Boscovitch's Theoria, originally published in 1758, introduced the idea of particles as point masses surrounded by a field of force, which varied between attraction and repulsion at very short distances and merged with Newton's law of gravitational attraction at larger distances. Though Boscovitch's attempt to explain the observed properties of extended bodies in terms of point masses ultimately proved unsuccessful, his ideas on fields of force strongly influenced. Faraday, Kelvin, and other nineteenth century scientists. This paperback reissue of Child's 1921 (...) translation makes one of the seminal, but almost forgotten, books that shaped modern science readily available to students of the history of science.—E. M. M. (shrink)

This book, a revised and expanded version of a paper delivered at an international congress of linguists, is chiefly concerned with technical questions in the science of linguistics, particularly the superiority of transformational models over taxonomic models in developing an adequate theory of syntax and phonemics. Underlying these technical questions is a sustained criticism of traditional empiricist theories of knowledge. The taxonomic model assumes that the scientific approach to language is an atomistic one, classifying the basic invariant units, sounds, or (...) grammatical slots and fillers, and then specifying the laws that govern the combination of these units. The transformational model, Chomsky's own development, does not presuppose fully specified units, but intricate mental structures whose laws give a determination to the component parts. As a professional scientist, Chomsky argues that the transformational model is superior on three levels of adequacy: observational, descriptive, and explanatory. As a part-time philosopher, he feels that such structures reflect the general nature of the mind and show the inadequacy of atomistic accounts of mental phenomena.—E. M. M. (shrink)

Thomas' commentary, which is three times the size of Aristotle's work, is a detailed paragraph-by-paragraph exposition of the Philosopher's thought, supplemented by discussions of the commentators Thomas knew, especially Averroes. Thomas' rare disagreements with Aristotle, e.g., on the question of the eternity of the world, are usually occasioned by theological concerns but are defended on strictly philosophical grounds. This careful literal translation makes available the clearest and most complete presentation of medieval Aristotelian physics. Thomas' work is also important as an (...) expression of the ideal, which some still cherish, of a unified philosophical science of physical reality.--E. M. M. (shrink)

The central concern in this tightly reasoned, technically written book is the logic of scientific explanation and its relation to the logic of ordinary language. Empirical differentiation, through the conceptual systems that shape ordinary discourse, can take various forms, but all utilize the related basic concepts of individuals, classes, and continua. In ordinary discourse these notions are essentially inexact, a feature which Körner handles through an adaption of Kleene's three valued logic. Any explanatory system, e.g., scientific theories, based on two (...) valued logic automatically represents an idealization introduced to provide a deductive unification of experience. In treating scientific theories Körner concentrates on mathematical systems and on explicating the various meanings of "necessary" which may characterize scientific laws. The final third of the book, on the relation between experience and scientific explanation, emphasizes the role of man as an active decision maker. Though Körner's conceptualistic approach raises difficulties and leaves many questions unanswered—and even unasked—his carefully ordered and precisely elaborated development presents a new and significant interpretation of the relation between an ordinary and theoretical language and their respective roles in man's understanding of reality.—E. M. M. (shrink)

Newton and his contemporaries reinterpreted the traditional "design" argument for God's existence to argue from a universe, conceived along mechanistic lines, to the "Supreme Geometrician" who planned the design, started the machine, and continually compensates for its mechanical inadequacies. This position, Hurlbutt contends, was Hume's primary target in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, a target which Hume effectively demolished. Hurlbutt attempts to amplify the significance of this thesis by summarizing various classical and medieval arguments for God's existence. Hume, he feels, (...) effectively refuted all of them by undercutting the rational arguments and showing that the mystical arguments rested on subjective needs and cultural conditioning. The present result of Hume's labors is that: "No modern theology is pursuing the path of natural theology or its prized argument—the design argument," a conclusion that Hurlbutt reaches by ignoring those theologians, e.g., many Thomists, who are pursuing the path of natural theology as well as the arguments that they actually employ.—E. M. M. (shrink)

Costa de Beauregard, one of France's senior theoretical physicists, has written a "haute vulgarisation" of modern physics trimmed to a particular point of view. His historical accounts of early physics are marred by an overfacile interpretation. Thus, Newton's laws are presented as spontaneous inductions from a common sense base. His accounts of contemporary physics, however, are well informed and clearly written. The thesis underlying the book is that four dimensional space-time is real and objective and can supply the conceptual basis (...) required to unify relativity and quantum theory. In presenting this he adapts and modifies de Broglie's interpretation of quantum mechanics, considering fundamental particles as essentially nothing but integral occupation numbers in the space-time continuum. With this interpretation of particle phenomena he can defend a species of determinism based on the total symmetry between past and future for elementary interactions, an assumption that has been sharply challenged by developments in particle physics subsequent to the writing of this book. There is little discussion of the philosophical presuppositions or implications of his position.—E. M. M. (shrink)

Gonseth's primary concern in this volume, as in his earlier study of space, is the methodology of philosophical investigation. How does the philosopher achieve thoroughness without introducing arbitrariness? His method of dialectical synthesis is aptly illustrated by focusing on a privileged example, the problem of time. Common language analysis of "time" words, his initial concern, gives a preliminary sketch of a solution by making explicit the intuitive view of time implicit in language. Language, however, is unintelligible apart from experience, while (...) experience, in turn, entails an openness to the deeper understanding made possible through mathematics and physics. Yet neither of these is self-sufficient. A time order can be axiomatized, but the interpretation of this axiomatic system involves the intersection of a theoretical horizon and a phenomenal horizon. Similarly, the more precisely the physicist attempts to measure coincidences and durations the more dependent he becomes on theoretical knowledge and on a personal evaluation of the total situation. Neither Bergson's stress on subjective time nor the positivists' objectification of time can properly interrelate intuitive, mathematical, and physical time. A dialectical synthesis clarifies and integrates the subjective and objective aspects of time. This challenging book invites philosophers of all persuasions to re-examine their own implicit assumptions on the nature and method of philosophy.—E. M. M. (shrink)

This selection of writings nicely illustrates the many sided career of Joseph Priestley. Priestley is best remembered today for his discovery of oxygen. In his varied career Priestley managed to combine qualities and positions that most men find contradictory. His theological writings offended rationalists because of his defense of Scripture, miracles, and the doctrine of the resurrection, and were even more offensive to orthodox theologians because of his materialism and extreme unitarianism. Though a lifelong defender of civil liberties and minority (...) rights, he yet taught that it is better for the law to punish the innocent than to take a chance on letting the guilty go free. Passmore's excellent introduction summarizes Priestley's career and gives a balanced appraisal of his merits. In Priestley's writings the major intellectual and political movements of the period are reflected and refracted by a mind which, though not profound enough to play a leading role, yet was bold, energetic, and above all else, commonsensical.—E. M. M. (shrink)

The author, a physicist as well as a philosopher, uses the thought of Werner Heisenberg as a focus for examining the epistemological foundations of quantum theory. Though Heisenberg's earliest original insights were stimulated by Plato's Timaeus he soon swung over to Bohr's empiricism in developing and supporting the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. His later philosophical reflections are markedly Kantian with irreducible physical invariants playing the role of Kant's necessary and universal laws. As Heelan sees it, an examination of the (...) intentionality-structure of the scientist supplies the critical basis for judging the reality of the objects known through science. Though Heisenberg rejected the naive "empirical objectivity" of pre-quantum interpretations of science, his reflective evaluation of his own achievements is inadequate in explaining the formal objectivity of the objects known. By distinguishing the criterion of reality, rational affirmation, from the meaning of "reality," whatever is defined by the object in its formal sense, Heelan is able to develop a critical realism that assigns an ontological status to fundamental particles. "Main-line" philosophers of science may feel ill at ease with Heelan's phenomenological terminology of "intentionality-structure," "noema," and "horizon" and may object to his treatment of "meaning" and "language." But if they "bracket" these reservations they will find this book an unusually well-informed and penetrating study of the philosophical implications of modern physics.—E. M. M. (shrink)

Though Béla von Juhos belonged to a Hungarian family, he was born in Vienna and, after his ninth year, lived there for the rest of his life. Though associated with the Vienna Circle, he did not assume a teaching position in Vienna until 1948. The present collection, ably translated by Paul Foulkes and introduced by Gerhard Frey, focuses on the type of epistemological analysis of scientific knowledge that remained Juhos’s abiding concern. By the mid-nineteen-thirties the pristine positivism of the early (...) Vienna Circle had been compromised by the switch from phenomenalism to physicalism and by expanding the early emphasis on logical syntax to include Tarski’s semantics. Juhos refused to accept such changes and remained to the end the purest, though hardly the most original, of the logical positivists. His development is of some interest in showing how the potentiality of the original program could be fulfilled, something that will merely be indicated here. (shrink)

In this work, the first of two volumes, Harris attempts to explicitate the world-view implicit in modern science. The second volume, adumbrated at the conclusion of this study, will develop a philosophical synthesis consistent with this world-view. The survey of science, which occupies the bulk of the book, is a masterful tour de force which stresses the striving of every level of reality toward completion on a higher level. His interpretation of physics is generally competent, but tends to rely too (...) heavily on Eddington and on speculative interpretations of general relativity and of the Pauli principle. His evolutionary biology is a sober critical redevelopment of views similar to those which Teilhard de Chardin sketched in glowing prose. In interpreting the findings of neurophysiology and psychology he utilizes Gestalt theory and Piaget's idea of developmental stages. His general conclusion is that mind and thought, the ultimate terms of evolutionary development, must be immanent in every preceding stage, not as consciousness but as rationality. Accordingly, the philosophy modern science requires must be a synthesis, along Hegelian lines, of monism and pluralism, of process and holism. Any philosophy which rests on atomic facts or atomic propositions is, in Harris's opinion, radically incapable of supplying such a synthesis.—E. M. M. (shrink)

The present work, the proceedings of a workshop conducted at Catholic University in the summer of 1962, presupposes an acceptance of Thomism as a philosophical synthesis. The series of papers presented consider Thomism as a system and its relation to other forms of scholasticism, contemporary problems and philosophical trends, and the methodological problems involved in teaching Thomism. While this study should be of value to the limited group for which it was intended, those teaching undergraduate philosophy courses in Catholic colleges, (...) its generally closed and conservative tone will limit its utility for a wider audience.—E. M. M. (shrink)

The aim of this book is both to develop a logic of microreduction, primarily for dynamic theories, or theories that state and explain the attributes and behavior, rather than the evolutionary development, of the things in some domain and, also, to argue that a program of microreduction offers the best hope for the unification of science. After two initial chapters, developing the necessary logical tools and techniques, Causey gets to the central problem of microreduction. The fundamental idea is: a theory, (...) T2, involving entities and attributes proper to some domain, D2, is microreduced to a theory, T1, involving entities and attributes proper to some other domain, D1, when the entities of D2 are explained as structured wholes made up of elements of D1. Attributes present more of a problem. One must first select the classifying attributes which divide the entities of each domain into disjoint equivalence classes. The connecting sentences, relating attributes of D2 to attributes of D1 cannot be identity statements in a set-theoretic formulation but should be such in a more flexible formulation. On this basis, the author gives a detailed specification of the condition for a successful, i.e., no emergence, reduction of the ontology and laws of T2 to those of T1. The second half of the book is more programmatic defending the program of microreduction as the best, though presently unrealizable, means of unifying science. The objections to the program brought by Fodor and others are countered. Though the author’s detailed analysis is geared to the reduction of chemistry to physics, he believes that the same general method should also handle the reduction of social sciences to a science of individual behavior. (shrink)