Where is Philosophy Going?

Philosophy ◽  
1937 ◽  
Vol 12 (48) ◽  
pp. 387-394
Author(s):  
J. H. Muirhead
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Max Planck ◽  
Similar Question ◽  
New School ◽  
Recent Conference ◽  
Younger Men ◽  
The Absolute

Some years ago Max Planck published a small book with the titleWhere is Science Going?in vigorous protest against the idea that the doctrine of relativity in general and the new quanta physics in particular mean that “the quest of the absolute becomes eliminated from scientific progress.” That it seems to be time to raise a similar question with regard to philosophy was suggested to me at a recent conference held at Farnham Castle on the relation between science and philosophy, at which the new school of logical positivism was strongly represented by some of the ablest of the younger men.

scholarly journals KEBENARAN ILMIAH DALAM PEMIKIRAN THOMAS S. KUHN DAN KARL R. POPPER: SUATU KAJIAN HERMENEUTIKA DAN KONTRIBUSINYA BAGI MASA DEPAN ILMU

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 252
Author(s):  
Fuad Fuad ◽  
Koento Wibisono S. ◽  
P. Hardono Hadi
Keyword(s):  
Development Strategy ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Epistemological Foundation ◽  
Investigation Area ◽  
Relative Ideal ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Scientific Truth

The scientific truth can be identified on the Kuhn's normal science as a period of scientific progress, and on the Popper's verisimilitude (the truthlikeness). The Kuhn's thought is a phenomenological hermeneutics due to his understanding of the scientific truth according to the phenomenon of scientific progress, and otherwise, the Popper's is an ontological hermeneutics which acknowledges the absolute truth beyond the scientific explanation. The essential similarity of Kuhn and Popper's hermeneutics is justifying the scientific truth as a relative ideal one (never be the absolute one), and the fundamental difference of both of them caused by Kuhn's hermeneutics based on a descriptive approach and Popper's by the normative one. The Kuhn and Popper's hermeneutics can be contributed to be a philosophical foundation of science, namely: the scientific investigation area (ontological foundation), the dialectic of scientific progress (epistemological foundation), and toward the absolute-transcendental truth (axiological foundation). The hermeneutics can also be contributed to reintegrate science and philosophy, as a correlation and interconnection entity of empirical and metaphysical dimension, and can spontaneously be an understanding frame of the demarcation of science (a system of empirical knowledge) and philosophy (a system of metaphysical one). The hermeneutics can be contributed to implement the integration of Natural Sciences and Humanities (and Social Sciences) in Indonesia, as an IPTEK development strategy which is relevant to the ethical values of the Pancasila's.

Toward a Formal Interpretation of Kant's Analogies of Experience

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 107-120
Author(s):  
Johan Blok
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Euclidean Geometry ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Pure Form ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Theory Of Relativity ◽  
Transcendental Logic ◽  
Non Euclidean Geometry

Very often, the rise of non-Euclidean geometry and Einstein's theory of relativity are seen as the decisive defeat of Kant's theoretical philosophy. Scientific progress seems to render Kant's philosophy obsolete. This view became dominant during the first decades of the twentieth century, when the movement of logical positivism arose. Despite extensive criticism of basic tenets of this movement later in the twentieth century, its view of Kant's philosophy is still common. Although it is not my intention to defend Kant infinitely, I think that this view is rather unsatisfactory and even misleading.Let us consider the first factor: non-Euclidean geometry. If one reads the first Critique carefully, it becomes clear that the claims of transcendental logic do not imply Euclidean geometry. Kant's notion of space, as explained in the aesthetics chapter, is rather limited: it does neither entail nor presuppose a specific form of geometry (Cf. B37-B57). None of his statements about the form of space is specific enough to imply or support Euclidean geometry. Although Kant uses several examples, Euclidean geometry does not play any systematic role; only the pure form of space is at issue in the aesthetics chapter. In my view, the same holds in the case of Newton's physics: it is neither presupposed nor entailed by Kant's transcendental logic. The justification of Newton's physics requires further specialisation and application of the transcendental framework to empirical concepts like matter and motion. Kant took this step in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.

Maimon, Salomon (1753/4–1800)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Franks
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Mathematical Physics ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Divine Mind ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Finite Minds

Educated as a rabbi in Lithuania, Shlomo (Salomon) ben Yehoshua migrated to Germany and adopted the surname Maimon in honour of Maimonides. His criticism of Kant’s dualism and his monistic account of the human mind as an imperfect expression of God’s infinite mind influenced Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Kant regarded him as the critic who understood him best. Maimon’s system combines rational dogmatism with empirical scepticism. As a rational dogmatist, he argues that cognition requires the absolute unity of subject and object. Maimon therefore criticizes Kant’s dualistic divisions between the mental form and extra-mental matter of knowledge, and between the faculties of sensibility and understanding. Experience in Kant’s sense – empirical knowledge – is possible only if these dualisms are merely apparent. Our finite minds must be imperfect expressions of an infinite, divine mind that produces the form and matter of knowledge. Through scientific progress, our minds become more adequate expressions of the infinite mind. Kant has not refuted Hume’s scepticism, which could be refuted only if science became perfect. Perfect science is an ideal for which we must strive but which we will never reach. Maimon is deeply indebted to Maimonides, but he reformulates Maimonidean ideas in light of modern mathematical physics and deploys them within a Kantian investigation of the possibility of experience. The result is a unique encounter between medieval and modern philosophy that decisively influenced German idealism and remains philosophically interesting.

Der Nachfolger

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-71
Author(s):  
Thomas Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Social Research ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Max Planck ◽  
New School ◽  
Jurgen Habermas

Man stelle sich für einen Moment vor, Jürgen Habermas wäre 1976 Hannah Arendts Nachfolger an der New School for Social Research geworden. Nur ein abstruses Gedankenspiel? Keineswegs. Am 28. Oktober 1975 lehnte Habermas, damals einer der beiden Direktoren am Starnberger «Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung der Lebensbedingungen der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt», die vom Dean der New School angebotene Position ab. Trotz allem «Ärger» am Institut, habe er sich «auch durch die Überlegung, dass man nicht ohne wirkliche Gründe emigrierten sollte, bewegen lassen, hier in Starnberg einen neuen Anlauf zu versuchen.»

Ayer and World Views

1991 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 63-75
Author(s):  
Frederick Copleston
Keyword(s):  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
World Views ◽  
Famous Book ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
First Philosophy

As we all know, in Freddie Ayer's famous book Language, Truth and Logic metaphysics received short shrift. Metaphysical assertions were dismissed as being all nonsensical (LTL, 2nd edn, 41). In the work in question Ayer clearly tended to equate metaphysics with what Professor W. H. Walsh was to describe as ‘transcendent’ (as distinct from ‘immanent’) metaphysics (Walsh, 1963). This tendency is also discernible, I think, in the 1949 debate between Ayer and myself on logical positivism. After all, my defence of metaphysics was largely prompted and certainly strengthened by what I believed to be the religious relevance of metaphysical philosophy. A lot of what Aristotle would have described as ‘first philosophy’ and what some later philosophers would have classified as ‘ontology’ Ayer would have called ‘philosophical analysis’. What he was primarily concerned with undermining was any claim by metaphysicians to be able to extend our knowledge of what exists, of the Absolute or God for example, by metaphysical arguments.

scholarly journals Half-a-century of gamma-ray astrophysics at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Schönfelder ◽  
Jochen Greiner
Keyword(s):  
Gamma Ray ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Max Planck ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Gamma Ray Astronomy ◽  
Research Fields ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
History Of

AbstractGamma-ray astronomy has been one of the prime scientific research fields of the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) from its beginning. Over the years, the entire gamma-ray energy range accessible from space was explored. The purpose of this review article is to summarise the achievements of the gamma-ray group at MPE during the last 50+ years. This covers a substantial part of the general history of space-based gamma-ray astronomy, for which both, general review articles (e.g. Pinkau in Exp Astron 5: 157, 2009; Schönfelder in AN 323: 524, 2002; Trimble in AIP Conf Proc 304: 40, 1994) and a detailed tabular list of events and missions (Leonard and Gehrels in https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/history, version 1.0.8, 2009), have been compiled. Here, we describe the gamma-ray activities at MPE from the beginning till the present, reviewing the tight interplay between new technological developments towards new instruments and scientific progress in understanding gamma-ray sources in the sky. This covers (i) the early development of instruments and their tests on half a dozen balloon flights, (ii) the involvement in the most important space missions at the time, i.e. ESA’s COS-B satellite, NASA’s Compton Gamma-ray Observatory and Fermi Space Telescope, as well as ESA’s INTEGRAL observatory, (iii) the participation in several other missions such as TD-1, Solar Maximum Mission, or Ulysses, and (iv) the complementary ground-based optical instruments OPTIMA and GROND to enhance selected science topics (pulsars, gamma-ray bursts). With the gradual running-out of institutional support since 2010, gamma-ray astrophysics as a main research field has now come to an end at MPE.

scholarly journals Carnab’s Confirmability Principle and Popper’s Objections

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
Mohsen Almoallem
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Inductive Method ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Contemporary Science

This article deals with the work of the prominent philosopher and logician Rudolf Carnab in establishing the Confirmability Principle as a tool to distinguish scientific from metaphysical statements, and the objections raised by the philosopher of science Karl Popper to this principle. It also focuses on the philosophical and logical argumentation that lasted decades between them and its outcomes which had an influence on the contemporary shape of the philosophy of science in the twentieth century and how each one of them presented his own account for the nature of scientific methods that contemporary sciences must follow. While Carnab and the logical positivism group in general created the “verification principle” and then the “confirmability principle” as the proper way to eliminate metaphysical ideas from science that hindered its eventual progress for several decades, relying on the inductive method as a ground for scientific progress, Popper on the other hand, thought that in order to achieve such progress one must adhere to scientific theories and more specifically to the “Falsification Principle” in addition to relying on the “Virtual method” which grants the “Rational Hypothesis” a crucial role in contemporary sciences. The article concludes with the results of this argumentation and with how philosophy of contemporary science ended up giving more weight to the rational hypothesis and less to the confirmability principle due to the retreat of rigid empiricism in contemporary sciences, especially in physics. This led contemporary science to depend on philosophy once again. 

Replications can cause distorted belief in scientific progress

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Białek
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychological Science

AbstractIf we want psychological science to have a meaningful real-world impact, it has to be trusted by the public. Scientific progress is noisy; accordingly, replications sometimes fail even for true findings. We need to communicate the acceptability of uncertainty to the public and our peers, to prevent psychology from being perceived as having nothing to say about reality.

Scientific progress is like doing a puzzle, not building a wall

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexa M. Tullett ◽  
Simine Vazire
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Jigsaw Puzzle ◽  
Replication Research

AbstractWe contest the “building a wall” analogy of scientific progress. We argue that this analogy unfairly privileges original research (which is perceived as laying bricks and, therefore, constructive) over replication research (which is perceived as testing and removing bricks and, therefore, destructive). We propose an alternative analogy for scientific progress: solving a jigsaw puzzle.

Bulk standards for low-temperature biological x-ray microanalysis

1984 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 282-283
Author(s):  
P. Echlin ◽  
M. McKoon ◽  
E.S. Taylor ◽  
C.E. Thomas ◽  
K.L. Maloney ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Phase Separation ◽  
Low Temperature ◽  
Analytical Method ◽  
Salt Solutions ◽  
Absolute Concentration ◽  
Cooling Process ◽  
X Ray ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Analytical Procedures ◽  
Electrical Conductors

Although sections of frozen salt solutions have been used as standards for x-ray microanalysis, such solutions are less useful when analysed in the bulk form. They are poor thermal and electrical conductors and severe phase separation occurs during the cooling process. Following a suggestion by Whitecross et al we have made up a series of salt solutions containing a small amount of graphite to improve the sample conductivity. In addition, we have incorporated a polymer to ensure the formation of microcrystalline ice and a consequent homogenity of salt dispersion within the frozen matrix. The mixtures have been used to standardize the analytical procedures applied to frozen hydrated bulk specimens based on the peak/background analytical method and to measure the absolute concentration of elements in developing roots.

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