Reason and Being

ISBN-13: 9789027721815 / Angielski / Twarda / 1987 / 444 str.

B. G. Kuznetsov; Boris G. Kuznetsov; Carolyn R. Fawcett

Opis

Boris Kuznetsov was a scientist among humanists, a philosopher among scientists, a historian for those who look to the future, an optimist in an age of sadness. He was steeped in classical European culture, from earliest times to the latest avant-garde, and he roamed through the ages, an inveterate time-traveller, chatting and arguing with Aristotle and Descartes, Heine and Dante, among many others. Kuznetsov was also, in his intelligent and thoughtful way, a Marxist scholar and a practical engineer, a patriotic Russian Jew of the first sixty years of the Soviet Union. Above all he meditated upon the revolutionary developments of the natural sciences, throughout history to be sure but particularly in his own time, the time of what he called 'non-classical science', and of his beloved and noblest hero, Albert Einstein. Kuznetsov was born in Dnepropetrovsk on October 5, 1903 (then Yekaterinoslav). By early years he had begun to teach, first in 1921 at an institute of mining engineering and then at other technological institutions. By 1933 he had received a scientific post within the Academy of Science of the U. S. S. R. , and then at the end of the Second World War he joined several colleagues at the new Institute of the History of Science and Technology. For more than 40 years he worked there until his death two years ago.

Recenzje

`...the editors deserve warm thanks for making one of Kuznetsov's most important books available to readers of English in a form worthy of its substance.'
ISIS, Vol. 79, No. 1, 1988

Spis treści

1. A Nonclassical Historical Perspective.- 2. The Criteria of ‘External Confirmation’ and ‘Inner Perfection’.- 3. The World-Line.- 4. The Structure of the Book.- 5. Epistemological Optimism.- I.- 1. The Heraclitean-Eleatic Clash.- 1. Heraclitus.- 2. Parmenides.- 3. Democritus.- 4. Plato.- 5. Aristotle.- 2. Paradoxes of Being.- 1. Paradoxes of Identity.- 2. Paradoxes of Infinity.- 3. Paradoxes of Structure.- 4. Paradoxes of Freedom.- 5. Paradoxes and the History of Philosophy and Science.- 6. Paradoxes of Science and Scientific Prediction.- 3. Einstein and Epicurus.- 1. Atoms and Space.- 2. Clinamen.- 3. Individual Being.- 4. Isotachy.- 5. A Modern Epilogue to Epicurean Physics.- 6. The Problem of Death and the Fear of Death for Epicurus and Einstein.- 7. The Gods of Epicurus and the ‘God’ of Einstein.- 4. The Rationalism of the Renaissance.- 1. Realism and the Revolution of Nonidentity.- 2. The Rationalism of Leonardo da Vinci.- 3. The Rationalism of Giordano Bruno.- 4. The Rationalism of Galileo.- 5. Descartes.- 1. The Illumination at Ulm.- 2. The Criteria of Certainty.- 3. Universal Mathematics.- 4. Being and Space.- 5. The Limits of Cartesian Rationalism.- 6. Spinoza and Einstein.- 1. Substance.- 2. Causa sui.- 3. Natura naturans.- 4. Attributes.- 5. Modes.- 6. Does Spinoza’s God Play Dice?.- 7. The Genesis of Classical Science and the Problem of Nonidentity.- 1. Nonidentity and Mathematics.- 2. A Thought Experiment.- 3. Nonidentity and Being.- 4. Classical Reduction.- 5. Differential Representation, Local Reflection and the Problem of Immortality.- 8. Dynamism and the Critique of Stationary Being.- 1. The Concept of Force.- 2. The Dynamism of Leibniz and the Problem of Individ- ualization.- 3. Pluralism and Eclecticism.- 4. Critical Philosophy: The Rejection of Rationalism and the Return to it.- 5. Dynamism and the Idea of a Natural Order.- II.- 9. Heterogeneous Being.- 1. Rationalism and Irrationalism in Dialectical Philosophy.- 2. ‘Being’and’Beginning’.- 3. ‘Pure Being’and’Pure Experience’.- 4. Being in Motion.- 5. The Hierarchy of Forms of Motion.- 10. Existence and Actuality.- 1. Becoming.- 2. Determinate Being.- 3. Essence 305.- 4. Existence.- 5. Actuality.- 6. The Theory of Relativity as a Theory of Actuality.- 11. Understanding and Reason in Nineteenth- and Twentieth- Century Science.- 1. Understanding, Reason and the Gradient of Science.- 2. Entropy.- 3. The Field.- 4. Physics and Mathematics.- 5. Quanta.- 6. Megascience.- 12. Nothing and the Vacuum.- 1. Determinate Nothing.- 2. The Alienation of Nature.- 3. The Being of Nature and the Being of Man.- 4. Philosophy and Political Economy.- 5. Phantom and Reality for Einstein and Dostoevsky.- Afterword.- Afterword.- 1. Lutetia.- 2. The Gargoyles of Notre Dame 401.- 3. Vanitas vanitatis, the Breton Megaliths and the Prob- lem of Infinity.- 4. For What Did They Give Up Their Lives?.- 5. La Gioconda.- 6. Beau and Belles.- 7. Logos and Eros.- 8. The Invariants of Culture.- 9. On Inspiration and the Poetic Mist in the Landscape of Paris.- 10. The Invariants of Poetry.- 11. The Poetry of Scientific Prediction.- Bibliography of Works Cited.- Index of Names.