In three volumes, a distinguished group of scholars from a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the humanities and the arts contribute essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The range of the essays, as well as their originality, and their critical and historical depth, pay tribute to the extraordinary scope of Professor Cohen's intellectual interests, as a scientist-philosopher and a humanist, and also to his engagement in the world of social and political practice. Science, Mind and Art, Volume III of Essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen focuses on issues in contemporary epistemology, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind as well as on the relations of science and human values in ethical and religious thought. It also has important new work in contemporary metaphysics, as well as in the history of philosophy, and on questions of multiculturalism in science education. Contributors include Paul Feyerabend, Adolf GrA1/4nbaum, Joseph Margolis, JoAlle Proust, Erazim Kohak, Elie Wiesel, Miriam Bienenstock, and John Silber, among others.

The essays in this Festschrift are celebrations of the human mind in its manifold expressions - philosophical, scientific, historical, aesthetic, political - and in its various modes - analytical, systematic, critical, imaginative, constructive. They are offered to Robert S. Cohen on the occasion of his 70th birthday, in acknowledgment of his own extra ordinary participation in the life of the mind, and of his unfailing encouragement and facilitation of the participation of others. It is fitting that these volumes should appear in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, the series which he co-founded so many years ago, and of which he has been the principal editor for more than three decades. (These are perhaps the only volumes of that series which he has not edited or co-edited ) The three volumes that constitute this Festschrift cover the range of Cohen's interests as a philosopher/scientistlhumanist, as they also represent the spectrum of his professional and personal friendships. (Regretfully, the editors could not include contributions from more of them here. ) The first volume centers around the philosophy and history of the natural sciences and mathematics; Volume Two collects essays related to Marxism and science, philosophy of culture and the social sciences; and the third volume focuses on science and the humanistic understanding in art, epistemology, religion and ethics."

In three volumes, a distinguished group of scholars from a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the humanities and the arts contribute essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The range of the essays, as well as their originality, and their critical and historical depth, pay tribute to the extraordinary scope of Professor Cohen's intellectual interests, as a scientist-philosopher and a humanist, and also to his engagement in the world of social and political practice. The essays presented in Physics, Philosophy, and the Scientific Community (Volume I of Essays in Honor of Robert S. Cohen) focus on philosophical and historical issues in contemporary physics: on the origins and conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics, on the reception and understanding of Bohr's and Einstein's work, on the emergence of quantum electrodynamics, and on some of the sharp philosophical and scientific issues that arise in current scientific practice (e.g. in superconductivity research). In addition, several essays deal with critical issues within the philosophy of science, both historical and contemporary: e.g. with Cartesian notions of mechanism in the philosophy of biology; with the language and logic of science - e.g. with new insights concerning the issue of a physicalistic' language in the arguments of Neurath, Carnap and Wittgenstein; with the notion of elementary logic'; and with rational and non-rational elements in the history of science. Two original contributions to the history of mathematics and some studies in the comparative sociology of science round off this outstanding collection.

It is fitting that Professor Dirk Jan Struik be greeted with this melange of mathematical, scientific, historical, sociological and political essays. The authors are also appropriately varied: different countries, outlooks, religions, generations, and we suppose - of course we did not as- different politics too. Many more would have joined us, we know, but the good friends in this book make a fine and representative assembly of the intersection of two (mathematical ) classes: affectionately respect ful admirers of Dirk Struik, and the best thinkers of this troubled century. Struik has been among the most steadfast supporters of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, that discussion group which we have been holding at Boston University since 1960, but his luminous collaboration has been welcome, in Boston and Cambridge, for nearly five decades among mathematicians, physicists, philosophical and political thinkers, and especially among the students. It has not mattered whether they have been his own students or not, whether at M.LT. or elsewhere, whether scholars or dropouts, nature-lovers or book worms, anarchists or Republicans, Catholics or Unitarians, Communists or communists, prim or liberated. No doubt he has his preferences But the main thing for Struik has been to educate and respect the other person."

In this volume of the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, we present a collection of articles on philosophical issues in contemporary physics. The principal domain of these investigations is quantum physics. There are also articles on questions in classical mechanics (Hooker), and relativity theory (papapetrou and Stachel), as well as a monographic essay in evolutionary epistemology (yilmaz), applying the conceptual and mathematical understanding of special relativistic quantum field theory to set forth a theory of the evolution and adaptation of perceptual structures. Finally, in addition, there are two essays on classical issues in the philosophy of nature - one, on types of continuity (Capek), which suggests an analogy between the perceptual and the quantum domains; the other, on causality, the first translation into English of a minor classic in the philosophical understanding of modern physics, H. Berg- man's well-known but little-read Der Kampf um das Kausalgesetz in der jiingsten Physik (Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1929). On the occasion of this publication, Professor Bergman has kindly contributed an introductory essay, 'Personal Remembrances of Albert Einstein'. Of the seven essays on quantum mechanics, four are on quantum logic (Marlow, Heelan, Bub and Demopoulos, Van Fraassen), the last being a critical survey of various current proposals for quantum logics; the re- maining three (MacKinnon, Stachel and Van Fraassen) are concerned with both the formal issues and the ontological commitments of quantum physics.

The last decades have seen major reformations in the philosophy and history of science. What has been called 'post-positivist' philosophy of science has introduced radically new concerns with historical, social, and valuative components of scientific thought in the natural sciences, and has raised up the demons of relativism, subjectivism and sociologism to haunt the once calm precincts of objectivity and realism. Though these disturbances intruded upon what had seemed to be the logically well-ordered domain of the philoso phy of the natural sciences, they were no news to the social sciences. There, the messy business of human action, volition, decision, the considerations of practical purposes and social values, the role of ideology and the problem of rationality, had long conspired to defeat logical-reconstructionist programs. The attempt to tarne the social sciences to the harness of a strict hypothetico deductive model of explanation failed. Within the social sciences, phenome nological, Marxist, hermeneuticist, action-theoretical approaches vied in attempting to capture the distinctiveness of human phenomena. In fact, the philosophy of the natural sciences, even in its 'hard' forms, has itself become infected with the increasing reflection upon the role of such social-scientific categories, in the attempt to understand the nature of the scientific enterprise."

The death of Imre Lakatos on February 2, 1974 was a personal and philosophical loss to the worldwide circle of his friends, colleagues and students. This volume reflects the range of his interests in mathematics, logic, politics and especially in the history and methodology of the sciences. Indeed, Lakatos was a man in search of rationality in all of its forms. He thought he had found it in the historical development of scientific knowledge, yet he also saw rationality endangered everywhere. To honor Lakatos is to honor his sharp and aggressive criticism as well as his humane warmth and his quick wit. He was a person to love and to struggle with. PAUL K. FEYERABEND ROBERT S. COHEN MARX W. WARTOFSKY TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface VII JOHN WORRALL / Imre Lakatos (1922-1974): Philosopher of Mathematics and Philosopher of Science JOSEPH AGASSI / The Lakatosian Revolution 9 23 D. M. ARMSTRONG / Immediate Perception w. W. BAR TLEY, III/On Imre Lakatos 37 WILLIAM BERKSON / Lakatos One and Lakatos Two: An Appreciation 39 I. B. COHEN / William Whewell and the Concept of Scientific Revolution 55 L. JONATHAN COHEN / How Can One Testimony Corroborate Another? 65 R. S. COHEN / Constraints on Science 79 GENE D'AMOUR/ Research Programs, Rationality, and Ethics 87 YEHUDA ELKANA / Introduction: Culture, Cultural System and Science 99 PA UL K.

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 awareness and human practice, all set within his endless inquiries into cultural formations from the entire sweep of human experience, must, we believe, be confronted by anyone who wants to understand the scientific consciousness. Indeed, we may wish to situate the changing theories of nature, and of humankind in nature, within a philosophical account of men and women as social practi tioners and as sensing, thinking, feeling centers of privacy; and then we will see the work of Hegel as a major effort to mediate between the purest of epistemological investigations and the most practical of the political and the religious. This book, long delayed to our deep regret, derives from a Symposium on Hegel and the Sciences which was sponsored jointly by the Hegel Society of America and the Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science a decade ago."

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 of Karel Berka (on scales of measurement) and A. A. Zinov'ev (on a non-tradi tional theory of quantifiers). Just how intriguing these results (or conjectures?) seem to us may be seen from some brief quotations: (1) Judson Webb: " . . . . the abstract machine concept has many of the appropriate kinds of properties for modelling living, reproducing, rule following, self-reflecting, accident-prone, and lucky creatures . . . the a priori logical results relevant to the abstract machine concept, above all Godel's, could not conceivably have turned out any better for the mechanist. " (2) M. L. Dalla Chiara: " . . . modal interpretation (of quantum logic) shows clearly that it possesses a logical meaning which is quite independent of quantum mechanics. " (3) Isaac Levi: (as against Peirce and Popper) " . . . infallibilism is con sistent with corrigibilism, and a view which respects avoidance of error is an important desideratum for science."

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 of the papers presented to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science in the academic year 1961-1962. There is no central theme nor any dominant approach in this colloquium. Initiated in 1960 as an inter-university interdisciplinary faculty group, the Colloqnium is intended to foster creative and regular exchange of research and opinion, to provide a forum for professional discussion in the philosophy of science, and to stimulate the development of academic programs in philosophy of science in the colleges and universities of metropolitan Boston. The base of the Colloquium is our philosophic and scientific community, as broad and heterodox as the academic, cultural and techno logical complex in and about this city. The Colloquium has been supported in its first full year, as an inter-institutional cooperative association, by a generous grant to Boston University from the U. S. National Science Foundation. We are most grateful for this help."

These essays on the conceptual understanding of modern physics strike directly at some of the principal difficulties faced by contemporary philos ophers of physical science. Moreover, they reverberate to earlier and classical struggles with those difficulties. Each of these essays may be seen as both a commentary on our predecessors and an original analytic interpretation. They come from work of the past decade, most from meetings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, and they demonstrate again how problematic the fundamentals of our understanding of nature still are. The themes will seem to be familiar but the variations are not only ingenious but also stimulating, in some ways counterpoint. And so once again we are confronted with issues of space and time, irreversibility and measurement, matter and process, hypothetical reality and verifiability, explanation and reduction, phenomenal base and sophisticated theory, unified science and the unity of nature, and the limits of conventionalism. We are grateful for the cooperation of our contributors, and in particular for the agreement of George Ellis and C. F. von Weizsiicker to allow us to use previously published papers."

This selection of papers that were presented (or nearly so ) to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during the seventies fairly re presents some of the most disturbing issues of scientific knowledge in these years. To the distant observer, it may seem that the defense of rational standards, objective reference, methodical self-correction, even the distin guishing of the foolish from the sensible and the truth-seeking from the ideological, has nearly collapsed. In fact, the defense may be seen to have shifted; the knowledge business came under scrutiny decades ago and, indeed, from the time of Francis Bacon and even far earlier, the practicality of the discovery of knowledge was either hailed or lamented. So the defense may be founded on the premise that science may yet be liberating. In that case, the analysis of philosophical issues expands to embrace issues of social interest and social function, of instrumentality and arbitrary perspective, of biological constraints (upon knowledge as well as upon the species-wide behavior of human beings in other relationships too), of distortions due to explanatory metaphors and imposed categories, and of radical comparisons among the perspectives of different civilizations. Some of our contributors are frankly programmatic, showing how problems must be formulated afresh, how evasions must be identified and omissions rectified, but they do not reach their own completion."

The fourth volume of Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science consists mainly of papers which were contributed to our Colloquium during the past few years. The volume represents a wide range of interests in contem porary philosophy of science: issues in the philosophy of mind and of language, the neurophysiology of perceptual and linguistic behavior, philosophy of history and of the social sciences, and studies in the fun damental categories and methods of philosophy and the inter-relation ships of the sciences with ethics and metaphysics. Papers on the logic and methods of the natural sciences, including biological, physical and mathematical topics appear in the fifth volume of our series. We have included in the present volume the first English translation of the classic and fundamental work on aphasia by Carl Wernicke, together with a lucid and appreciative guide to his work by Dr. Norman Geschwind. The papers were not written to form a coherent volume, nor have they been edited with such a purpose. They represent current work-in progress, both in the United States and in Europe. Although most of the authors are philosophers, it is worth noting that we have essays of philosophical significance here written by a sociologist, an anthropologist, a political scientist, and by three neurophysiologists. We hope that collaboration among working scientists and working philosophers may develop further."

Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, 1962-1964

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 of Karel Berka (on scales of measurement) and A. A. Zinov'ev (on a non-tradi tional theory of quantifiers). Just how intriguing these results (or conjectures?) seem to us may be seen from some brief quotations: (1) Judson Webb: " . . . . the abstract machine concept has many of the appropriate kinds of properties for modelling living, reproducing, rule following, self-reflecting, accident-prone, and lucky creatures . . . the a priori logical results relevant to the abstract machine concept, above all Godel's, could not conceivably have turned out any better for the mechanist. " (2) M. L. Dalla Chiara: " . . . modal interpretation (of quantum logic) shows clearly that it possesses a logical meaning which is quite independent of quantum mechanics. " (3) Isaac Levi: (as against Peirce and Popper) " . . . infallibilism is con sistent with corrigibilism, and a view which respects avoidance of error is an important desideratum for science."

In three volumes, a distinguished group of scholars from a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the humanities and the arts contribute essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The range of the essays, as well as their originality, and their critical and historical depth, pay tribute to the extraordinary scope of Professor Cohen's intellectual interests, as a scientist-philosopher and a humanist, and also to his engagement in the world of social and political practice. Science, Mind and Art, Volume III of Essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen focuses on issues in contemporary epistemology, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind as well as on the relations of science and human values in ethical and religious thought. It also has important new work in contemporary metaphysics, as well as in the history of philosophy, and on questions of multiculturalism in science education. Contributors include Paul Feyerabend, Adolf Grunbaum, Joseph Margolis, Joelle Proust, Erazim Kohak, Elie Wiesel, Miriam Bienenstock, and John Silber, among others.

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 awareness and human practice, all set within his endless inquiries into cultural formations from the entire sweep of human experience, must, we believe, be confronted by anyone who wants to understand the scientific consciousness. Indeed, we may wish to situate the changing theories of nature, and of humankind in nature, within a philosophical account of men and women as social practi tioners and as sensing, thinking, feeling centers of privacy; and then we will see the work of Hegel as a major effort to mediate between the purest of epistemological investigations and the most practical of the political and the religious. This book, long delayed to our deep regret, derives from a Symposium on Hegel and the Sciences which was sponsored jointly by the Hegel Society of America and the Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science a decade ago."

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 of the papers presented to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science in the academic year 1961-1962. There is no central theme nor any dominant approach in this colloquium. Initiated in 1960 as an inter-university interdisciplinary faculty group, the Colloqnium is intended to foster creative and regular exchange of research and opinion, to provide a forum for professional discussion in the philosophy of science, and to stimulate the development of academic programs in philosophy of science in the colleges and universities of metropolitan Boston. The base of the Colloquium is our philosophic and scientific community, as broad and heterodox as the academic, cultural and techno logical complex in and about this city. The Colloquium has been supported in its first full year, as an inter-institutional cooperative association, by a generous grant to Boston University from the U. S. National Science Foundation. We are most grateful for this help."

The fourth volume of Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science consists mainly of papers which were contributed to our Colloquium during the past few years. The volume represents a wide range of interests in contem porary philosophy of science: issues in the philosophy of mind and of language, the neurophysiology of perceptual and linguistic behavior, philosophy of history and of the social sciences, and studies in the fun damental categories and methods of philosophy and the inter-relation ships of the sciences with ethics and metaphysics. Papers on the logic and methods of the natural sciences, including biological, physical and mathematical topics appear in the fifth volume of our series. We have included in the present volume the first English translation of the classic and fundamental work on aphasia by Carl Wernicke, together with a lucid and appreciative guide to his work by Dr. Norman Geschwind. The papers were not written to form a coherent volume, nor have they been edited with such a purpose. They represent current work-in progress, both in the United States and in Europe. Although most of the authors are philosophers, it is worth noting that we have essays of philosophical significance here written by a sociologist, an anthropologist, a political scientist, and by three neurophysiologists. We hope that collaboration among working scientists and working philosophers may develop further."

This selection of papers that were presented (or nearly so ) to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during the seventies fairly re presents some of the most disturbing issues of scientific knowledge in these years. To the distant observer, it may seem that the defense of rational standards, objective reference, methodical self-correction, even the distin guishing of the foolish from the sensible and the truth-seeking from the ideological, has nearly collapsed. In fact, the defense may be seen to have shifted; the knowledge business came under scrutiny decades ago and, indeed, from the time of Francis Bacon and even far earlier, the practicality of the discovery of knowledge was either hailed or lamented. So the defense may be founded on the premise that science may yet be liberating. In that case, the analysis of philosophical issues expands to embrace issues of social interest and social function, of instrumentality and arbitrary perspective, of biological constraints (upon knowledge as well as upon the species-wide behavior of human beings in other relationships too), of distortions due to explanatory metaphors and imposed categories, and of radical comparisons among the perspectives of different civilizations. Some of our contributors are frankly programmatic, showing how problems must be formulated afresh, how evasions must be identified and omissions rectified, but they do not reach their own completion."

This third volume of Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science contains papers which are based upon Colloquia from 1964 to 1966. In most cases, they have been substantially modified subsequent to presentation and discussion. Once again we publish work which goes beyond technical analysis of scientific theories and explanations in order to include philo sophical reflections upon the history of science and also upon the still problematic interactions between metaphysics and science. The philo sophical history of scientific ideas has increasingly been recognized as part of the philosophy of science, and likewise the cultural context of the genesis of such ideas. There is no school or attitude to be taken as de fining the scope or criteria of our Colloquium, and so we seek to under stand both analytic and historical aspects of science. This volume, as the previous two, constitutes a substantial part of our final report to the U. S. National Science Foundation, which has continued its support of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science by a grant to Boston University. That report will be concluded by a subse quent volume of these Studies. It is a pleasure to record our thanks to the Foundation for its confidence and funds. We dedicate this book to the memory of Norwood Russell Hanson. During this academic year of 1966-67, this beloved and distinguished American philosopher participated in our Colloquium, and he did so before."

These essays on the conceptual understanding of modern physics strike directly at some of the principal difficulties faced by contemporary philos ophers of physical science. Moreover, they reverberate to earlier and classical struggles with those difficulties. Each of these essays may be seen as both a commentary on our predecessors and an original analytic interpretation. They come from work of the past decade, most from meetings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, and they demonstrate again how problematic the fundamentals of our understanding of nature still are. The themes will seem to be familiar but the variations are not only ingenious but also stimulating, in some ways counterpoint. And so once again we are confronted with issues of space and time, irreversibility and measurement, matter and process, hypothetical reality and verifiability, explanation and reduction, phenomenal base and sophisticated theory, unified science and the unity of nature, and the limits of conventionalism. We are grateful for the cooperation of our contributors, and in particular for the agreement of George Ellis and C. F. von Weizsiicker to allow us to use previously published papers."

The last decades have seen major reformations in the philosophy and history of science. What has been called 'post-positivist' philosophy of science has introduced radically new concerns with historical, social, and valuative components of scientific thought in the natural sciences, and has raised up the demons of relativism, subjectivism and sociologism to haunt the once calm precincts of objectivity and realism. Though these disturbances intruded upon what had seemed to be the logically well-ordered domain of the philoso phy of the natural sciences, they were no news to the social sciences. There, the messy business of human action, volition, decision, the considerations of practical purposes and social values, the role of ideology and the problem of rationality, had long conspired to defeat logical-reconstructionist programs. The attempt to tarne the social sciences to the harness of a strict hypothetico deductive model of explanation failed. Within the social sciences, phenome nological, Marxist, hermeneuticist, action-theoretical approaches vied in attempting to capture the distinctiveness of human phenomena. In fact, the philosophy of the natural sciences, even in its 'hard' forms, has itself become infected with the increasing reflection upon the role of such social-scientific categories, in the attempt to understand the nature of the scientific enterprise."

The essays in this Festschrift are celebrations of the human mind in its manifold expressions - philosophical, scientific, historical, aesthetic, political - and in its various modes - analytical, systematic, critical, imaginative, constructive. They are offered to Robert S. Cohen on the occasion of his 70th birthday, in acknowledgment of his own extra ordinary participation in the life of the mind, and of his unfailing encouragement and facilitation of the participation of others. It is fitting that these volumes should appear in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, the series which he co-founded so many years ago, and of which he has been the principal editor for more than three decades. (These are perhaps the only volumes of that series which he has not edited or co-edited ) The three volumes that constitute this Festschrift cover the range of Cohen's interests as a philosopher/scientistlhumanist, as they also represent the spectrum of his professional and personal friendships. (Regretfully, the editors could not include contributions from more of them here. ) The first volume centers around the philosophy and history of the natural sciences and mathematics; Volume Two collects essays related to Marxism and science, philosophy of culture and the social sciences; and the third volume focuses on science and the humanistic understanding in art, epistemology, religion and ethics."

In three volumes, a distinguished group of scholars from a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the humanities and the arts contribute essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The range of the essays, as well as their originality, and their critical and historical depth, pay tribute to the extraordinary scope of Professor Cohen's intellectual interests, as a scientist-philosopher and a humanist, and also to his engagement in the world of social and political practice. The essays presented in Physics, Philosophy, and the Scientific Community (Volume I of Essays in Honor of Robert S. Cohen) focus on philosophical and historical issues in contemporary physics: on the origins and conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics, on the reception and understanding of Bohr's and Einstein's work, on the emergence of quantum electrodynamics, and on some of the sharp philosophical and scientific issues that arise in current scientific practice (e.g. in superconductivity research). In addition, several essays deal with critical issues within the philosophy of science, both historical and contemporary: e.g. with Cartesian notions of mechanism in the philosophy of biology; with the language and logic of science - e.g. with new insights concerning the issue of a physicalistic' language in the arguments of Neurath, Carnap and Wittgenstein; with the notion of elementary logic'; and with rational and non-rational elements in the history of science. Two original contributions to the history of mathematics and some studies in the comparative sociology of science round off this outstanding collection.