After 1905, Einstein's miraculous year, physics would never be the same again. In those twelve months, Einstein shattered many cherished scientific beliefs with five extraordinary papers that would establish him as the world's leading physicist. This book brings those papers together in an accessible format. The best-known papers are the two that founded special relativity: On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies and Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on Its Energy Content? In the former, Einstein showed that absolute time (...) had to be replaced by a new absolute: the speed of light. In the second, he asserted the equivalence of mass and energy, which would lead to the famous formula E = mc 2 . The book also includes On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light , in which Einstein challenged the wave theory of light, suggesting that light could also be regarded as a collection of particles. This helped to open the door to a whole new world--that of quantum physics. For ideas in this paper, he won the Nobel Prize in 1921. The fourth paper also led to a Nobel Prize, although for another scientist, Jean Perrin. On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat concerns the Brownian motion of such particles. With profound insight, Einstein blended ideas from kinetic theory and classical hydrodynamics to derive an equation for the mean free path of such particles as a function of the time, which Perrin confirmed experimentally. The fifth paper, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions , was Einstein's doctoral dissertation, and remains among his most cited articles. It shows how to calculate Avogadro's number and the size of molecules. These papers, presented in a modern English translation, are essential reading for any physicist, mathematician, or astrophysicist. Far more than just a collection of scientific articles, this book presents work that is among the high points of human achievement and marks a watershed in the history of science. Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the miraculous year, this new paperback edition includes an introduction by John Stachel, which focuses on the personal aspects of Einstein's youth that facilitated and led up to the miraculous year. (shrink)

This book is for physicists, historians and philosophers of physics as well as students seeking an introduction to ongoing debates in relativistic and quantum physics. This title covers the recent debates on the emergence of relativity and quantum theory. It includes chapters with an introductory character, comprehensible to students and science teachers. It strengthens the bonds between the communities of scientists, historians, and philosophers.

In three volumes, a distinguished group of scholars from a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the humanities and the arts contribute essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The range of the essays, as well as their originality, and their critical and historical depth, pay tribute to the extraordinary scope of Professor Cohen's intellectual interests, as a scientist-philosopher and a humanist, and also to his engagement in the world of (...) social and political practice. Science, Mind and Art, Volume III of Essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen focuses on issues in contemporary epistemology, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind as well as on the relations of science and human values in ethical and religious thought. It also has important new work in contemporary metaphysics, as well as in the history of philosophy, and on questions of multiculturalism in science education. Contributors include Paul Feyerabend, Adolf Grünbaum, Joseph Margolis, Joëlle Proust, Erazim Kohak, Elie Wiesel, Miriam Bienenstock, and John Silber, among others. (shrink)

Some Philosophical Prehistory of General Relativity As history, my remarks will form rather a medley. If they can claim any sort of unity (apart from a ...

Potentiality, Entanglement and Passion-at-a-Distance is a book for theoretical physicists and philosophers of modern physics. It treats a puzzling and provocative aspect of recent quantum physics: the apparent interaction of certain physical events that cannot share any causal connection. These are said to be `entangled' in some way, but an explanation remains elusive. Abner Shimony - to whom the book is dedicated - and others suggest the need to revive the category of what may be seen as a metaphysical potentiality. (...) Abner has described these events without actions to link them as `passion at a distance': not active, but passive. The discussions gathered here are written by a truly remarkable cast of scientists and philosophers and shed new light on the most profound puzzles of our times. (shrink)

The key to understanding self-identity is identifying the transcendental structures that make a temporally extended, continuous, and unified experiential life possible. Self-identity is rooted in the formal, temporalizing structure of intentional experience that underlies psychological continuity. Personal identity, by contrast, is rooted in the content of the particular flow of experience, in particular and primarily, in the convictions adopted passively or actively in reflection by a self-identical subject in the light of her social and traditional inheritances. Secondarily, a person’s identity (...) is rooted in others’ characterizations of that person in the light of the social conventions and constructs of the cultures and traditions that have shaped the personal identity of the ones who make the attributions. Personal identity, on this view, is fundamentally rooted in beliefs, traits—especially character traits—sentiments, and moods, that is, in the subject’s convictions about the true, the good, and the right—and in the commitments to the pursuit of (apparently) worthwhile goods and to the practical identities rooted in those convictions. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the issues that motivate representationalist accounts, and it describes the different versions of representationalism as responses to these issues. It argues that the representationalist views do not adequately respond to the epistemological problems that motivate them and that they engender some ontological problems. The chapter presents an alternative ‘presentationalist’ account that preserves the straightforward sense of the mind's openness to the world. While representationalism and presentationalism agree that the relation between mental events or states is direct but (...) mediated, they radically differ in their views of the nature of the mediation involved in the mind's intentional directedness to the world. This difference and the preferability of the presentationalist account are explored. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between two senses of the term “ phenomenology ”: a narrow sense and a broader sense. It claims, with particular reference to the moral sphere, that the narrow meaning of moral phenomenology cannot stand alone, that is, that moral phenomenology in the narrow sense entails moral intentionality. The paper proceeds by examining different examples of the axiological and volitional experiences of both virtuous and dutiful agents, and it notes the correlation between the phenomenal and intentional differences belonging (...) to these experiences. The paper concludes with some reflections on how the focus on the broader sense of “ phenomenology ” serves to provide a more precise sense of what we might mean by “ moral phenomenology.”. (shrink)

This paper approaches the intentional structure of the emotions by considering three claims about that structure. The paper departs from the Brentanian and Husserlian ‘priority of presentation claim’. The PPC comprises two theses: intentional feelings and emotions are founded on presenting acts and intentional feelings and emotions are directed specifically to the value-attributes of the presented objects. The paper then considers two challenges to this claim: the equiprimordial claim and the priority of feeling claim. The EC asserts that the presentational (...) and affective dimensions of intentional feelings and emotions are equiprimordial. I respond to this challenge to the PPC by revising it, claiming instead that the founding relations exist between the presentational and affective senses in an experience whose presenting and affective aspects are equiprimordial. The PFC grants priority to the affective, a grant which presupposes the independence of the affective from the presentational. I argue that the PFC is mistaken, and that the revision of the PPC can handle the examples on which the PFC is based. (shrink)

Following a brief summation of the phenomenological method, the paper considers three metaethical positions adopted by phenomenologists and the implications of those positions for a normative ethics. The metaethical positions combine epistemological and ontological viewpoints. They are non-intellectualism and strong value realism as represented by the axiological views of phenomenologists such as Scheler, Meinong, Reinach, Stein, Hartmann, von Hildebrand, and Steinbock; non-intellectualism and anti-realism as represented by the freedom-centered phenomenologies of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty; and weak intellectualism and weak value (...) realism as represented by Husserl and Drummond. The paper argues that only the third metaethical view can support a normative ethics that is consistent with the essential features of the phenomenological method, that allows for freedom in an agent’s choosing from a multiplicity of first-order goods, including vocational goods, practical identities, and life plans, available in the agent’s factical circumstances, and that provides norms governing the correctness of our actions and our obligations to others. The normative dimension is introduced, first, by the requirement that the fulfillment of first-order evaluations and choices be truthful, that is, that the evaluations be appropriate and the actions right. Second, transcendental considerations revealed in the phenomenological analysis of intentional experience disclose a notion of second-order goods of agency that universally bind agents in their exercise of freedom and their dealings with others. (shrink)

This paper provides a phenomenological account of the intentional structure of action. To establish the context, I first distinguish physiological changes and the bodily motions manifesting the...

This paper explores two perspectives in Husserl's recently published writings on ethics and axiology in order to sketch anew a phenomenological account of practical reason. The paper aims a) to show that a phenomenological account of moral intentionality i) transcends the disputes between intellectualist-emotivist and intellectualist-voluntarist disputes and ii) points toward a position in which practical reason has an emotive content or, conversely, the emotions have a cognitive content, and the paper aims b) to show that a phenomenological ethics identifies (...) universal human goods that are, nevertheless, specified differently in varying cultural contexts. (shrink)

In reworking his Logical Investigations Husserl adopts two positions that were not actually incorporated into later editions of the Investigations but do appear in other writings: a new distinction between signitive and significative intentions, and the claim that even naming and perceiving acts are categorially formed. This paper investigates Husserl's notion of noematic sense and the pure grammatical ' categories ' intimated therein in order to shed light on these new positions. The paper argues that the development of the theories (...) of the noema and of pure grammar allows us to recognize how even merely perceived or named things have a certain categoriality belonging to them, but that this development also requires us to distinguish between an anticipatory categoriality and an articulated categoriality. (shrink)

Dennett’s contrast between auto- and hetero-phenomenology is badly drawn, primarily because Dennett identifies phenomenologists as introspective psychologists. The contrast I draw between phenomenology and hetero-phenomenology is not in terms of the difference between a first-person, introspective perspective and a third-person perspective but rather in terms of the difference between two third-person accounts – a descriptive phenomenology and an explanatory psychology – both of which take the first-person perspective into account.

This paper argues that frege did not significantly influence husserl's departure from psychologism by (1) examining husserl's early logical reflections, Especially those concerning the meaning of the term ""vorstellung"," and (2) determining which parts of husserl's "philosophy of arithmetic", Criticized for its psychologism by frege, Were psychologistic and when husserl rejected them. It concludes that the logical writings show an independent movement toward a non-Psychologistic position and that the psychologism of "philosophy of arithmetic" was abandoned by 1891 apart from any (...) fregean influence. (shrink)

This paper explores the emergence of the distinctions between the transcendental and the psychological and, correlatively, between phenomenology and psychology that emerge in The Idea of Phenomenology. It is argued that this first attempt to draw these distinctions reveals that the conception of transcendental phenomenology remains infected by elements of the earlier conception of descriptive psychology and that only later does Husserl move to a more adequate—but perhaps not yet fully purified—conception of the transcendental.

Edmund Husserl, generally regarded as the founding figure of phenomenology, exerted an enormous influence on the course of twentieth and twenty-first century philosophy. This volume collects and translates essays written by important German-speaking commentators on Husserl, ranging from his contemporaries to scholars of today, to make available in English some of the best commentary on Husserl and the phenomenological project. The essays focus on three problematics within phenomenology: the nature and method of phenomenology; intentionality, with its attendant issues of temporality (...) and subjectivity; and intersubjectivity and culture. Several essays also deal with Martin Heidegger's phenomenology, although in a manner that reveals not only Heidegger's differences with Husserl but also his reliance on and indebtedness to Husserl's phenomenology. Taken together, the book shows the continuing influence of Husserl's thought, demonstrating how such subsequent developments as existentialism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction were defined in part by how they assimilated and departed from Husserlian insights. The course of what has come to be called continental philosophy cannot be described without reference to this assimilation and departure, and among the many successor approaches phenomenology remains a viable avenue for contemporary thought. In addition, problems addressed by Husserl--most notably, intentionality, consciousness, the emotions, and ethics--are of central concern in contemporary non-phenomenological philosophy, and many contemporary thinkers have turned to Husserl for guidance. The essays demonstrate how significant Husserl remains to contemporary philosophy across several traditions and several generations. The volume includes essays by Rudolf Bernet, Klaus Held, Ludwig Landgrebe, Dieter Lohmar, Verena Mayer and Christopher Erhard, Ullrich Melle, Karl Mertens, Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Jan Patočka, Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, Karl Schuhmann, and Elisabeth Ströker. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify how one might understand philosophy as necessarily involving both third-person and first-person perspectives. It argues, first, that philosophy must incorporate the first-person perspective in order to provide an adequate account of consciousness and the prereflective awareness of the self and, second, in opposition to Dennett’s hetero-phenomenology that this incorporation is possible only within a transcendental perspective. The paper also attempts to meet the challenge of those who claim that the notion of the self—and along with (...) it, the idea of first-person perspective—is dependent upon a second-person perspecive. It argues that the second-person challenge depends upon a sense of “self ” different from that at stake in the first-person perspective operative in prereflective self-awareness. (shrink)

In a series of recently published lectures and essays two Roman Catholic Cardinals—Cardinals Ratzinger and Kasper—have offered significantly different positions of the issue of the relationship of the Universal to the Particular Churches. Cardinal Kasper locates the root of the disagreement in the philosophical foundations of the two views in privileging the Universal over the Particular (or vice versa) as the starting point for ecclesiology. I will explain why I find Josiah Royce’s late work (as informed by C. S. Peirce’s (...) thought) to be a valuable resource for the complexities of such a rich ecclesiological enquiry. I examine the interrelationship between Spirit, Community and the Interpretation of Signs in the mature thought of Royce, I assess his contribution to the preceding discussion, and I offer some insights into his potential value to any ongoing dialogue on the nature and purpose of the Church. (shrink)

This paper (1) questions the manner in which James Mensch's <I>Ethics and Selfhood: Alterity and the Phenomenology of Obligation<D> characterizes the alternatives among moral theories provided, for example, by Kant and Aristotle; (2) considers and criticizes the notion of "inherent alterity" that Mensch uses to articulate a middle ground in moral theory; and (3) offers an alternative phenomenology of obligation. The notion of "inherent alterity," standing on apparently opposed Husserlian and Levinasian legs, is, it is charged, ambiguous. I argue that (...) the notion of obligation is properly grounded in nonmanifest goods to be realized in the pursuit of manifest goods. (shrink)

The notion of community—a many that is one—is troubled in two respects: (1) On a theoretical level, given that there are many kinds of communities, what, despite their differences, do they share as communities? (2) On a practical level, communities in fact often manifest little unity riven, as they are, by factions and conflicts. After exploring the ways in which empathy as supplemented and complemented by affective dimensions of experience contributes to both the unity and disunity of communities, I shall (...) focus on what I take to be an extreme instance of a disunified community, namely, the political community in which the disunity is institutionalized in political parties, governing administrations, and opposition movements. The focus on the disunified community, I suggest, points to a difference between those communities unified by a shared understanding of the ends and activities pursued in collective action and those communities more weakly unified by conflicting “thick” understandings of a shared “thin” understanding of the ends and activities proper to the political community. (shrink)