Search for a Naturalistic World View. Vol. 1: Scientific Method and Epistemology. Vol. 2: Natural Science and Metaphysics

1994 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-288
Author(s):  
Abner Shimony ◽  
James T. Cushing
1977 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 675-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lowell Dittmer

The extent to which the Cultural Revolution has transformed the world-view of the Chinese masses remains among the psycho-cultural imponderables, but clearly it has revolutionized the western view of Chinese politics. The dominant pre-1966 image of a consensual solidarity disturbed only rarely by purges, also handled in an orderly way by a consensus excluding only its victims, was challenged by a sudden multitude of polemical claims to the effect that a struggle for power and principle had been raging behind the scenes for decades. This struggle was characterized as a “struggle between two lines”: a “proletarian revolutionary line,” led by Mao Tse-tung, and a “bourgeois reactionary line,” led by Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng Hsiaop'ing. This struggle allegedly represented a deep underlying ideological cleavage within the leadership that had repercussions on every aspect of Chinese life: foreign policy, strategies of economic development, techniques of leadership and administration, pay scales and living standards, delivery patterns for education, medicine, and other services; even scientific method. Allegations concerning this struggle were supported by a wealth of documentary evidence, culled from hitherto confidential Party and government files. Initially greeted with scepticism among western journalists and academic circles, some variant of the “two lines” paradigm has made increasing inroads into our attempts to understand the origins of the Cultural Revolution. The time has come to re-evaluate the conception of a two-line struggle in retrospect and to try to determine just what it means and how it functions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
Daniel Garber ◽  

In this paper, I would like to examine the method that Bacon proposes in Novum organum II.1-20 and illustrates with the example of the procedure for discovering the form of heat. One might think of a scientific method as a general schema for research into nature, one that can, in principle, be used independently of the particular conception of the natural world which one adopts, and independently of the particular scientific domain with which one is concerned. Indeed, Bacon himself suggested that as with logic, his method, or as he calls it there his “system of interpreting” is widely applicable to any domain, and not just to natural philosophy. [Novum organum I.127] Now, recent studies of Bacon have emphasized his own natural philosophical commitments, and the underlying conception of nature that runs through his writings. In my essay I argue that the method Bacon illustrates in Novum organum II is deeply connected to this underlying view of nature: far from being a neutral procedure for decoding nature, Bacon’s method is a tool for filling out the details of a natural philosophy built along the broad outlines of the Baconian world view.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Н. В. Козловская

В статье использован когнитивный подход к терминологии, в рамках которого термин рассматри-вается как компонент динамической модели языка для специальных целей, диалектически сочетаю-щий в себе стабильную знаковую форму и постоянное переосмысление содержание. Содержатель-ное варьирование термина обусловлено сложностью семантики термина, а также диалектическим характером познания.Цель статьи – выявить и лингвистически обосновать различия в понятийном наполнении тер-мина космизм в разных областях знания. Для решения этой научной задачи произведен анализ контекстуальных определений и выявлены элементы сходства и различия в функционировании и содержании термина в разных типах дискурсов: религиозно-философском, философском, есте-ственнонаучном и литературно-художественном. Сопоставление содержательного наполнения тер-м\xD0\xB8на космизм в языках для специальных целей показало, что в философии термин космизм может включать исторический и субъективный компоненты значения, отражающие развитие философ-ской мысли в рамках направления или индивидуального мировоззрения (космизм в древнегреческой философии, космизм Спинозы, поздний космизм, космизм Н. А. Бердяева).Изменение содержательной структуры термина в философском дискурсе не затрагивает понятий-ного ядра, включающего базовые слоты, сохраняющиеся во всех без исключения терминосистемах. Однако организация этих слотов и содержательная связь между ними может быть разной: в боль-шинстве концепций это преобладание вселенского (космического) начала над индивидуальным, од-нако в авторской терминосистеме Н. А. Бердяева происходит выбор и замена слота ‘подчинение’ на ‘равенство’. Это свидетельствует о том, что космизм – полиинтерпретируемый философский термин, дефинитивная вариантность которого определяется конкретной философской терминосистемой, в том числе авторской. Термин может использоваться в широком (философское понимание кос-мизма) и узком (естественнонаучное понимание космизма в трудах К. Э. Циолковского, В. И. Вер-надского и др.) значениях. За пределами философского дискурса термин активно используется как литературоведческое понятие, обозначающее различные виды поэтического мировоззрения (кос-мизм Ф. И. Тютчева, космизм С. А. Есенина). Кроме того, термин космизм как название направления пролетарской поэзии, является частью закрытой терминосистемы, существовавшей в 1918–1925 гг. (творчество поэтов Пролеткульта).Все эти интерпретационные варианты объединены общим сигнификативным компонентом зна-чения, включающим базовые компоненты: Человек, Вселенная, способ взаимосвязи между ними. Экстралингвистически содержательная вариантность термина обусловлена движением научной мысли и вектором духовного развития, лингвистически – перегруппировкой и добавлением слотов в фреймовую структуру термина.Материалом исследования являются тексты, содержащие термин космизм. Терминофиксирующие источники (словари, энциклопедии) в ходе анализа не использовались, так как ни один источни\xD0\xBA такого типа не отражает явления содержательной вариантности термина в полной мере.The paper deals with the cognitive approach to terminology, according to which the term is considered as part of a dynamic language model for special purposes, which dialectically combines a stable sign form with constant rethinking of the meaning. The semantic variation of the term is caused by both the complexity of the term’s semantics and the dialectical character of cognition.The research is aimed at the revelation and linguistic substantiation of the differences in the conceptual contents the term cosmism demonstrates in different branches of knowledge. In order to solve the above-mentioned scientific task, the contextual definitions of the term are analyzed and the similarities and differences in the functioning and meaning of the term are revealed depending on different discourse types such as the religious-philosophical, philosophical, natural-science as well as literary and art discourse. The comparison of the conceptual meanings of the term cosmism in languages for special purposes has shown that cosmism as a philosophical term can comprise historical and subjective semantic components which reflect the development of philosophical thought within the framework of a certain movement or of an individual world view (cosmism in Ancient Greek philosophy, Spinoza’s cosmism, the late cosmism, Berdyaev’s cosmism).The transformation of the term’s semantic structure in philosophical discourse does not affect the conceptual meaning including the basic slots which remain preserved in all systems of terminology without exception. However, the slot structure and the semantic connection between them may be different: in most conceptions, the universal, or cosmic, principle prevails over the individual one, while in Berdyaev’s individual terminology, a term selection can be observed and the slot ‘subordination’ is replaced through the slot ‘equality’. This statement is the evidence of the fact that cosmism is a variously interpreted philosophical term whose definitive variation is determined by a certain philosop hical term system, including the one of an individual author.The term can be interpreted in a broad sense (the philosophical understanding of cosmism) and a narrow sense (the natural-science understanding of cosmism in Tsiolkovsky’s and Vernadsky’s works). Beyond the philosophical discourse, the term is frequently used as a concept in the study of literature, where it denotes different types of poetic worldview (Tyutchev’s cosmism, Esenin’s cosmism). Besides, the term cosmism belongs to the closed term system as a denomination for the Proletarian poetry movement in the years 1918–1925 (the works of Proletkult poets).The above-mentioned interpretational variants are united by a common significant semantic component which includes the basic semes: the Human, the Universe, and the way of intercommunication between them. From an extralinguistic point of view, the semantic variation of the term is determined by a current of scientific thought and a trend for spiritual development, while linguistically it is caused by the rearrangement and addition of slots into the term’s frame structure.The research is based on texts which contain the term cosmism. Sources containing the lexicographic representation of the term (like dictionaries or encyclopedias) have not been used for the purpose of analysis since there is no source of such kind that would be able to fully reflect the semantic variation of the term.


2000 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 91-104
Author(s):  
Roger Fellows

Oscar Wilde remarked in The Picture of Dorian Gray that, ‘It is only the shallow people who do not judge by appearances.’ Over three centuries of natural science show that, at least as far as the study of the natural world is concerned, Wilde's epigram is itself shallow. Weber used the term ‘disenchantment’ to mean the elimination of magic from the modern scientific world view: the intellectual rationalisation of the world embodied in modern science has made it impossible to believe in magic or an invisible God or gods, without a ‘sacrifice of the intellect’.


1975 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 1336-1353 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Weinberger

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
João José Pinto Ferreira ◽  
Anne-Laure Mention ◽  
Marko Torkkeli

Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only in memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter’s colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments. Elbert Hubbard At a very early age, we start to develop a sense of playfulness. We touch things, we build things, we break them apart. Soon after we begin to utter words. We babble, we squeal, we try to imitate. Music begins to inform our bodily movements. What develops last and continues to develop throughout our waking lives is connections of words. The essential and characteristic features of words used to describe things within and around us are the hardest to grapple with. The same word can be expressed in different ways and could mean different things in different contexts. Literature, being the written expression of words in its various forms, has progressively shaped our world view. Liberal news outlets around the world have been stressing recurrently that words matter, as the imagination of some politicians’ is set loose and boundaries to what one may say seem not to exist. However, despite this current societal struggle to adhere to facts, namely amid the current pandemic, science has remained irreducible in its systematic approach supported by the scientific method where facts and doubt do co-exist as a process towards the discovery and construction of new knowledge. (...)


1989 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-173
Author(s):  
Joseph Mali

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.


Slavic Review ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 471-493
Author(s):  
Alexander Spektor

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.


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