genetics. " It is simply the appropriation of that term, very likely with insufficient knowledge and respect for its past usage. For that, the Editor alone is responsible and requests tolerance. He has, as far as he can tell, no intention or desire to use it for any historiographical purposes other than that just mentioned. Even more important, the decision to consider Muller together with Fisher, Haldane and Wright is also not original. Crow (1984) has already done so, arguing persua- sively that Muller was "keenly interested in evolution and made sub- stantial contributions to the...

Quine is one of the twentieth century's most important and influential philosophers. The essays in this collection are by some of the leading figures in their fields and they touch on the most recent turnings in Quine's work. The book also features an essay by Quine himself, and his replies to each of the papers. Questions are raised concerning Quine's views on knowledge: observation, holism, truth, naturalized epistemology; about language: meaning, the indeterminacy of translation, conjecture; and about the philosophy of logic: ontology, singular terms, vagueness, identity, and intensional...

This book is a collection of papers which reflect the recent trends in the philosophy and history of molecular biology. It brings together historians, philosophers, and molecular biologists who reflect on the discipline's emergence in the 1950's, its explosive growth, and the directions in which it is going. Questions addressed include: (i) what are the limits of molecular biology? (ii) What is the relation of molecular biology to older subdisciplines of biology, especially biochemistry? (iii) Are there theories in molecular biology? (iv) If so, how are these theories structured? (v) What...

To some philosophers, seeking to understand the human condition, technology is a necessary guide. But to think through the complex human phenomenon of technology we must tackle philosophy of science, philosophy of culture, moral issues, comparative civilizational studies, and the economics of specific industrial and military technologies in their historical contexts. The philoso- pher wants to grasp the technological factor in this troubled world, even as we see it is only one factor, and that it does not speak openly for itself. Put directly, our human troubles to a considerable extent have...

This anthology is the culmination of some 20 years of interest in the field of bioethics. I began my studies in the philosophy of science while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970. My interest then, as now, continues to be the complex interrelationship between science and the humanities. While grounded in philosophy and molecular biology, I yearned for a more applied realm for exploration and integration of the value laden nature of science in the public policy arena. After receiving my medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, I continued my work in...

Time and again, philosophy, in trying to untangle the issues surrounding the an- alytic-synthetic distinction, has doubted that such a distinction can significantly be drawn at all. We think, in face of the varied and age-old discussions on it, that such reflections amount only to one more documentation of the tenacity of the problems behind this distinction. We could even be justified in promoting the thesis that this distinction refers to the complex relationship between the universe of meanings and the universe of objects and thus concerns each domain of human thinking where a form of...

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"? Or does it result from interplay of relations of power - the view of Michel Foucault? Or does our knowledge arise from "the will to power" - the view of Nietzsche? This volume sets out to critically examine the theses of those who would debunk the idea of rational explanation.

The book is wide-ranging. The theories of method of...

Edgar Zilsel (1891-1944) lived through the best of times and worst of times, through the renewal of scientific optimism and humane politics, and through the massive social collapse into idolatrous barbarism. With it all, and with his per- sonal and family crises in Vienna and later in America, Zilsel was, I believe, a th heroic, indeed a model, scholar of the first half of the 20 century. He was widely admired as a teacher, at high schools, in workers education, in research tutoring and seminars. He was an original investigator on matters of the methodology of science, and of the history of...

The roots of this work lie in my earlier book, Scientific Progress, which first appeared in 1981. One of its topics, the distinction - tween scientific laws and theories, is there treated with reference to the same distinction as drawn by N. R. Campbell in his Physics: The Elements. Shortly after completing Scientific Progress, I read Rom Harre's The Principles of Scientific Thinking, in which the concept of theory is even more clearly delineated than in Campbell, being directly connected to the notion of a model - as it was in my book. In subsequent considerations regarding science, Harre's...

Proceedings of the 1970 second Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Boston, Fall, 1970