Addressing a wide range of topics, from Newton to Post-Kuhnian philosophy of science, these essays critically examine themes that have been central to the influential work of philosopher Michael Friedman. Special focus is given to Friedman's revealing study of both history of science and philosophy in his work on Kant, Newton, Einstein, and other major figures. This interaction of history and philosophy is the subject of the editors' « ...
Tool-Being offers a new assessment of Martin Heidegger's famous tool-analysis, and with it, an audacious reappraisal of Heidegger's legacy to twenty-first-century philosophy.Every reader of Being and Time is familiar with the opposition between readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit) and presence-at-hand (Vorhandenheit), but commentators usually follow Heidegger's wishes in giving this distinction a limited scope, as if it applied only t ...
This book deals with questions about the nature of a priori knowledge and its relation to empirical knowledge. Until the twentieth century, it was more or less taken for granted that there was such a thing as a priori knowledge, that is, knowledge whose source is in reason and reflection rather than sensory experience. With a few notable exceptions, philosophers believed that mathematics, logic and philosophy were all a priori. Although the seed ...
Simulations of God is a brilliant, provocative work by one of the great creative scientists of the twentieth century, John Lilly, M.D.. In it he examines the sacred realms of self, religion, science, philosophy, sex, drugs, politics, money, crime, war, family, and spiritual paths “with no holds barred, with courage and a sense of excitement”. Lilly’s purpose is to provide readers with a unique view of inner reality ...
“Satire is her oxygen. . . . In her new oddball comedy, Dead Man’s Cell Phone , Sarah Ruhl is forever vital in her lyrical and biting takes on how we behave.”— The Washington Post “Ruhl’s zany probe of the razor-thin line between life and death delivers a fresh and humorous look at the times we live in.”— Variety “Sarah Ruhl is deliriously imaginative ...
A profoundly influential figure in American psychology, William James (1842–1910) was also a philosopher of note, who used Charles S. Peirce's theories of pragmatism as a basis for his own conception of that influential philosophy. For James, this meant an emphasis on «radical empiricism» and the concept that the meaning of any idea — philosophical, political, social, or otherwise — has validity only in terms o ...
"All men by nature are actuated with the desire of knowledge," declared Aristotle. The philosopher's works are foundational to the history of science, and his treatise on metaphysics, or «first philosophy,» is divided into sections on previous philosophical thought and theories; a refutation of skepticism; a demonstration of God's existence; an examination of the relation of metaphysics to the other sciences; an elucidation of the ...
The final published book by Nobel Prize-winning author and philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941), La pensée et le mouvant (translated here as The Creative Mind), is a masterly autobiography of his philosophical method. Through essays and lectures written between 1903 and 1923, Bergson retraces how and why he became a philosopher, and crafts a fascinating critique of philosophy itself. Until it leaves its false paths, he demons ...
An adventuresome, ethereal being (Link) discovers Earth and the concept of the physical during his explorations of other worlds from his non-physical realm, Altura. Link gets fascinated with Earth and makes regular visits to this planet. But because he is formless, he can observe but cannot truly experience what it is to be physical. He wants to have this experience. That desire grows, and eventually he chooses to trade his non-physical state to ...
