An anthology of contemporary philosophy of science in Spain. Essays on 19th Century physics, the new cosmology, philosophy of biology, scientific rationality, philosophy of mathematics, phenomenology's account of scientific progress, science and ethics, philosophy of economics, methodology, and the philosophy of technology.
This volume features essays that detail the distinctive ways authors and researchers in Spanish speaking countries express their thoughts on contemporary philosophy of technology. Written in English but fully capturing a Spanish perspective, the essays bring the views and ideas of pioneer authors and many new ones to an international readership. Coverage explores key topics in the philosophy of technology, the ontological and epistemological aspects of technology, development and innovation, and new technological frontiers like nanotechnology and cloud computing. In addition, the book features case studies on philosophical queries. Readers will discover such voices as Miguel Ángel Quintanilla and Javier Echeverría, who are main references in the current landscape of philosophy of technology both in Spain and Spanish speaking countries; José Luis Luján, who is a leading Spanish author in research about technological risk; and Emilio Muñoz, former head of the Spanish National Research Council and an authority on Spanish science policy. The volume also covers thinkers in American Spanish speaking countries, such as Jorge Linares, an influential researcher in ethical issues; Judith Sutz, who has a very recognized work on social issues concerning innovation; Carlos Osorio, who focuses his work on technological determinism and the social appropriation of technology; and Diego Lawler, an important researcher in the ontological aspects of technology.
This text collects and translates a broad spectrum of philosophical reflections on technology from throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Highlighting work from Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain and Venezuela - with further representation from Argentina, Cuba, Colombia, Uruguay and the US - it introduces both affirmatives and critical studies by younger as well as established philosophers.
Burtt's book, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, is something of a puzzle within the context of twentieth-century intellectual history, especially American intellectual history. Burtt's pioneering study of the scientific revolution has proved to prophetic in its rejection of both scientism and positivism. Published in 1924, Burtt's book continues to be read in educated circles and remains both the rose and the thorn on university reading lists, raising skeptical questions about science methods and science knowledge just as it did seventy-five years ago. This book examines Burtt's public, academic and personal life. From his politics of conscience after World War I on through the Cold War Burtt is shown to be a man of unparalleled integrity, whose relentless search for philosophic understanding drove his more quixotic philosophical quests and steered his personal life, including its tragic dimension, toward simple virtue. The many who have been affected by The Metaphysical Foundations will be especially interested in this new perspective on the life and thought of its author. Those who have not read Burtt's books might be inspired to study this unusual American thinker.
"In this book Igor Hanzel reconstructs the developmental stages of scientific law, working both with the history of different conceptions of scientific explanation and also within the limitations of each, which then demand further sophistication. As one basic argument of this work, which is deeply analytic as well as dialectical, the author shows that the natural and the social sciences do not operate exclusively with one type of scientific law, nor do they explain phenomena by means of one exclusive method. Thus science is not mono-paradigmatic, but poly-paradigmatic."--Jacket.
Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science, is the second volume of a collection on Nietzsche and the Sciences, featuring essays addressing truth, epistemology, and the philosophy of science, with a substantial representation of analytically schooled Nietzsche scholars. This collection offers a dynamic articulation of the differing strengths of Anglo-American analytic and contemporary European approaches to philosophy, with translations from European specialists, notably Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Paul Valadier, and Walther Ch. Zimmerli. This broad collection also features a preface by Alasdair MacIntyre. Contributions explore Nietzsche's contributions to the philosophy of language and epistemology, and include essays on the social history of truth and the historical and cultural analyses of Serres and Baudrillard, as well as new contributions to the philosophy of science, including theological and hermeneutical approaches, history of science, the philosophy of medicine, cognitive science, and technology.
Science is a multifaceted, natural and historical phenomenon. It consists of five elements, that is, it happens in five distinct media: biological, linguistic, technological, social, and historical. None of these alone provides an indubitable basis for the truth of scientific knowledge, but combined together they compose a solid ground for our trust in its reliability. The composition, however, is uniquely related to our modern mode of living. Science did not exist before modernity, and it will cease to exist in this form if our way of life should change. The book presents a thorough analysis of all these dimensions and their relations, and thus lays the path for an integral theory of science. Because of this it can be used as a textbook for general courses in the theory of science at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
This volume presents 15 studies occasioned by the 500th anniversary of the European discovery of America. It covers both the initial encounters between the Europeans and native Americans and the golden age of Hispanic philosophy that followed the discovery - specifically between 1500 and 1650.
Do knowledge and science arise from the application of canons of rationality and scientific method? Or is all our scientific knowledge caused by socio-political factors, or by our interests in the socio-political - the view of sociologists of "knowledge"? Or does it result from interplay of relations of power - the view of Michel Foucault? Or does our knowledge arise from "the will to power" - the view of Nietzsche? This volume sets out to critically examine the theses of those who would debunk the idea of rational explanation. The book is wide-ranging. The theories of method of Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend (amongst others) are discussed and related to the views of Marx, Foucault, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche as well as sociologists of science such as Mannheim and Bloor. The author provides a wide interpretative framework which links the doctrines espoused by many of these authors; it is argued that they inherit many of the difficulties in the Strong Programme in the sociology of "knowledge", and that they fail to reconcile the normativity of knowledge with their naturalism. It is argued that neither relativists, sceptics, nihilists, sociologists of "knowledge" nor the postmodernists successfully debunk the claims of rational explanation, far from it: these theorists presuppose much of the theory of methodology they deny.
Although produced in controversy, this book is not a controversial work. The calming effects of the years that have passed since the tumultuous days in Lubeck are enough to guarantee that these pages will accurately trace the coming and going of opinions, the battle for the truth and the recognition of error. In only a few passages, especially in Part Six, will one be able to tell from the tone of the book that it comes out of this struggle. For these I ask the indulgence of my reader, since they contain explanations the extent of which probably does not correspond either to the difficulty of the questions treated or to their influence. But in such passages the extent of treatment could not - as was otherwise the case - be made to depend solely on a judgment as to the value and significance of the investigations presented. There considerations of defense, more than concern for symmetry, had to determine the structure.
