In this book, Ben-Yami reassesses the way Descartes developed and justified some of his revolutionary philosophical ideas. The first part of the book shows that one of Descartes' most innovative and influential ideas was that of representation without resemblance. Ben-Yami shows how Descartes transfers insights originating in his work on analytic geometry to his theory of perception. The second part shows how Descartes was influenced by the technology of the period, notably clockwork automata, in holding life to be a (...) mechanical phenomenon, reducing the soul to the mind and considering it immaterial. Ben-Yami explores the later role of the digital computer in Turing's criticism of Descartes' ideas. The last part discusses the Meditations: far from starting everything afresh without presupposing anything that can be doubted, Descartes' innovations in the dream argument, the cogito and elsewhere are modifications of old ideas based upon considerations issuing from his separately developed theories, formed under the influence of the technology, mathematics and science of his age. (shrink)

The Modern Philosophical Revolution breaks new ground by demonstrating the continuity of European philosophy from Kant to Derrida. Much of the literature on European philosophy has emphasised the breaks that have occurred in the course of two centuries of thinking. But as David Walsh argues, such a reading overlooks the extent to which Kant, Hegel, and Schelling were already engaged in the turn toward existence as the only viable mode of philosophising. Where many similar studies summarise individual thinkers, (...) this book provides a framework for understanding the relationships between them. Walsh thus dispels much of the confusion that assails readers when they are only exposed to the bewildering range of positions taken by the philosophers he examines. His book serves as an indispensable guide to a philosophical tradition that continues to have resonance in the post-modern world. (shrink)

This paper argues that changes in philosophical practice will be most revolutionary not in the exercise of creativity and innovation in the content and substance of philosophical arguments - although these are not only important but also, to some extent, necessary for the survival of philosophy - but rather, in changes made: 1) to the philosophical environment and its tools; 2) to the kinds of bodies developed and expressed in those environments and in the course of using (...) those tools; or 3) to the styles, manners and mechanics of philosophical thinking. The introduction of these changes is what we should expect from the exercise of the imagination. To expect anything less would be to place in danger the ethical and political significance of thoughtfulness, not only in the context of the practice of philosophy, but also more broadly for the ethical and political health of the global community. (shrink)

A short, clear, and authoritative guide to one of the most important and difficult works of modern philosophy Perhaps the most influential work of modern philosophy, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is also one of the hardest to read, since it brims with complex arguments, difficult ideas, and tortuous sentences. A philosophical revolutionary, Kant had to invent a language to express his new ideas, and he wrote quickly. It's little wonder that the Critique was misunderstood from the start, (...) or that Kant was compelled to revise it in a second edition, or that it still presents great challenges to the reader. In this short, accessible book, eminent philosopher and Kant expert Yirmiyahu Yovel helps readers find their way through the web of Kant's classic by providing a clear and authoritative summary of the entire work. The distillation of decades of studying and teaching Kant, Yovel's "systematic explication" untangles the ideas and arguments of the Critique in the order in which Kant presents them. This guide provides helpful explanations of difficult issues such as the difference between general and transcendental logic, the variants of Transcendental Deduction, and the constitutive role of the "I think." Yovel underscores the central importance of Kant's insistence on the finitude of reason and succinctly describes how the Critique's key ideas are related to Kant's other writings. The result is an invaluable guide for philosophers and students. (shrink)

Albert Ellis is widely recognized as one of the most influential psychologists in the history of psychology. However, his importance as a pioneer of applied philosophy is not as widely acknowledged. This paper, in memoriam, pays tribute to Ellis’s contributions to applied philosophy. In particular it discusses his revolutionarily important applications of philosophy to the field of psychology and briefly discusses his influence on the emerging field of philosophical counseling.

_Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy_ provides new foundations and methods for the revolutionary project of philosophical therapy pioneered by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The book vindicates this currently much-discussed project by reconstructing the genesis of important philosophical problems: With the help of concepts adapted from cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, the book analyses how philosophical reflection is shaped by pictures and metaphors we are not aware of employing and are prone to misapply. Through innovative case-studies on the genesis of (...) classical problems about the mind and perception, and on thinkers including Locke, Berkeley and Ayer, the book demonstrates how such autonomous habits of thought systematically generate unsound intuitions and philosophical delusions, whose clash with reality, or among each other, gives rise to ill-motivated but maddening problems. The book re-examines models of therapeutic philosophy, due to Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, and develops an approach that may let us overcome philosophical delusions and the problems they engender. In this way, the book explains where and why therapy in called for in philosophy, and develops techniques to carry it out. (shrink)

According to the author of the paper, philosophy serves to nurture civilizations by nurturing human values. It must evoke human consciousness and initiate a revolution indispensable for an ever evolving, creative, vibrant, and sustainable civilization. For the author, philosophy’s first and the foremost attribute should be the sustaining and enhancement of life. The author claims that such philosophy is desperately needed in our world gradually losing grounds for life. In author’s opinion, Henryk Skolimowski’s eco-philosophy sparks a revolution for (...) healing the self, the planet, restoring the ecological balance, and constructing a new reality. Ecological consciousness, eco-ethics, ecojustice, eco-yoga, eco-dharma, etc. are valuable attributes of eco-philosophy conferred on our present civilization. Skolimowski’s philosophy unfolds the potencies of the mind and serves to educate it. It brings out all the elements of human glory and glorifies humans who are in his view custodians of life and of the whole cosmos. He infuses in them a superb sense of responsibility for Earth. Skolimowski’s philosophy reveals creativedimensions of the cosmic light. It attempts to cosmologise human beings. (shrink)

Albert Ellis is widely recognized as one of the most influential psychologists in the history of psychology. However, his importance as a pioneer of applied philosophy is not as widely acknowledged. This paper, in memoriam, pays tribute to Ellis’s contributions to applied philosophy. In particular it discusses his revolutionarily important applications of philosophy to the field of psychology and briefly discusses his influence on the emerging field of philosophical counseling.

This is a review of Yovel’s latest book, "Kant’s Philosophical Revolution: A Short Guide to the Critique of Pure Reason.".

As the subtitle suggests, this book serves as a guide through Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Those familiar with Yirmiyahu Yovel’s excellent work will find the usual clarity of writing and acuity...

This book discusses Process Pragmatism, the view that whatever is, derives from interactions. The contributors examine and defend its merits by focusing on major topics, including truth, the existence of unobservables, the origin of knowledge, scientific activity, mathematical functions, laws of nature, and moral agency.

As the subtitle suggests, this book serves as a guide through Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Those familiar with Yirmiyahu Yovel’s excellent work will find the usual clarity of writing and acuity...

Scientific revolution is a widely known concept. But does revolution really occur in science? Change through revolution means that present thinking does not retain anything from the past, because everything is thrown away due to the revolution. Does this pattern of change really correspond to the history of science? There is another pattern which is called evolution. This writing will show that process of evolution rather than revolution presents the real situation of scientific change. According (...) to this concept, science grows as an organic species grows in certain environment. An organism is different from its every former stage, yet it remains the same organism throughout its life. In the same way, we will find both change and continuity in scientific growth. (shrink)

So much of the history of science has been written from the point of view of the scientist or the proto-scientist that it may be salutary for the modern reader occasionally to consider how science and its early practitioners were viewed from the outside. We must not be too surprised if a pioneering activity performed by controversial agents was misunderstood or misrepresented and if what emerges is, therefore, sometimes less of a portrait than a caricature. We are concerned here much (...) less with what natural philosophers actually did than what they were thought to have done, or what they were thought to stand for. The image is sometimes more influential than the reality. Considering that the period to be studied is one of major political and social unrest and that the principal spokesman, Edmund Burke (1729–1797), had made his reputation mainly in the arena of parliamentary politics, we can anticipate rather more polemic than dispassionate argument. In the formation of public opinion a colourful exaggeration or even an occasional sneer are often more effective than the objective exposition of a case. The spectacles through which Burke looked at his world sometimes magnified and often distorted, but they produced a view of knowledge and society shared by many of his contemporaries and of considerable subsequent influence. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's shadow hangs over almost every field of intellectual inquiry. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become a modern classic. His influence on philosophy, social science, historiography, feminism, theology, and (of course) the natural sciences themselves is unparalleled. His epoch-making concepts of 'new paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' make him probably the most influential scholar of the twentieth century. Sharrock and Read take the reader through Kuhn's work in a careful and accessible way, emphasizing Kuhn's detailed studies (...) of the history of science, which often assist the understanding of his more abstract philosophical work. These historical studies provide vital insight into what Kuhn was actually trying to achieve in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: an endeavour far less extreme than either his 'foes' or his 'fans' claim. In the book's second half, Sharrock and Read provide excellent explications, defences and, where appropriate, criticisms of Kuhn's central concept of 'incommensurability', and tackle head on the crucial issue of whether Kuhn's insights concerning the natural sciences can be extrapolated to other disciplines, such as the social sciences. This is the first comprehensive introduction to the work of Kuhn and it will be of particular interest to students and scholars in philosophy, theory of science, management science and anthropology. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's shadow hangs over almost every field of intellectual inquiry. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become a modern classic. His influence on philosophy, social science, historiography, feminism, theology, and (of course) the natural sciences themselves is unparalleled. His epoch-making concepts of ‘new paradigm’ and ‘scientific revolution’ make him probably the most influential scholar of the twentieth century. -/- Sharrock and Read take the reader through Kuhn's work in a careful and accessible way, emphasizing Kuhn's detailed (...) studies of the history of science, which often assist the understanding of his more abstract philosophical work. These historical studies provide vital insight into what Kuhn was actually trying to achieve in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: an endeavour far less extreme than either his ‘foes’ or his ‘fans’ claim. In the book's second half, Sharrock and Read provide excellent explications, defences and, where appropriate, criticisms of Kuhn's central concept of ‘incommensurability’, and tackle head on the crucial issue of whether Kuhn's insights concerning the natural sciences can be extrapolated to other disciplines, such as the social sciences. -/- This is the first comprehensive introduction to the work of Kuhn and it will be of particular interest to students and scholars in philosophy, theory of science, management science and anthropology. (shrink)

In this article, I present the arguments of three republican women philosophers of eighteenth-century France, focusing especially on two themes: equality (of class, gender, and race) and the family. I argue that these philosophers, Olympe de Gouges, Marie-Jeanne Phlipon Roland, and Sophie de Grouchy, who are interesting and original in their own right, belong to the neo-republican tradition and that re-discovering their texts is an opportunity to reflect on women’s perspectives on the ideas that shaped our current political thought.

Scientific revolution has been one of the most controversial topics in the history and philosophy of science. Yet it has been no consensus on what is the best unit of analysis in the historiography of scientific revolutions. Nor is there a consensus on what best explains the nature of scientific revolutions. This chapter provides a critical examination of the historiography of scientific revolutions. It begins with a brief introduction to the historical development of the concept of scientific revolution, (...) followed by an overview of the five main philosophical accounts of scientific revolutions. It then challenges two historiographical assumptions of the philosophical analyses of scientific revolutions. (shrink)

This article argues that philosophers tend to employ a particular method in constructing their theories and critiquing their opponents. To substantiate this claim, the article examines the work of Nietzsche and Locke, the Empiricists and Rationalists, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida, and Russell and Wittgenstein, showing how each relies on a method the article labels “revolution-through-return.” The method consists in identifying the authority behind your opponent's theory, then appealing to something “prior to” that authority, from which you then proceed to (...) derive your own theory. The article distinguishes between several senses of priority, argues that modern philosophers tend to rely on temporal priority, and discusses the questions in priority theory that need to be addressed in order evaluate and construct revolution-through-return arguments. (shrink)

The articles discusses the philosophical foundations and the traditions of the theory of the humanitarian and technological revolution. The subject-matter of HTR theory is the description and forecast of the transition from the industrial to the post-industrial phase of civilization development as well as the strategy and the most effective methods of management of various socio-economic systems. This theory, actively developing in recent years, focuses on goal setting and on determining priorities and development criteria in the field of (...) technology, science and education. The current revolution largely justifies the forecast of D. Bell, an author of the theory of post-industrial development, about the transition from the world of technology to the world of people. The human is the main subject and object of the changes. In this regard, we review an interdisciplinary program on human research, initiated in the 1980s by I.T. Frolov. The ongoing scientific revolution in genetics and the transition to autoevolution make these ideas even more relevant. The concept of universal evolutionism proposed by N.N. Moiseev is fundamental. This concept originates from philosophical and methodological generalizations based on the vast experience of computer modeling of “human-dimensional” systems. The principles of co-evolution of man and biosphere, the strategies for finding compromises are very close to the ecology of technologies, developed by the theory of HTR. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the interdisciplinary concept of self-organization for many scientific fields and, in particular, for the theory of HTR. In our days, proposed by an outstanding mathematician, methodologist and thinker S.P. Kurdyumov, the interpretation of synergetics as a bridge between humanities and natural science, as a common language of natural scientists, mathematicians, scholars has become generally accepted. Kurdyumov predicted that many concepts and ideas of synergetics, through their philosophical understanding, would change the outlook and become an element of scientific culture. We show that this forecast turns into reality and in the process of HTR the ideas of synergetics begin to change our world. We pay special attention to the concept of self-developing systems, the theory of global scientific revolutions and the types of scientific rationality proposed by V.S. Stepin. In this regard, we can say that the HTR brings even more large-scale changes, covering not only science but also technology, society, the inner world of man. Identifying the philosophical foundations of HTR, we contribute to the development of methodology of this approach, enhance intra-scientific reflection and make possible to formulate unsolved problems more accurately. (shrink)

This book offers an up-to-date insight into the early philosophical debate on Einsteinian relativity. The essays explore the reception and interpretation of Einstein’s ideas by some of the most important philosophical schools of the time, such as logical positivism (Reichenbach), neo-Kantianism (Cassirer, Natorp), critical realism (Sellars), and radical empiricism (Mach). The book is aimed at physicists and historians of science researching the epistemological implications of the theory of relativity, as well as to scholars in philosophy interested in understanding (...) how leading philosophical figures of the early twentieth century reacted to the relativistic revolution. (shrink)

It is the sole topic of conversation throughout Europe. An economic crisis with an underlying crisis of values is devastating everything, while politics has nothing to say. An attempt was made to base the European Unión on a single currency, and the resulting traders’ Europeprevented the desired political project from bearing fruit. Instead of comparing different legal systems before creating a constitution for citizens, we have seen the birth of a new idolatry that is connected with a perverse fatalism. Only (...) macroeconomic figures are considered to be important, while citizens have to suffer because of the actions of a few unscrupulous people who worship profit as well as having legalised usury. Given this situation it is necessary to take all types of precaution, and that is why it is a good idea to see what classical authors have to say. The Enlightenment seems to be a failed project that urgently needs to be restarted. It may be enormously useful to re-read Rousseau, as Cassirer did during the rise of Nazism so that it could be fought on the basis of the history of ideas. His discourse on inequality could not be more relevant now. And the same consideration applies to the genealogical study of the French revolution by Tocqueville. That was the revolution par excellence which Kant described as a symbol of the moral progress of mankind. (shrink)

The scientific study of chaotic dynamics, popularly known as chaos theory, has been described by several writers as a revolution in the sense of Kuhn. I provide a definition of chaos theory and offer a brief description of this field of research. I then take up the question of whether or not chaos theory should be described as "revolutionary," in light of the fact that no well-developed science of nonlinear dynamics preceded it. In some respects, chaos theory may be (...) fruitfully described as an "immature science," and the semantic view of theories helps to bring out some of its important features. Many aspects of this emerging field make it most appropriate to consider it a new style of scientific reasoning, analogous to statistical thinking as interpreted by Ian Hacking. (shrink)

Darwin proclaimed his own work revolutionary. His revolution, however, is still in progress, and the changes that are going on are reflected in the contemporary historical and philosophical literature, including that written by scientists. The changes have taken place at different levels, and have tended to occur at the more superficial ones. The new ontology that arose as a consequence of the realization that species are individuals at once provides an analytical tool for explaining what has been happening (...) and an example of the kind of changes that seem in order. It provides a clear distinction between the roles of history and of laws of nature. Pre-Darwinian "evolution" was superficial in the sense that it treated change as either as something pre-ordained or else due to timeless laws of nature, rather than historical contingency. Darwinism puts the ontological emphasis upon concrete, particular things (individuals) and therefore delegitimizes both essentialistic and teleological ways of thinking. However, traditional ways of thinking have persisted, if not explicitly, then often as assumptions and procedures that are merely implicit or even unconscious. As a result, anti-evolutionary attitudes continue to influence the practice of evolutionary biology as well as the study of its history and philosophy. (shrink)