Böcker i Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science-serien

Wolfgang Spohn is one of the most distinguished analytic philosophers in Germany. His work covers a huge range including epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of science. This collection presents 15 of his most important essays on theoretical philosophy.

We are often told that quantum phenomena demand radical revisions of our scientific world view and that no physical theory describing well defined objects, such as particles described by their positions, evolving in a well defined way, let alone deterministically, can account for such phenomena.

An understanding of developments in Arabic mathematics between the IXth and XVth century is vital to a full appreciation of the history of classical mathematics.

Since the Niels Bohr centenary of 1985 there has been an astonishing international surge of scholarly analyses of Bohr's philosophy.

It features unique resources for students of the philosophy and history of quantum mechanics and the Copenhagen Interpretation, cognitive theory and the psychology of perception, the history and philosophy of art, and the pragmatic and historical relationships between religion and science.

This volume covers a wide range of topics in the most recent debates in the philosophy of mathematics, and is dedicated to how semantic, epistemological, ontological and logical issues interact in the attempt to give a satisfactory picture of mathematical knowledge.The essays collected here explore the semantic and epistemic problems raised by different kinds of mathematical objects, by their characterization in terms of axiomatic theories, and by the objectivity of both pure and applied mathematics. They investigate controversial aspects of contemporary theories such as neo-logicist abstractionism, structuralism, or multiversism about sets, by discussing different conceptions of mathematical realism and rival relativistic views on the mathematical universe. They consider fundamental philosophical notions such as set, cardinal number, truth, ground, finiteness and infinity, examining how their informal conceptions can best be captured in formal theories.The philosophy of mathematics is an extremely lively field of inquiry, with extensive reaches in disciplines such as logic and philosophy of logic, semantics, ontology, epistemology, cognitive sciences, as well as history and philosophy of mathematics and science. By bringing together well-known scholars and younger researchers, the essays in this collection ¿ prompted by the meetings of the Italian Network for the Philosophy of Mathematics (FilMat) ¿ show how much valuable research is currently being pursued in this area, and how many roads ahead are still open for promising solutions to long-standing philosophical concerns.Promoted by the Italian Network for the Philosophy of Mathematics ¿ FilMat

Featuring contributions from leading experts, this book represents the first collection of essays on the topic of art and science in the analytic tradition of philosophy. The volume offers a very different and welcome approach to study.

In addition, coverage also looks at the explanatory role of mathematics and the philosophical relevance of mathematical explanation. The book will appeal to a broad mathematical and philosophical audience.

" At another place, Kapitza meditates on the roles played by instinct, imagination, audacity, experiment, and hard work in the develop ment of science, and for a moment seems to despair at understanding the dogged arguments of great scientists: "Einstein loved to refer to God when there was no more sensible argument!"

Observability and Scientific Realism It is commonly thought that the birth of modern natural science was made possible by an intellectual shift from a mainly abstract and specuJative conception of the world to a carefully elaborated image based on observations.

After his failure to replace metaphysics by a linguistic approach, Ludwig Boltzmann came to identify the philosophy of science with methodology which, in turn, he considered to be part of science itself, and thus not part of philosophy at all.

In addition, the book's critical examination helps clear up many of the current misunderstandings about the transmission of the text and the diagrams. These diagrams are not only significant for a reconstruction of the text but can also be considered as a commentary on the text.

This volume explores the reorganisation of knowledge taking place in the course of Galileo's research process extending over a period of more than thirty years, pursued within a network of exchanges with his contemporaries, and documented by a vast collection of research notes.

With this third edition of Nelson Goodman's The Structure of Appear ance, we are pleased to make available once more one of the most in fluential and important works in the philosophy of our times.

This comprehensive volume marks a new standard in scholarship in the emerging field of the philosophy of chemistry. Philosophers, chemists, and historians of science ask some fundamental questions about the relationship between philosophy and chemistry.

Having examined previous volumes of the Boston Studies series devoted to different countries, and having discussed the best way to present contemporary research in France, we have arrived at a careful selection of 15 participants, including the organizers.