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This course examines the ideas, thoughts and theories in biology (particularly evolutionary biology), traces them to Western traditions of natural history, metaphysics and epistemology, and deals with the intersection between life science and philosophy. The course content includes both historical documents concerning zoology, palaeontology, geology, comparative anatomy, physiology, psychology and brain science as well as philosophical writings on what we now consider as biological questions. We will investigate how the conceptual frameworks and methods of inquiry in biological study derive from the traditions of Western philosophy, how major philosophers, like Aristotle, Descartes and Hume, consider or redefine the roles of man and animals in their systems of knowledge, and how biological sciences interact with sociology and political theory at epistemological, methodological and ethical levels. In class discussion, the combination of historical and philosophical approaches will shed light on the interdisciplinarity of life science in its historical development and unfold the reconceptualization of mankind and human society in biological study.
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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
