Summary Kant's critique of corpuscular theory created a tabula rasa situation in natural philosophy and opened up a vast new field of research, particularly related to the study of heat, light, electricity and magnetism. ?rsted introduced Kantian epistemology in Scandinavia and made friends with J. W. Ritter, an outstanding experimenter who was the first to make dynamical philosophy productive. The ?rsted?Ritter partnership aimed at the construction of a cosmology based on dynamical philosophy as well as galvanic interpretations of (...) the Lichtenberg and Chladni patterns. It is suggested that Kantian critique and dynamical cosmology provided the framework within which ?rsted and Ritter made their epochal discoveries as well as their bold speculations. Finally, it is argued that the Romantics widened the scope of natural philosophy itself. (shrink)

Modern logic has Wldergone some remarkable developments in the last hun dred years. These have contributed to the extraordinary use of formal logic which has become essentially the concern of mathematicians. This has led to attempts to identify logic with formal logic. The claim has even been made that all non-formal reasoning, to the extent that it cannot be formalized, no longer belongs to logic. This conception leads to a genuine impoverishment of logic as well as to a narrow conception (...) of reason. It means that as soon as demonstrative proofs are no longer available reason will no longer dominate. Even the idea of the 'reasonable' becomes foreign to logic and such expres sions as 'reasonable decisions', 'reasonable choice' or 'reasonable hypotheses' would be put aside as meaningless. The domain of action, including method ology and everything that is given over to deliberation or controversy - i.e., foreign to formal logic - would become a battleground where necessarily the reason of the strongest would always prevail. (shrink)

Although the prohibition of human cloning for reproductive purposes has been proclaimed internationally, embryo stem cell research is progressively considered as a positive field for future therapeutical developments. Implicitly cloning is then becoming a tool which allows the creation of new forms of life, including human life.

Analyse: Le penseur chinois Wang Chong (27-97?) fut souvent considéré comme un auteur hétérodoxe, voire anti-confucianiste, tant en Chine ancienne qu'au XXe siècle.

During the past year, there has been progressive criticism and debate in the literary field centered on my former point of view in aesthetics. This has been very helpful to me. As a result of this, I have a better understanding of the errors of the basic starting point in subjective idealism. At the same time, I have gained a clearer understanding of the basic question in aesthetics and of the differences among the various opinions of those who took part (...) in the debate. This is not yet the time for summarizing; but as we shall see below, the road that we have taken and even the difficulties that we have encountered along that road have been very beneficial to our progressive inquiries. (shrink)