Es wird die Frage nach dem Ursprung des Konventionalismus aufgeworfen und ein Versuch ihrer Beantwortung unternommen. Die Entstehung des Konventionalismus wird auf das Versagen der philosophischen Grundlegung befremdender, aber auch empirisch erfolgreicher wissenschaftlicher Hypothesen zurückgeführt. Auch verdankt der moderne Positivismus seinen Aufschwung zum Teil der Unvereinbarkeit solcher Hypothesen mit herrschenden metaphysischen, bzw. religiösen, Weltanschauungen. Dies führt zum Versuch, die ontologischen Voraussetzungen wissenschaftlicher Theorien auszuklammern, ohne dadurch ihren empirischen Gehalt zu verringern. Im letzten Abschnitt wird dargetan, daß sowohl der moderne Positivismus (...) wie auch der Realismus in verschiedenen Aspekten der Kantschen Transzendentalphilosophie wurzeln. (shrink)

It is commonly held that Theophrastus criticized or rejected Aristotle's account of place. The evidence that scholars put forward for this view, from Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's Physics, comes in two parts: (1) Simplicius reports some aporiai that Theophrastus found for Aristotle's account; (2) Simplicius cites a passage of Theophrastus which is said to 'bear witness' to the theory of place which Simplicius himself adopts (that of his teacher Damascius) — a theory which is utterly different from Aristotle's. But the (...) aporiai have relatively straightforward solutions, and we have no reason to suppose that Theophrastus didn't avail himself of them (and some reason to think that he did). Moreover, the text which Simplicius cites as bearing witness to Damascius' view on closer inspection does not seem to be inconsistent with Aristotle's account of place or natural motion. (shrink)

‘Saving the appearances’, , is a slogan that, in its time, stood or was made to stand for many different methodological positions in many different branches of ancient natural science. It is not my aim, in this paper, to attempt to tackle the subject as a whole. I shall concentrate on just one inquiry, astronomy. Nor, with astronomy, can I do justice to all the complexities of what was certainly one of the central methodological issues, if not the central issue, (...) in the history of ancient theoretical astronomy. I have a quite limited aim, to examine the foundations, and test the applicability, of a widespread and influential line of interpretation of ancient Greek astronomy according to which it was essentially, or at least predominantly, what we may call ‘instrumentalist’ in character—that is, broadly speaking, that Greek astronomical theories were devices or fictions put forward purely for the sake of calculations with no claims to correspond with physical reality. (shrink)

‘Saving the appearances’,, is a slogan that, in its time, stood or was made to stand for many different methodological positions in many different branches of ancient natural science. It is not my aim, in this paper, to attempt to tackle the subject as a whole. I shall concentrate on just one inquiry, astronomy. Nor, with astronomy, can I do justice to all the complexities of what was certainly one of the central methodological issues, if not the central issue, in (...) the history of ancient theoretical astronomy. I have a quite limited aim, to examine the foundations, and test the applicability, of a widespread and influential line of interpretation of ancient Greek astronomy according to which it was essentially, or at least predominantly, what we may call ‘instrumentalist’ in character—that is, broadly speaking, that Greek astronomical theories were devices or fictions put forward purely for the sake of calculations with no claims to correspond with physical reality. (shrink)

Abstract Islam displaces the ancient idea of time as an implacable enemy with the scriptural image of time as the stage of judgment, a narrow bridge of accountability stretched between creation and eternity. The stark contrast of temporal evanescence with all the immutability of eternity challenges Muslim theologians and philosophers of the classic age. The dialectical theologians of the kalam describe time and change atomisti?cally and even occasionalistically, seeking to preserve the absoluteness of the contrast and to avoid compromising the (...) purity of God's creative act and the sheer facticity of its temporal effect. The falasifa, philosophers in the Greek tradition, use Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic arguments to reconcile temporality with eternity. Stripped of argument, their emanative and archetypal schemes join the core symbolisms of Islam, but only when accommodated to the Qur'anic ideas of judgment and creation. (shrink)

The ArgumentIt was commonly accepted in the middle ages that void within or outside the world is impossible. The paper presents a quite unusual conception of void, which is described in Yeda'aya ha-Penini's commentary on Ibn Rushd's epitome on Aristotle's Physics. According to this conception there is a thin layer of void between the water and the inner surface of the container. Ha-Penini describes two versions of this conception. According to one version this void layer is three-dimensional but thin, according (...) to the other it is two-dimensional. The first part of the paper shows how ha-Penini “corrects” the text of Ibn Rushd, putting into it ideas which were unknown to Ibn Rushd. It is argued that, though the two views are rejected by Ibn Rushd, ha-Penini himself partly accepts (his version of) these views. The second part of the paper argues that ha-Penini could not have found these views in the Arabic-Hebrew tradition, and it seems that he relied on Christian sources. If this is indeed so, the paper presents an example of acquaintance of Hebrew scholars in southern France with Scholastic science in the first half of the fourteenth century. (shrink)

Two translations into English of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature have appeared in the same year a century after the other parts of the Encyclopaedia—the Logic and the Philosophy of Mind—had been translated. The Victorian translator passed by the Philosophy of Nature, unconscious that to omit the middle part of a systematic work must certainly conceal the sense of the whole. He finds it a sufficient explanation that “for nearly half a century the study of nature has passed almost completely out (...) of the hands of the philosophers into the care of the specialists of science.” Revived for a few years by Schelling and then Hegel, Philosophy of Nature only recalled “a time of hasty enthusiasms and over-grasping ambition of thought which, in its eagerness to understand the mystery of the universe, jumped to conclusions on insufficient grounds, trusted to bold but fantastic analogies, and lavished an unwise contempt on the plodding industry of the mere hodman of facts and experiments.” This modest retreat of philosophy before the specialists is not thought to need explanation, even though it was not only from the seeming extravagance of Schelling and Hegel but from the general preoccupation of philosophers since Bacon and Descartes with natural philosophy. (shrink)

A discussion of Lloyd's Tarner Lectures at Trinity College. The importance of Lloyd's previous scholarship is characterized and these sweeping, erudite lectures are placed in the context of that scholarship. In the broadest terms, the lectures are a call to culturally and historically comparative study of human reasoning. At their heart is a comparative history of scientific theorizing from the ancients through to modern science. Lloyd rejects the positivist picture, and the view of modern and ancient science as discontinuous; he (...) urges scholars to undertake comparative work on the ancient sciences in different traditions. This critical notice evaluates Lloyd's view and raises several questions for further reflection. (shrink)

One of the hardest questions to answer for a (Neo)platonist is to what extent and how the changing and unreliable world of sense perception can itself be an object of scientific knowledge. My dissertation is a study of the answer given to that question by the Neoplatonist Proclus (Athens, 411-485) in his Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. I present a new explanation of Proclus’ concept of nature and show that philosophy of nature consists of several related subdisciplines matching the ontological stratification (...) of nature. Moreover, I demonstrate that for Proclus philosophy of nature is a science, albeit a hypothetical one, which takes geometry as its methodological paradigm. I also offer an explanation of Proclus’ view of what is later called the mathematization of physics, i.e. the role of the substance of mathematics, as opposed to its method, in explaining the natural world. Finally, I discuss Proclus’ views of the discourse of philosophy of nature and its iconic character. (shrink)

This dissertation offers a new and comprehensive analysis of Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī's cosmology by focusing on various important issues that have been largely neglected by the modern scholarship. It provides an examination of the physical, metaphysical, and astronomical aspects of al-Fārābī's cosmology by adopting a multidisciplinary approach that takes into account the history of philosophy and the history of astronomy. Accordingly, my dissertation explores how al-Fārābī attempted to reconcile features of Ptolemaic astronomy with Aristotelian and Neoplatonic theories, an endeavor which (...) resulted in the formulation of innovative cosmological ideas. Chapters I and II provide background information on al-Fārābī's activity as a commentator and his relation to the Greek commentatorial tradition and assess the relevant primary sources. In addition, they examine al-Fārābī's approach to cosmology and his scientific method in terms of both the Ptolemaic astronomical tradition and the Aristotelian corpus. Chapter III addresses problems related to the structure of al-Fārābī's cosmology, especially the origin of his ennadic cosmological model and his spherology. Particular attention is devoted to the question of how Aristotle's unmoved movers and Ptolemy's astronomical theories are reconciled. Chapters IV, V, and VI analyze the place of celestial matter, intellect, and motion respectively in al-Fārābī's cosmology and attempt to redefine the second teacher's relation to the various trends of Greek philosophy. The study stresses al-Fārābī's connection with the Neoplatonic and Peripatetic currents, particularly with thinkers such as Alexander of Aphrod. (shrink)