In the letters contained in this book, David Bohm argues that the dominant formal, mathematical approach in physics is seriously flawed. In the 1950s and 60s, Bohm took a direction unheard of for a professor of theoretical physics: while still researching in physics, working among others with Yakir Aharanov and later Jeffrey Bub, he also spent time studying "metaphysics"-such as Hegel's dialectics and Indian panpsychism. 50 years on, questions raised about the direction and philosophical assumptions of theoretical physics show that Bohm's arguments still have contemporary relevance.

This book is about the functions of technical artefacts, material objects made to serve practical purposes; objects ranging from tablets of Aspirin to Concorde, from wooden clogs to nuclear submarines. More precisely, the book is about usinganddesigningartefacts, aboutwhatitmeanstoascribefunctionstothem, and about the relations between using, designing and ascribing functions. In the following pages, we present a detailed account that shows how strong these relations are. Technical functions cannot be properly analysed without taking into regard the beliefs and actions of human beings, we contend. This account stays deceptively close to common sense. After all, who would deny that artefacts are for whatever purpose they are designed or used? As we shall show, however, such intentionalist accounts face staunch opposition from other accounts, such as those that focus on long-term reproduction of artefacts. These accounts are partly right and mostly wrong - and although we do take a common-sense position in the end, it is only after sophisticated analysis. F- thermore, the results of this analysis reveal that technical functions depend on a larger and more structured set of beliefs and actions than is typically s- posed. Much work in the succeeding pages goes into developing an appropriate action-theoretical account, and forging a connection with function ascriptions.

What is the role of scientists in society? What should we think when they talk about more than just science? Mary Midgley discusses the high spiritual ambitions which tend to gather around the notion of science.

Fifty years have passed since Norwood Russell Hanson's unexpected death, yet he remains an important voice in philosophy of science. This book is a revised and expanded edition of a collection of Hanson's essays originally published in 1971, edited by Stephen Toulmin and Harry Woolf. The new volume features a comprehensive introduction by Matthew Lund (Rowan University) and two new essays. The first is "Observation and Explanation: A Guide to Philosophy of Science", originally published as a posthumous book by Harper and Row. This essay, written near the end of Hanson's life, represents his mature philosophy of science. The second new addition, Hanson's essay "The Trial of Galileo", is something of a "lost" work - it was only published in a small run collection on famous trials and was left out of the published lists of Hanson's works. Ever the outspoken firebrand, Hanson found many lessons and warnings from Galileo's trial that were relevant to Cold War America. This volume not only contains Hanson's best-known work in history and philosophy of science, but also highlights the breadth of his philosophical thought. Hanson balanced extreme versatility with a unified approach to conceptual and philosophical problems. Hanson's central insight is that philosophy and science both strive to render the world intelligible -- the various concepts central to our attempts to make sense of the world are interdependent, and cannot operate, or even be fully understood, independently. The essays included in this collection present Hanson's thinking on religious belief, theory, observation, meaning, cosmology, modality, logic, and philosophy of mind. This collection also includes Hanson's lectures on the theory of flight, Hanson's greatest passion.

For the past 50 years a select group of scientists has provided advice to the US President, mostly out of the public eye, on issues ranging from the deployment of weapons to the launching of rockets to the moon to the use of stem cells to cure disease. The role of the presidential science adviser came under increasing scrutiny during the administration of George W. Bush, which was highly criticized by many for its use (and some say, misuse) of science. This edited volume includes, for the first time, the reflections of the presidential science advisers from Donald Hornig who served under Lyndon B. Johnson, to John Marburger, the previous science advisor, on their roles within both government and the scientific community. It provides an intimate glimpse into the inner workings of the White House, as well as the political realities of providing advice on scientific matters to the presidential of the United States. The reflections of the advisers are supplemented with critical analysis of the role of the science adviser by several well-recognized science policy practitioners and experts. This volume will be of interest to science policy and presidential history scholars and students.

This book is the first critical genealogy of Jacques Derrida's philosophy of technology. It traces the evolution of what Derrida calls "originary technicit"' via an appraisal of his own philosophy of technology together with that of key interlocutors including Marx, Freud, Lacan, Heidegger and Bernard Stiegler.

This book offers the most complete and up-to-date overview of the philosophical work of Evandro Agazzi, presently the most important Italian philosopher of science and one of the most influential in the world. Scholars from seven countries explore his contributions in areas ranging from philosophy of physics and general philosophy of science to bioethics, philosophy of mathematics and logic, epistemology of the social sciences and history of science, philosophy of language and artificial intelligence, education and anthropology, metaphysics and philosophy of religion. Agazzi developed a complete and coherent philosophical system, anticipating some of the turns in the philosophy of science after the crisis of logical empiricism and exerting an equal influence on continental hermeneutic philosophy. His work is characterized by an original synthesis of contemporary analytic philosophy, phenomenology and classical philosophy, including the scholastic tradition and these threads are reflected in the different backgrounds of the contributors to this book. While upholding the epistemological value of science against scepticism and relativism, Agazzi eschews scientism by stressing the equal importance of non-scientific forms of thought, such as metaphysics and religion. While defending the freedom of research as a cognitive enterprise, he argues that as a human and social practice it must nonetheless respect ethical constraints.

For many years, scientists have attempted to unite the four fundamental forces-the strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity, and electromagnetism. Many have tried uniting known theories, such as general relativity, with quantum mechanics, string theory, and even the standard model. These theories differ, and it seems difficult to find a link to connect them.

In The Theory of Everything, Solved author and researcher Lawrence J. Wippler explains a new theory and provides an alternate understanding of the workings of the atom. He found that the four fundamental forces of nature can be united by just three particles-the north and south magnetic monopoles and a particle of matter that represents an element. He describes how these particles interact with each other and how they are able to create all forms of energy, including magnetism and gravity.

Setting aside the presently known theories and laws of physics and attacking the problem from a different perspective, Wippler kept his assumptions simple when developing the three-particle theory. In The Theory of Everything, Solved Wippler shows that the north and south monopoles and a particle of matter are the building blocks of the universe.

by the Academies of the two countries - to the Italian-Swiss University of Lugano for the two-day-Symposium. The question of the meaning of "truth" is central to many areas of contemporary debate, whether between those subscribing to a post-Enlightenment view of the world and those who seek fundamental truth in religious texts, or between those maintaining that there are absolute truths and those believing facts to be social constructs. For some, the ultimate truth is revealed through religious faith and t- tual authority. Can this view be reconciled with an evidence-based, materialist, post-Enlightenment perspective of the truth as embraced by the natural sciences? If religion holds the key to the truth, which religion and which truths? During the five thematic sessions of the symposium, all attended by the same audience and by all the speakers and panel members, these and many other qu- tions, but in particular the one about the meaning of truth, were examined and debated. The whole range of perspectives represented on the panels and in the au- ence came to the fore. After the keynote lecture by Professor Simon Blackburn, the five sessions covered the following disciplines: philosophy, mathematics, physics, cosmology, the biological sciences including biodiversity and sustainability, h- tory, the social sciences, theology and religion. This volume contains the speakers' lectures, the corresponding reactions of the invited panel members as well as the panel and general discussions of the two-d- symposium.

In this essay collection, leading physicists, philosophers, and historians attempt to fill the empty theoretical ground in the foundations of information and address the related question of the limits to our knowledge of the world. Over recent decades, our practical approach to information and its exploitation has radically outpaced our theoretical understanding - to such a degree that reflection on the foundations may seem futile. But it is exactly fields such as quantum information, which are shifting the boundaries of the physically possible, that make a foundational understanding of information increasingly important. One of the recurring themes of the book is the claim by Eddington and Wheeler that information involves interaction and putting agents or observers centre stage. Thus, physical reality, in their view, is shaped by the questions we choose to put to it and is built up from the information residing at its core. This is the root of Wheeler's famous phrase "it from bit." After reading the stimulating essays collected in this volume, readers will be in a good position to decide whether they agree with this view.

Ordinary language and scientific language enable us to speak about, in a singular way (using demonstratives and names), what we recognize not to exist: fictions, the contents of our hallucinations, abstract objects, and various idealized but nonexistent objects that our scientific theories are often couched in terms of. Indeed, references to such nonexistent items-especially in the case of the application of mathematics to the sciences-are indispensable. We cannot avoid talking about such things. Scientific and ordinary languages thus enable us to say things about Pegasus or about hallucinated objects that are true (or false), such as "Pegasus was believed by the ancient Greeks to be a flying horse," or "That elf I'm now hallucinating over there is wearing blue shoes." Standard contemporary metaphysical views and semantic analyses of singular idioms on offer in contemporary philosophy of language have not successfully accommodated these routine practices of saying true and false things about the nonexistent while simultaneously honoring the insight that such things do not exist in any way at all (and have no properties). That is, philosophers often feel driven to claim that such objects do exist, or they claim that all our talk isn't genuine truth-apt talk, but only pretence. This book reconfigures metaphysics (and the role of metaphysics in semantics) in radical ways that allow the accommodation of our ordinary ways of speaking of what does not exist while retaining the absolutely crucial presupposition that such objects exist in no way at all, have no properties, and so are not the truth-makers for the truths and falsities that are about them.

This book reports on the results of the third edition of the premier conference in the field of philosophy of artificial intelligence, PT-AI 2017, held on November 4 - 5, 2017 at the University of Leeds, UK. It covers: advanced knowledge on key AI concepts, including complexity, computation, creativity, embodiment, representation and superintelligence; cutting-edge ethical issues, such as the AI impact on human dignity and society, responsibilities and rights of machines, as well as AI threats to humanity and AI safety; and cutting-edge developments in techniques to achieve AI, including machine learning, neural networks, dynamical systems. The book also discusses important applications of AI, including big data analytics, expert systems, cognitive architectures, and robotics. It offers a timely, yet very comprehensive snapshot of what is going on in the field of AI, especially at the interfaces between philosophy, cognitive science, ethics and computing.

Zygmunt Zawirski (1882-1948), an eminent and original Polish philosopher, belonged to the Lwow-Warsaw School (LWS) which left an indelible trace in logic, semiotics and philosophy of science. LWS was founded in 1895 by K. Twardowski, a disciple of Brentano, in the spirit of clarity, realism and analytic philosophy. LWS was more than 25 years older than the Vienna Circle (VC). This belies, inter alia, the not infrequently repeated statement that LWS was one of the many centres initiated by VC. The achievements of LWS in logic are well recognized, while those relating to philosophy of science are almost unknown. It is in order to fill this gap that some fragments of Zawirski's papers are presented, dealing mainly with causality, determinism, indeterminism and philosophical implications of relativity and quantum mechanics. His magnum opus "L'Evolution de la Notion du Temps" (Eugenio Rignano Prize, 1933) is devoted to time. Zawirski took into account all the issues which are at present widely discussed. The real value of these achievements can be understood better today than by his contemporaries. This text is suitable for all those interested in philosophy of science and philosophy, and history of ideas.

This book argues that ethical judgment by individual scientific policy advisors is more important than is often acknowledged. While many scientific policy advisors routinely present themselves as neutral or value free scientists, here is demonstrated that the ideal of scientific integrity as neutrality is misguided and that an alternative understanding is demanded. The book provides an overview of the type of social and political value decisions that have to be made in all phases of research and advice. It moves on to examine proposed procedures or guidelines for scientists and critically assesses plans for the democratization of decision making in science and scientific advice. The book offers a reflection on the practice of scientific advice that will appeal to practitioners and scholars of Public Administration, Public Management and Policy Analysis.

This book presents a systematic reconstruction of Leibniz's dynamics project (c. 1676-1700) that contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the concepts of physical causality in Leibniz's work and 17th century physics. It argues that Leibniz's theory of forces privileges the causal relationship between structural organization and physical phenomena instead of body-to-body mechanical causation. The mature conception of Leibnizian force is not the power of one body to cause motion in another, but a kind of structural causation related to the configuration of integral systems of bodies in physical evolution. By treating the immanent philosophy of Leibniz's dynamics, this book makes explicit the systematic aims and inherent limits of Leibniz's physical project, in addition to providing an alternative vision of the scientific understanding of the physical world in the late 17th and early 18th century.

How can we invent new certain knowledge in a methodical manner? This question stands at the heart of Salomon Maimon's theory of invention. Chikurel argues that Maimon's contribution to the ars inveniendi tradition lies in the methods of invention which he prescribes for mathematics. Influenced by Proclus' commentary on Elements, these methods are applied on examples taken from Euclid's Elements and Data. Centering around methodical invention and scientific genius, Maimon's philosophy is unique in an era glorifying the artistic genius, known as Geniezeit. Invention, primarily defined as constructing syllogisms, has implications on the notion of being given in intuition as well as in symbolic cognition. Chikurel introduces Maimon's notion of analysis in the broader sense, grounded not only on the principle of contradiction but on intuition as well. In philosophy, ampliative analysis is based on Maimon's logical term of analysis of the object, a term that has yet to be discussed in Maimonian scholarship. Following its introduction, a new version of the question quid juris? arises. In mathematics, Chikurel demonstrates how this conception of analysis originates from practices of Greek geometrical analysis.

Scientists use concepts and principles that are partly specific for their subject matter, but they also share part of them with colleagues working in different fields. Compare the biological notion of a 'natural kind' with the general notion of 'confirmation' of a hypothesis by certain evidence. Or compare the physical principle of the 'conservation of energy' and the general principle of 'the unity of science'. Scientists agree that all such notions and principles aren't as crystal clear as one might wish.
An important task of the philosophy of the special sciences, such as philosophy of physics, of biology and of economics, to mention only a few of the many flourishing examples, is the clarification of such subject specific concepts and principles. Similarly, an important task of 'general' philosophy of science is the clarification of concepts like 'confirmation' and principles like 'the unity of science'. It is evident that clarfication of concepts and principles only makes sense if one tries to do justice, as much as possible, to the actual use of these notions by scientists, without however following this use slavishly. That is, occasionally a philosopher may have good reasons for suggesting to scientists that they should deviate from a standard use. Frequently, this amounts to a plea for differentiation in order to stop debates at cross-purposes due to the conflation of different meanings.
While the special volumes of the series of Handbooks of the Philosophy of Science address topics relative to a specific discipline, this general volume deals with focal issues of a general nature.
After an editorial introduction about the dominant method of clarifying concepts and principles in philosophy of science, called explication, the first five chapters deal with the following subjects. Laws, theories, and research programs as units of empirical knowledge (Theo Kuipers), various past and contemporary perspectives on explanation (Stathis Psillos), the evaluation of theories in terms of their virtues (Ilkka Niiniluto), and the role of experiments in the natural sciences, notably physics and biology (Allan Franklin), and their role in the social sciences, notably economics (Wenceslao Gonzalez).
In the subsequent three chapters there is even more attention to various positions and methods that philosophers of science and scientists may favor: ontological, epistemological, and methodological positions (James Ladyman), reduction, integration, and the unity of science as aims in the sciences and the humanities (William Bechtel and Andrew Hamilton), and logical, historical and computational approaches to the philosophy of science (Atocha Aliseda and Donald Gillies).
The volume concludes with the much debated question of demarcating science from nonscience (Martin Mahner) and the rich European-American history of the philosophy of science in the 20th century (Friedrich Stadler).
- Comprehensive coverage of the philosophy of science written by leading philosophers in this field
- Clear style of writing for an interdisciplinary audience
- No specific pre-knowledge required

This text collects and translates a broad spectrum of philosophical reflections on technology from throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Highlighting work from Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain and Venezuela - with further representation from Argentina, Cuba, Colombia, Uruguay and the US - it introduces both affirmatives and critical studies by younger as well as established philosophers. Of special importance are the contributions by Marcos Gara de la Huerta (Chile), Hugo Padilla (Mexico), Miguel Quintanilla (Spain), Juan David Gara Bacca (Venezuela) and Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla (Venezuela) - all of whom are leading and influential authors and none of whom has previously appeared in English. For students and scholars concerned with the philosophy of science and technology, Latin American studies, and interdisciplinary science-technology-society programs, this text contains 25 papers addressing issues in the metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political, historical and anthropological analysis of technology.

Rationis Defensor is to be a volume of previously unpublished essays celebrating the life and work of Colin Cheyne. Colin was until recently Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Otago, a department that can boast of many famous philosophers among its past and present faculty and which has twice been judged as the strongest research department across all disciplines in governmental research assessments. Colin is the immediate past President of the Australasian Association for Philosophy (New Zealand Division). He is the author of Knowledge, Cause, and Abstract Objects: Causal Objections to Platonism (Springer, 2001) and the editor, with Vladimir Svoboda and Bjorn Jespersen, of Pavel Tichy's Collected Papers in Logic and Philosophy (University of Otago Press, 2005) and, with John Worrall, of Rationality and Reality: Conversations with Alan Musgrave (Springer, 2006). This volume celebrates the dedication to rational enquiry and the philosophical style of Colin Cheyne. It also celebrates the distinctive brand of naturalistic philosophy for which Otago has become known. Contributors to the volume include a wide variety of philosophers, all with a personal connection to Colin, and all of whom are, in their own way, defenders of rationality. "

Presents a unique study of Integrative Problem-Solving (IPS). The consideration of 'Decadence' is essential in the scientific study of environmental and other problems and their rigorous solution, because the broad context within which the problems emerge can affect their solution. Stochastic reasoning underlines the conceptual and methodological framework of IPS, and its formulation has a mathematical life of its own that accounts for the multidisciplinarity of real world problems, the multisourced uncertainties characterizing their solution, and the different thinking modes of the people involved. Only by interpolating between the full range of disciplines (including stochastic mathematics, physical science, neuropsychology, philosophy, and sociology) and the associated thinking modes can scientists arrive at a satisfactory account of problem-solving, and be able to distinguish between a technically complete problem-solution, and a solution that has social impact.

To the majority of people Einstein's theory is a complete mystery. Their attitude towards Einstein is like that of Mark Twain towards the writer of a work on mathematics: here was a man who had written an entire book of which Mark could not understand a single sentence. Einstein, therefore, is great in the public eye partly because he has made revolutionary discoveries which cannot be translated into the common tongue. We stand in proper awe of a man whose thoughts move on heights far beyond our range, whose achievements can be measured only by the few who are able to follow his reasoning and challenge his conclusions. There is, however, another side to his personality. It is revealed in the addresses, letters, and occasional writings brought together in this book. These fragments form a mosaic portrait of Einstein the man. Each one is, in a sense, complete in itself; it presents his views on some aspect of progress, education, peace, war, liberty, or other problems of universal interest. Their combined effect is to demonstrate that the Einstein we can all understand is no less great than the Einstein we take on trust.

The first international volume on the topic of biosemiotics and linguistics. It aims to establish a new relationship between linguistics and biology as based on shared semiotic foundation.

The book identifies the specific ethical aspects of sustainability and develops ethical tools to analyze them. It also provides a methodological framework to integrate ethical and scientific analyses of sustainability issues, and explores the notion of a new type of self-reflective inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability research. With this, the book aims to strengthen the overall ability of academics to contribute to the analysis and solution of sustainability issues in an inclusive and integrated way.

What is consciousness? Does free will exist?There exists a widespread conviction that the recent scientific discoveries, especially those related to physics and biology, in particular in contemporary neurosciences, question the traditional attempts to give meaning to life and a basis for our moral compass. Current scientific thinking usually identifies the mind with the mere exchange of electrical signals among neurons. It claims that consciousness is an irrelevant epiphenomenon and that introspection is an unreliable instrument to achieve any form of knowledge. Also, that the physical universe is causally closed and therefore all that occurs only has physical causes and all kind of freedom is excluded. The problem of assigning meaning and purpose to our lives, to the essential conceptions of the value of human life and social justice, becomes practically insoluble if one accepts the predominant notions that supposedly stem from contemporary science. The clash between the scientific and humanistic conception of human beings seems to have no option but to abandon the latter.The aim of this book is to show that, contrary to what is usually considered, current advances in science allow to re-evaluate the role of consciousness and human freedom without entering into contradiction with empirical evidence or scientific theories in place today. The book starts by analyzing the certainties provided by the scientific thought and philosophical reflection while discussing the role and content of physical theories, and in particular, quantum mechanics. It discusses in detail the nature of quantum objects and the role they may have in consciousness. In particular, it analyzes models that allow phenomena of quantum nature to manifest themselves in the brains of animals and humans, and account for many of the properties of consciousness. Finally, we analyze how self-conscious and free entities like persons emerge, making compatible the scientific view with a renewed and better supported way of perceiving people, their values and culture.