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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. The core focus of the study is the attempt
to elucidate how and under what conditions scientific knowledge
about social facts, empirically justified and theoretically
embedded, can be obtained. The empirical basis of knowledge within
the social sciences forms a phenomenological concept of experience.
According to Kaufmann, this concept of experience exhibits a
complex structure. Within the meaning-interpretation of human
action as the core of knowledge in the social sciences, this
structure reaches out across the isolated act of verification
toward the synthesis of external and internal experiences. The book
opens with a detailed and useful introduction by Ingeborg K.
Helling, which introduces the historical and theoretical background
of Kaufmann's study and specifically illuminates his relation to
Alfred Schütz and John Dewey. Finally, it contains interviews with
and letters to members of his family, colleagues and students.
This fascinating text is an exploration of the relationship between
science and philosophy in the early nineteenth century. This
subject remains one of the most misunderstood topics in modern
European intellectual history. 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.
In September 2007, more than 100 philosophers came to Prague with
the determination to approach Karl Popper's philosophy as a source
of inspiration in many areas of our intellectual endeavor. This
volume is a result of that effort. Topics cover Popper's views on
rationality, scientific methodology, the evolution of knowledge and
democracy; and since Popper's philosophy has always had a strong
interdisciplinary influence, part of the volume discusses the
impact of his ideas in such areas as education, economics,
psychology, biology, or ethics. The concept of falsification, the
problem of demarcation, the ban on induction, or the role of the
empirical basis, along with the provocative parallels between
historicism, holism and totalitarianism, have always caused
controversies. The aim of this volume is not to smooth them but
show them as a challenge. In this time when the traditional role of
reason in the Western thought is being undermined, Popper's
non-foundationist model of reason brings the Enlightenment message
into a new perspective. Popper believed that the open society was
vulnerable, due precisely to its tolerance of otherness. This is a
matter of great urgency in the modern world, as cultures based on
different values gain prominence. The processes related to the
extending of the EU, or the increasing economic globalization also
raise questions about openness and democracy. The volume's aim is
to show the vitality of critical rationalism in addressing and
responding to the problems of this time and this world.
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. The core focus of the study is the attempt
to elucidate how and under what conditions scientific knowledge
about social facts, empirically justified and theoretically
embedded, can be obtained. The empirical basis of knowledge within
the social sciences forms a phenomenological concept of experience.
According to Kaufmann, this concept of experience exhibits a
complex structure. Within the meaning-interpretation of human
action as the core of knowledge in the social sciences, this
structure reaches out across the isolated act of verification
toward the synthesis of external and internal experiences. The book
opens with a detailed and useful introduction by Ingeborg K.
Helling, which introduces the historical and theoretical background
of Kaufmann's study and specifically illuminates his relation to
Alfred Schutz and John Dewey. Finally, it contains interviews with
and letters to members of his family, colleagues and students."
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 Law of Causality and its Limits was the principal philosophical
work of the physicist turned philosopher, Philipp Frank. Born in
Vienna on March 20, 1884, Frank died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on
July 21, 1966. He received his doctorate in 1907 at the University
of Vienna in theoretical physics, having studied under Ludwig
Boltzmann; his sub sequent research in physics and mathematics was
represented by more than 60 scientific papers. Moreover his great
success as teacher and expositor was recognized throughout the
scientific world with publication of his collaborative Die
Differentialgleichungen der Mechanik und Physik, with Richard von
Mises, in 1925-27. Frank was responsible for the second volume, on
physics, and especially noted for his authoritative article on
classical Hamiltonian mechanics and optics. Among his earliest
papers were those, beginning in 1908, devoted to special
relativity, which together with general relativity and physical
cosmology occupied him throughout his life. Already in 1907, Frank
published his seminal paper 'Kausalgesetz und Erfahrung'
('Experience and the Law of Causality'), much later collected with
a splendid selection of his essays on philosophy of science, in
English (1941c and 1949g, in our Bibliography). Joining the first
'Vienna Circle' in the first decade of the 20th century, with Hans
Hahn, mathematician, and Otto Neurath, sociologist and economist,
and deeply influenced by studies of Ernst Mach's critical
conceptual histories of science and by the striking challenge of
Poincare and Duhem, Frank continued his epistemological
investigations."
The splendid achievements of Japanese mathematics and natural
sciences during the second half of our 20th century have been a
revival, a Renaissance, of the practical sciences developed along
with the turn toward Western thinking in the late 19th century. The
equally admirable results of Japanese philosophers (and historians)
of science in our time followed upon a period less congenial to
Western interests in the philosophical questions linked to modern
science; and this reluctance to confront the epistemology, not even
the humane significance, of the sciences went along with devotion
to other Western trends. Thus, with the 'new' Japan of the Meiji
restoration of 1868, and the early introduction of Western
philosophy in the subsequent decade by Nishi Amane, a period of
intellectual attraction to utilitarian, positivist, evolutionary,
even materialist outlooks was soon replaced by devotion to
scholarly work on Kant and Hegel, on ethical and general
philosophical idealism. These studies often could emulate the
critical spirit (the philosopher Onishe Hajime, praised for his own
critical independence, was known as the Japanese Kant) but the neo
Kantian and neo-Hegelian developments were not much affected by
either empirical sciences or theoretical speculations about Nature.
The pre-eminent philosopher of Japan ofthe first half of our
century was Nishida Kitaro, with a pioneering treatise A Study of
the Good, who, with his leading student Tanabe Hajime, formed the
'Kyoto School' of pre-war philosophy.
The various efforts to develop a Marxist philosophy of science in
the one time 'socialist' countries were casualties of the Cold War.
Even those who were in no way Marxists, and those who were
undogmatic in their Marxisms, now confront a new world. All the
more harsh is it for those who worked within the framework imposed
upon professional philosophy by the official ideology. Here in this
book, we are concerned with some 31 colleagues from the late German
Democratic Republic, representative in their scholarship of the
achievements of a curiously creative while dismayingly repressive
period. The literature published in the GDR was blossoming,
certainly in the final decade, but it developed within a
totalitarian regime where personal careers either advanced or
faltered through the private protection or denunciation of mentors.
We will never know how many good minds did not enter the field of
philosophy in the first place due to their prudent judgments that
there was a virtual requirement that the candidate join the
Socialist Unity (i.e. Communist) Party. Among those who started
careers and were sidetracked, the record is now beginning to be
revealed; and for the rest, the price of 'doing philosophy' was
mostly silence in the face of harassments the likes of which make
academic politics in the West seem child's play."
Azarya Polikarov was born in Sofia on October 9, 1921. Through the
many stages of politics, economy, and culture in Bulgaria, he
maintained his rational humanity and scientific curiosity. He has
been a splendid teacher and an accomplished critical philosopher
exploring the conceptual and historical vicis situdes of physics in
modern times and also the science policies that favor or threaten
human life in these decades. Equally and easily at home both within
the Eastern and Central European countries and within the Western
world. Polikarov is known as a collaborating genial colleague, a
working scholar. not at all a visiting academic tourist. He
understands the philosophy of science from within, in all its
developments, from the classical beginnings through the great ages
of Galilean, Newtonian. Maxwellian science. to the times of the
stunning discoveries and imaginative theories of his beloved
Einstein and Bohr of the twentieth century. Moreover, his
understanding has come along with a deep knowledge of the
scientific topics in themselves. Looking at our Appendix listing
his principal publications, we see that Polikarov's public research
career, after years of science teaching and popular science
writing, began in the fifties in Bulgarian, Russian and German
journals.
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."
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."
In this stimulating study of the logical character of selected
fundamental topics of physics, Zinov'ev has written the first, and
major, stage of a general semantics of science. In that sense he
has shown, by rigorous examples, that in certain basic and
surprising respects we may envision a reducibility of science to
logic; and further that we may detect and eliminate frequent
confusion of abstract and empirical objects. In place of a near
chaos of unplanned theoretical languages, we may look toward a
unified and epistemologically clarified general scientific
language. In the course of this work, Zinov'ev treats issues of
continuing urgency: the non-trivial import of Zeno's paradoxes; the
residually significant meaning of 'cause' in scientific
explanation; the need for lucidity in the conceptions of 'wave' and
'particle', and his own account of these; the logic of fields and
of field propagation; Kant's antimonies today; and, in a startling
aper u, an insightful note on 'measuring' consciousness. Logical
physics, an odd-appearing field of investigation, is a part of
logic; and as logic, logical physics deals with the linguistic
expressions of time, space, particle, wave, field, causality, etc.
How far this may be taken without explicit use of, or reference to,
empirical statements is still to be clarified, but Zinov'ev takes a
sympathetic reader well beyond a realist's expectation, beyond the
classical conventionalist. Zinov'ev presents his investigations in
four chapters and an appendix of technical elucidation.
In his letter to B. K. Matilal, dated February 20, 1977, the author
of this book wrote about his work on Advaita-Vedanta: " ... It was
not to present Advaita in the light of current problems of the
logic of scientific discovery and modern philosophy of language ...
but just the contrary. I do not believe that any 'logic without
metaphysics' or 'philosophy of language without thinking' is
possible." This passage alone may serve as the clue to Zilberman's
understanding and mode of explaining that specific and highly
original approach to (not 'of' ) philosophy that he himself
nicknamed modal. Four points would seem to me to be most essential
here. First, a philosophy cannot have 'anything un-thinking' as its
object of investigation. Language, to Zilberman, is not a
phenomenon of con sciousness but a spontaneously working natural
mechanism (like, for instance, 'mind' to some Buddhist
philosophers). It may, of course, be come used for and by
consciousness; consciousness may see itself, so to speak, in
language, but only secondarily, only as in one of its modifica
tions, derivations or modalities. That is why to Zilberman
linguistic- as to Kant psychology - cannot and must not figure as
the primary ground for any philosophical investigation."
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 philosophical writings of Otto Neurath, and their central
themes, have been described many times, by Carnap in his
authobiographical essay, by Ayer and Morris and Kraft decades ago,
by Haller and Hegselmann and Nemeth and others in recent years. How
extraordinary Neurath's insights were, even when they perhaps were
more to be seen as conjectures, aperfus, philosophical hypotheses,
tools to be taken up and used in the practical workshop of life;
and how prescient he was. A few examples may be helpful: (1)
Neurath's 1912 lecture on the conceptual critique of the idea of a
pleasure maximum [ON 50] substantially anticipates the development
of aspects of analytical ethics in mid-century. (2) Neurath's 1915
paper on alternative hypotheses, and systems of hypotheses, within
the science of physical optics [ON 81] gives a lucid account of the
historically-developed clashing theories of light, their un
realized further possibilities, and the implied contingencies of
theory survival in science, all within his framework that antedates
not only the quite similar work of Kuhn so many years later but
also of the Vienna Circle too. (3) Neurath's subsequent paper of
1916 investigates the inadequacies of various attempts to classify
systems of hypotheses [ON 82, and this volume], and sets forth a
pioneering conception of the metatheoretical task of scientific
philosophy.
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."
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 their own words; and likewise we see that Tamas has built
upon the historians and commentators, upon the pioneering
historical investigation of the categories by Trendelenburg a
century ago and by Bochenski in our days. Tamas has two principal
goals here: to investigate the logic, which is to say the structure
and the relations, of the philosophical categories; and to set
forth the logic of thought which may then be based upon the
critically established system of categories obtained by that
investigation. Ancillary but of striking value is his style of
historical relevance which enables the reader to engage in a
discussion that is both analytically sharp and developmentally
insightful. Furthermore, Tamas draws upon his contem porary
colleagues with similar critical respect: Lukasiewicz, Quine,
Patzig, Menne, Tavanets and others."
By North-American standards, philosophy is not new in Quebec: the
first men tion of philosophy lectures given by a Jesuit in the
College de Quebec (founded 1635) dates from 1665, and the oldest
logic manuscript dates from 1679. In English-speaking universities
such as McGill (founded 1829), philosophy began to be taught later,
during the second half of the 19th century. The major influence on
English-speaking philosophers was, at least initially, that of
Scottish Empiricism. On the other hand, the strong influence of the
Catholic Church on French-Canadian society meant that the staff of
the facultes of the French-speaking universities consisted, until
recently, almost entirely of Thomist philosophers. There was
accordingly little or no work in modern Formal Logic and Philosophy
of Science and precious few contacts between the philosophical
communities. In the late forties, Hugues Leblanc was a young
student wanting to learn Formal Logic. He could not find anyone in
Quebec to teach him and he went to study at Harvard University
under the supervision of W. V. Quine. His best friend Maurice L'
Abbe had left, a year earlier, for Princeton to study with Alonzo
Church. After receiving his Ph. D from Harvard in 1948, Leblanc
started his profes sional career at Bryn Mawr College, where he
stayed until 1967. He then went to Temple University, where he
taught until his retirement in 1992, serving as Chair of the
Department of Philosophy from 1973 until 1979.
By North-American standards, philosophy is not new in Quebec: the
first men tion of philosophy lectures given by a Jesuit in the
College de Quebec (founded 1635) dates from 1665, and the oldest
logic manuscript dates from 1679. In English-speaking universities
such as McGill (founded 1829), philosophy began to be taught later,
during the second half of the 19th century. The major influence on
English-speaking philosophers was, at least initially, that of
Scottish Empiricism. On the other hand, the strong influence of the
Catholic Church on French-Canadian society meant that the staff of
the facultes of the French-speaking universities consisted, until
recently, almost entirely of Thomist philosophers. There was
accordingly little or no work in modem Formal Logic and Philosophy
of Science and precious few contacts between the philosophical
communities. In the late forties, Hugues Leblanc was a young
student wanting to learn Formal Logic. He could not find anyone in
Quebec to teach him and he went to study at Harvard University
under the supervision of W. V. Quine. His best friend Maurice L'
Abbe had left, a year earlier, for Princeton to study with Alonzo
Church. After receiving his Ph. D from Harvard in 1948, Leblanc
started his profes sional career at Bryn Mawr College, where he
stayed until 1967. He then went to Temple University, where he
taught until his retirement in 1992, serving as Chair of the
Department of Philosophy from 1973 until 1979.
Within the last ten years, the interest of historians and
philosophers of science in the epistemological writings of the
Polish medical microbiologist Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961), who had up
to then been almost completely unknown, has advanced with great
strides. His main writings on epistemological questions were
published in the mid-1930's, but they remained almost unnoticed.
Today, however, one may rightly call Fleck a 'classical' figure
both of episte mology and of the historical sociology of science,
one whose works are comparable with Popper's Logic of Scientific
Discovery or Merton's pioneer ing study of the relations among
economics, Puritanism, and natural science, both also originally
published in the mid-1930's. The story of this book of 'materials
on Ludwik Fleck' is also the story of the reception of Ludwik
Fleck. In this volume, some essential materials which have been
produced by that reception have been gathered together. We will
sketch both the reception and the materials."
Boris Kuznetsov was a scientist among humanists, a philosopher
among scientists, a historian for those who look to the future, an
optimist in an age of sadness. He was steeped in classical European
culture, from earliest times to the latest avant-garde, and he
roamed through the ages, an inveterate time-traveller, chatting and
arguing with Aristotle and Descartes, Heine and Dante, among many
others. Kuznetsov was also, in his intelligent and thoughtful way,
a Marxist scholar and a practical engineer, a patriotic Russian Jew
of the first sixty years of the Soviet Union. Above all he
meditated upon the revolutionary developments of the natural
sciences, throughout history to be sure but particularly in his own
time, the time of what he called 'non-classical science', and of
his beloved and noblest hero, Albert Einstein. Kuznetsov was born
in Dnepropetrovsk on October 5, 1903 (then Yekaterinoslav). By
early years he had begun to teach, first in 1921 at an institute of
mining engineering and then at other technological institutions. By
1933 he had received a scientific post within the Academy of
Science of the U. S. S. R. , and then at the end of the Second
World War he joined several colleagues at the new Institute of the
History of Science and Technology. For more than 40 years he worked
there until his death two years ago.
The articles in this collection were all selected from the first
five volumes of the Journal of Dialectics of Nature published by
the Chinese Academy of Sciences between 1979 and 1985. The Journal
was established in 1979 as a comprehensive theoretical publication
concerning the history, philosophy and sociology of the natural
sciences. It began publication as a response to China's reform,
particularly the policy of opening to the outside world. Chinese
scholars began to undertake distinctive, original research in these
fields. This collection provides a cross-section of their efforts
during the initial phase. To enable western scholars to understand
the historical process of this change in Chinese academics, Yu
Guangyuan's On the Emancipation of the Mind' and Xu Liangying's
Essay on the Role of Science and Democracy in Society' have been
included in this collection. Three of the papers included on the
philosophy of science are discussions of philosophical issues in
cosmology and biology by scientists themselves. The remaining four
are written by philosophers of science and discuss information and
cognition, homeostasis and Chinese traditional medicine, the I
Ching (Yi Jing) and mathematics, etc. Papers have been selected on
the history of both classical and modern science and technology,
the most distinctive of which are macro-comparisons of the
development of science in China and the west. Some papers discuss
the issue of the demarcation of periods in the history of science,
the history of ancient Chinese mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy,
machinery, medicine, etc. Others discuss the history of modern
physics and biology, the history of historiography of science in
China and the history of regional development of Chinese science
and technology. Also included are biographies of three
post-eighteenth-century Chinese scholars, Li Shanlan (1811-1882),
Hua Hengfang (1833&endash;1902), and Cai Yuanpei
(1868&endash;1940), who contributed greatly to the introduction
of western science and scholarship to China. In addition, three
short papers have been included introducing the interactions
between Chinese scholars and three great western scientists, Niels
Bohr, Norbert Wiener, and Robert A. Millikan.
At the annual meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., 27 December 1966, a
symposium was held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death
of Ernst Mach, the physicist who was vitally concerned about
philosophical foundations. It was arranged by Section B on Physics,
and co-sponsored by Section L on the History and Philosophy of
Science, as well as by the History of Science Society. Dr. Allen W.
Astin, Vice-President of the Association and Director of the
National Bureau of Standards, presided. Representing the Austrian
ambassador, Dr. Ernst Lemberger, a few opening remarks on his
behalf were made by Dr. Walter Hietsch. Also present was Dr. Ernest
A. Lederer, a grandson of Ernst Mach. The contributors, to the
symposium, mostly physicists, represented different backgrounds and
differing points of view; they presented their review of Mach's
work primarily in the light of subsequent developments. They all,
however, share a common interest in the life and works of Ernst
Mach. Two of them, Otto BlUh and Peter G. Bergmann, received their
doctoral degrees in theoretical physics from the University of
Prague. Karl Menger received his doctoral degree in mathematics
from the University of Vienna (he is responsible for the latest
edition [1960] of Mach's celebrated The Science of Mechanics: A
Critical and Historical Account of its Development, for which he
prepared a new Introduction).
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