This chapter contains sections titled: The Term “Philosophy of History” The Terms “Philosophy” and “History” Historiographical Production Critical Theory of Historiography vs. Substantive Philosophy of History The Meaning and Function of History The Evolution of Substantive Philosophies of History The Poetics of the Substantive Philosophy of History The Arrival of the Philosophy of Historiography References Further Reading.

In this article, I present a substantive proposal about the timing and nature of the final stage of the evolution of full human language, the transition from so-called “protolanguage” to language, and on the origins of a simple protolanguage with structure and displaced reference; a proposal that depends on the idea that the initial expansion of communicative powers in our lineage involved a much expanded role for gesture and mime. But though it defends a substantive proposal, the (...) article also defends and illustrates a methodological proposal too. I argue that language is a special case of a more general phenomenon—cumulative cultural evolution—and while we rarely have direct information about communication, we have more direct information about the cumulative cultural evolution of technical skill, ecological strategies, and social complexity. These same factors also enable us to make a reasonable estimate of the intergenerational social learning capacities of these communities and of the communicative demands these communities face. For example, we can, at least tentatively, identify forms of cooperation that are stable only if third party information is transmitted widely, cheaply, and accurately. So we can use these more direct markers of information accumulation to locate, in broad terms, the period in our evolutionary history during which we became lingual. (shrink)

In this article I explore Maimon’s role in the evolution of Kant’s understanding of the function of the history of philosophy in philosophical enquiry. Kant is often viewed as holding an ambivalent...

Marxist philosophy of education plays a key role in contemporary education in China, serving as an important theoretical foundation for reforms. With a history of more than one hundred years in China, Marxist philosophy of education has gone through three major historical stages: emergence (before 1949), localization (from 1949 to 1979), and new development (after 1979). Looking back and reflecting on the exploration of Marxist philosophy of education in China, it can be found that the following problems still remain (...) to be solved: first, the dogmatic tendency of Marxism still needs to be avoided; second, the study of the original classics of Marxism is not enough; third, there is no adequate response to major practical problems in education; and fourth, there is no adequate interdisciplinary and international academic exchange. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy by Trevor PearceAlexander KleinTrevor Pearce. Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 384. Paperback, $35.00.Pragmatist pioneers were young lions in the days of Darwin. Evolutionary-biological thinking infused this philosophical movement from the start. And yet the last time a major monograph appeared on classic pragmatism and evolutionary biology—Philip Wiener's (...) Evolution and the Founders of Pragmatism (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1949)—the author could personally thank Ralph Barton Perry, William James's junior colleague and eventual biographer. John Dewey himself wrote the foreword.Almost seventy-five years later, we have Trevor Pearce's painstakingly researched Pragmatism's Evolution. The author has graduate training in both biology and philosophy and is a former student of William Wimsatt and Robert Richards's (343). The book offers an intricate portrait of how debates about evolutionary biology informed the thinking of a loose-knit group of pragmatists between the years 1860 and 1910. While a remarkable variety of figures are discussed, ten pragmatists command the most attention: Chauncey Wright, C. S. Peirce, Francis Ellingwood Abbot, John Fiske, William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey, Jane Addams, G. H. Mead, and W. E. B. Du Bois (18). Call them "the American Ten."Without downplaying Darwin, an overarching theme is the special significance of Herbert Spencer. Despite many specific disagreements with him (see e.g. 74, 207–8, 253–54, 281), the American Ten all accepted something more fundamental from Spencer: an intellectual framework that explains mind and morality in terms of functional relationships between organism and environment.After an introduction outlining what Pearce identifies as four chronological "cohorts" of pragmatists (more on this concept below), he examines the 1860s and 1870s reception of Darwin (chapter 1) and Spencer (chapter 2), showing how senior pragmatists like Wright, Peirce, and James defended evolution during this period. In chapter 2, we meet the Metaphysical Club's arch Spencerian, John Fiske, and we get a reading of James's critique of Spencer's psychology and sociology. Chapter 3 gives a highly detailed, reference-work-like portrait of the second cohort's training in evolutionary biology during the 1880s—chiefly Royce, Dewey, Addams, Mead, and Du Bois. In chapter 4, we learn that in the 1880s and 1890s, idealists like Edward Caird, Samuel Alexander, David George Ritchie, and Josiah Royce all co-opted ideas from evolutionary biology, which they apparently thought compatible with Hegelian dialectics. Chapter 5 shows that central planks of Peirce's metaphysics and Dewey's ethics are responsive to an 1890s dispute over the causes of the biological variation upon which selection acts (the so-called "factors" debate). The final two chapters show how pragmatist ethics (chapter 6) and epistemology (chapter 7) were infused with substantive ideas about evolution and about scientific experiment more generally.The depth and use of historical scholarship on offer here are both remarkable. On depth, Pearce draws from nineteen special collections and archives housed at institutions from California to Manchester, UK. The reference list (published on Pearce's website) runs [End Page 160] to 118 pages and was apparently too long for inclusion in the book. Archival research and lengthy bibliographies are to be expected in today's history of philosophy. But the sheer range of sources Pearce draws from is, by any measure, impressive.The use to which he puts those sources is provocative. Close reading, and in particular argument reconstruction, is usually the stock in trade for historians of philosophy. Pearce takes a different approach (7), seeking interpretive insight through a kind of philosophical network analysis. The nodes are mainly philosophers, scientists, and social critics. Unlike digital network analyses, Pearce connects his nodes by hand, via a great multiplicity of social, educational, and intellectual relations. We learn who studied evolution where, with whom, and when; what specific texts were assigned in classes taken, in classes taught; who attacked whom, who sided with whom; and so on.The resulting networks are rich, though they can be difficult to track due to their complexity. At its best, the book uses networks to produce genuine insights that... (shrink)

Great classic showing that history is not chance but rational process, the evolution of freedom.

My dissertation examines several proleptic bases running through Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of history. After setting preliminary ground to frame Kant’s hopeful historical viewpoint, I attempt to address and answer problems such as Yirmiyahu Yovel’s notion of “the historical antinomy” by trying to bridge the gap between reason and empirical history; to extricate Kant from Arthur Danto’s inclusion of him in a group of “substantive philosophers of history,” who all share the characteristic of presenting “prophetic” accounts of (...) the future; as well as to offer an original reading of Kant’s use of Seneca’s phrase, “Ducunt volentum fata, nolentem trahunt,” as it appears in two of the socio-political essays. Ultimately, I argue that it would be a betrayal of Kantian hope to forfeit the presumption, however unknowable, that there are teleological principles operating in history, thereby resigning ourselves to the “dismal reign of chance” (trostloses Ungefähr), a caveat that humanity cannot afford to dismiss. (shrink)

This Book Focuses On The Evolution Of Philosophy In India With Reference To Socio-Political And Economic Conditions, Through Which One Can Learn That Life And Thought Are Invariably Interconnected With Polity And Persons, Economy And Environment. This Book Is Unique In The Sense That It Contains A Review In The Conclusion; And The Philosophical Heritage Has Been Evaluated In Its Introduction.

Researchers in cultural evolutionary theory have recently proposed the foundation of a new field of research in cultural evolution named ‘epistemic evolution’. Drawing on evolutionary epistemology’s early studies, this programme aims to study science as an evolutionary cultural process. The paper discusses the way CET’s study of science can contribute to the philosophical debate and, vice versa, how the philosophy of science can benefit from the adoption of a cultural evolutionary perspective. Here, I argue that CET’s main contribution (...) to an evolutionary model of scientific growth comes from the application of ‘population thinking’ to science. Populationism offers a ‘variation based’ understanding of scientists’ epistemic and socio-epistemic criteria that is able to better accommodate the variegated preferences that intervene in scientific epistemic decisions. A discussion of the so called theory choice context is offered as an example of the way a populationist approach can shed new light on the operation of scientists’ epistemic choices. (shrink)

Historians of ideas, and students of nationalism in particular, have traced the origins of much of our current vocabulary and ways of thinking about the nation back to Johann Gottfried Herder. This volume provides a clear, readable, and reliable translation of _Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit_, supplemented by some of Herder's other important writings on politics and history. The editors' insightful Introduction traces the role of Herder's thought in the evolution of nationalism and highlights (...) its influence on fields such as history, anthropology, and politics. The volume is designed to give English-speaking readers more ready access to the thinker whom Isaiah Berlin called the father of the related notions of nationalism, historicism, and Volksgeist. (shrink)

Art and philosophy are the two major elements of the human world. The existence of art and philosophy can expand the spiritual world of human beings to a greater extent and enrich their spiritual life, thus supporting the construction of the material world. And music, as an aural art, has also been given a philosophical meaning in the evolution of history because of its birth and development. Therefore, when studying music, one should first study the history of (...) music. The philosophy of music history education is not only profound and contains world culture and philosophy, but also carries history and economy. Music history education is also a vivid art form of philosophy, where teachers create an artistic beauty to attract students and achieve the purpose of imparting knowledge by optimizing their educational philosophy. To develop the philosophy of education to its fullest extent, teachers must adhere to the concepts associated with the philosophy of art. To explain this process in greater depth, this paper provides a brief review of the aesthetic philosophy and historical evolution of Chinese. (shrink)

Philosophy evolves as the philosophical imagination of thinkers seek answers to emerging data and circumstances that inherited perspectives did not provide. This short history of philosophy shows how materialism, immaterialism, rationalism, empiricism, phenomenalism, historicism, existentialism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, the linguistic turn, and feminism developed to sharpen and enlarge the modern mind.

Some ‘naturalist’ accounts of disease employ a biostatistical account of dysfunction, whilst others use a ‘selected effect’ account. Several recent authors have argued that the biostatistical account offers the best hope for a naturalist account of disease. We show that the selected effect account survives the criticisms levelled by these authors relatively unscathed, and has significant advantages over the BST. Moreover, unlike the BST, it has a strong theoretical rationale and can provide substantive reasons to decide difficult cases. This (...) is illustrated by showing how life-history theory clarifies the status of so-called diseases of old age. The selected effect account of function deserves a more prominent place in the philosophy of medicine than it currently occupies. _1_ Introduction _2_ Biostatistical and Selected Effect Accounts of Function _3_ Objections to the Selected Effect Account _3.1_ Boorse _3.2_ Kingma _3.3_ Hausman _3.4_ Murphy and Woolfolk _4_ Problems for the Biostatistical Account _4.1_ Schwartz _5_ Analysis versus Explication _6_ Explicating Dysfunction: Life History Theory and Senescence _7_ Conclusion. (shrink)

The article analyzes the socio-cultural and theoretical origins of the Russian philosophy of history. These origins determined the development of the philosophy of history as a special feld of philosophical knowledge. This process took place in the second half of the 19th century, a significant factor of which was the split within the cultural and spiritual unity of Russian society on the wave of Alexander II’s reforms associated with the abolition of serfdom. In this period the subject-matter of (...) the philosophy of history was defned. In the author’s opinion, the subject-matter of the philosophy of history includes: 1) the historical process in its universal human dimensions and in “past – present – future” movement, 2) the life of society in historically concrete forms of the organization of human community, 3) historical epistemology. The article shows why the philosophy of history, formed in this research feld, was established in the public consciousness and intellectual context as historiosophy, i.e. knowledge of spiritual senses, the beginning and end of history. This philosophical-historical paradigm excluded the oppositions, on the one hand, between philosophical knowledge and historical science and, on the other hand, between the philosophy of the history and social philosophy. As the main ideas of the Russian philosophy of history during that period, the author considers the idea of the integrity of historical existence as an “organic life” and the idea of the variability of the historical process, interpreted as the constant inclination of history to “permanent improvisation”. The author pays special attention to the development of the concepts of “transitional form” and “chaos,” which provide the acceleration of the progressive movement of history and the possibility of an active and responsible participation of an individual and masses in it. The attention to this problem introduced the spiritual and moral component into the ontological basis of the historical process as well as the concept of necessity and chance, freedom and violence, revolution and evolution into the conceptual apparatus of philosophical and historical knowledge. As a result, simultaneously with the metaphysical principles, the principles of concrete historical and axiological analysis were integrated into the methodology of the philosophy of history. This approach to the analysis of the historical process has preserved its heuristic potential to the present day. (shrink)

The paper discusses the philosophical and historical doctrine of the Russian philosopher and historian George Petrovich Fedotov. The author focuses on the analysis of imperial issues in the works of G.P. Fedotov, especially of his views on the cultural history of the Russian empire and the essence of imperial project in Russia. Fedotov reconsiders the historical experience and revolutionary catastrophe of Russia and searches for the foundations of the social and cultural processes determining the events of Russian history. (...) Fedotov’s works offer a variety of interpretations of the political and cultural phenomenon of empire. This reflects his evolution as a philosopher of history: the focus of his vision shifts from the Medieval Rus to the Empire of Peter the Great, then to the collapsed empire of Nicholas II and finally to the USSR. Fedotov’s concept of Empire evolves into a timeless cultural-philosophical phenomenon but originates from the historical description of the centralization of power in the feudal monarchy of Ivan the Terrible. The evolution of the philosophical and historical views of Fedotov is influenced by the changes of his attitude to the historical conception of Klyuchevsky. In the 1940s Fedotov considers the empire as a universal idea. The concept of empire proposed by Fedotov gives an understanding of the Russian historical development, especially the causes of the decline and fall of the Russian Empire. Fedotov associates the cause of the salvation of Russia with the study of ancient Russian culture, in which he founds a moral and political ideal of the “Republic of Saint Sophia.” The paper shows heuristic potential of Fedotov’s cultural and philosophical ideas on the vocation of spiritual elite and the creative role of personality in the process of nation-building. (shrink)

A frequent criticism of the neuroscientific approach to consciousness is that its theories describe only 'correlates' or 'analogues' of consciousness, and so fail to address the nature of consciousness itself. Despite its apparent logical simplicity, this criticism in fact relies on some substantive assumptions about the nature and evolution of scientific explanations. In particular, it is usually assumed that, in expressing correlations, neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) theories must fail to capture the causal structure relating brain and mind. (...) Drawing on work in the history and philosophy of science, I argue that this assumption - along with the related claim that even a correct NCC theory would fail to explain consciousness - is grounded in an inadequate conception of the way in which scientific explanations develop. Examination of parallel developments in 20th century biology reveals that, under the right circumstances, seemingly crude correspondences can play an essential role in scientific discovery and can sometimes become central to our everyday understanding of the phenomena in question. A proper understanding of this process clarifies the value of NCC theories and sheds light on the standards by which they should be evaluated. In closing, I describe two specific criteria for evaluating NCC proposals: intertheoretic bridge potential and detailed mapping. (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)

One of the primary propositions in Marxist philosophy is that thought is historical in nature. "The theoretical thought of each epoch," observed Engels, "is a historical product which takes on very different forms at different times, and also very different content" . Accordingly, any analysis of the nature of thought in general that does not consider its historical character is either incomplete or may result in false conclusions. Naturally, what we are talking about is substantive thought, i.e., thought that (...) proceeds on a basis of elaboration and development of definite principles relating to the structure and evolution of material existence, and that is expressed in terms of knowledge concerning nature, society, and man. (shrink)

Although macroevolution has been the subject of sustained attention in the history and philosophy of science (HPS) community, only in recent years have science educators begun to more fully engage with the topic. This chapter first explores how science educators have conceptualized macroevolution and how their perspectives align with the views from HPS. Second, it illustrates how science educators’ limited engagement with HPS scholarship on macroevolution has influenced construct delineation, measurement instrument development, and educational arguments about which aspects of (...) macroevolution are most important for students to learn. Third, it discusses how scientific debates about the causal factors responsible for macroevolutionary patterns have been exploited by creationists and have impacted the teaching of evolution. Finally, it emphasizes that the rich perspectives that HPS has to offer on the important topic of macroevolution have yet to be integrated into science education scholarship. (shrink)

Well into the 1940s, many French biologists rejected both Mendelian genetics and Darwinism in favour of neo-transformism, the claim that evolution proceeds by the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In 1931 the zoologist Maurice Caullery published Le Problème d’évolution, arguing that, while Lamarckian mechanisms could not be demonstrated in the present, they had nevertheless operated in the past. It was in this context that Raymond Aron expressed anxiety about the relationship between biology, history, and human autonomy in his 1938 (...) Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: essai sur les limites de l’objectivité historique, in which he rejected both neo-Kantian and biological accounts of human history. Aron aspired to a philosophy of history that could explain the dual nature of human existence as fundamentally rooted in the biological, and at the same time, as a radical transcendence of natural law. I argue that Aron’s encounter with evolutionary theory at this moment of epistemic crisis in evolutionary theory was crucial to the formation of his philosophy of history, and moreover that this case study demonstrates the importance of moving beyond the methodological divisions between intellectual history and history of science. (shrink)

The historical evolution of the homotopy concept for paths illustrates how the introduction of a concept (be it implicit or explicit) depends upon the interests of the mathematicians concerned and how it gradually acquires a more satisfactory definition. In our case the equivalence of paths first meant for certain mathematicians that they led to the same value of the integral of a given function or that they led to the same value of a multiple-valued function. (See for instance [Cau], (...) [Pui], [Rie].) Later this dependency upon given functions is dropped (by Jordan for surfaces, by Riemann and most explictly by Poincaré) and this leads to a concept which depends only upon the manifold. It thus becomes a concept which belongs to topology. As a consequence of this hesitant evolution, there was at first a confusion between concepts and hence no attention to relations between them. At a later stage these relations were investigated, as for instance the fact that homotopy equivalence implies homology equivalence: in1882, Klein gave an example of a closed curve on a surface which is the boundary of a part of the surface but could not be shrunk to a point. In 1904, Poincaré explicitly said that this curve is “homologue à zéro” (null homologous), but not “équivalent à zéro” (null homotopic). Poincaré obtains the homologies from the fundamental group by allowing changes in the order of the terms in the “équivalences”. This means also that the equivalences imply homologies but not vice versa. From a methodological standpoint, this situation of using properties without asking about relations between them or without even properly defining them is reminiscent of mathematics of a century earlier. An example is the way differentiability was used for the differentiation of functions without consciously questioning the properties of this concept until in the nineteenth century examples were given by Bolzano (1834), Weierstrass (1872), Riemann (1854) and others of functions which are continuous but nowhere differentiable [Kli]. Another example is the use eighteenth-century mathematicians made of series without inquiring about the validity of the operations they used on them. Another aspect which had its influence was the success of algebraic methods in topology which explains the preference for theories with “base point” and constrained deformation even though free deformation is a more natural concept. As we can see the evolution of the homotopy concept for paths did not progress without impediments. It also had an influence on the evolution of the abstract group concept and the basic principle of equivalence. These aspects make it a history which is not only intrinsically interesting (how did homotopic paths come to be?), but also because it illustrates relations between different branches of mathematics. (shrink)

A pesar de que los historiadores han considerado frecuentemente que el conocimiento histórico moderno surge como contraparte a la filosofía de la historia y el positivismo, en la idea tradicional de narración la herencia de la filosofía dialéctica de Hegel es recurrente: en ambos casos, el devenir de la auto-constitución del ser determina el método de conocimiento. Hegel afirma que las fases de la lógica no son solamente condiciones trascendentales que hacen posible la experiencia, sino etapas en la auto-determinación del (...) Espíritu. Ranke sostiene que la narración es el método histórico apropiado debido a que la historia misma posee una estructura narrativa. Desde la década de 1970, esta idea de narración experimenta una crisis. Nuestra hipótesis es que las perspectivas predominantes de este concepto utilizadas actualmente por historiadores y teóricos de la historia corresponden a las principales posturas del pensamiento filosófico contemporáneo: la narración como modelo analítico, la narración como competencias del discurso práctico, la narración como mecanismo de legitimación, la narración sin estructura y la narración como necesidad transcultural. Despite the fact that historians have often considered that modern historical knowledge originates in opposition to philosophy of history and positivism, in the traditional idea of narration the inheritance of Hegel's dialectical philosophy is recurrent: in both cases, the becoming of the self-constitution of the Being determines the knowledge method. Hegel asseverates that phases of logic are not only transcendental conditions that make possible the experience, but stages in the self-determination of Spirit. Ranke affirms that narration is the historical appropriate method due to the fact that the history itself possesses a narrative structure. Since 1970's, this idea of narration undergoes a crisis. Our hypothesis is that the prevalent perspectives of this concept, used at present by historians and theorists of history, correspond to the principal positions of contemporary philosophical thought: narration as an analytic model, narration as condition of practical discourse, narration as a function of legitimation, narration without structure. (shrink)

This book offers to the international reader a collection of original articles of some of the most skillful historians and philosophers of biology currently working in Latin American universities. During the last decades, increasing attention has been paid in Latin America to the history and philosophy of biology, but since many local authors prefer to write in Spanish or in Portuguese, their ideas have barely crossed the boundaries of the continent. This volume aims to remedy this state of things, (...) providing a good sample of this production to the English speaking readers, bringing together contributions from researchers working in Brazilian, Argentinean, Chilean, Colombian and Mexican universities. The stress on the regional provenance of the authors is not intended to suggest the existence of something like a Latin American history and philosophy of biology, supposedly endowed with distinctive features. On the contrary, the editors firmly believe that advances in this field can be achieved only by stimulating the integration in the international debate. Based on this assumption, the book focuses on two topics, life and evolution, and presents a selection of contributions addressing issues such as the history of the concept of life, the philosophical reflection on life manipulation and life extension, the structure and development of evolutionary theory as well as human evolution. Life and Evolution – Latin American Essays on the History and Philosophy of Biology will provide the international reader with a rather complete picture of the ongoing research in the history and philosophy of biology in Latin America, offering a snapshot of this dynamic community. It will also contribute to contextualize and develop the debate concerning life and evolution, and the relation between the two phenomena. (shrink)

In the late 1920s – early 1930s, the Russian poet and novelist Konstantin Vaginov (1899–1934) wrote four novels which reproduce various discourses pertainingto the Russian humanities (philosophy, psychology, linguistics, study of literature) of that time. Trying to go back to the source of the corresponding theories and “hidden” quotations by identifying their authors allows us to include Vaginov’s prose in the general intellectual context of his epoch. Analysing Vaginov’s prose in the light of the history of ideas enables us (...) to understand how a number of philological and philosophical trends were interpreted by particular groups of Soviet intellectuals (for instance, writers and poets who were Vaginov’s contemporaries). Besides, it allows us to propose a new interpretation of Vaginov’s novels and their evolution which corresponds to his perception of humanities around him: their many tendencies and peculiarities become unacceptable for the writer in the 1930s. (shrink)

Although macroevolution has been the subject of sustained attention in the history and philosophy of science (HPS) community, only in recent years have science educators begun to more fully engage with the topic. This chapter first explores how science educators have conceptualized macroevolution and how their perspectives align with the views from HPS. Second, it illustrates how science educators’ limited engagement with HPS scholarship on macroevolution has influenced construct delineation, measurement instrument development, and educational arguments about which aspects of (...) macroevolution are most important for students to learn. Third, it discusses how scientific debates about the causal factors responsible for macroevolutionary patterns have been exploited by creationists and have impacted the teaching of evolution. Finally, it emphasizes that the rich perspectives that HPS has to offer on the important topic of macroevolution have yet to be integrated into science education scholarship. (shrink)

Our understanding of nature, and in particular of physics and the laws governing it, has changed radically since the days of the ancient Greek natural philosophers. This book explains how and why these changes occurred, through landmark experiments as well as theories that - for their time - were revolutionary. The presentation covers Mechanics, Optics, Electromagnetism, Thermodynamics, Relativity Theory, Atomic Physics and Quantum Physics. The book places emphasis on ideas and on a qualitative presentation, rather than on mathematics and equations. (...) Thus, although primarily addressed to those who are studying or have studied science, it can also be read by non-specialists. The author concludes with a discussion of the evolution and organization of universities, from ancient times until today, and of the organization and dissemination of knowledge through scientific publications and conferences. (shrink)

In this comprehensive tour of the long history and philosophy of expertise, from ancient Greece to the 20th century, Jamie Carlin Watson tackles the question of expertise and why we can be skeptical of what experts say, making a valuable contribution to contemporary philosophical debates on authority, testimony, disagreement and trust. His review sketches out the ancient origins of the concept, discussing its early association with cunning, skill and authority and covering the sort of training that ancient thinkers believed (...) was required for expertise. Watson looks at the evolution of the expert in the middle ages into a type of "genius" or "innate talent", moving to the role of psychological research in 16th-century Germany, the influence of Darwin, the impact of behaviorism and its interest to computer scientists, and its transformation into the largely cognitive concept psychologists study today. (shrink)

This chapter is about Grete Hermann, a philosopher-mathematician who productively and mutually beneficially interacted with the founders of quantum mechanics in the early period of that theory's elaboration. Hermann was a neo-Kantian philosopher. At the heart of Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy lay the question of the conditions under which we can be said to know something objectively, a question Hermann found to be particularly pressing in quantum mechanics. Hermann's own approach to Neo-Kantianism was Neo-Friesian. Jakob Friedrich Fries, like Kant, had (...) understood critical philosophy to be an essentially epistemic project. Fries departed from Kant in his account of the elements involved in our cognition. In this chapter it is discussed how, beginning from a neo-Friesian understanding of critical philosophy, Hermann is led to conclude that quantum mechanics shows us that physical knowledge is fundamentally split; that the objects of quantum mechanics are only objects from a particular perspective and in the context of a particular physical interaction. It will be seen how Hermann's solution to the problem of objectivity in quantum mechanics is a natural one from a neo-Friesian point of view, even though it disagrees with those offered by more orthodox versions of Kantian doctrine. (shrink)

Of the many translators who carried the Buddhist doctrine to China, Paramartha, a missionary-monk who arrived in China in AD 546, ranks as the translator par excellence of the sixth century. Introducing philosophical ideas that would subsequently excite the Chinese imagination to develop the great schools of Sui and T'ang Buddhism, Paramartha's translations are almost exclusively of Yogacara Buddhist texts on the nature of the mind and consciousness. This first study of Paramartha in a Western language focuses on the Chuan (...) shih lun (Evolution of Consciousness), a text that reveals the outline of Paramartha's Yogacara thought. The study begins with a discussion of Paramartha's life, the historical and political context of the time in India and south China, and the roles of his main disciples in disseminating his work. It then describes Paramartha's treatment of Yogacarin views on language and the process of cognition, both central to this system of thought. The final chapter analyzes the history and content of the Chuan shih lun, and the book concludes with a new translation of the text, with extensive annotations. (shrink)

This unique publication offers a complete history of Roman law, from its early beginnings through to its resurgence in Europe where it was widely applied until the eighteenth century. Besides a detailed overview of the sources of Roman law, the book also includes sections on private and criminal law and procedure, with special attention given to those aspects of Roman law that have particular importance to today's lawyer. The last three chapters of the book offer an overview of the (...) history of Roman law from the early Middle Ages to modern times and illustrate the way in which Roman law furnished the basis of contemporary civil law systems. In this part, special attention is given to the factors that warranted the revival and subsequent reception of Roman law as the 'common law' of Continental Europe. Combining the perspectives of legal history with those of social and political history, the book can be profitably read by students and scholars, as well as by general readers with an interest in ancient and early European legal history. The civil law tradition is the oldest legal tradition in the world today, embracing many legal systems currently in force in Continental Europe, Latin America and other parts of the world. Despite the considerable differences in the substantive laws of civil law countries, a fundamental unity exists between them. The most obvious element of unity is the fact that the civil law systems are all derived from the same sources and their legal institutions are classified in accordance with a commonly accepted scheme existing prior to their own development, which they adopted and adapted at some stage in their history. Roman law is both in point of time and range of influence the first catalyst in the evolution of the civil law tradition. (shrink)

Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy (Motilal Banarsidass 2007). Regretfully, it is not an uncommon view in orthodox Indology that Indian philosophers were not interested in ethics. This claim belies the fact that Indian philosophical schools were generally interested in the practical consequences of beliefs and actions. The most popular symptom of this concern is the doctrine of karma, according to which the consequences of actions have an evaluative valence. Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy argues (...) that the orthodox view in Indology concerning Indian ethics is false. The first half the book deals with theoretical issues in studying ethics: defining moral terms, understanding the subject matter of ethics so as to transcend culturally specific substantive commitments and touches upon issues of cross-cultural hermeneutics and translation. The second half consists of a systematic explication of the moral philosophical aspects of nine major Indian philosophical schools. I argue that “dharma” in its various uses in Indian philosophy is always rationally treated as a moral term—even in so called “ontological” employments of the term as seen in Buddhism and Jainism. In understanding “dharma” in this manner, the Indian philosophical tradition is replete with different versions of moral realism that fit tidily with other philosophical commitments of Indian philosophers. Pains are taken to show the breath of moral philosophical disagreement in this tradition. On a comparative note, some Indian moral philosophy resembles realist approaches of the Western tradition (such as the Non-natural realism of Neo-Platonism, or the Naturalism of Utilitarianism). Out of the major Indian philosophical schools, a slim minority are shown to be committed to moral irrealism while some are shown to regard their entire philosophical orientation as firmly planted within moral philosophy (such as Jainism, Buddhism, Purva Mimamsa and Yoga). In response to those who would argue that what Indian philosophers meant by “dharma” is very different from what moral philosophers in the West have meant by “ethical” or “good,” I argue that this is as vacuous as noting that Utilitarians have a different conception of the good from Deontologists. If philosophy is concerned with theoretical debate, as I argue it is, philosophical terms function to articulate such disagreements. The various seemingly desperate uses of “dharma” in the Indian tradition are no longer confusing or disorderly when we understand the theoretico-philosophical function of this term in Indian philosophical disputes. -/- The second edition contains an additional chapter that addresses the colonial and political context of the study of Indian Ethics. (shrink)

Part 1: What is philosophy? Introduction -- A brief history of philosophy -- Part II: The evolution of philosophy. Reason -- Sense experience -- Reason, sense, and intuition -- Self-preservation/power -- Desire/Free will -- Science -- Language -- Additional human activities -- Philosophy : the lessons learned -- Part III: The philosophy of conscious energy. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) -- The philosophy of conscious energy -- Comments.

In the late 1920s – early 1930s, the Russian poet and novelist Konstantin Vaginov (1899–1934) wrote four novels which reproduce various discourses pertainingto the Russian humanities (philosophy, psychology, linguistics, study of literature) of that time. Trying to go back to the source of the corresponding theories and “hidden” quotations by identifying their authors allows us to include Vaginov’s prose in the general intellectual context of his epoch. Analysing Vaginov’s prose in the light of the history of ideas enables us (...) to understand how a number of philological and philosophical trends were interpreted by particular groups of Soviet intellectuals (for instance, writers and poets who were Vaginov’s contemporaries). Besides, it allows us to propose a new interpretation of Vaginov’s novels and their evolution which corresponds to his perception of humanities around him: their many tendencies and peculiarities become unacceptable for the writer in the 1930s. (shrink)

The author analyses the context and reasons for the change in Pushkin's understanding of history. The idea of Russia's special path, disagreement with the Decembrists, and the appeal to the history and personality of Peter I led to the evolution of the poet's views to anti-violent and, in fact, pessimistic attitudes.

History and Philosophy of Science reprints a distinguished selection of important texts published in this field over the last century. This set presents a unique opportunity to gain comprehensive coverage of all aspects of the history and philosophy of science. It covers all major fields of scientific thought throughout history from Physics, Biology, and Cosmology to ESP and Alchemy. It includes texts on all the great historical scientific figures including Darwin, Copernicus, Archimedes and Hooker and covers all (...) main themes in science taking in creation, evolution, the development of scientific methodology and the future of science. For further information on this collection please email [email protected]. (shrink)

Although first published in 1969, the methodological views advanced in Quentin Skinner's “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas” remain relevant today. In his article Skinner suggests that it would be inappropriate to even attempt to write the history of any idea or concept. In support of this view, Skinner advances two arguments, one derived from the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein and the other from that of J. L. Austin. In this paper I focus on the (...) first of these arguments. I claim that the conclusion which Skinner draws from this particular argument does not necessarily follow and that an alternative assessment of the methodological significance of Wittgenstein's philosophy for historians of ideas is possible. On this alternative view, far from ruling out conceptual history, an appeal to the view of meaning set out in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations leads to a quite different conclusion, namely that the writing of such a history is arguably a necessary precondition for the elucidation of the meaning of a number of the core concepts in the canon of the history of political thought. Skinner's views have changed somewhat since 1969. Indeed, from the mid 1970s onwards he came to relax the strict opposition to the idea of conceptual history to which he was then committed. The paper concludes by noting that this evolution in Skinner's thinking has made him much more sympathetic than anybody reading “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas” would have imagined to the research project of the Begriffgeschichte School of conceptual history. (shrink)

With the benefit of the complete publication of Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France, the reception of his work by political philosophers in the English-speaking world during the late 1970s and early 1980s appears extremely confused. This reception was based on the English translations of work published in the mid-1970s, chiefly Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality Volume One, along with collections of interviews from the same period. The misunderstandings of those works were compounded by ignorance (...) of developments in his approach to politics and his understanding of power worked out in lectures from 1976 to 1979. The aim of this paper is not simply to defend Foucault against critics from that period, but to show how a more complete understanding of the evolution of his political thought might enable a better understanding of the similarities and differences between his genealogical approach to power and government and the concerns of normative political philosophy. (shrink)

History and Philosophy of Biology summarizes the major philosophical ideas that have attended the development of science in general and of biology in particular. The book then explores how the techniques and the concepts of the physical sciences have impacted biology. A reductionist approach to biology -- anatomy, physiology, genetics -- complements the study of evolution by natural selection and an ecological perspective. The final section of the book explores several examples of the influence of science on society, (...) and of society on science. Each of 46 chapters of History and Philosophy of Biology has been or could be the topic of a major tome. The book is unique in that it explores the web of interactions among issues of philosophy, techniques and concepts of the physical sciences, fields of biology, and the diverse relationships between society and science. The book should appeal to readers of Scientific American or the New York Review of Books even if they are not trained biologists. It is a good text, or additional reading, for an advanced undergraduate course treating history and/or philosophy of biology or of science in general. (shrink)