To the scientists and philosophers of our time, Hegel has been either a ne- glected or a provocative thinker, a source of irrelevant dark metaphysics or of complex but insightful analysis. His influence upon the work of natural scientists has seemed minimal, in the main; and his stimulus to the nascent sciences of society and to psychology has seemed to be as often an obstacle as an encouragement. Nevertheless his philosophical analysis of knowledge and the knowing process, of concepts and their evolutionary formation, of rationality in its forms and histories, of the stages of empirical...

The broad range of interdisciplinary concerns which are encompassed by the philosophy of science have this much in common: (I) they arise from reflection upon the fundamental concepts, the formal structures, and the methodology of the sciences; (2) they touch upon the characteristically philosophical questions of ontology and epistemology in a unique way, bringing to traditional conceptions the analytic apparatus of modern logic, and the new content and conceptual models of active scientific investigations. These sources are reflected in the present volume, which consists of the major portion...