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This course investigates fundamental developments of scientific knowledge with an emphasis on epistemological questions concerning the conceptual framework, the method of inquiry, the practice of investigation, the system of knowledge, the logic of argumentation, the mode of thought, the order of things, etc. In addition, class discussion may examine scientific assumptions in relation to the traditions of epistemology, the theory of knowledge, metaphysics, cosmology, natural philosophy, theology, philosophy of mind, socio-political thought, and intellectual history. The focus will vary according to the instructor, and reading materials may also include non-Western natural philosophy and scientific thoughts.
Chronicling the development of scientific ideas, practices, and institutions from pre-Socratic Greek philosophy to late-Medieval scholasticism, this book, first published in 1992, surveys all the most important themes in the history of science, including developments in cosmology, astronomy, mechanics, optics, alchemy, natural history, and medicine. In addition, it offers an illuminating account of the transmission of Greek science to medieval Islam and subsequently to medieval Europe. This second edition includes revisions on nearly every page, as well as several sections that have been completely rewritten, such as the section on Islamic science.
Published in 1863, only five years after Darwin’s The Origin of Species, this work by Thomas H. Huxley offers a compelling review of primate and human paleontology, and is the first attempt to apply Darwin’s theory to human beings. This work, challenging the notion of supernatural creation, was also explicitly directed against Richard Owen, who had claimed that there were distinct differences between human brains and those of apes. Huxley demonstrated that ape and human brains were fundamentally similar in every anatomical detail, thus applying evolution to the human race.
This Hume’s work, first published in 1748, is a concise statement of Hume's central philosophical positions. It develops an account of human mental functioning which emphasizes the limits of human knowledge and the extent of our reliance on (non-rational) mental habits. It then applies that account to questions of free will and religious knowledge before closing with a defence of moderate scepticism. This volume, which presents a modified version of the definitive 1772 edition of the work, offers helpful annotation and a selection of other works by Hume that throw light on both the circumstances of the work's genesis and its key themes and arguments.
This book provides modern, accurate translations of the texts necessary for a careful study of most aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy. The book provides translation of texts in the fields of logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and practical philosophy. Aside from these translations, it also provides a List of Books and a list of Topics (e.g. Action, Dialectic, Justice, Necessity and Possibility, Teleological Explanation). The Topics indicate the main Aristotelian texts which deal with a given issue (and, in some cases, secondary texts), as well as books included in the List of Books and some recent articles concerned with the issue, and cross-references to related Topics.
This book set offers a complete and unrivaled overview of the entire Western philosophical tradition, dividing the matter according to philosophers rather than by following out the development of first one and then another philosophical problem. This fourth volume introduces the reader to the modern philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It details the work and influence of the three major rationalist thinkers of this period: Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, dealing with the epistemological issues they raise (Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am') as well as the ontological issues (Leibniz's proof of God and Spinoza's materialism).
This book set offers a complete and unrivaled overview of the entire Western philosophical tradition, dividing the matter according to philosophers rather than by following out the development of first one and then another philosophical problem. This fifth volume looks at the British philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, discussing the development of British philosophy from Hobbes up to and including the Scottish philosophy of common sense. In particular, it deals with the political philosophies of Hobbes and Locke that developed in response to the English Civil War, and with Hume's empiricism.
This book offers a comprehensive anthology of fifty-two primary texts by leading philosophers in the field, including Thomas S. Kuhn, Karl Popper, Carl G.Hempel, W. V. Quine, Jerry A. Fodor, Philip S. Kitcher, and other prominent philosophers. It surveys the foundational questions in the field: What distinguishes science from pseudoscience? Is scientific change a rational process? In what sense is science objective? What are natural laws, and what do they describe? Do scientific theories offer a true account of the world? And many others. The book also provides extensive editorial commentary that places the readings in a wide philosophical context.
The purpose of this book is to represent the conception of scientific progress, the means by which scientific beliefs are produced, the scientific realism that says that science aims at truth and employs methods that achieve that aim, and the distinction between context of discovery and context of justification. The main idea of this book is that the pattern of scientific change exists in this way- normal science, crisis, extraordinary science, new phase of normal science. Normal science is built on and built by paradigms, which are exemplary instances of puzzle-solving in that discipline that provides a context and a model for future puzzle-solving. Extraordinary science is revolutionary.
Focusing on the notion of evidence, the author argues that a methodology powerful enough to account for theories of any scope and depth is incapable of ruling out the influence of social and cultural values in the very structuring of knowledge. Examining theories of human evolution and of prenatal hormonal determination of “gender-role” behavior, of sex differences in cognition, and of sexual orientation, the author shows how assumptions laden with social values affect the description, presentation, and interpretation of data. She concludes with a discussion of the relation between science, values, and ideology, based on the work of Habermas, Foucault, Keller, and Haraway.
Descartes speaks of this work as his metaphysics, in which he rejects all his former beliefs in the quest for new certainties. Discovering his own existence as a thinking entity in the very exercise of doubt, he goes on to prove the existence of God, who guarantees his clear and distinct ideas as a means of access to the truth. He develops new conceptions of body and mind, capable of serving as foundations for the new science of nature. This new translation pays particular attention to Descartes's terminology and style, with its elaborate but beautifully lucid syntax, careful balancing, and rhetorical signposting.
This work is a compilation of Descartes’ physics and metaphysics. It was intended to replace Aristotle's philosophy and traditional Scholastic Philosophy. In the first part, Descartes discusses the nature of knowledge and the methods by which it can be acquired. In the second part, Descartes explores the nature of the human mind and its relationship to the body. In the third part, Descartes discusses the nature of God and the relationship between God and the world. Finally, in the fourth part, Descartes applies his philosophical system to a range of practical issues, including ethics, politics, and the nature of the physical world.
This Hume’s work addresses central questions of human life and knowledge. It considers the origin and processes of human thought, reaching the stark conclusion that we can have no ultimate understanding of the physical world, or indeed our own minds. In either sphere we must depend on instinctive learning from experience, recognizing our animal nature and the limits of reason. This edition reprints the last edition published in 1777, containing corrections made by Hume shortly before his death. A comprehensive introduction and rich Appendices are great tool for further study of this text and Hume.
This volume contains the complete texts of Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature and of his Abstract of that work. The Treatise first explains how we form such concepts as cause and effect, external existence, and personal identity, as well as compelling but unconfirmable beliefs in the entities represented by these concepts. It then advances a novel account of the passions, explains freedom and necessity as they apply to human choices and actions, and concludes with detailed explanations of how we distinguish between virtue and vice and of the different kinds of virtue.
This book is a timely and essential addition to current conversations around gender. Grayson Perry explores what masculinity is: from sex to power, from fashion to career prospects, and what it could become- with illustrations throughout. Grayson Perry admits he's not immune from the stereotypes himself- yet his thoughts on everything from power to physical appearance, from emotions to a brand new Manifesto for Men, are shot through with honesty, tenderness, and the belief that, for everyone to benefit, updating masculinity has to be something men decide to do themselves.
This work by Thomas H. Huxley addresses current social and political debate about application of evolutionary principle of competition on society. It records Thomas H. Huxley's classic lecture on evolution, human nature, and the way to true happiness. Arguing that the human psyche is at war with itself, that humans are alienated in the cosmos, and that moral societies are necessarily in conflict with the natural conditions of their existence, Huxley nevertheless saw moral dictates as the key to future human happiness and success- He claims that ethical process kept natural processes under control and made men truly human.
This work by Herbert Spencer is a survey of the foundations of sociology that applies the idea of natural selection to the group survival and institutional structures, in which he raised his famous theory of social evolution and organismic analogy. He states that similar to species, society would evolve from a simple form and progress to a complex form. He develops the tendency to see society as an organism, and is concerned with overall structure of society, the interrelationship of the parts of society, and the functions of the parts for each other as well as for the system as a whole.
This book challenges several widespread views concerning Aristotle's methods and practices of scientific and philosophical research. Taking central topics in psychology, zoology, astronomy and politics, G. E. R. Lloyd explores generally unrecognised tensions between Aristotle's deeply held a priori convictions and his remarkable empirical honesty in the face of complexities in the data or perceived difficult or exceptional cases. Lloyd argues that there are plenty of signs of tentativeness, of hesitation, of the pluralism and open-endedness of his approach, of a readiness to backtrack, to qualify and modify even fundamental doctrines and principles.
This book is intended to discover and explore the growth and structure of Aristotle’s thought. After an overview of his life and writings, Part One tells the story of Aristotle’s intellectual development in so far as it can be reconstructed, from the pupil of Plato to the critic of Plato, from the philosopher of nature to the founder of systematic research. Part Two presents the fundamentals of his thought in the main fields of inquiry in which he was interested, including logic and metaphysics, physics, psychology, ethics, politics, and literary criticism.
This book focuses on Hume’s philosophy, specifically devoted to explanation of the meaning of some of his central philosophical doctrines. Beginning with a chapter setting out Hume’s own account of the process of understanding that emphasizes imagination, the book then proceeds to the primary methodological principles that Hume derives from his account of representation. The rest of the book is devoted to particular philosophical topics from his Treatise and his two Enquiries- the inductive origins of belief, the nature of causation, the freedom of human actions, belief in miracles, the nature of personal identity, the character of moral evaluations, and the status of skeptical arguments.
This book is the first full book-length study for forty years of David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Buckle offers a careful guide through the argument and structure of the work. He shows how the central sections of the Enquiry offer a critique of the dogmatic empiricisms of the ancient world (Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Aristotelianism) and set in place an alternative conception of human powers based on the skeptical principles of habit and probability. These principles are then put to work, to rule out philosophy's metaphysical ambitions and their consequences: religious systems and their attendant conception of human beings as semi-divine rational animals.
This book analyzes Descartes’s pivotal concept that deals with all the functions of the mind, cognitive as well as volitional, theoretical as well as practical and moral. It examines Descartes’s treatment of mind and cognition in his earliest unpublished texts, discusses his mature view of the mind as distinct in nature from the body, of the different kinds of knowledge Descartes associates with his primary notions of thought, extension, and mind-body union, and deals with his notion of thought and its various aspects- its wide definition in terms of consciousness and its relation to language, its intentional and representative nature, and the status of sensations as mental phenomena.
This book focuses on the theory of natural selection, showing how Darwin’s great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of humanity’s place in the universe. Dennett vividly describes the theory itself and then extends Darwin's vision with impeccable arguments to their often surprising conclusions, challenging the views of some of the most famous scientists, including the biologists Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould, the philosopher John Searle and the linguist Noam Chomsky-Dennett is convinced that intellectuals underestimate the explanatory power of evolutionary theory, which to Dennett means natural selection.
Originally published in 1979, The Darwinian Revolution was the first comprehensive and readable synthesis of the history of evolutionary thought. Ruse argues that the action began in France around 1800, with the very different pictures of life's origins offered by Lamarck and Cuvier, the former an evolutionist and the latter an opponent. It then moved across the Channel to Britain around 1830, the time when Charles Darwin was coming into scientific maturity and when he took on and conquered the organic origins problem. The key figure here was Charles Lyell. Time out occurred between Darwin's fruitful creative period and the publication of the Origin in 1859.
This four-volume work, a collection of almost one hundred contributions to Herbert Spencer’s work, represents a long-awaited, systematic appraisal of Spencer’s thought. Leading commentators on the theory of evolution, sociology, psychology, and philosophy are all represented. In nine sections, these volumes cover every aspect of Spencer’s life and work, including general assessments of Spencer’s work and impact, his conceptions of social Darwinism; his thoughts on Comete, Tönnies, and Durkheim; his theory of evolution and social change; his conceptions of society; his ideas on psychology and evolution; his ideas on ethics and evolution; political aspects of social evolution; and his ideas on women, the family, and welfare.
