Science, Mind and the Universe: an introduction to natural philosophy

1996 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-224
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Universe

On the matter of proving Euclidean fifth postulate and the origin of non-Euclidean geometries

2019 ◽  
Vol 950 (8) ◽  
pp. 2-11
Author(s):  
S.A. Tolchelnikova ◽  
K.N. Naumov
Keyword(s):  
Celestial Mechanics ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Relativity Theory ◽  
Theory Of Relativity ◽  
The Third ◽  
Stellar Astronomy ◽  
Spherical Surfaces ◽  
Mathematical System ◽  
Solar System Bodies ◽  
The Universe

The Euclidean geometry was developed as a mathematical system due to generalizing thousands years of measurements on the plane and spherical surfaces. The development of celestial mechanics and stellar astronomy confirmed its validity as mathematical principles of natural philosophy, in particular for studying the Solar System bodies’ and Galaxy stars motions. In the non-Euclidean geometries by Lobachevsky and Riemann, the third axiom of modern geometry manuals is substituted. We show that the third axiom of these manuals is a corollary of the Fifth Euclidean postulate. The idea of spherical, Riemannian space of the Universe and local curvatures of space, depending on body mass, was inculcated into celestial mechanics, astronomy and geodesy along with the theory of relativity. The mathematical apparatus of the relativity theory was created from immeasurable quantities

scholarly journals Time and Life in the Relational Universe: Prolegomena to an Integral Paradigm of Natural Philosophy

Philosophies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abir Igamberdiev
Keyword(s):  
Probability Function ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Spatiotemporal Structure ◽  
Internal Logic ◽  
Decision Making System ◽  
Relational Domains ◽  
Relational Order ◽  
Infinite Set ◽  
The Universe

Relational ideas for our description of the natural world can be traced to the concept of Anaxagoras on the multiplicity of basic particles, later called “homoiomeroi” by Aristotle, that constitute the Universe and have the same nature as the whole world. Leibniz viewed the Universe as an infinite set of embodied logical essences called monads, which possess inner view, compute their own programs and perform mathematical transformations of their qualities, independently of all other monads. In this paradigm, space appears as a relational order of co-existences and time as a relational order of sequences. The relational paradigm was recognized in physics as a dependence of the spatiotemporal structure and its actualization on the observer. In the foundations of mathematics, the basic logical principles are united with the basic geometrical principles that are generic to the unfolding of internal logic. These principles appear as universal topological structures (“geometric atoms”) shaping the world. The decision-making system performs internal quantum reduction which is described by external observers via the probability function. In biology, individual systems operate as separate relational domains. The wave function superposition is restricted within a single domain and does not expand outside it, which corresponds to the statement of Leibniz that “monads have no windows”.

Twelfth-century Cosmography, theDe secretis philosophie, and Māshā'allāh (Attr. to),Liber de Orbe

Traditio ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 235-276
Author(s):  
Barbara Obrist
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Lunar Eclipse ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
Central Section ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester ◽  
The Universe

TheLiber de orbe, attributed to Māshā'allāh (fl. 762–ca. 815) in the list of Gerard of Cremona's translations, stands out as one of the few identifiable sources for the indirect knowledge of Peripatetic physics and cosmology at the very time Aristotle's works on natural philosophy themselves were translated into Latin, from the 1130s onward. This physics is expounded in an opening series of chapters on the bodily constitution of the universe, while the central section of the treatise covers astronomical subjects, and the remaining parts deal with meteorology and the vegetal realm. Assuming that Gerard of Cremona's translation of theLiber de orbecorresponds to the twenty-seven chapter version that circulated especially during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was, however, not this version, but a forty-chapter expansion thereof that became influential as early as the 1140s. It may have originated in Spain, as indicated, among others, by a reference to the difference of visibility of a lunar eclipse between Spain and Mecca. Unlike the twenty-seven chapterLiber de orbe, this expanded and also partly modified text remains in manuscript, and none of the three copies known so far gives a title or mentions Māshā'allāh as an author. Instead, the thirteenth-century witness that is now in New York attributes the work to an Alcantarus:Explicit liber Alcantari Caldeorum philosophi. While no Arabic original of the twenty-seven chapterLiber de orbehas come to light yet, Taro Mimura of the University of Manchester recently identified a manuscript that partly corresponds to the forty-chapter Latin text, as well as a shorter version thereof.

scholarly journals DISJUNCTIONS AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN MARCUS AURELIUS

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 858-879
Author(s):  
Benjamin Harriman
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
The Universe

In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius repeatedly presents a disjunction between two conceptions of the natural world. Either the universe is ruled by providence or there are atoms. At 4.3, we find perhaps its most succinct statement: ἀνανεωσάμενος τὸ διεζευγμένον τό⋅ ἤτοι πρόνοια ἢ ἄτομοι (recall the disjunction: either providence or atoms). The formulation of the disjunction differs; at 7.32, being composed of atoms is contrasted with a stronger sort of unity (ἕνωσις) that may survive death. In 10.6 and 11.18 Marcus simply offers φύσις (nature, construed in the Stoic manner as providentialist and causally efficacious) in opposition. On the surface, the contrast between the theory of atomism and the acceptance of providence seems to not warrant the term ‘disjunction’; it seems possible to accept both atomism and a causally determined providential universe. Yet, it is agreed on all sides, in the recent literature, that the relevant contrast for Marcus is not between the atomist and the non-atomist views of the constitution of the natural world as such but between two entailments that follow from the atomist Epicurean and the non-atomist Stoic advocacy of these positions. The contrast is between the providential ordering of the Stoic universe and the chaotic chance-ridden Epicurean model.

Machines

On Purpose ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 42-60
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Change ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter discusses the Scientific Revolution that is dated from the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus's On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, the work that put the sun rather than the earth at the center of the universe to Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687, the work that gave the causal underpinnings of the whole system as developed over the previous one hundred and fifty years. Historian Rupert Hall put his finger precisely on the real change that occurred in the revolution. It was not so much the physical theories, although these were massive and important. It was rather a change of metaphors or models—from that of an organism to that of a machine. By the sixteenth century, machines were becoming ever more common and ever more sophisticated. It was natural therefore for people to start thinking of the world—the universe—as a machine, especially since some of the most elaborate of the new machines were astronomical clocks that had the planets and the sun and moon moving through the heavens, not by human force but by predestined contraptions. In a word, by clockwork!

scholarly journals The Game of the Sphere or of the Universe — a Spiral Race Game from 17th century France

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Adrian Seville
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Planetary Motion ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Tycho Brahe ◽  
Classical Knowledge ◽  
The Universe

Abstract Simple race games, played with dice and without choice of move, are known from antiquity. In the late 16th century, specific examples of this class of game emerged from Italy and spread rapidly into other countries of Europe. Pre-eminent was the Game of the Goose, which spawned thousands of variants over the succeeding centuries to the present day, including educational, polemical and promotional variants.1 The educational variants began as a French invention of the 17th century, the earliest of known date being a game to teach Geography, the Jeu du Monde by Pierre Duval, published in 1645. By the end of the century, games designed to teach several of the other accomplishments required of the noble cadet class had been developed: History, the Arts of War, and Heraldry being notable among them. A remarkable example of a game within this class is the astronomical game, Le Jeu de la Sphere ou de l’Univers selon Tycho Brahe, published in 1661 by E(s)tienne Vouillemont in Paris. The present paper analyses this game in detail, showing how it combines four kinds of knowledge systems: natural philosophy, based on the Ptolemaic sphere; biblical knowledge; astrology, with planetary and zodiacal influences; and classical knowledge embodied in the names of the constellations. The game not only presents all four on an equal footing but also explores links between them, indicating some acceptance of an overall knowledge-system. Despite the title, there is no evidence of the Tychonian scheme for planetary motion, nor of any Copernican or Galilean influence. This game is to be contrasted with medieval race games, based on numerology and symbolism, and with race games towards the end of the Early Modern period in which science is fully accepted.

scholarly journals The Coming Emptiness: On the Meaning of the Emptiness of the Universe in Natural Philosophy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregor Schiemann
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Accelerated Expansion ◽  
Interstellar Space ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Current Standard ◽  
Distant Future ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
Expansion Of The Universe ◽  
Substantial Change ◽  
The Universe

The cosmological relevance of emptiness—that is, space without bodies—is not yet sufficiently appreciated in natural philosophy. This paper addresses two aspects of cosmic emptiness from the perspective of natural philosophy: the distances to the stars in the closer cosmic environment and the expansion of space as a result of the accelerated expansion of the universe. Both aspects will be discussed from both a historical and a systematic perspective. Emptiness can be interpreted as “coming” in a two-fold sense: Whereas in the past knowledge of emptiness as it were came to human beings, in the future it is coming insofar as its relevance in the cosmos will increase.The longer and more closely emptiness was studied since the beginning of modernity, the larger became the spaces over which it was found to extend. From a systematic perspective, I will show with regard to the closer cosmic environment that the earth may be separated from the perhaps habitable planets of other stars by an emptiness that is inimical to life and cannot be traversed by humans. This assumption is a result of the discussion of the constraints and possibilities of interstellar space travel as defined by the known natural laws and technical means. With the accelerated expansion of the universe, the distances to other galaxies (outside of the so-called local group) are increasing. According to the current standard model of cosmology and assuming that the acceleration will remain constant, in the distant future this expansion will lead first to a substantial change in the epistemic conditions of cosmological knowledge and finally to the completion of the cosmic emptiness and of its relevance, respectively. Imagining the postulated completely empty last state leads human thought to the very limits of what is conceivable.

Hegel's Philosophy of Nature

Dialogue ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-399
Author(s):  
James A. Doull
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Middle Part ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophy Of Nature ◽  
The Universe

Two translations into English of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature have appeared in the same year a century after the other parts of the Encyclopaedia—the Logic and the Philosophy of Mind—had been translated. The Victorian translator passed by the Philosophy of Nature, unconscious that to omit the middle part of a systematic work must certainly conceal the sense of the whole. He finds it a sufficient explanation that “for nearly half a century the study of nature has passed almost completely out of the hands of the philosophers into the care of the specialists of science.” Revived for a few years by Schelling and then Hegel, Philosophy of Nature only recalled “a time of hasty enthusiasms and over-grasping ambition of thought which, in its eagerness to understand the mystery of the universe, jumped to conclusions on insufficient grounds, trusted to bold but fantastic analogies, and lavished an unwise contempt on the plodding industry of the mere hodman of facts and experiments.” This modest retreat of philosophy before the specialists is not thought to need explanation, even though it was not only from the seeming extravagance of Schelling and Hegel but from the general preoccupation of philosophers since Bacon and Descartes with natural philosophy.

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