In this book the author analyzes the work of physicists, mathematicians, biologists, historians, and philosophers in order to discover the principles that underlie their various ways of knowing and in terms of which they describe the ...

"Cassirer employs his remarkable gift of lucidity to explain the major ideas and intellectual issues that emerged in the course of nineteenth century scientific and historical thinking. The translators have done an excellent job in reproducing his clarity in English. There is no better place for an intelligent reader to find out, with a minimum of technical language, what was really happening during the great intellectual movement between the age of Newton and our own."—_New York Times._.

Band 2 der ECN macht erstmals die 1936-1937 geschriebene, fast fertiggestellte Monographie »Ziele und Wege der Wirklichkeitserkenntnis« zugänglich. Cassirer stellt sich darin die Aufgabe, die verschiedenen Richtungen, in denen der Prozeß der Objektivierung von Erkenntnis fortschreiten kann, gesondert zu verfolgen, um damit das Phänomen des Erscheinens selbst in seiner ganzen Fülle und in seiner ganzen Tiefe zu erfassen. Diese Schrift gibt einen allgemeinen systematischen Überblick über die verschiedenen Methoden, die in den Einzelwissenschaften (Mathematik, Physik, Biologie, Geschichte) verwandt werden und die (...) deren Wirklichkeitsbegriff bestimmen. Cassirers »Ziele und Wege der Wirklichkeitserkenntnis« bilden das systematische Pendant zu seiner historischen Bearbeitung des Verhältnisses von Philosophie und Wissenschaften im vierten Band seines 'Erkenntnisproblems' und wenden die in der Philosophie der symbolischen Formen gewonnene Konzeption verschiedener gleichberechtigter Zugangsweisen zu »Wirklichkeit« auf die verschiedenen Methoden wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis an. Inhalt: Kapitel 1: Die drei Grundrichtungen der Wirklichkeitserkenntnis; Kapitel 2: Die mathematische Synthesis; Kapitel 3: Die Invarianten der Wahrnehmung und des Begriffs; Kapitel 4: Kulturwissenschaft und Geschichtswissenschaft (1936/37). (shrink)

In this insightful study of the common origins of analytic and continental philosophy, Friedman looks at how social and political events intertwined and influenced philosophy during the early twentieth century, ultimately giving rise to the two very different schools of thought. He shows how these two approaches, now practiced largely in isolation from one another, were once opposing tendencies within a common discussion. Already polarized by their philosophical disagreements, these approaches were further split apart by the rise of Naziism and (...) the resulting emigration of all influential German-speaking philosophers except for Heidegger. Although the book gives a general overview of the philosophical issues of the period, the author pays special attention to the relationships among three key twentieth-century philosophers: Rudolf Carnap, Ernst Cassirer, and Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

A fascinating exploration of the very essence of life itself sheds new light on the order and evolution in complex life systems and defines and explains autonomous agents and work within the contexts of thermodynamics and information theory, setting the stage for a dramatic technological revolution. 50,000 first printing.

Stuart Kauffman here presents a brilliant new paradigm for evolutionary biology, one that extends the basic concepts of Darwinian evolution to accommodate recent findings and perspectives from the fields of biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. The book drives to the heart of the exciting debate on the origins of life and maintenance of order in complex biological systems. It focuses on the concept of self-organization: the spontaneous emergence of order widely observed throughout nature. Kauffman here argues that self-organization plays an (...) important role in the emergence of life itself and may play as fundamental a role in shaping life's subsequent evolution as does the Darwinian process of natural selection. Yet until now no systematic effort has been made to incorporate the concept of self-organization into evolutionary theory. The construction requirements which permit complex systems to adapt remain poorly understood, as is the extent to which selection itself can yield systems able to adapt more successfully. This book explores these themes. It shows how complex systems, contrary to expectations, can spontaneously exhibit stunning degrees of order, and how this order, in turn, is essential for understanding the emergence and development of life on Earth. Topics include the new biotechnology of applied molecular evolution, with its important implications for developing new drugs and vaccines; the balance between order and chaos observed in many naturally occurring systems; new insights concerning the predictive power of statistical mechanics in biology; and other major issues. Indeed, the approaches investigated here may prove to be the new center around which biologicalscience itself will evolve. The work is written for all those interested in the cutting edge of research in the life sciences. (shrink)

The fifty-seven original essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of animal cognition.

The final version of the paper is published pp. 117-166 in: Myrdene Anderson and Floyd Merrell (eds.): On Semiotic Modeling . Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, 1991.