Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) gehörte zu jenen Wissenschaftlern, die im ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert an der Umbildung der Physik im großen Stil arbeiteten und damit an der Vorbereitung der wissenschaftlichen Revolution beteiligt waren, die durch Planck und Einstein herbeigeführt wurde. Duhems klassisches Werk der modernen Wissenschaftstheorie hat auf die Entwicklung des logischen Empirismus nachhaltigen Einfluß ausgeübt. Das von Duhem beigezogene reichhaltige Material und seine konzisen Fallstudien stellen eine Fundgrube für jeden dar, der sich ernsthaft mit Wissenschaftstheorie beschäftigt.

A presentation and discussion of Gottlob Frege's understanding of language, both natural and artificial, with close attention to his texts.

The dissertation seeks to gain a comprehensive understanding of Frege's watershed work of logic, the 1879 Begriffsschrift . The treatise is the first since Aristotle's instauration of the discipline to have succeeded in completely recasting logic. Very generally stated, the dissertation aims at making explicit the conceptual origins of modern logic. To do that will require that each of the achievements of Concept-script be examined from one or more vantage points: either within the perspective of Frege's larger and guiding ambition, (...) that of providing a logical justification of arithmetic; or with respect to the horizon of modernity; or in relation to later developments in logical theory and the philosophy of language, developments stimulated, albeit not exclusively, by Frege's very work. The vantage point adopted in each case will depend on the nature of the topic and the extent to which it requires to be made explicit. One perspective will have preponderance, that of Frege's relationship to his early modern ancestors, a group that includes philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians. Since modernity is constituted in a nearly constant critical, if not polemical, relationship to the Ancients, they will also at times be drawn into the discussion. The elucidation of Frege's breakthrough work will be guided by the following thesis: Frege's attempt to justify arithmetic logically and the fine work of clarification he produced in actualizing this project; his discovery of function-theoretic logic and his fashioning of a concept-script ; and his critique of natural language and the attendant semantics developed over the course of that critique constitute an unfolding and an extension of the primacy of universal method over ontology that is the signature of modern inquiry. (shrink)

This is not a work of mine. For some reason, I am unable to remove it from my page. It is a list of Dr. Reiner Schürmann's lecture notes for courses that he taught at the New School for Social Research (aka The New School).

A review of Michel Henry's book on Marx.

A review of a bibliographical register of medieval Aristotle commentators.

Recording and manipulating neuronal ensemble activity is a key requirement in advanced neuromodulatory and behavior studies. Devices capable of both recording and manipulating neuronal activity brain-computer interfaces should ideally operate un-tethered and allow chronic longitudinal manipulations in the freely moving animal. In this study, we designed a new intracortical BCI feasible of telemetric recording and stimulating local gray and white matter of visual neural circuit after irradiation exposure. To increase the translational reliance, we put forward a Göttingen minipig model. The (...) animal was stereotactically irradiated at the level of the visual cortex upon defining the target by a fused cerebral MRI and CT scan. A fully implantable neural telemetry system consisting of a 64 channel intracortical multielectrode array, a telemetry capsule, and an inductive rechargeable battery was then implanted into the visual cortex to record and manipulate local field potentials, and multi-unit activity. We achieved a 3-month stability of the functionality of the un-tethered BCI in terms of telemetric radio-communication, inductive battery charging, and device biocompatibility for 3 months. Finally, we could reliably record the local signature of sub- and suprathreshold neuronal activity in the visual cortex with high bandwidth without complications. The ability to wireless induction charging combined with the entirely implantable design, the rather high recording bandwidth, and the ability to record and stimulate simultaneously put forward a wireless BCI capable of long-term un-tethered real-time communication for causal preclinical circuit-based closed-loop interventions. (shrink)

Avec la publication des tomes VI (2016) et VII (2018) du Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, l’entreprise « biobibliographique » colossale menée par Richard Goulet touche à sa fin. On trouve dans ces deux tomes la même rigueur éditoriale et recherche d’exhaustivité que dans les cinq premiers et l’on reste admiratif et reconnaissant devant le travail de coordination, de rédaction et de relecture du maître d’œuvre. Ce dernier est aussi le principal contributeur en nombre de notices du dictio...

At the turn of the last century C.G. Jung began his career as a psychiatrist. During the next decade, three men whose names are famous in the annals of medical psychology influenced his professional development: Pierre Janet, under whom he studied at the Sappetriere Hospital in Paris; Eugen Bleuler, his chief at the Burgholzli Mental Hospital in Zurick; and Sigmund Frued, whom Jung met in 1907. It is Bleuler, and to a lesser extent Janet, whose influence is to be (...) found in the descriptive experimental psychiatry composing Volume I of the _Collected Works_. These papers appeared between 1902 and 1905l most of them are now being published in English for the first time. The volume opens with Jung's dissertation for the medical degree: 'On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena', a study that foreshadows much of his later work, and as such is indispensable to all serious students of his work. It is the detailed analysis of the case of an hysterical adolescent girl who professed to be a medium. The volume also includes papers on cryptomnesia, hysterical parapraxes in reading, manic mood disorder, simulated insanity, and other subjects. (shrink)

Ambassades et ambassadeurs témoigne de la bonne forme des études sur l’histoire de la diplomatie et des relations internationales à l’époque moderne. Les vingt contributions réunies par Jean-Louis Fournel et Matteo Residori sont pour partie issues des actes (largement remaniés) d’un colloque parisien tenu en novembre 2015. Les études sont découpées en deux thèmes : « pratiques et usages » d’une part ; « écritures, langages et pensée politique » de l’autre. Le volume est marqué par un certain...

Avec un certain humour noir, R. Goulet a mis en exergue de son avant-propos un proverbe arabe : « Lorsque le Tout-Puissant – loué soit-Il – estime que l’éternité ne sera pas suffisamment longue pour châtier un pécheur, Il lui inspire de commencer sur terre un dictionnaire. » On mesure avec respect la justesse de la citation à la lecture du substantiel cinquième et avant-dernier tome du Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques qu’il fait paraître trente ans après la mise en œuvre (...) du projet. En ra... (shrink)

Forthcoming in Jennifer Oldstone-Moore, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Confucianism (New York: Oxford University Press).

Ed. by John J. Cleary and Gary M. Gurtler ( this volume contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during the academic year 2006-7).

Enactivism does not have its primary philosophical roots in pragmatism: phenomenology (from Husserl to Jonas) is its first source of inspiration (with the exception of Hutto & Myin’s radical enactivism). That does not exclude the benefits of pragmatist readings of enactivism, and of enactivist readings of pragmatism. After having sketched those readings, this paper focuses on the philosophical concept of intentionality. I show that whereas enactivists endorse the idea that intentionality is a base-level property of cognition, pragmatism offer(ed) us some (...) reasons not to proceed this way. It is therefore doubtful to hold that pragmatists and enactivists would converge in the defence of a common, non-representational conception of intentionality. (shrink)

L’article présente l’ouvrage de Fernand Hallyn, Les structures rhétoriques de la science de Kepler à Maxwell (éd. Seuil, 2004), où sont explorées les formes d’imaginaire théorique qui se développent à la limite entre pratiques littéraires et pratiques scientifiques. Sans prendre le risque d’en faire rentrer les vérités dans une perspective relativiste au point de vue de laquelle la science ne serait qu’une manière particulière de mettre le réel en récit, cette démarche apporte un précieux éclairage sur le processus de la (...) science non déjà toute faite mais en train de se faire, où interviennent, entre autres, des modèles repris à la rhétorique et à la poétique. Ceci pris en compte, on est amené à renoncer à l’idée selon laquelle la connaissance scientifique parviendrait tout d’un coup à des vérités nues, dépouillées de tout revêtement textuel, et pouvant être appréhendées indépendamment du processus de leur production, sous forme d’énoncés autonomes, comme des phrases qui ne prendraient pas d’emblée place dans des textes, à l’intérieur desquels elles revêtent un sens qui, pour une part, déborde les limites objectives de leur énoncé, et s’offre à être restitué au point de vue, non seulement d’une épistémologie, mais aussi d’une poétique. (shrink)

In the 1920s, Carnap and Schlick both made an important use of definitions in their main publications: Schlick, in his Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918, 2nd ed. 1925) and Carnap in Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928, mostly written by 1925). In this paper, we first provide an analysis of the kinds of definitions that are distinguished in these books and a few other papers, and we then propose a systematic comparison of Schlick’s and Carnap’s diverging conceptions of definitions in the 1920s, (...) relating them, in both cases, to their respective philosophical projects in the Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre and in Der logische Aufbau der Welt. (shrink)

This book-review was written by Professor Pierre Dubois just before his untimely death. The Editors are grateful to his wife, Dr Elfrieda Dubois, for preparing the text for publication in History of European Ideas.