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

For protophysics, the fascinating and impressive constructive re-establish ment of the foundations of science by Professor Paul Lorenzen, working with his colleagues and students of the Erlangen School, no task is more central than to.furmulate a theoretical understanding of the practical art of measurement of time.

Costa de Beauregard's scientific career has focused on three domains - special relativity, statistics and irreversibility, and quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, derives from very complicated principles but, since its mathematics is straightforward, people feel they understand it.

In this stimulating study of the logical character of selected fundamental topics of physics, Zinov'ev has written the first, and major, stage of a general semantics of science. the logic of fields and of field propagation; and as logic, logical physics deals with the linguistic expressions of time, space, particle, wave, field, causality, etc.

With this defense of intensional realism as a philosophical foundation for understanding scientific procedures and grounding scientific knowledge, James Fetzer provides a systematic alternative to much of recent work on scientific theory.

In this stimulating investigation, Gideon Freudenthal has linked social history with the history of science by formulating an interesting proposal: that the supposed influence of social theory may be seen as actual through its co herence with the process of formation of physical concepts.

These essays on Finalization in Science - The Social Orientation of Scientific Progress comprise a remarkable, problematic and controversial book.

system reflected in Saussure's linguistic theory, and so influential in the great progress linguistic theory has made in this century.

In Language and Production, Gyorgy Markus presents us with a pro found critique of contemporary social theory: of the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences;

[1977] Hermann von Helmholtz in the History of Scientific Method In 1921, the centenary of Helmholtz' birth, Paul Hertz, a physicist, and Moritz Schlick, a philosopher, published a selection of his papers and lectures on the philosophical foundations of the sciences, under the title Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie.

Do knowledge and science arise from the application of canons of rationality and scientific method? Or is all our scientific knowledge caused by socio-political factors, or by our interests in the socio-political - the view of sociologists of "knowledge"?

After relatively short academic appointments at the University of Toronto and at Princeton University, he taught at the University of Chicago until reaching the age of normal retirement.

No student or colleague of Marjorie Grene will miss her incisive presence in these papers on the study and nature of living nature, and we believe the new reader will quickly join the stimulating discussion and critique which Professor Grene steadily provokes.

This book surveys philosophies that have had a significant positive or negative impact on the search for truth, offering systemism and materialism as research-nurturing doctrines. Covers problems under current discussion, and points out neglected topics.

This book reviews the transformation of natural philosophy in the 16th and 17th centuries: description of nature in mathematical terms; comparison of natural phenomena to existing or imaginary machines and the use of mechanical analogies in natural philosophy.

This book proposes a detailed account of scientific realism which exploits several fruitful ideas of Jurgen Habermas, building on an analysis of scientific experimentation, and developing it through an in-depth case study of the history of quantum mechanics.

This book exhibits deep philosophical quandaries and intricacies of the historical development of science lying behind a simple item of common sense in modern science: the composition of water as H2O. It offers a unique new advocacy for pluralism in science.

Typically, philosophy of technology has existed at, or beyond, the margins of the philosophy of science, and therefore the question of technology has come to be posed (when it is) either by historians of technology or by social critics.

Wartofsky is philosopher of the natural and the social sciences, of perception, esthetics and the creative arts, of the 18th century French and the 19th century Germans, of politics and morality, ofthe methods and morals of medicine, and it is plain, of all human existence.

the mass of experimental data from current research in psychology and physiology, Grossberg proposes and develops a non-linear mathematics as a model for specific functions of mind and brain.

In this volume, Wallace provides the companion to his splendid annotated translation of Galileo 's Early Notebooks: The Physical Questions (University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), pointing to the 'realist' sources, mainly unearthed by the author himself during the past two decades.

The work of Galileo has long been important not only as a foundation of modern physics but also as a model - and perhaps the paradigmatic model - of scientific method, and therefore as a leading example of scientific rationality. Specifically, how and on what grounds are we to accept or reject scientific theories, or scientific reasoning?

Kosik writes that the history of a text is in a certain sense the history of its interpretations. For its theme is the characterization of science and of rationality in the context of the social roots of science and the social critique which an appropriately rational science should afford.

" At another place, Kapitza meditates on the roles played by instinct, imagination, audacity, experiment, and hard work in the develop ment of science, and for a moment seems to despair at understanding the dogged arguments of great scientists: "Einstein loved to refer to God when there was no more sensible argument!"

Naturally, we may wish to understand whether Kant is relevant to Popper's philosophy of knowledge, how Popper has understood Kant, and to what extent the Popperian Kant has systematically or historically been of influence on later philosophy of science, as seen by Popper or not.

Friedrich Rapp, in this magisterial and critical essay on technology, the complex human phenomenon that demands philosophy of science, philosophy of culture, moral insight, and historical sensi tivity for its understanding, writes modestly of the grave and ten tative situation in the philosophy of technology.