As opposed to what is held in common opinion, the golden section never played any significant role in Antiquity or Renaissance. It is basically an invented tradition from Romanticism, and as such ascribed to earlier eras. The book contains a step by step investigation of the impact of the 'divine proportion' in mathematics, science and humanities.

Cette traduction inedite de l'oeuvre principale d'Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) apporte des contributions fondamentales a divers champs de la connaissance. Disciple de Husserl, Reinach propose une interpretation du monde social qui engage la phenomenologie sur le terrain des actes sociaux et des experiences individuelles qui les accompagnent, afin d'isoler les structures a priori qui sont au principe meme du droit positif. Le travail de Reinach s'inscrit egalement dans un champ d'analyse philosophique et linguistique centre sur les enonces dits performatifs, baptises (...) tels par Austin quelques decennies plustard. (shrink)

Womit beschäftigt sich die medizinische Wissenschaft? Ich verstehe ja natürlich nichts davon, aber sie beschäftigt sich doch mit dem Menschen. Und die Juristerei, die Gesetzgebung und Rechtsprechung? Auch mit dem Menschen.

This paper offers a refutation of P. Duhem's thesis that the falsifiability of an isolated empirical hypothesis H as an explanans is unavoidably inconclusive. Its central contentions are the following: 1. No general features of the logic of falsifiability can assure, for every isolated empirical hypothesis H and independently of the domain to which it pertains, that H can always be preserved as an explanans of any empirical findings O whatever by some modification of the auxiliary assumptions A in conjunction (...) with which H functions as an explanans. For Duhem cannot guarantee on any general logical grounds the deducibility of O from an explanans constituted by the conjunction of H and some revised non-trivial version R of A: the existence of the required set R of collateral assumptions must be demonstrated for each particular case. 2. The categorical form of the Duhemian thesis is not only a non-sequitur but actually false. This is shown by adducing the testing of physical geometry as a counterexample to Duhem in the form of a rebuttal to A. Einstein's geometrical articulation of Duhem's thesis. 3. The possibility of a quasi a priori choice of a physical geometry in the sense of Duhem must be clearly distinguished from the feasibility of a conventional adoption of such a geometry in the sense of H. Poincare. And the legitimacy of the latter cannot be invoked to save the Duhemian thesis from refutation by the foregoing considerations. (shrink)

Includes both German and English texts of "The Basic Concepts of Ethics", "The Basic Features of Ethics", "Reflection: Its Ethical and Legal Significance", with an introduction by James Smith.

Adolf von Harnack auf schloss Elmau, von J. Müller.--Briefe Adolf von Harnacs an Johannes Müller.--Leben und erkennen, von A. Harnack.

Prompted by the "Panel Discussion of Grünbaum's Philosophy of Science" (Philosophy of Science 36, December, 1969) and other recent literature, this essay ranges over major issues in the philosophy of space, time and space-time as well as over problems in the logic of ascertaining the falsity of a scientific hypothesis. The author's philosophy of geometry has recently been challenged along three main distinct lines as follows: (i) The Panel article by G. J. Massey calls for a more precise and more (...) coherent account of the Riemannian conception of an intrinsic as opposed to an extrinsic metric, which the author has invoked as his basis for the distinction between non-conventional and convention-laden ascriptions of metrical equality and inequality; (ii) the latter distinction has been claimed to suffer from the liabilities of the so-called "standard conception" of scientific theories [36]; and (iii) pursuant to H. Putnam's "An Examination of Grünbaum's Philosophy of Geometry" [56], J. Earman [16, 17] and R. Swinburne [65] have contended that the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic metrics is scientifically unilluminating, and that the associated distinction between non-conventional and convention-laden metrical comparisons does not have the kind of relevance to extant scientific theories that the author has claimed for it. The essay consists of two installments. The present installment, comprising the Introduction and Part A, is devoted to the clarification, correction and further development of the author's prior writings on the philosophy of geometry. Its main objective is constructive elaboration rather than offering polemics. But rebuttals to Earman, [16, 17], Swinburne [65] and Demopoulos [13] are included, because their inclusion conduced to clarity in giving the new exposition. Part B is to appear in a subsequent issue and will be devoted to replies to critiques contained in the Panel Discussion and in other recent literature. It will range over issues in the philosophy of geometry and in the logic of ascertaining the falsity of a scientific hypothesis. By way of merely elliptical anticipation of much more precise statements given in Part A, section 3(ii), the Introduction dissociates the notion of convention-ladenness developed in Part A from the quite different notion integral to the so-called "standard conception" of scientific theories. Thereby, the Introduction prepares the ground for seeing, as a corollary to Part A, section 3(ii), that the notion advocated in the present essay has nothing to fear from the following fact, noted by C. G. Hempel ([36]; cf. also his 1970 Carus Lectures): "even though a sentence may originally be introduced as true by stipulation, it soon joins the club of all other member-statements of the theory and becomes subject to revision in response to further empirical findings and theoretical developments." Part A, which begins with a fairly detailed table of contents, endeavors to meet the aforementioned three-fold challenge to the author's philosophy of geometry. Massey's call for the provision of clear and detailed characterizations of intrinsic and extrinsic metrics is answered with the invaluable aid rendered personally by Massey himself. These characterizations are shown to permit a precise explication of the portions of Riemann's Inaugural Dissertation relevant to (1) Riemann's brilliant anticipation of Einstein's dynamical conception of physical geometry, and (2) the author's philosophical characterization of the metrics and geometries of space, time, and space-time {section 2(c)}. A byproduct of the analysis is to raise two major philosophical doubts concerning Clifford's sketch of a so-called "space-theory of matter" as elaborated in J. A. Wheeler's relativistic geometrodynamics. That theory's vision of understanding matter as a manifestation of empty curved space is questioned in regard to (1) the existence of an intra-geometrodynamic basis for individuating the metrically homogeneous world points of its space-time manifold {section 1(a)}, and (2) the compatibility of the theory with the Riemannian metrical philosophy apparently espoused by its proponents {section 2(c)(i)}. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

With respect to the reproach by habermas and ricoeur that freud will fall prey to a "scientistic self-misunderstanding" i submit that it was not freud, but these hermeneuticians themselves, who forced the clinical theory of psychoanalysis onto the procrustean bed of a philosophical ideology demonstrably alien to it. as against the generic "disavowal" of causal attributions advocated by some hermeneuticians, i maintain that it is a nihilistic, if not frivolous, trivialization of freud's entire clinical theory. far from serving as a (...) new citadel for psychoanalytic apologetics, the embrace of such hermeneuticians is, i submit, the kiss of death for the legacy that was to be saved. (edited). (shrink)

It is a commonplace in the analytic geometry of physical space-time that an extended straight line segment, having positive length, is treated as “consisting of” unextended points, each of which has zero length. Analogously, time intervals of positive duration are resolved into instants, each of which has zero duration.

Ellis and Bowman's account of nonstandard signal synchronizations is examined as a prolegomenon to this paper. Attention is called to some consequences of an important ambiguity in their account of the transitivity of nonstandard synchrony. Then an analysis is given of the principle of relativity to assess E & B's claim that this principle either restricts nonstandard signal synchronisms or rules them out altogether. It is argued that the latitude for choices of nonstandard synchronisms is not circumscribed by the factual (...) content of the principle of relativity; instead, the exclusion of such synchronisms by this principle depends on a tacit appeal to the particular conventions implicit in certain formulations of the principle. Hence E & B's claim is rejected as an argument against the factual tenability of nonstandard synchronisms. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Sokrates und die alte Kirche" verfügbar.

Professor Buck has given an illuminating account of the logical status of reflexive predictions in the social sciences. He tells us that the classification of a prediction as reflexive is predicated on a tacit distinction between the “normal” and the “abnormal” or perturbed conditions under which it is made. This seems to me to be a perceptive and sound circumscription of the class of reflexive predictions as encountered in the social sciences. He goes on to show helpfully how the social (...) scientist can cope with the pitfalls of spurious disconfirmation and spurious confirmation which are created by “self-frustrating” and “self-fulfilling” predictions respectively. And Professor Buck then offers some searching doubts concerning the adequacy of regarding self-fulfilling predictions as the pattern of racial discrimination against minority groups. Finally, he presents objections to my critique of Robert Merton's claim that self-defeating and self-fulfilling predictions are endemic to the domain of human affairs and are “not found among predictions about the world of nature.”. (shrink)

The last decade has witnessed the beginnings of a remarkable convergence of Husserlian phenonenology and analytic philosophy of language, and the present volumes provide original and important texts of the phenomenological philosophy of language. Powerfully influenced by the writings of the early Husserl, Reinach fashioned Husserl’s ideas into a rigorous analytical methodology of his own, which he applied in particular to problems in logic and the theory of knowledge, and to the philosophies of law and psychology. The central role of (...) the concept of state of affairs in Reinach’s philosophy will bring to mind immediately the formal ontology of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Reinach’s most significant contribution, however, is contained in his The a priori foundations of civil law (1913), above all in the detailed analysis of the a priori structure of the act of promising. This amounts to an elaborate phenomenological theory of speech acts which anticipates, and in some respects goes beyond, the later theories of Austin and Searle. The present edition is in two volumes. Volume 1, which includes a biographical and thematic introduction by the editors, contains critical editions of those pieces published by Reinach himself. Volume II is a collection of all those items in Reinach’s surviving Nachlass which are in publishable form, including a number of important pieces not hitherto obtainable on such themes as ethical predicates, speech acts (“soziale Akte”), perception and the theory of number, together with a comprehensive sketch of the problems in the theory of knowledge, logic and ethics. Appended to this is a text-critical apparatus which also contains extensive discussions of the origins and sources of the materials in question. (shrink)

In earlier writings, I argued that neither of the two major physical cosmologies of the twentieth century support divine creation, so that atheism has nothing to fear from the explanations required by these cosmologies. Yet theists ranging from Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Leibniz to Richard Swinburne and Philip Quinn have maintained that, at every instant anew, the existence of the world requires divine creation ex nihilo as its cause. Indeed, according to some such theists, for any given moment t, God’s (...) volition thatthe-world-should-exist-at-t supposedly brings about its actual existence at t.In an effort to establish the current viability of this doctrine of perpetual divine conservation. Philip Quinn I argued that it is entirely compatible with physical energy-conservation in the Big Rang cosmology, as well as with the physics of the steady-state theories.But I now contend that instead, there is a logical incompatibility on both counts. Resides, the stated tenet of divine conservation has an additional defect: It speciously purchases plausibility by trading on the multiply disanalogous volitional explanations of human actions. (shrink)

According to some cosmologists, the big bang cosmogony and even the (now largely defunct) steady-state theory pose a scientifically insoluble problem of matter-energy creation. But I argue that the genuine problem of the origin of matter-energy or of the universe has been fallaciously transmuted into the pseudo-problem of creation by an external cause. A fortiori, it emerges that the initial "true" and "false" vacuum states of quantum cosmology do not vindicate biblical divine creation ex nihilo at all.

Distinguishes two senses of 'judgment' on the one hand as meaning a state of 'conviction' or 'belief', and on the other hand as meaning an act of 'affirmation' or 'assertion'. Certainly conviction and assertion stand in close relation to each other, but they delineate two heterogeneous logical spheres, and thereby divide the total field of the theory of judgment into two neighbouring but separate sub-fields. Once this is done it is shown to have implications for our understanding especially of the (...) phenomenon of negation, and of the distinction between negation as affirmation of a negative state of affairs, and negation as act of contradicting the judgment someone else has made. (shrink)

Philosophers have postulated the existence of God to explain (I) why any contingent objects exist at all rather than nothing contingent, and (II) why the fundamental laws of nature and basic facts of the world are exactly what they are. Therefore, we ask: (a) Does (I) pose a well-conceived question which calls for an answer? and (b) Can God's presumed will (or intention) provide a cogent explanation of the basic laws and facts of the world, as claimed by (II)? We (...) shall address both (a) and (b). To the extent that they yield an unfavourable verdict, the afore-stated reasons for postulating the existence of God are undermined. As for question (I), in 1714, G. W. Leibniz posed the Primordial Existential Question (hereafter 'PEQ'): 'Why is there something contingent at all, rather than just nothing contingent?' This question has two major presuppositions: (1) A state of affairs in which nothing contingent exists is indeed genuinely possible ('the Null Possibility'), the notion of nothingness being both intelligible and free from contradiction; and (2) De jure, there should be nothing contingent at all, and indeed there would be nothing contingent in the absence of an overriding external cause (or reason), because that state of affairs is 'most natural' or 'normal'. The putative world containing nothing contingent is the so-called 'Null World'. As for (1), the logical robustness of the Null Possibility of there being nothing contingent needs to be demonstrated. But even if the Null Possibility is demonstrably genuine, there is an issue: Does that possibility require us to explain why it is not actualized by the Null World, which contains nothing contingent? And, as for (2), it originated as a corollary of the distinctly Christian precept (going back to the second century) that the very existence of any and every contingent entity is utterly dependent on God at any and all times. Like (1), (2) calls for scrutiny. Clearly, if either of these presuppositions of Leibniz's PEQ is ill founded or demonstrably false, then PEQ is aborted as a non-starter, because in that case, it is posing an ill-conceived question. In earlier writings (Grünbaum [2000], p. 5), I have introduced the designation 'SoN' for the ontological 'spontaneity of nothingness' asserted in presupposition (2) of PEQ. Clearly, in response to PEQ, (2) can be challenged by asking the counter-question, 'But why should there be nothing contingent, rather than something contingent?' Leibniz offered an a priori argument for SoN. Yet it will emerge that a priori defences of it fail, and that it has no empirical legitimacy either. Indeed physical cosmology spells an important relevant moral: As against any a priori dictum on what is the 'natural' status of the universe, the verdict on that status depends crucially on empirical evidence. Thus PEQ turns out to be a non-starter, because its presupposed SoN is ill founded! Hence PEQ cannot serve as a springboard for creationist theism. Yet Leibniz and the English theist Richard Swinburne offered divine creation ex nihilo as their answer to the ill-conceived PEQ. But being predicated on SoN, their cosmological arguments for the existence of God are fundamentally unsuccessful. The axiomatically topmost laws of nature (the 'nomology') in a scientific theory are themselves unexplained explainors, and are thus thought to be true as a matter of brute fact. But theists have offered a theological explanation of the specifics of these laws as having been willed or intended by God in the mode of agent causation to be exactly what they are. A whole array of considerations are offered in Section 2 to show that the proposed theistic explanation of the nomology fails multiply to transform scientific brute facts into specifically explained regularities. Thus, I argue for The Poverty of Theistic Cosmology in two major respects. (shrink)

Three major ways in which temporal asymmetries enter into scientific induction are discussed as follows: 1. An account is given of the physical basis for the temporal asymmetry of recordability, which obtains in the following sense: except for humanly recorded predictions and one other class of advance indicators to be discussed, interacting systems can contain reliable indicators of only their past and not of their future interactions. To deal with the exceptional cases of non-spontaneous "pre-records," a clarification is offered of (...) the essential differences in the conditions requisite to the production of an indicator having retrodictive significance ("post-record"), on the one hand, and of one having predictive significance ("prerecord" or recorded prediction), on the other. Purported counter-examples to the asymmetry of spontaneous recordability are refuted. 2. It is shown how in cases of asymmetric recordability, the associated retrodiction-prediction asymmetry makes for an asymmetry of assertibility as between an explanandum (or an explanans) referring to a future event and one referring to a past one. But it is argued that this epistemological asymmetry in the assertibility per se must be clearly distinguished from a logical asymmetry between the past and the future in regard to the inferability (deductive or inductive) of the explanandum from the explanans. And it is then contended that the failure to distinguish between an epistemological and a logical asymmetry vitiates the critiques that recent writers have offered of the Popper-Hempel thesis, which affirms symmetry of inferability as between predictive and post-explanatory arguments. In reply to Scriven, it is maintained that predictions based on mere indicators (rather than causes) do not establish an asymmetry in scientific understanding as between predictive arguments and post-explanatory ones. 3. As a further philosophical ramification of the retrodiction-prediction asymmetry, a set of sufficient conditions are stated for the correctness of philosophical mechanism as opposed to teleology. (shrink)