Biological Deism

Philosophy ◽  
1931 ◽  
Vol 6 (21) ◽  
pp. 30-42
Author(s):  
Joseph Needham
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Philosophical Importance

Thosewho still interest themselves in problems connected with God, Freedom, and Immortality are not accustomed to look to natural science for any light on these dark places. It is usually admitted that the scientific method operates with basic assumptions which are far from binding on philosophers, and which indeed have no very satisfactory metaphysical authority. In spite of a few protests by philosophers, scientific thinkers have on the whole felt entitled to neglect the philosophical consequences of their theories, and have gone ahead in the investigation of nature by accepting only such hypotheses as explained the maximum number of known facts, irrespective of their possible results on other fields of work. When a strictly scientific theory is invested with philosophical importance, some form of materialism, however well disguised, usually results.

scholarly journals Technology of an Unfree World. I. Primary Code

2021 ◽  
pp. 96-109
Author(s):  
Hauke RITZ
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
New World ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Technological Revolution ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
The Universe

The actual technological revolution challenges our ideas about civilization to a much larger extent than all previous technological breakthroughs. Does it not lead us into a new world where there is no place for human freedom, and what has made possible such a trajectory of technological progress? To answer the latter question, it is necessary to analyze the logic of natural science development as well as the currently dominant scientific image of the universe. In the first part of his research, the author focuses on the premises of the scientific method, on the basic assumptions about the nature of our reality, which precede any scientific research and unconsciously structure the perception of reality.

On research methodology towards a scientific theory of engineering design

1987 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 145-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Dixon
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Computational Approach ◽  
Institutional Variables ◽  
Guided Search ◽  
Design Theories ◽  
Descriptive Theories ◽  
And Control

The goal of this paper is to raise awareness and generate discussion about research methodology in engineering design. Design researchers are viewed as a single communicating community searching for scientific theories of engineering design; that is, theories that can be tested by formal methods of hypothesis testing. In the paper, the scientific method for validating theories is reviewed, and the need for operational definitions and for experiments to identify variables and meaningful abstractions is stressed. The development of a design problem taxonomy is advocated. Generating theories is viewed as guided search. Three types of design theories are described: prescriptive, cognitive descriptive, and computational. It is argued that to seek prescriptions is premature and that, unless the human and institutional variables are reduced to knowledge and control, cognitive descriptive theories will be impossibly complex. A case is made for a computational approach, though it also shown that computational and cognitive research approaches can be mutually supportive.

The Epistemological Foundations of Natural Philosophy

Philosophy ◽  
1946 ◽  
Vol 21 (78) ◽  
pp. 5-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. J. Whitrow
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
External World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Discussion ◽  
Metaphysical Necessity ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of

The history of Natural Philosophy is dominated by a paradox; broadly speaking, a vast increase in its range of application to the external world has been accompanied by a sweeping simplification in its basic assumptions. From the standpoint of Empiricism this dual development appears utterly mysterious. On the other hand, Rationalism, which seeks to demonstrate the metaphysical necessity of natural law, and hence might throw light on this development, has been generally discredited, particularly by men of science. It is not surprising, therefore, that philosophical discussion of scientific method has become a Babel of confusing tongues.

Hobbes's Doctrine of Method

1975 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 1336-1353 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Weinberger
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Persistent Problem ◽  
New Science ◽  
New Rhetoric ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
Modern Natural Science ◽  
Human Problem

A persistent problem in the interpretation of Hobbes's self-proclaimed founding of modern political science is the nature of the link between that political science and Hobbes's understanding of modern natural science and scientific method. The intention of this essay is to suggest that Hobbes's doctrine of method reveals the unity of his teaching about science, man, and politics. The unifying role of the doctrine of method can be understood only as a function of Hobbes's intention to reform what he saw as the previously defective relationship between practice and theory. In the light of this intention, the doctrine of method will be shown to consist in a new rhetoric which links the resolution of the human problem to the conquest of nature facilitated by the new science of nature. This rhetoric will be shown to be the substantial core of the doctrine of method itself.

Science, Tradition, and the Science of Tradition

1989 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-173
Author(s):  
Joseph Mali
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Religious Controversy ◽  
Intellectual Origins ◽  
Modes Of Thought

The ArgumentScience consists in progress by innovation. Scientists, however, are committed to all kinds of traditions that persist or recur in society regardless of intellectual and institutional changes. Merton's thesis about the origins of the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century England offers a sociohistorical confirmation of this revisionist view: the emergence of a highly rational scientific method out of the religious-ethical sentiments of the English Puritans implies that scientific knowledge does indeed grow out of – and not really against – customary modes of thought.In tracing the intellectual origins of this view back to the religious controversy between Protestants and Catholics, the essay demonstrates that the essential conflict between them with regard to natural science stemmed from their antagonistic conceptions of tradition and its function in the production of genuine knowledge – of religious as well as of natural affairs. Whereas the Protestants believed only in those truths that are immediately revealed by God to each man through his reason, the Catholics adhered to truths that are related to men or “made” by them through culture and history.

The Science of Poetry: Poetic Process as Evolution in Mandel'shtam's “Conversation about Dante”

Slavic Review ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 471-493
Author(s):  
Alexander Spektor
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Complex Theory ◽  
Natural Scientists ◽  
The Relationship

This article investigates the relationship between the humanities and science by focusing on Osip Mandel'shtam's “Conversation about Dante.” Noting the importance of natural science for Mandel'shtam's treatise, I argue that Mandel'shtam makes use of the methods of the natural sciences in developing a complex theory of the poetic process. He encounters the scientific method of analysis in his reading of the natural scientists, written about in his travelogue “Journey to Armenia,” as well as various shorter pieces accompanying it. Mandel'shtam begins with a proposition of isomorphism between poetry and nature. Ultimately, I argue that the scientific method allows Mandel'shtam to theorize the poetic process as a dialogue between author and reader in which cultural kinship between its participants is established as a break within their individuality and a recognition of the authority of the “poetic impulse” or “instinct.” In turn, envisioning the poetic process as a dialogue that paradoxically suspends and transcends the individuality of its participants allows Mandel'shtam simultaneously to insist on the necessity of submission to the authority of the poetic message and to endow poetry with political autonomy.

scholarly journals The Naturalist Turn in Literary and Art Study: Two-Way Interdisciplinarity and the Sciences of Mind

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 277
Author(s):  
Patricia Kolaiti
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Cognitive Neuropsychology ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Science Philosophy ◽  
Epistemological Framework

<p><em>In recent years, a bourgeoning area of paradigm-revising scholarly investigation involves what could be referred to as a “Naturalist” or “Cognitive” turn in literary and art study, exploring the interface between theory in the arts and humanities and scientific theory of the type produced in disciplines belonging to the empirical and cognitive paradigm such as linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy of mind and cognitive neuropsychology. In this paper, I will discuss a range of theoretical, epistemic and methodological issues raised by such an interdisciplinary enterprise including the possibility of a genuine methodological merger with the cognitive paradigm, the plea for psychological realism, the extent to which the scientific method is compatible with the nature of literature and art as an investigative object and the need for genuine, two-way interdisciplinary practices in literary and art study. I will also briefly consider the role Relevance Theory might have to play in this interdisciplinary venture as both a pragmatic and epistemological framework.</em></p>

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