes around the nineteenth century and claims art has played the main role in nature appreciation, even with the emphasis on scientific knowledge. This paper proposes a tri-stage, Scientific Knowledge-Aesthetic Value Transformation Model and argues nature appreciation is indirectly related to (...) class='Hi'>knowledge. Scientific knowledge plays a part in the first, pre-appreciation stage and helps build the impression of nature that bridges scientific cognition with aesthetic appreciation in the second, impression-rebuilt stage. Finally, the engagement model is required in the third, appreciation stage. This paper also presents a two-dimensional evaluation criterion to assess various approaches of nature appreciation and artworks. (shrink)