This book is intended for people interested in physics and its philosophy. for those who regard physics as an essential component of modern culture rather than merely a tool for industry or war. Indeed this volume is addressed to those students, teachers and research workers who enjoy learning, teaching or doing physics, and are in the habit of pausing once in a while to ponder over key physical concepts and hypotheses and to wonder whether received theories are as perfect as textbooks would have us believe and, if not, how they might be improved. Henry Margenau, recently retired from Yale...

The articles collected in this volume were written for a Colloquium on Fifty Years of Quantum Mechanics which was held at the University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg on May 2-4, 1974, in commemoration of the original work by De Broglie in 1924. It is our hope that this volume will convey to the reader the idea that quantum mechanics, besides being a fundamental tool for scien tific workers today, is also a source of a number of questions and thoughts about the interpretation of the foundation of quantum mechanics itself. This gives rise to problems of a philosophical and logical character and...

The topic to which this book is devoted is reductionism, and not reduction. The difference in the adoption of these two denominations is not, contrary to what might appear at first sight, just a matter of preference between a more abstract (reductionism) or a more concrete (reduction) terminology for indicating the same sUbject matter. In fact, the difference is that between a philosophical doctrine (or, perhaps, simply a philosophical tenet or claim) and a scientific procedure. Of course, this does not mean that these two fields are separated; they are only distinct, and this already means...

1. GENERAL The term "diagnostics" refers to the general theory of diagnosis, not to the study of specific diagnoses but to their general framework. It borrows from different sciences and from different philosophies. Traditionally, the general framework of diagnostics was not distinguished from the framework of medicine. It was not taught in special courses in any systematic way; it was not accorded special attention: students absorbed it intuitively. There is almost no comprehensive study of diagnostics. The instruction in diagnosis provided in medical schools is exclusively specific....

With characteristic incisiveness Georg Henrik von Wright identifies pro- haireticIogic (i. e. the logic of preference) as the core of a general theory of value concepts. Essentially, this nucleus involves the logical study of acts from the point of view of their preferability. 1 (italics added) Though the term prohairesis is found in Plato, as well as in Aristotle's treatment of the relations of preference, it is von Wright who introduces this word into contemporary analytical philoso- phy, and succinctly specifies the philosophical dimensions it encompasses. The above emphasis upon the...

Leibniz said with a mixture of admiration and inspiration that the Duchess Sophie of Hannover always wanted to know the reason why behind the reason why. And that is just how rationality works: it wants to leave no loose ends to understanding, seeking to enable us to understand things through to the bitter end.
In the twelve chapters that make up Satisfying Reason, Rescher develops and defends the following perspective:

• That rationality is a cardinal virtue in cognitive matters.
• That this is not something simple and cut-and-dried: in the pursuit of truth...