E.A. Burtt, Historian and Philosopher: A Study of the author of The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science

ISBN-13: 9781402004285 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 300 str.

D. Villemaire

Opis

Here is a much needed study of the American historian and philosopher, E.A. Burtt. H. Floris Cohen, author of "The Scientific Revolution, A Historiography," has described Burtt as an "individual thinker...beyond philosophical or historical currents or fashion." Burtt's book, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, is something of a puzzle within the context of twentieth-century intellectual history, especially American intellectual history. Burtt's pioneering study of the scientific revolution has proved to prophetic in its rejection of both scientism and positivism. Published in 1924, Burtt's book continues to be read in educated circles and remains both the rose and the thorn on university reading lists, raising skeptical questions about science methods and science knowledge just as it did seventy-five years ago.
This book examines Burtt's public, academic and personal life. From his politics of conscience after World War I on through the Cold War Burtt is shown to be a man of unparalleled integrity, whose relentless search for philosophic understanding drove his more quixotic philosophical quests and steered his personal life, including its tragic dimension, toward simple virtue.
The many who have been affected by The Metaphysical Foundations will be especially interested in this new perspective on the life and thought of its author. Those who have not read Burtt's books might be inspired to study this unusual American thinker.

Spis treści

Preface. Introduction. 1. Columbia University in the 1920s: The Young Radical Philosophers. 2. The Idealists: James Harvey and the Genetic Method of History, John Dewey and Reflective Thinking. 3. The Realists who Sharpened the Edges of Burtt's Ideas. 4. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. 5. The Chicago School of Pragmatism. 6. Religious Humanism. 7. Burtt's New Philosophy of Mind. 8. The Genesis of Hypothesis and The Metaphysics of Empirical Theory. 9. Burtt's Newton and the Debate over the Rationality of Early Modern Science. 10. What Happened to the Metaphysical Foundations and Burtt's Interest in the History of Science. 11. Burtt's Philosophy After 1935. 12. A return to the Ideas in The Metaphysical Foundations. Conclusion. Notes. Bibliography. Index.