Fundamental problems of the uses of formal techniques and of natural and instrumental practices have been raised again and again these past two decades, in many quarters and from varying viewpoints. We have brought a number of quite basic studies of these issues together in this volume, not linked con- ceptually nor by any rigorously defined problematic, but rather simply some of the most interesting and even provocative of recent research accomplish- ments. Most of these papers are derived from the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during 1973-80, the two exceptions being those...

Gyorgy Tamas works in the philosophy of logic, that difficult interdisciplin- ary region wherein the notion of categories is both basic and subtle. To understand ways of thinking, to understand patterns of whatever is real, to recognize what is possible and to reject the nonsensical and the impossible is to comprehend the categories. This was a in thought and in fact, recurring motive of European thought from the earliest self-aware beginnings, and Tamas knows that history well, as his critical respect demonstrates. Ancient, medieval, and modern thinkers appear in this book, set forth in...

By taking the brilliant career of Danish physicist-philosopher Hans Christian Orsted as their organizing theme, leading international philosophers and historians of science reveal illuminating new perspectives on the intellectual map of Europe in the age of revolution and romanticism.

This volume contains the English translation of Felix Kaufmann's (1895-1945) main work Methodenlehre der Sozialwissenschaften (1936). In this book, Kaufmann develops a general theory of knowledge of the social sciences in his role as a cross-border commuter between Husserl's phenomenology, Kelsen's pure theory of law and the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle. This multilayered inquiry connects the value-oriented reflections of a general philosophy of science with the specificity of the methods and theories of the social sciences, as opposed to abstract natural science and psychology....