The current implementation of the Neo-Darwinian model of evolution typically assumes that the set of possible phenotypes is organized into a highly symmetric and regular space. Most conveniently, a Euclidean vector space is used, representing phenotypic properties by real-valued variables. Computational work on the biophysical genotype-phenotype model of RNA folding, however, suggests a rather different picture. If phenotypes are organized according to genetic accessibility, the resulting space lacks a metric and can be formalized only in terms of a relatively unfamiliar (...) structure. Patterns of phenotypic evolution—such as punctuation, irreversibility, and modularity—result naturally from the properties of the genotype-phenotype map, which, given the genetic accessibility structure, define accessibility in the phenotype space. The classical framework, however, addresses these patterns exclusively in terms of natural selection on suitably constructed fitness landscapes. Recent work has extended the explanatory level for phenotypic evolution from fitness considerations alone to include the topological structure of phenotype space as induced by the genotype-phenotype map. Lewontin’s notion of “quasi-independence” of characters can also be formalized in topological terms: it corresponds to the assumption that a region of the phenotype space is represented by a product space of orthogonal factors. In this picture, each character corresponds to a factor of a region of the phenotype space. We consider any region of the phenotype space that has a given factorization as a “type”, i.e., as a set of phenotypes that share the same set of phenotypic characters. Thus, a theory of character identity can be developed that is based on the correspondence of local factors in different regions of the phenotype space. (shrink)

Review of the book Stadler, F. (Ed.). (2017). Integrated History and Philosophy of Science: Problems, Perspectives, and Case Studies. (Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol. 20). Vienna: Springer.

This abridged and revised edition of the original book (Springer-Verlag Vienna, 2001) offers the only comprehensive history and documentation of the Vienna Circle based on new sources with an innovative historiographical approach to the study of science. With reference to previously unpublished archival material and more recent literature, it refutes a number of widespread clichés about "neo-positivism" or "logical positivism". Following some insights on the relation between the history of science and the philosophy of science, the book offers an accessible (...) introduction to the complex subject of "the rise of scientific philosophy" in its socio-cultural background and European philosophical networks till the forced migration in the Anglo-Saxon world. The first part of the book focuses on the origins of Logical Empiricism before World War I and the development of the Vienna Circle in "Red Vienna" (with the "Verein Ernst Mach"), its fate during Austro-Fascism (Schlick's murder 1936) and its final expulsion by National-Socialism beginning with the "Anschluss" in 1938. It analyses the dynamics of the Schlick-Circle in the intellectual context of "late enlightenment" including the minutes of the meetings from 1930 on for the first time published and presents an extensive description of the meetings and international Unity of Science conferences between 1929 and 1941. The chapters introduce the leading philosophers of the Schlick Circle (e.g., Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Felix Kaufmann, Edgar Zilsel) and describe the conflicting interaction between Moritz Schlick and Otto Neurath, the long term communication between Moritz Schlick, Friedrich Waismann and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as between the Vienna Circle with Heinrich Gomperz and Karl Popper. In addition, Karl Menger's "Mathematical Colloquium" with Kurt Gödel is presented as a parallel movement. The final chapter of this section describes the demise of the Vienna Circle and the forced exodus of scientists and intellectuals from Austria.The second part of the book includes a bio-bibliographical documentation of the Vienna Circle members and for the first time of the assassination of Moritz Schlick in 1936, followed by an appendix comprising an extensive list of sources and literature. (shrink)

This landmark work provides a systematic introduction to systems of modal logic and stands as the first presentation of what have become central ideas in philosophy of language and metaphysics, from the "new theory of reference" and non-linguistic necessity and essentialism to "Kripke semantics.".

Scientific Philosophy: Origins and Development is the first Yearbook of the Vienna Circle Institute, which was founded in October 1991. The book contains original contributions to an international symposium which was the first public event to be organised by the Institute: `Vienna--Berlin--Prague: The Rise of Scientific Philosophy: The Centenaries of Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach and Edgar Zilsel.' The first section of the book - `Scientific Philosophy - Origins and Developments' reveals the extent of scientific communication in the inter-War years between (...) these great metropolitan centres, as well as presenting systematic investigations into the relevance of the heritage of the Vienna Circle to contemporary research and philosophy. This section offers a new paradigm for scientific philosophy, one which contrasts with the historiographical received view of logical empiricism. Support for this re-evaluation is offered in the second section, which contains, for the first time in English translation, Gustav Bergmann's recollections of the Vienna Circle, and an historical study of political economist Wilhelm Neurath, Otto Neurath's father. The third section gives a report on current computer-based research which documents the relevance of Otto Neurath's `Vienna method of pictorial statistics', or `Isotypes'. A review section describes new publications on Neurath and the Vienna Circle, as well anthologies relevant to Viennese philosophy and its history, setting them in their wider cultural and political perspective. Finally, a description is given of the Vienna Circle Institute and its activities since its foundation, as well as of its plans for the future. (shrink)

This volume is a result of the international symposium “The Tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw School in European Culture,” which took place in Warsaw, Poland, September 2015. It collects almost all the papers presented at the symposium as well as some additional ones. The contributors include scholars from Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Poland. The papers are devoted to the history and reception of the Lvov-Warsaw School, a Polish branch of analytic philosophy. They present the School’s achievements as well as its (...) connections to other analytic groups. The contributors also show how the tradition of the School is developed contemporarily. The title will appeal to historians of analytic philosophy as well as historians of philosophy in Central Europe. (shrink)

Appearing in English for the first time, Schelling’s 1842 lectures develop the idea that many philosophical concepts are born of religious-mythological notions.

This book explores the complexity of two philosophical traditions, extending from their origins to the current developments in neopragmatism. Chapters deal with the first encounters of these traditions and beyond, looking at metaphysics and the Vienna circle as well as semantics and the principle of tolerance. There is a general consensus that North-American pragmatism and European Logical Empiricism were converging philosophical traditions, especially after the forced migration of the European Philosophers. But readers will discover a pluralist image of this relation (...) and interaction with an obvious family resemblance. This work clarifies and specifies the common features and differences of these currents since the beginning of their mutual scientific communication in the 19th century. The book draws on collaboration between authors and philosophers from Vienna, Tübingen, and Helsinki, and their networks. It will appeal to philosophers, scholars in the history of philosophy, philosophers of science, pragmatists and beyond. (shrink)

In this rejoinder, we respond to two commentaries on the study by Greiff, S.; Stadler, M.; Sonnleitner, P.; Wolff, C.; Martin, R. Sometimes less is more: Comparing the validity of complex problem solving measures. Intelligence 2015, 50, 100–113. The study was the first to address the important comparison between a classical measure of complex problem solving (CPS) and the more recent multiple complex systems (MCS) approach regarding their validity. In the study, we investigated the relations between one classical microworld (...) as the initially developed method (here, the Tailorshop) with three more recently developed multiple complex systems (MCS; here, MicroDYN, Genetics Lab, and MicroFIN) tests. We found that the MCS tests showed higher levels of convergent validity with each other than with the Tailorshop even after reasoning was controlled for, thus empirically distinguishing between the two approaches. The commentary by Kretzschmar and the commentary by Funke, Fischer, and Holt expressed several concerns with how our study was conducted, our data was analyzed, and our results were interpreted. Whereas we acknowledge and agree with some of the more general statements made in these commentaries, we respectfully disagree with others, or we consider them to be at least partially in contrast with the existing literature and the currently available empirical evidence. (shrink)

Der interdisziplinäre "Wiener Kreis" (der "Wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung", des "Logischen Empirismus") entstand um Moritz Schlick im Wien der Zwischenkriegszeit. Er ist bis heute nicht nur in den exakten Wissenschaften und der analytischen Philosophie allgegenwärtig. Er hat darüber hinaus Forschungsfelder wie Ökonomie, Architektur (Werkbund und Bauhaus), Psychologie (Gestalttheorie) oder moderner Literatur mitbestimmt. Seine Wirkung reicht von sozialen Reformbewegungen (Siedlerbewegung) bis in die Kunst der Neuen Sachlichkeit.

With precision and profundity born of 30 years of devoted study, John Boyle offers an essential introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas on Scripture, shedding helpful light on the goals, methods, and commitments that animate the Angelic Doctor's engagement with the sacred page. Because the genius of St. Thomas's approach to the Bible lies not so much in its novelty but rather in the fidelity and clarity with which he recapitulates the riches of the preceding interpretive Tradition, this initiation into St. (...) Thomas's vision of Scripture is itself an orientation to the Church's vision of Scripture, from the Fathers through and beyond the Middle Ages. St. Thomas's embeddedness within the Church's Tradition and his own historical context is integral to his approach to Scripture, yet it sets him at some distance from modern readers, for whom his interpretive vision may seem perplexing or even impenetrable. In this Primer, Boyle first provides an acclimation to this medieval context through a survey and explanation of pertinent technical terminology used by St. Thomas and characteristic of the scholastic theology of the time. With an eye to the medieval practice of considering Scripture according to the fourfold division of causes, Boyle builds on this initial foundation by exploring in turn St. Thomas's accounts of the end or use of Scripture (final cause), its divine and human authorship (efficient cause), its order and division (material cause), and its literary styles or genres (formal cause). Drawing on writings from across St. Thomas's corpus, but especially his work On the Commendation and Division of Sacred Scripture and the prologues to his biblical commentaries, Boyle masterfully elucidates both the hermeneutical principles and deep wisdom of the Angelic Doctor's approach to Scripture, imparting invaluable guidance not only for reading and understanding St. Thomas and other great masters of the Tradition, but also-and ultimately-for understanding Scripture in light of this Tradition and reading it with greater benefit and joy. (shrink)

One of the key events in the relations between the Central European philosophers and those of the Nordic countries was the Second International Congress for the ...

Small gaseous molecules play important roles in biological signaling in both animal and plant physiology. The hydrocarbon gas ethylene has long been known to regulate diverse aspects of plant growth and development, including fruit ripening, leaf senescence and flower abscission. Recent progress has been made toward identifying components involved in ethylene signal transduction in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Ethylene is perceived by five receptors that have similarity to two‐component signaling proteins. The hydrophobic amino‐terminus of the receptors binds ethylene, and mutations (...) in this domain both prevent ethylene binding and confer ethylene insensitivity to the plant; the carboxyl‐terminal portion of the receptors has similarity to bacterial his tidine protein kinases. Genetic data suggest a model in which ethylene binding inhibits receptor signaling, yet precisely how these receptors function is unclear. Two of the receptors have been found to associate with a negative regulator of ethylene responses called CTR1, which appears to be a mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) kinase kinase. BioEssays 23:619–627, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The book discusses Franz Brentano’s impact on Austrian philosophy. It contains both a critical reassessment of Brentano’s place in the development of Austrian philosophy at the turn of the 20th century and a reevaluation of the impact and significance of his philosophy of mind or ‘descriptive psychology’ which was Brentano's most important contribution to contemporary philosophy and to the philosophy in Vienna. In addition, the relation between Brentano, phenomenology, and the Vienna Circle is investigated, together with a related documentation of (...) Brentano's disciple Alfred Kastil. The general part deals with the ongoing discussion of Carnap's "Aufbau" and the philosophy of mind, with a focus on physicalism as discussed by Carnap and Wittgenstein. As usual, two reviews of recent publications in the philosophy of mathematics and research on Otto Neurath's lifework are included as related research contributions. This book is of interest to students, historians, and philosophers dealing with the history of Austrian and German philosophy in the 19th and 20th century. (shrink)

Two classic learning situations are critically reviewed and interpreted from a synergetic point of view: human learning of complex skills, and animal discrimination learning. Both show typical characteristics of nonlinear phase transitions: instability, fluctuations, critical slowing down and reorganisation. Plateaus in the acquisition curves of complex skills can be viewed as phases of arrested progress in which a reorganisation of simple skills is necessary before their integration into complex units is possible. Fluctuations and critical slowing down are expressed in instances (...) of "vicarious trial-and-error," which describe the oscillating behavior of rats at a choice point that is shown only just before discrimination learning is completed. It is concluded that education might pay more attention to the role of individual learning rhythms. (shrink)

In this paper we propose the multiple complex systems approach for assessing domain-general complex problem-solving skills and its processes knowledge acquisition and knowledge application. After defining the construct and the formal frameworks for describing complex problems, we emphasise some of the measurement issues inherent in assessing CPS skills with single tasks. With examples of the MicroDYN test and the MicroFIN test, we show how to adequately score problem-solving skills by using multiple tasks. We discuss implications for problem-solving research and the (...) assessment of CPS skills in general. (shrink)

According to the standard interpretation, Italian pragmatism is split into two groups. On the one hand is the mathematician Giovanni Vailati, Peano’s former collaborator, and his disciple, the economist Mario Calderoni. On the other hand, there are the two “brats,” Giovanni Papini and Giuseppe Prezzolini, naïve philosophers with eccentric ideas. While Vailati and Calderoni followed Peirce’s mathematical and logical pragmatism, the other two articulated a “magical” pragmatism, a kind of relativist, post-modern version of the original American movement. The paper shows (...) that this narrative is incomplete. During the years 1905-6, while Vailati was living in Florence, Italian pragmatists listed three kinds of pragmatism among themselves. Relying on the third stripe, attributed to Vailati, they found a more Unitarian, theoretical project that united the will to belief and the precision of reasoning. The unity did not last very long because Vailati moved from Florence in 1906. However, the common project from 1905-6 remains the highest peak of their awareness of pragmatism and, possibly, an original way to interpret it. (shrink)

Research on implicit learning - a cognitive phenomenon in which people acquire knowledge without conscious intent or awareness - has been growing exponentially. This volume draws together this research, offering the first complete reference on implicit learning by those who have been instrumental in shaping the field. The contributors explore controversies in the field, and examine: functional characteristics, brain mechanisms and neurological foundations of implicit learning; connectionist models; and applications of implicit learning to acquiring new mental skills.

"The chief business of twentieth-century philosophy” is “to reckon with twentieth-century history," claimed R. G. Collingwood. In this remarkable collection of essays, Frank Ankersmit demonstrates the prescience of that remark and goes a long way toward meeting its challenge. Responding to the work of Hayden White, Arthur Danto, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, he examines such issues as the difference between historical representation and artistic expression, the status of metaphor in historical description, and the relation of postmodernism to historicism. Ankersmit's fluent grasp (...) of European thought and his ability to incorporate concepts from literary theory, art history, the philosophy of science, and political thought into his analyses assure that this collection will interest readers throughout the humanities. (shrink)

Ernst Mach zählt zu den bedeutendsten Naturwissenschaftlern und Philosophen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. In der Physik gilt er als Wegbereiter von Einsteins Relativitätstheorie und Kontrahent von Boltzmanns Atomistik. In der Biologie, Psychologie und Physiologie wird er als Pionier einer empiristischen und gestalthaften „Analyse der Empfindungen“ betrachtet. In der Wissenschaftsphilosophie schließlich war er Vorbild des Wiener Kreises mit dem Verein Ernst Mach und Wegbereiter einer integrierten Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Wissenschaftstheorie. Der Band versammelt die deutschsprachigen Beiträge zum Symposium anlässlich des 100. Todestages (...) von Ernst Mach. Im Mittelpunkt der internationalen Konferenz im Juni 2016 an der Universität Wien und der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften standen Leben, Werk und Wirkung des Naturforschers und Philosophen. Der Band bietet eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme von Machs Lebenswerk vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Forschung und Historiografie. Die Autoren untersuchen unter anderem • seine Bedeutung für die Herausbildung einer naturwissenschaftlichen Psychologie • Machs historisch-kritische Methode • die Rolle der Kinematographie • die Rezeption durch Aleksander Bogdanov • das Verhältnis zu Sigmund Freuds Psychoanalyse Der Band erscheint in der Reihe „Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis“ und richtet sich an Forschende auf den Gebieten der Wissenschaftsphilosophie, -geschichte und -theorie sowie der Kulturwissenschaften und der Wahrnehmungspsychologie. (shrink)

This book features papers on the history and philosophy of science. It also includes related reviews of recent research literature on Rudolf Carnap, Eino Kaila, Ernst Mach, and Otto Neurath. The central idea behind this volume is that this distinctive field is both historical and philosophical at the same time. Good history and philosophy of science is not just history of science into which some philosophy of science may enter. On the other hand, it is neither philosophy of science into (...) which some history of science may enter. The founding insight of this modern research discipline is that history and philosophy have a special affinity and one can effectively advance both simultaneously. The selection of contributions collected in this volume are good examples and best practices for these claims. In addition, it includes illuminating case studies. It will appeal to scholars in the history of and philosophy of science, especially history and philosophy of physics and biology, as well as economics, extended evolution, and the history of knowledge. (shrink)