Metaphysics Of Science Research Articles

Peirce's scientific metaphysics: The philosophy of chance, law and evolution

Peirce's scientific metaphysics: The philosophy of chance, law and evolution

Peirce's Scientific Metaphysics: The Philosophy of Chance, Law, and Evolution (review)

Andrew Reynolds' Peirce's Scientific Metaphysics: The Philosophy of Chance, Law, and Evolution is an exploration of Peirce's cosmology geared toward "the more technical issues that are of importance from the standpoint of the history and philosophy of science" (1). Setting his study against the available secondary literature—which Reynolds sees as approaching the cosmology via "more abstract and broadly philosophical issues"—Reynolds makes his way through Peirce's cosmological writings through detailed examinations of the physics, statistics, and biology of Peirce's lifetime.

Andrew Reynolds. Peirce’s Scientific Metaphysics: The Philosophy of Chance, Law, and Evolution. (Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy.) xii+228 pp., bibl., index. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002. $45 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewAndrew Reynolds. Peirce’s Scientific Metaphysics: The Philosophy of Chance, Law, and Evolution. (Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy.) xii+228 pp., bibl., index. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002. $45 (cloth).Oscar R. Martí Oscar R. Martí Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 94, Number 4December 2003 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/386509 Views: 12Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Pluralism, Entwinement, and the Levels of Selection

This paper distinguishes and critiques several forms of pluralism about the levels of selection, and introduces a novel way of thinking about the biological properties and processes typically conceptualized in terms of distinct levels. In particular, “levels” should be thought of as being entwined or fused. Since the pluralism discussed is held by divergent theorists, the argument has implications for many positions in the debate over the units of selection. And since the key points on which the paper turns apply beyond this specific issue, the paper may prove of general interest in thinking about the metaphysics of science

Peirce's scientific metaphysics: the philosophy of chance, law, and evolution

Peirce's Scientific Metaphysics is the first book devoted to understanding Charles Sanders Peirce's (1839-1914) metaphysics from the perspective of the scientific questions that motivated his thinking. Deftly situating Peirce's often original and pathbreaking ideas within their appropriate historical and scientific contexts, Reynolds traces his reliance upon the law of large numbers, which illustrated for Peirce the emergence of a stable order and regularity from a multitude of chance events, throughout his writings on late nineteenth-century physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and cosmology. Along the way, Peirce's vision of an indeterministic and evolutionary cosmology is contrasted with the thought of other important late nineteenth-century scientists and philosophers, such as James Clerk Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, and Ernst Haeckel. While offering a detailed account of the scientific ideas and theories essential for understanding Peirce's metaphysical system (e.g., the irreversibility of time and the reversibility of physical laws, the statistical law of large numbers), this book is written in a manner accessible to the non-specialist. This will make it especially attractive to students of Peirce's philosophy who lack familiarity with the scientific and mathematical ideas that are so central to his thought. Those with an interest in the history and philosophy of science, especially concerning the application of statistical and probabilistic thinking to physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and cosmology, will find this discussion of Peirce's philosophy invaluable.

NOTES SUR LES MEDICINALIA DE TOMMASO CAMPANELLA*

SUMMARY The inadequacy of the Galenic theory concerning the effect of medicines prompted Campanella, after Fernel, to define a theory of the occult operation capable of curing those illnesses Hippocrates called divine, thanks to a metaphysical science. In his MEDICINALIA (1609), it is the primalitary constitution of living beings - the basic structure of reality whose specific function consists in accounting for occult operations in nature in general, and for the occult virtues of some remedies in particular - that is to generate the rules for applying the various medicines to the corresponding parts of the body. Yet its being occult prevents it from providing the medicinal practitioner with the laws of adaptation to its objects. I show that, for Campanella, as well as for Fernel, the solution most probably lies in the use of method. For, like Fernel, he methodically divides the realm of the occult, the Platonic dichotomy, applied to diseases and remedies, allowing a rational adaptation of the latter to the former, without knowing the nature of either. Thus medical practice possesses its own logic deriving from the nature common to man, the illnesses affecting him, and the medicines that can cure them. Medical efficacy then depends on a capacity for the methodical analysis of natural beings in their complexity, and for taking this into account in therapeutic applications.

Reviews

Lamarque, Peter and Haugon, Stein Truth, Fiction and LiteratureDilworth, Craig Scientific Progess, and The Metaphysics of Science

Craig Dilworth: Scientific Progress. A Study Concerning the Nature of the Relation Between Successive Scientific Theories. Craig Dilworth: The Metaphysics of Science. An Account of Modern Science in terms of Principles, Laws and Theories

Craig Dilworth: Scientific Progress. A Study Concerning the Nature of the Relation Between Successive Scientific Theories. Craig Dilworth: The Metaphysics of Science. An Account of Modern Science in terms of Principles, Laws and Theories

Kant, Boole and Peirce's Early Metaphysics

Charles Peirce is often credited for being among the first, perhaps even the first, to develop a scientific metaphysics of indeterminism. After rejecting the received view that Peirce developed his views from Darwin and Maxwell, I argue that Peirce's view results from his synthesis of Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy and George Boole's contributions to formal logic. Specifically, I claim that Kant's conception of the laws of logic as the basis for his architectonic, when combined with Boole's view of probability, yields Peirce's metaphysics of probabilistic laws. Indeterminism provides, therefore, an excellent illustration of how Peirce attempted to use logic to clarify metaphysical problems.“Since everyone must have conceptions of things in general, it is most important that they should be carefully constructed. I shall enter into no criticism of the different methods of metaphysical research, but shall merely say that in the opinions of several great thinkers, the only successful mode yet lighted upon is that of adopting our logic as our metaphysics”. (W1: 490, 1866)2

Principles, laws, theories and the metaphysics of science

In this paper an outline of a metaphysical conception of modern science is presented in which a fundamental distinction is drawn between scientific principles, laws and theories. On this view, ontologicalprinciples, rather than e.g. empirical data, constitute the core of science. The most fundamental of these principles are three in number, being, more particularly (A) the principle of the uniformity of nature, (B) the principle of the perpetuity of substance, and (C) the principle of causality. These three principles set basic constraints on the methodology of both empirical and theoretical science. The uniformity principle is central to the empirical aspect of science, suggesting a methodology consisting in the attempt to discover empiricallaws, while the causality principle is central to the theoretical aspect of science, suggesting the postulation of scientifictheories capable of indicating the causal basis of the laws. And the perpetuity principle functions so as to form a bridge between the theories and the laws. By distinguishing between principles, laws and theories in this way, a dimension is added to the analysis of modern science which allows for a more realistic account of its nature.

Aquinas on Resolution in Metaphysics

AQUINAS ON RESOLUTION IN METAPHYSICS MICHAEL TAVUZZI, O.P. Angeliaum University Rome FOR AQUINAS a sequence of thoughts, even if interconnected in some manner, does not DJutomatically constitute a scientific discipline. To justify a daim to scientific status such a sequence will have ito he characterized by those properties which raise mere thinking to the level of reasoning : it wiH have to proceed rationabiliter,. in all senses of the term. The sequence wiM havie to he concerned with a 1corresponding obiectum speculabile, with a universal concept or ratio.1 It wi11 have to be endowed with a direct object of in1 " Et ideo oportet scientias speculativas dividi per differentias speculabilium , in quantum speculabilia sunt." In Boethii de Trin., q. 5, a. l; "... scientia est de aliquo dupliciter. Uno modo et principaliter, et sic scientia est de rationibus universalibus ..." In Boethii de Trin., q. 5, a. 2, ad 4um. The term ratio in Aquinas has a remarkable multiplicity of senses. L. Schutz, ThomM-Lexikon (reprinted N.Y., 1957), pp. 679-690, enumerates eighteen principal significations. Without going into detail, I would like to point out that I am employing the term ratio in the sense of a universal concept (Schlitz's 'i '). This is not the universal concept taken as a particular psychological fact or mental event, with the ontological status of an accident inhering in the rational soul as in its subject, but rather the universal concept in the sense of its notional content, taken as a particular psychological fact. The term ratio, therefore, denotes the notional content which: (l) represents the intellect's understanding of the nature or essence which is instantiated in a multiplicity of particulars (the nature or essence is itself denoted by the term ratio according to another of its senses, Schlitz's sense 'k '); (2) is endowed with the intentio universalitatis whereby the multiplicity of particulars in which the corresponding nature or essence is instantiated falls under the concept as its genus or species; (3) is verbally expressed by a definition. This sense of the term ratio is, of course, not to be confused with that wholly different sense (also of great importance for an understanding of metaphysical resolution) whereby it denotes tbe intellect's 199 ~00 MICHAEL TAVUZZI, O.P. vestigation, with ·a proportionate subiectum scientiae, which is at foast formally distinct from that of any other scientific discipline. Aquinais affirms thrut this is indeed the case with the sequence of interconnected reasonings which consititutes the science of metaphysics. In the Prooemium to the oommentary on the Metaphysics of A~istotle, he states that metaphysics is concerned , in the first place, with being as sUJCh-with being as being and the properties which are immediately consequent upon it.2 The diroot subject matter of metaphysics, its obiectum spooulabile as such, is the ratio which is the content of the concept of being in general (ens commune) and which is instantiated in everything which falls under this quasigeneric concept. But just how does the mind have access to this obiectum speculabile? How does the intellect form the concept of being in geneml and sei:z;e its content? After aH, the 1 content of this concept which e~resses the " nature " of being as such, the ratio entis, is neither readily nor immediately gmsped by ,the intellect. If it were, there wouM indeed be no need for the discipline of metaphysics. Just how then does the intellect attain it? This question represents the crucial probfom of the very possibility of the science of metaphysics as envisaged by Aquinas. Aquinas is ce:vtainly aware of this and in the same Prooemium does not neglect to answer it. The content of the concept of being in general, the obiectum speculabile of metaphysics, is attained by means of a process of resolut:io.8 In this paper I shall examine this process of metaphysical resolution. I shall first trace Aquina;s's gradual clarification of the nature of resolutive reasoning by commencing with its most primitiv

Die filosofie van Immanuel Kant en Protestants-teologiese denkstrukture

The philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Protestant theological structures Kant’s critical epistemology destroyed the idea of scientific metaphysics (valid up to Wolff) as the foundation of theology. Kant, however, reconstructed his own metaphysics on the basis of practical reason. In this scheme metaphysics and ethics are interwoven and culminate in a religion exclusively based on and conditioned by pure reason, usually known as Kant’s moral theology or rational religion. The purpose of this paper is, firstly, to give a very short exposition of the basic concepts of Kant’s moral theology, and secondly, to show its decisive influence on post Kantian protestant view of religion.

The (even) bolder model. The clinical psychologist as metaphysician-scientist-practitioner.

Is the clinical psychologist best characterized as a scientist-practitioner? Or does the practice of science and psychotherapy involve metaphysics to such an extent that the clinical psychologist ought to be considered a metaphysician-scientist-practitioner? To answer these questions, the roles, if any, of metaphysics in science and psychotherapy are examined. This article investigates this question by examining the views of the logical positivists, Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos, and concludes that the practice of science and psychotherapy involves metaphysics in (a) problem choice, (b) research and therapy design, (c) observation statements, (d) resolving the Duhemian problem, and (e) modifying hypotheses to encompass anomalous results.

From Kuhn to Lakatos to Laudan

Publisher Summary This chapter provides the overview of Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan methodology of scientific research programs. Kuhn decisively redirected the philosophy of science away from the logical empiricist or positivist account that was then orthodox. The positivists limited their account of science to the categories of theory and evidence and the relationships between them. The two most important of these relationships were said to be “explanation” and “confirmation”. Kuhn's main contribution was to describe the important role super theoretical entities, such as “world hypotheses,” play in science. Kuhn called these types of entities paradigms. Lakatos renamed them research programs and Laudan dubbed them research traditions. Kuhn never adequately specified the connection between paradigm and theory. Lakatos' first innovation was to specify this relationship with great clarity, and in doing so he also explicated further the role of metaphysics in science. Metaphysical assumptions appear as core principles that pass unchanged through all the theories of a research program, that is, through those theories that succeed one another as the program evolves. The sequence of theories itself constitutes the research program. Laudan attempted to direct philosophy of science away from explaining facts and toward “solving problems.” The philosophy of science begun by Kuhn rejected the positivists' attempts to accommodate all of science in the categories of theory and observation. On the positivist view, “explanation” was the primary relationship linking the two descriptive categories: theories explained observations. But Laudan also questioned the primacy of explanation. He argued that the dynamics of science are best understood as a search for new problem solutions. For this reason Overton spoke of research programs solving problems.

Kant on the Tutelage of God and Nature

KANT ON THE TUTELAGE OF GOD AND NATURE* Ay ATTEMPT TO discuss the Kantian philosophy in terms of the success or failure of specific doctrines, such as the distinction between phenomena and noumena , is premature unless guided by an understanding of what Kant refers to as its architectonic-the systematic unity of the various modes of knowledge expressing a prephilosophical Idea which serves as the norm for the possibility as well as doctrinal components of philosophy as metaphysics. As stated by Kant: By an architectonic I understand the art of constructing systems. By a system I understand the unity of the manifold modes of knowledge under one idea. This idea is the concept provided by reason-of the form of a whole-insofar as the concept determines a priori not only the scope of its manifold contents, but also the positions which the parts occupy relatively to one another.1 Kant's architectonic thus becomes a hermeneutics for judging the doctrinal components of his metaphysics as they issue from its Idea. That this Idea is a priori points to its prephilosophical (i.e., pretheoretical) origin. And the locus of the prephilosophical is the realm of practice. The Kantian Idea thus concerns the ground of human aotion, for the eros toward metaphysics springs from the " ultimate aim of reason," which is " no other than the whole vocation of man, and the philosophy which deals with it is entitled moral philosophy." 2 Kant's metaphysics is thus a metaphysics of morals since man's moral calling -resting on the two pillars of the categorical imperative and practical autonomy-is its a priori beginning. It is in this *For much in this article I am indebted to my former teacher Peter Van Nuis. 1 Critique of Pure Reason, translated by N. Kemp Smith (New York, 1965), B860. Hereafter designated "CPuR ". This crucial heuristic is reiterated in the Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason. • CPuR, B868. 26 KANT ON THE TUTELAGE OF GOD AND NATURE 27 light that we must evaluarte Kant's theoretical assertions, the most problematic being the duality of phenomena and noumena . For while it is true that Kant's purely philosophical arguments turn on this distinction, the Kantian architectonic forces us to recognize that this central bifurcation has its ground in turn in a practical and not a theoretical obligationthe categorical imperative as the overriding metaphilosophical norm. This is shown by Kant's analysis of metaphysics as a natural disposition. The possibility of philosophy as metaphysics is expressed in a two-fold manner: a) as a theoretical science and b) as a natural disposition. The former is shown to be impossible since pure reason desires what it cannot achieve-a science of metaphysics on a par with the sciences of physics and mathematics. Consequently the question becomes, as in the Prolegomena, " Is metaphysics possible at all? " since reason encounters antinomies and dialectical illusions when reaching for the Absolute . However, despite constant failure the attempt nonetheless persists. The possibility of metaphysics thus shifts to its possibility as a natural disposition. That is, we do not ask (as with physics and mathematics) how metaphysics as an actual science becomes possible. We ask, given the perpetual frustration, how metaphysics arises as a natural disposition and in wha:t way this disposition is to be properly directed. The answer to both questions is reason's practical employment. The origin and content of metaphysics is man's eithical nature. The metaphysical questions-God, freedom and immortality -are the ethically most significant questions since " these ... in turn refer us yet ful'lther, namely, to the problem of what we ought to do, if the will is free, if there is a God and a future world." 3 What we ought to do, of course, is obey the categorical imperative. The primacy of practical over theoretical reason is likewise reflected in the ordering of the questions concerning the three metaphysical issues: 8 Ibid., BS!lS. ~8 WALTER SOFFER 1. What can I know?, which points to absolute first cause. ~. What ought I to do?, which points to freedom as the ground of the moral law. 3. What may I hope?, which points to the transcendental ground...

Buffon's gnoseological principle

In establishing what he called the “metaphysics of science”, the French naturalist Buffon was confronted with the problem of situating the place occupied by man in the natural world, a problem which ultimately depended on discerning his true nature. The paradox of Descartes' dualism offered various solutions — the extremes being, either to condemn man's material nature as corrupted in order to exalt his spiritual nature as a moral being, as Pascal had done, or to reduce man's pretended spiritual nature to nothing more than a manifestation of his material organization, the solution of La Mettrie. Buffon could accept neither, proves man's duality, and proceeds to establish his gnoseological principle on his critique of these two radical solutions.

Is Scientific Metaphysics Possible?

Metaphysics is back and doing rather well considering that it was pronounced defunct several times over the past two centuries. It comes in three different species: plain, exact, and scientific. Plain metaphysics ranges from elaborate nonsense through archaic common sense to deep and sophisticated yet outdated good sense. Although it is a rich mine of problems and insights, plain metaphysics is too far removed from contemporary knowledge. On the other hand, exact metaphysics, as exemplified by the so-called calculus of individuals and by some recent theories of possibility and of time, is done with the explicit help of contemporary logical or mathematical tools. It is living proof that metaphysics need not be obscure and on bad terms with logic. All too often, though, exact metaphysics neglects the philosophical tradition or does not care much for science, thus tending to become a futile exercise in applied logic. Scientific metaphysics is more ambitious: it attempts to solve some of the problems left over by plain metaphysics, it tackles new problem, and it tries to be in tune with both formal and factual science.

"The Foundations of Metaphysics in Science," by Errol E. Harris

"The Foundations of Metaphysics in Science," by Errol E. Harris

The Foundations of Metaphysics in Science. By Errol E. Harris. Allen & Unwin, London, 1965. Pp. 512. 63s.

Previous articleNext article No AccessREVIEWSThe Foundations of Metaphysics in Science. By Errol E. Harris. Allen & Unwin, London, 1965. Pp. 512. 63s.W. H. THORPEW. H. THORPECambridge University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Volume 17, Number 3November 1966 Society: The British Society for the Philosophy of Science Views: 2Total views on this site Views: 2Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/17.3.261 Views: 2Total views on this site © 1966 by The Author. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Foundations of Metaphysics in Science.

The Foundations of Metaphysics in Science.