Bøger i Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science serien

Some philosophers think that Paul Feyerabend is a clown, a great many others think that he is one of the most exciting philosophers of science of this century.

The anthology derives in large measure from the symposium, "Organism and the Origin of Self' held at Boston University, April 3-4, 1990, under the auspices of the Boston University Center for the Philosophy and History of Science, with generous support of Robert Cohen and Jon Westling, and the organizational skills of Deborah Wilkes.

If ever a major study of the history of science should have acted like a sudden revolution it is this book, published in two volumes in 1905 and 1906 under the title, Les origines de la statique.

By North-American standards, philosophy is not new in Quebec: the first men tion of philosophy lectures given by a Jesuit in the College de Quebec (founded 1635) dates from 1665, and the oldest logic manuscript dates from 1679.

These almost completely forgotten texts contained important insights into the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and they provided several ideas which were missing or elusively expressed in SchrOdinger's published papers and books of the same period.

Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) held the chair of theoretical physics at Bordeaux from 1894 to his death. This book will be of interest to scholars in history and philosophy of science, especially those interested in the development of physical chemistry and the work of Pierre Duhem.

Vols. 1 - 4

The subject of this study is Husserl's theory of meaning as it appears in his writings from the Logical Investigations to the Crisis of the European Sciences.

Proceedings of Section L, 1969, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1969/1972

This collection is the first proceedings volume of the lectures delivered within the framework of the Israel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science, in its year of inauguration 1981-82.

Case studies drawn from the history of all branches of science (including chemistry and the earth sciences) and from Antiquity to the present day, serve to widen and to deepen the understanding of every reader (whether a historian of science or not) with a desire to learn more about the realities of the scientific pursuit.

When writing of decisions and actions, he is at the interface of philosophy of science, decision theory, philosophy of the specific social sciences, and inventory theory (itself, for him, at the interface of economic theory, production engineering and information theory).

The impressive record of Italian philosophical research since the end of Fascism thirty-two years ago is shown in many fields: esthetics, social and" personal ethics, history and sociology of philosophy, and magnificently, perhaps above all, in logic, foundations of mathematics and the philosophY, methodology, and intellectual history ofthe empirical sciences. To our pleasure, Maria Luisa Dalla Chiara of the University of Florence gladly agreed to assemble a 'sampler' of recent Italian logical and analytical work on the philosophical foundations of mathematics and physics, along with a number of historical studies of epistemological and mathematical concepts. The twenty-five essays that form this volume will, we expect, encourage English-reading philosophers and scientists to seek further works by these authors and by their teachers, colleagues, and students; and, we hope, to look for those other Italian currents of thought in the philosophy of science for which points of departure are not wholly analytic, and which also deserve study and recognition in the world­ wide philosophical community. Of course, Italy has long been related to that world community in scien­ titlc matters.

The 1977 lectures of the International School for the History of Science at Erice in Sicily were devoted to that vexing but inexorable problem, the nature of scientific discovery.

An impressive characteristic of Dudley Shapere's studies in the philosophy of the sciences has been his dogged reasonableness. He sorts things out, with logical care and mastery of the materials, and with an epistemological curiosity for the historical happenings which is both critical and respectful. Science changes, and the philosopher had better not link philosophical standards too tightly to either the latest orthodox or the provocative up­ start in scientific fashions; and yet, as critic, the philosopher must not only master the sciences but also explicate their meanings, not those of a cognitive never-never land. Neither dreamer nor pedant, Professor Shapere has been able to practice the modern empiricist's exercises with the sober and stimulat­ ing results shown in this volume: he sees that he can be faithful to philosoph­ ical analysis, engage in the boldest 'rational reconstruction' of theories and experimental measurements, and faithful too, empirically faithful we may say, to both the direct super-highways and the winding pathways of conceptual evolutions and metaphysical revolutions. Not least, Shapere listens! To Einstein and Calileo of course, but to the workings of the engineers and the scientific apprentices too, and to the various philosophers, now and of old, who have also worked to make sense of what has been learned and how that has happened and where we might go wrong.

To the scientists and philosophers of our time, Hegel has been either a ne glected or a provocative thinker, a source of irrelevant dark metaphysics or of complex but insightful analysis.

This selection of papers that were presented (or nearly so!) to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during the seventies fairly re presents some of the most disturbing issues of scientific knowledge in these years.

These essays on the conceptual understanding of modern physics strike directly at some of the principal difficulties faced by contemporary philos ophers of physical science.

Though the publication of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions seemed to herald the advent of a unified study of the history and philosophy of science, it is a hard fact that history of science and philosophy of science have increasingly grown apart.

Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1961/1962.

Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1966/1968

Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1964/1966