This volume is dedicated to Mario Bunge in honor of his sixtieth birthday. Mario Bunge is a philosopher of great repute, whose enormous output includes dozens of books in several languages, which will culminate with his Treatise on Basic Philosophy projected in seven volumes, four of which have already appeared Reidel, I 974ff. ]. He is known for his works on research methods, the foundations of physics, biology, the social sciences, the diverse applications of mathematical methods and of systems analysis, and more. Bunge stands for exact philosophy, classical liberal social philosophy,...

x I wish to express my thanks to all contributors to this volume for their collaboration, and especially to Professor laakko Hintikka, Editor of Synthese Library, for his help in editing this book. THE EDITOR INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND IMPRESSION The articles included in this collection represent what may be called the standard modal approach to deontic logic (the logic of normative concepts), in which deontic logic is treated as a branch of modal logic, and the normative concepts of obligation, permission (permissibility) and prohibi- tion are regarded as analogous to the 'alethic'...

An impressive characteristic of Dudley Shapere's studies in the philosophy of the sciences has been his dogged reasonableness. He sorts things out, with logical care and mastery of the materials, and with an epistemological curiosity for the historical happenings which is both critical and respectful. Science changes, and the philosopher had better not link philosophical standards too tightly to either the latest orthodox or the provocative up- start in scientific fashions; and yet, as critic, the philosopher must not only master the sciences but also explicate their meanings, not those of a...

of him in like measure within myself, that is my highest wish. This noble individual was not conscious of the fact that at that very moment the divine within him and the divine of the universe were most intimately united. So, for Goethe, the resonance with a natural rationality seems part of the genius of modern science. Einstein's 'cosmic religion', which reflects Spinoza, also echoes Goethe's remark (Ibid. , Item 575 from 1829): Man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible. Else he would give up investigating. But how far will Goethe share the devotion of these...

This book presents a perspective on the history of theoretical physics over the past two hundreds years. It comprises essays on the history of pre-Maxwellian electrodynamics, of Maxwell's and Hertz's field theories, and of the present century's relativity and quantum physics. A common thread across the essays is the search for and the exploration of themes that influenced significant con- ceptual changes in the great movement of ideas and experiments which heralded the emergence of theoretical physics (hereafter: TP). The fun. damental change involved the recognition of the scien- tific...

The subject of this study is Husserl's theory of meaning as it appears in his writings from the Logical Investigations to the Crisis of the European Sciences. The first chapter focuses on HusserI's critique of psychologism and the theory of meaning that stems from it. The second chapter takes its departure from the question of HusserI's attitude towards the Cartesian tradition, then presents the transcendental (noematic) theory of meaning represented by The Idea of Phenome- nology, Ideas, and Cartesian Meditations. The third chapter deals with Husserl's interpretation of time consciousness...

Science is a multifaceted, natural and historical phenomenon. It consists of five elements, that is, it happens in five distinct media: biological, linguistic, technological, social, and historical. None of these alone provides an indubitable basis for the truth of scientific knowledge, but combined together they compose a solid ground for our trust in its reliability. The composition, however, is uniquely related to our modern mode of living. Science did not exist before modernity, and it will cease to exist in this form if our way of life should change. The book presents a thorough...

Many, perhaps most textbooks of quantum mechanics present a Copenhagen, single system angle; fewer present the subject matter as an instrument for treating ensembles, but the two methods have been silently coexisting since the mid-Thirties. This lingering dichotomy of purpose for a major physical discipline has much shrouded further insights into the foundations of quantum theory.
Quantum Reprogramming resolves this long-standing dichotomy by examining the mutual relation between single systems and ensembles, assigning each its own tools for treating the subject at hand: i.e.,...

Philosophical understandings of Nature and Human Nature. Classical Greek and modern West, Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, by 14 authors, including Robert Neville, Stanley Rosen, David Eckel, Livia Kohn, Tienyu Cao, Abner Shimoney, Alfred Tauber, Krzysztof Michalski, Lawrence Cahoone, Stephen Scully, Alan Olson and Alfred Ferrarin. Dedicated to the phenomenological ecology of Erazim Kohak, with 10 of his essays and a full bibliography. Overall theme: on the question of the moral sense of nature."