The acquisition of knowledge is not a single unrelated occasion but rather an adaptive process in which past acquisitions modify present and future ones. In Part I of this essay in epistemology it is argued that coping with knowledge is not a passive affair but dynamic and active, involving its continuance into the stages of assimilation and deployment. In Part II a number of specific issues are raised and discussed in order to explore the dimensions and the depths of the workings of adaptive knowing. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS "Activity as A Source of Knowledge" first appeared in Tulane Studies in...

It has been asserted that there is no one universal proposition with which all philosophers would agree, including this one. The pre- dicament has rarely been recognized and almost never accepted, although neither has it been successfully challenged. If the claim holds true for philosophy taken by itself, how much more must it of religion, the hold for crossfield interests, such as the philosophy philosophy of science and many others. The philosophy of educa- tion is a particular case in point. The topic of education itself is generally regarded as a dull af- fair, a charge not entirely...

In the following pages I have endeavored to show the impact on philosophy of tech nology and science; more specifically, I have tried to make up for the neglect by the classical philosophers of the historic role of technology and also to suggest what positive effects on philosophy the ahnost daily advances in the physical sciences might have. Above all, I wanted to remind the ontologist of his debt to the artificer: tech nology with its recent gigantic achievements has introduced a new ingredient into the world, and so is sure to influence our knowledge of what there is. This book, then,...

There remains only the obligation to thank those who have helped me with specific suggestions and the editors who have kindly granted permission to reprint material which first appeared in the pages of their journals. To the former group belong Alan B. Brinkley and Max O. Hocutt Portion of chap- ters I and VI were published in Philosophy of Science; of chapters IV and V in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine; of chapter VIII in Dialectica; of chapter IX in The British lournal for the Philosophy of Science; and of chapter XIII in Synthese. J.K.F. New Orleans, 1971 PREFACE In this book I have...

In Plato's Laws is the earliest surviving fully developed cosmological argument. His influence on the philosophy of religion is wide ranging and this book examines both that and the influence of religion on Plato.

Central to Plato's thought is the theory of forms, which holds that there exists a realm of forms, perfect ideals of which things in this world are but imperfect copies. In this book, originally published in 1959, Feibleman finds two diverse strands in Plato's philosophy: an idealism centered upon the Forms denying full ontological status to the realm of becoming,...