Plaass's treatise stood at the beginning of a renewed wave of scholarship regarding Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MF). Plaass argues that the MF represents an integral step in Kant's development between the two editions of the Critique of Pure Reason. The MF repeats the Copernican turn', using the conditions of subjectivity to derive the metaphysical determinations of matter' as the object of natural science with the new method called metaphysical construction', which simultaneously grounds the mathematizability of...

In this book Martin Bunzl considers the prospects for a general and comprehensive account of explanation, given the variety of interests that prompt explanations in science. Bunzl argues that any successful account of explanation must deal with two very different contexts - one static and one dynamic. Traditionally, theories of explanation have been built for the former of these two contexts. That is to say, they are designed to show how it is that a 'finished' body of scientific knowledge can be put to explanatory use. But finished sciences are few and far between. Real 'explanation'...

An idea of the philosophy of archaeology can best be gained by showing what it is, what the issues are, who is working in the field, and how they proceed. Reading Lester Embree's Metaarchaeology provides the best possible introduction to the field, since in it several leading archaeologists show how accessible and interesting the current archeological literature is, and currently active philosophers of archaeology reveal something of the current state of discussion on the subject. Bibliographies have also been developed of the philosophy of archaeology as well as of selected parts of...

Foundational questions in logic, mathematics, computer science and physics are constant sources of epistemological debate in contemporary philosophy. To what extent is the transfinite part of mathematics completely trustworthy? Why is there a general malaise' concerning the logical approach to the foundations of mathematics? What is the role of symmetry in physics? Is it possible to build a coherent worldview compatible with a macroobjectivistic position and based on the quantum picture of the world? What account can be given of opinion change in the light of new evidence?
These are...

Scholarly studies of mathematics and the sciences, carried out by philos- ophers and historians in Taiwan in recent years, have two main goals: first, positive and critical participation in the logical analysis of scientific theories and scientific explanation; and second, conceptual clarification joined with faithful historical investigation of the sciences of traditional and modem China. In this book, Professors Cheng-hung Lin and Daiwie Fu have gathered fine representative essays from both endeavors. Their two introductory discussions guide the reader in three ways. First, we have...

This is the fourth volume in the series of the Bar-Hillel Colloquium (formerly the Israel Colloquium). The essays and commentaries presented here are intended to strike a rather special balance between the disciplines to which the Colloquium is dedicated. The historical and sociological vantage point is addressed to Krammick's and Mali's treatment of Priestley, In Vicker's and Feldhay's studies of the Renaissance occult, and in Warnke's and Barasch's work on the imagination. From a philosophical angle several concepts, all material to the methodology of science, are taken up; rule following,...

As the only book-length general history and defense of energetics, Georg Helm's Energetik is a unique and important work. Conceived in the strife of the great debate on energetics at the Lubeck Naturforscherversammlung, Helm's book seeks to achieve several distinct, although often closely related, objectives. It tries to revise, clarify and defend Helm's own development of energetic theory in order to rebut critics, especially Boltzmann and Planck. It also seeks to defend and promote a phenomenalist conception of energetics and thus a view of the history, nature and goal of physical theory...

The splendid achievements of Japanese mathematics and natural sciences during the second half of our 20th century have been a revival, a Renaissance, of the practical sciences developed along with the turn toward Western thinking in the late 19th century. The equally admirable results of Japanese philosophers (and historians) of science in our time followed upon a period less congenial to Western interests in the philosophical questions linked to modern science; and this reluctance to confront the epistemology, not even the humane significance, of the sciences went along with devotion to...

This book is about Austrian philosophy leading up to the philosophy of Rudolf Haller. It emerged from a philosophy conference held at the University of Arizona by Keith Lehrer with the support of the University of Arizona and Austrian Cultural Institute. We are grateful to the University of Arizona and the Austrian Cultural Institute for their support, to Linda Radzik for her editorial assistance, to Rudolf Haller for his advice and illuminating autobiographical essay and to Ann Hickman for preparing the camera-ready typescript. The papers herein are ones preseJ,lted at the conference. The...

This book discusses the impetus-based physics of the Jesuit natural philosopher and mathematician Honore Fabri (1608-1688), a senior representative of Jesuit scientists during the period between Galileo's death (1642) and Newton's Principia (1687). It shows how Fabri, while remaining loyal to a general Aristotelian outlook, managed to reinterpret the old concept of "impetus" in such a way as to assimilate into his physics building blocks of modern science, like Galileo's law of fall and Descartes' principle of inertia. This account of Fabri's theory is a novel one, since his physics is...