Peter Munz and Historical Thought

Few philosophers of history ever recognized the profundity of Peter Munz’s The Shapes of Time that came out in 1977. In this book Munz upheld the view that no part or aspect of the past itself provides us with the solid fundament of all historical knowledge. For him, the historian’s most fundamental logical entity is what he calls the Sinngebild. The Sinngebild consists of two events defined and held together by a covering law. These CL’s can be anything from simple truisms, the regularities we know from daily life to truly scientific laws. But ‘underneath’ these Sinngebilde there is nothing. Hence, Munz’s bold assertation: ‘the truth of the matter is that there is no ascertainable face behind the various masks every story-teller is creating’ and his claim that his philosophy of history is ‘an idealism writ small’. Next, Munz distinguishes between ‘explanation’ and ‘interpretation’. We ‘explain’ the past by taking seriously the historical agent’s self-description and ‘interpret’ it by stating what it looks like from our present perspective. ‘Explanation’ and ‘interpretation’ may ‘typologically’ be more or less similar. Relying on a number of very well-chosen examples from his own field (Munz was a medievalist), this enables Munz to argue why one historical interpretation may be superior to another. In his later life Munz developed a speculative philosophy of history inspired by Popper’s fallibilism.

Text and Reality in Soviet “Sociological Poetics” of the 1920s

The article considers several scientific metaphors describing the regularities of relations between literature and reality in the Soviet “sociological” literary theory of the 1920s. The most productive of these conceptual metaphors — reflection and refraction — reveal the features of key Marxist theories — Plekhanov, Lenin, Friche, Pereverzev, Medvedev, Bakhtin, Voloshinov, etc. The tendency towards the development of universal scientific laws as applied to cultural phenomena, which is characteristic of the epoch, is noted, in particular, the leveling of the author's role in the historical and literary process and the critical potential of art associated with it. There are analyzed the different strategies of interpretation of basic theoretical metaphors interpreted, first of all, as reflection/ refraction of social reality in literature. Two aspects of the problem of reflection/refraction are discussed — ontological, implying a “true image” of reality, and epistemological, which assumes that literature reproduces not the reality itself, but the social optics of its understanding. The author of the article shows that optical metaphors make it possible to understand which theories imply greater dependence of the literature on prevailing social notions, and which ones — greater independence, flexibility and variability of the law of reflection/refraction. In this light, the poles of “sociological poetics” — the theory of Friche and Pereverzev — are considered as sequential versions of ideological determinism, Lenin's approach as a kind of deconstruction of literary ideology, and the method of “Bakhtin's circle” as the most soft version of “sociologism”, which combines it with some provisions of the formal school.

Can scientific laws be discussed on philosophical grounds? a reply to naïve arguments on ‘predators’ proposed by Bramble (2021)

A recent paper by Bramble (2021) argues that given that predators inflict pain and fear on their prey we have the moral right to act to minimize these effects. The author proposes two alternatives. The first is to transform predators by ‘genetically modifying them so that their offspring gradually evolve into herbivores’. The second is simply ‘painlessly killing predators’, which is the title of Bramble’s essay. We address the misconceptions that Bramble uses as central in his arguments and present scientific reasoning to discuss the ethical implications of disregarding scientific knowledge when addressing animal welfare and animal rights. We conclude that both Bramble’s alternatives are nonsensical, not only from a scientific point of view, but also, and more importantly, from ethical grounds.

The Law of Nature

This chapter explores how natural law worked in the legal system of the 18th and 19th centuries. It discusses how lawyers believed natural law could be discerned, how natural law related to positive law, why natural law seemed so plausible, how natural law figured in legal education, and how natural law was used in practice. Natural law was understood to consist of general principles found in nature, like the principles we call “scientific” laws today. They formed a backdrop against which positive law was enacted and interpreted. These general principles guided courts’ decisions where positive law did not yield a clear answer.

Marshall McLuhan’s General Theory of Media (GToM), His Laws of Media; Comparing Three Kinds of Law

We suggest that despite McLuhan’s claim not to have a theory of communication that in fact the body of his work does indeed constitute a theory of media and their effects which I have called his General Theory of Media (GToM) that also includes his Laws of Media (LoM). Both McLuhan’s GToM and his LoM are described. A comparison is made of three notions of law: i. McLuhan’s notion of law as used in his Laws of Media; ii. the notions of the Law in the legal sense and iii. the notion of law as formulated in scientific laws. McLuhan’s understanding of media is used to analyze some of the negative effects of social media suggesting that laws need to be formulated to prevent the misuse of social media that are antithetical to democracy and the invasion of the privacy of the individual users of these apps. McLuhan’s Laws of Media are then used to provide insights into the nature of scientific laws, the Law in the legal sense and his own Laws of Media.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PRINCIPLE OF EVOLUTION OF CLASSICAL AND NON-CLASSICAL SCIENCE

The relevance of the study of the mechanism of evolution is determined by the fact that the understanding of scientific laws is changing in modern science. From the microworld to the megaworld, the historical nature of the processes occurring in them is recognized, which should be reflected in the interpretation of laws. The author sets out to reveal the prerequisites of the idea of self-organization, which is a distinctive feature of evolutionary processes in the synergetic picture of the world of post-non-classical science. The idea of self-organization grows out of the concepts of evolution developed in the classical and non-classical periods of the development of modern science. The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the concepts of the evolution of these periods. The dominant approach in the modern philosophy of science is the history of science, so the author is guided by the methodology of historical and scientific research, when comparative analysis is implemented through finding out the similarities and differences of the stages of interest. The article substantiates the thesis that at this stage the concept of evolutionism is based on the recognition of the time parameter either in the form of an infinite sequence of events embodied in the present («external time»), or in the form of the principle of historicity («internal time»). The classical concept of evolution was a hypothesis. In non-classical science, the concept of evolution receives a scientific — empirical and theoretical — justification. To specify the principle of evolution in this period, the material from astrophysics, biology and historical science is given. The novelty of the obtained results is connected with the recognition of the hypothetical nature of the idea of evolution in the non-major non-rationalist branch of descriptive natural science of classical stage, the acquisition of scientific justification by it (the idea of evolution) at the non-classical stage, as well as with the transition from the concept of «external» to «internal» time. «Internal» time is the essence of the new concept of historicism, where evolution is interpreted as self-organization. A new concept of evolution and a new type of scientific laws set the prospect for further research. Key words: the concept of evolution, classical / non-classical science, time, the principle of historicism, V. I. Vernadsky, M. Foucault, sciences of inorganic / organic nature, historical science.

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Logical Positivism

The article examines the question of whether L. Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus had any influence on the formation and development of logical positivism. It is shown that the members of the Vienna Circle were familiar with the Tractatus, but practically did not accept anything from its content. Wittgenstein's reasoning about the world, about facts, about the structure of fact were rejected by them as a bad metaphysics, with which they fought. The denial of causality and the deprivation of the meaning of scientific laws could not be accepted by representatives of logical positivism, whose main task was the logical analysis of the language of science in order to cleanse it of metaphysical concepts and build a unified science on a solid empirical foundation. If the members of the Vienna Circle were even familiar with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, then representatives of the Berlin Group, the Lvov-Warsaw School, the Uppsala School and supporters of logical positivism in other countries hardly heard of it. This leads to the conclusion that Wittgenstein's Tractatus did not have any impact on the logical positivism.

Some morals from the physico-mathematical character of scientific laws

This article derives some morals from the examination of the physico-mathematical view of scientific laws and its place in the current philosophical debate on laws of nature. After revisiting the expression scientific law, which appears in scientific practice under various names (such as laws, principles, equations, symmetries, and postulates), I briefly assess two extreme, opposite positions in the literature on laws, namely, full-blown metaphysics of laws of nature, which distinguishes such laws from the more mundane laws that we find in science; and nomological eliminativism, which ultimately contends that we should dispense with laws in science altogether. I argue that both positions fail to make sense of the laws that we find in scientific practice. For this, I outline the following twofold claim: first, most laws in physics are abstract mathematical statements; and second, they express some of the best physical generalisations achieved in this branch of science. Thus understood, a minimal construal of laws suggests that they are in principle intended to refer to those features of phenomena whose salience and stability are relevant for specific scientific tasks.

Teaching and Learning Through Laboratory Experiments in the Area of Nuclear Technology

Simulated laboratories are an effective tool to complement teaching and learning processes, in this case, in the area of nuclear physics and related sciences. They can be used in universities, schools, and research centers for personnel ramp up and training. This work presents the development of a simulator of a nuclear radiation counter and the elements used in experiments alongside it, such as simulated radioactive sources, absorbing materials and dispersing materials of radiation. This simulator allows us to verify the scientific laws that are involved in the interaction of radiation with matter, in a safe and reproducible way. The simulated laboratory experiments include determining the plateau curve of a Geiger-Müller tube, beta particle absorption and backscattering, and radioactive background. The data obtained from the simulations is based on the real experiments, eliminating the inherent risks of the manipulation of radioactive materials. This also allows to verify theoretical concepts in practice, strengthening the learning process and incentivizing research, interpretation, integration and communication of the obtained results. By incorporating this simulator in the multidisciplinary teaching and learning processes in STEM fields, it is possible to run these laboratories in a simple manner using non-radioactive materials.

Narratives in STEM Education

Looking from the perspective of the requirements of the modern world, STEM education is a significant challenge related to teaching both people whose professional paths will be associated with STEM and those who will use knowledge in this area “unprofessionally” – only to solve everyday problems. Teachers and educators face a difficult challenge related to arousing the interest of learners in the subject of STEM, developing understanding of scientific concepts and processes, and strengthening the involvement in scientific activity. Narratives are becoming an important tool available to educators in the implementation of this task. They can arouse the students’ interest through an attractive form of presentation of, e.g. the figures of outstanding scientists or brilliant discoveries. Such forms of presentation can introduce both basic and advanced scientific knowledge, and, at the same time, save cognitive resources, strengthening the children’s involvement by making them actively participate in discovering not only the scientific laws, but also the meaning (including the personal one) of science. It is also important that narratives can become a useful tool for building the positive image of science as a world accessible to everyone, regardless of gender, age or origins. The purpose of this article is to indicate only a few areas of possible applications of narratives in STEM education, and to encourage the use of various narrative materials in education in this area at various stages of education.