Provides a philosophical analysis of such biological concepts as natural selection, adaptation, speciation, and evolution.

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)

This is an important book for students, biologists, and general readers interested in the history of ideas--especially ideas that have radically altered our ...

The anthropological scale -- Organ projection -- The first tools -- Limbs and measure -- Apparatuses and instruments -- The inner architecture of the bones -- Steam engines and rail lines -- The electromagnetic telegraph -- The unconscious -- Machine technology -- The fundamental morphological law -- Language -- The state.

A great contemporary German philosopher attacks the explosive problem of political myth in our day, and reveals how the myth of the state evolved from primitive times to prepare the way for the rise of the modern totalitarian state. "A brilliant survey of some of the major texts in the history of political theory."—Kenneth Burke, _The Nation._.

I analyze a number of widespread misconceptions concerning species. The species category, defined by a concept, denotes the rank of a species taxon in the Linnaean hierarchy. Biological species are reproducing isolated from each other, which protects the integrity of their genotypes. Degree of morphological difference is not an appropriate species definition. Unequal rates of evolution of different characters and lack of information on the mating potential of isolated populations are the major difficulties in the demarcation of species taxa.

This book grew out of that conviction, and as such it brought a fresh perspective to some of the rarely examined assumptions and methods of analysis.

This thought-provoking classic investigates how the Renaissance spirit fundamentally questioned and undermined medieval thought. Of value to students of literature, political theory, history of religious and Reformation thought, and the history of science.

"In his Phenomenology of Cognition, Cassirer provides a comprehensive and systematic account of the dynamic process involved in the whole of human culture as it progresses from the world of myth and its feeling of social belonging to the highest abstractions of mathematics, logic and theoretical physics. Cassirer engages with the most sophisticated and cutting-edge work in fields ranging from ethnology to classics, egyptology and assyriology to ethology, brain science and psychology to logic, mathematics and theoretical physics. His command of (...) philosophy, literature, and the arts is superb. Echoing his work on Kant, Cassirer begins ThePhilosophy of Symbolic Formswith the problem posed by the meaning of being for philosophy since Plato. But Cassirer also shows that this problem gains new significance with Kant and with the development of modern culture. Cassirer weaves his conception of the development of knowledge into a broadly Kantian and German idealist dynamic-historical conception of significance and of experience that refuses to accept a fundamental opposition between literary, philosophical and scientific culture. In consequence of his great vision grounded in careful reflection and argument, Cassirer's systematic conception of the Copernican cosmopolitan-cosmological revolution is still philosophically and scientifically unmatched in contemporary philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic and of the Pacific." - Pierre Keller, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside, USA. This new translation makes Cassirer's seminal work available to a new generation of scholars. Each volume includes an introduction by Steve Lofts, a foreword by Peter Gordon, a glossary of key terms, and an index. Steve Lofts is Professor of Philosophy at King's University College, Canada. He is the translator of Cassirer's The Logic of the Cultural Sciences and The Warburg Years : Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology. (shrink)

The paper introduces a new type of rules into Natural Deduction, elimination rules by composition. Elimination rules by composition replace usual elimination rules in the style of disjunction elimination and give a more direct treatment of additive disjunction, multiplicative conjunction, existence quantifier and possibility modality. Elimination rules by composition have an enormous impact on proof-structures of deductions: they do not produce segments, deduction trees remain binary branching, there is no vacuous discharge, there is only few need of permutations. This new (...) type of rules fits especially to substructural issues, so it is shown for Lambek Calculus, i.e. intuitionistic non-commutative linear logic and to its extensions by structural rules like permutation, weakening and contraction. Natural deduction formulated with elimination rules by composition from a complexity perspective is superior to other calculi. (shrink)

The type in taxonomy is not meant to be a particularly typical specimen, but simply a reference specimen suited to serve as a 'name bearer' whenever doubt arises concerning the identity of a species. The minimum requirement is that the specimen reflects some differentiating characteristics of the species. In analogy, only such individuals should be made the type of an ideological system as adhere to the principal ideologies of that system. Only such an evolutionist could serve as type for Darwinism (...) who on the whole accepts gradual evolution and, as the major moving force in evolution, natural selection. It is very questionable whether the type-method would be of any use where highly heterogeneous, open, or rapidly evolving systems are involved. When the meaning of a system is changing it is less confusing to redefine it than to coin a new term for each change. (shrink)

Les modifications profondes de notre système socio-culturel font émerger des questions éthiques nouvelles, à l'intérieur de toutes les disciplines qui ont l'homme pour objet, telles l'esthétique, la philosophie, la politique, le droit, la médecine.Pour comprendre ces questions, par-delà leur « actualité ponctuelle », dans le flux vivant de leur constitution, leur approche doit être patiente, complexe, parfois aussi éprouvante qu'une initiation au parcours du labyrinthe. C'est cette tâche difficile que les auteurs de ce livre ont tenté d'amorcer.Leurs contributions sont issues (...) du cycle de leçons publiques qui ont été organisées durant l'année académique 1984-1985, par l'École des sciences philosophiques et religieuses des Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis à Bruxelles. (shrink)