I write this short essay in response to Peirce, as a feminist, pragmatist, and cultural studies scholar, in the hope that it will help to bring feminism and pragmatism together. I suggest that Peirce offers marginalized and colonized people a way to argue for the importance of their input, with his theory of fallibilism, even if he still claims a position of privilege. He also offers assistance through his concept of “a community of inquirers.” It is curious that Peirce’s definition (...) of a university argues for a split between theory and practice that his earlier work sought to heal. Peirce opened a door to help diverse scholars be able to enter the university, and find a way to address issues of power, with his youthful connecting of theory to practice, that his more senior position draws our attention away from and seeks to hold off. Fortunately, it is too late. Peirce’s youthful pragmatism has been developed in important ways by other scholars and now serves as an example of a way to do philosophy that does connect theory to practice and does seek to address real problems in diverse peoples lives, and help to find solutions that effect change. (shrink)

Burke approaches man in terms of human actions. His key concepts--elucidated at length in A Grammar of Motives --are act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. Men are viewed as agents acting in a scene and using some agency for the accomplishment of some purpose. This is a "field" orientation of the sort found in George H. Mead's "philosophy of the act," in Edward C. Tolman's "purposive behaviorism," and in Talcott Parson's concept of "action-system." Burke makes many references to Mead, and (...) his approach to man is very similar to Mead's in its stress upon the act, upon man as a symbol-using agent, and upon the forms of "identification" which role-taking makes possible. The focus of Burke's attention is, however, upon man's literary products as a mirror in which to behold the forms and complexity of human motivation. He is in effect telling us--and showing us--the importance of the study of man's most complex symbolic acts as a way of enriching our understanding of human nature. In the Rhetoric, humanistic material is penetratingly analysed in a way which supplements and broadens the conception of man gained from more narrowly scientific studies. In his discussion of the range and the principles of rhetoric Burke considers Cicero, Aristotle, Augustine, Bacon, Bentham, Marx, Carlyle, Empson, Veblen, Diderot, La Rochefoucauld, De Gourmont, Pascal, Ovid, Machiavelli, and Dante. Of his analyses of literary works the pages on Castiglione, Shakespere, Kafka, and Kierkegaard are very fine. That no student of man should neglect this humanistic material or this mode of linguistic analysis is convincingly attested by Burke's achievements. (shrink)

This book explores how far some leading philosophers, from Montaigne to Hume, used Academic Scepticism to build their own brand of scepticism or took it as its main sceptical target. The book offers a detailed view of the main modern key figures, including Sanches, Charron, La Mothe Le Vayer, Bacon, Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, Pascal, Foucher, Huet, and Bayle. In addition, it provides a comprehensive assessment of the role of Academic Scepticism in Early Modern philosophy and a complete survey of (...) the period. As a whole, the book offers a basis for a new, balanced assessment of the role played by scepticism in both its forms. Since Richard Popkin's works, there has been considerable interest in the role played by Pyrrhonian Scepticism in Early Modern Philosophy. Comparatively, Academic Scepticism was much neglected by scholars, despite some scattered important contributions. Furthermore, a general assessment of the presence of Academic Scepticism in Early Modern Philosophy is lacking. This book fills the void. (shrink)

John Case , the most important English Aristotelian of the Renaissance period, has not yet received the attention he deserves. In his Lapis philosophicus , an exposition of Aristotle's Physics, is found a discussion of the relation of nature to art which parallels in many ways that formulated a few years later in the writings of Francis Bacon. Case argues, in a way more reminiscent of the works of Giambattista della Porta than of those of Aristotle, that the natural (...) philosopher can legitimately apply the productive arts in helping nature to fulfill her function. Moreover, while rejecting the excessive claims of the Paracelsians, Case does accept the transmutational claims of the alchemists. In the final analysis, his ‘Aristotelianism’ has been tempered by the tradition of Renaissance natural magic. Like many other Peripatetic thinkers of the period, Case shows himself to be an eclectic, drawing materials from a wide variety of sources and open to many of the new scientific tendencies then developing. (shrink)

Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science Volume 77Issue 4 01 November 2023 Table of Contents -/- [1] C. T. Wolfe, “The life of matter: early modern vital matter theories,” Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, vol. 77, no. 4, pp. 673–675, Nov. 2023. -/- [2] G. Giglioni, “Large as life: Francis Bacon on the animate matter of plants,” Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History (...) of Science, vol. 77, no. 4, pp. 677–696, Nov. 2023. -/- [3] L. Georgescu, “Cavendish on life,” Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, vol. 77, no. 4, pp. 697–715, Nov. 2023. -/- [4] A. Clericuzio, “Thomas Willis’ iatrochemistry and the activity of matter,” Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, vol. 77, no. 4, pp. 717–732, Nov. 2023. -/- [5] R. Garau, “Gassendi’s second thought. From a materialistic picture of cognition to the defence of dualism: the lasting influence of the polemic with Descartes,” Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, vol. 77, no. 4, pp. 733–751, Nov. 2023. -/- [6] T. Demeter, “Sympathetic Organizations: body, mind, and society in Robert Whytt and David Hume,” Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, vol. 77, no. 4, pp. 753–769, Nov. 2023. -/- [7] P. Pecere, “Materialism, Lebenskraft and the limits of science: metaphysical vitalism in post-Kantian scenarios,” Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, vol. 77, no. 4, pp. 771–787, Nov. 2023. -/- . (shrink)

Monsters as a category seem omnipresent in early modern natural philosophy, in what one might call a “long” early modern period stretching from the Renaissance to the late eighteenth century, when the science of teratology emerges. We no longer use this term to refer to developmental anomalies (whether a two-headed calf, an individual suffering from microcephaly or Proteus syndrome) or to “freak occurrences” like Mary Toft’s supposedly giving birth to a litter of rabbits, in Surrey in the early eighteenth-century (Todd (...) 1995). But the term itself has a rich semantic history, coming from the Latin verb monstrare (itself deriving from monere, to remind, warn, advise), “to show,” from which we also get words like “monitor,” “admonish,” “monument” and “premonition”; hence there are proverbs like, in French, le monstre est ce qui montre, difficult to render in English: “the monsters is that which shows.” Scholars have discussed how this “monstrative” dimension of the monster is in fact twofold: on the one hand, and most awkwardly, the monster is an individual who is “pointed at,” who is shown; on the other hand, the monster is a sign, a portent, an omen, and in that sense “shows us” something (on the complex semantic history of the term across Indo-European languages see Ochsner 2005). The latter dimension persists in naturalized form in the early modern period when authors like Bacon, Fontenelle or William Hunter insist that monsters (or anomalies) can show us something of the workings of Nature. (shrink)

lecture 1. Introduction : intellectual history and conceptual change -- lecture 2. The dawn of the 17th century : Aristotelian scholasticism -- lecture 3. The new vision of Francis Bacon -- lecture 4. The new astronomy and cosmology -- lecture 5. Descartes's dream of perfect knowledge -- lecture 6. The specter of Thomas Hobbes -- lecture 7. Skepticism and Jansenism : Blaise Pascal -- lecture 8. Newton's discovery -- lecture 9. The Newtonian revolution -- lecture 10. John Locke, the (...) revolution in knowledge -- lecture 11. The Lockean moment -- lecture 12. Skepticism and Calvanism : Pierre Bayle -- lecture 13. The moderns, the generation of 1680-1715 -- lecture 14. Introduction to deism -- lecture 15. The conflict between deism and Christianity -- lecture 16. Montesquieu and the problem of relativism -- lecture 17. Voltaire, bringing England to France -- lecture 18. Bishop Joseph Butler and God's providence -- lecture 19. The skeptical challenge to optimism, David Hume -- lecture 20. The assault upon philosophical optimism, Voltaire -- lecture 21. The philosophes : the triumph of the French Enlightenment -- lecture 22. Beccaria and enlightened reform -- lecture 23. Rousseau's dissent -- lecture 24. Materialism and naturalism, the boundaries of the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Table of Contents 0. Introduction Part I. Life and mechanism 1. Guido Giglioni (Macerata) Scaliger Bacon Harvey: A Trajectory in the Early Modern History of Vegetative Life 2. Andreas Blank (Klagenfurt) Jacob Schegk on Plants, Medicaments, and the Question of Emergence 3. Oana Matei (Arad/Bucharest) Particles, universal spirit, and seeds: John Evelyn's theory of matter in Elysium Britannicum 4. Luca Tonetti (Bologna) Stimulus and fibre theory in Giorgio Baglivi’s medicine: A reassessment 5. Antonio Clericuzio (Roma Tre) ‘Febris non est (...) morbus, sed bellum contra morbum’. A study of seventeenth-century theories of fevers. 6. Riccardo Chiaradonna (Roma Tre) Plotinus and Ficino in Ralph Cudworth’s philosophy of nature 7. Raphaële Andrault (CNRS-ENS Lyon) The chain of motions and the chain of thoughts. The diachronic mechanism of Spinoza's friends. 8. Antonio M. Nunziante (Padova) Both Natural and Supernatural: Leibniz’s Integrated Model of Life 9. Marco Storni (Neuchâtel) Experience, Analogy and Mechanism in Maupertuis’s Theory of Generation 10. Cécilia Bognon-Küss (Louvain-La-Neuve) Intussusception, vital mechanisms and the ontology of life 11. Charles Wolfe (Toulouse) Expanded mechanism or heuristic vitalism? Part II. Mechanisms of the mind 12. Emanuela Scribano (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) Powers of the Body and Eclipse of the Soul. From Descartes On 13. Ursula Renz (Graz) Shaftesbury’s Conception of Human Thought 14. Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) Psychology and Mechanism: Christian Wolff on the Soul-Body Analogy 15. Federico Boccaccini (Brasilia) Mental Machinery and active powers from Hartley to Ward 16. Paolo Pecere (Roma Tre) Mechanism, organization, mind: a Kantian legacy in 19th century psychology 17. Lydia Patton (Virginia Tech) Organic Memory and the Perils of Perigenesis: the Helmholtz-Hering Debate. (shrink)

For scholars of American philosophy, this anthology of essays on S. C. Pepper's works on metaphysics, aesthetics, and value theory is especially a welcome one. Also included is a reprint of a little known but valuable essay by Pepper entitled "Metaphor in Philosophy," which originally appeared in volume 3 of Phillip S. Wiener's Dictionary of the History of Ideas. In this essay, Pepper discusses his root metaphor theory in relation to Bacon and Kant, and some contemporary uses of the (...) notion of paradigm, e.g., Wittgenstein and Kuhn. Lewis E. Hahn's "The Stephen C. Pepper Papers, 1903-1972" gives an informative account of six book-length unpublished manuscripts in the Pepper Archives at the Southern Illinois University. The rest of the essays concentrate on the various aspects of Pepper's works. A few deal with aesthetic theory and its application to critical practice. Of philosophical interests are papers by Elmer H. Duncan, David B. Richardson, Robert J. Yanal, Robert L. Armstrong, and Brian Caraher, and a short essay by Charles Hartshorne and a response by Joseph H. Monast. Duncan gives a just but critical account of the neglect of Pepper's Sources of Value, and a highly appreciative appraisal of Pepper's World Hypotheses. Caraher's careful essay on the conflicting root metaphors in Frege's theory of meaning offers interesting application of Pepper's conception of formism and contextualism to problems in Frege's philosophy. A variety of problems such as the root metaphor theory, descriptive definition and aesthetic experience are discussed. Efron's long introductory essay entitled "Pepper's Continuing Value" serves its purpose well in terms of indicating Pepper's influence in non-philosophical disciplines and the problems that arise in Pepper's value theory. What is missed is a sustained critical examination of Pepper's root metaphor theory, characterization of the various world hypotheses including Pepper's own selectivism, and its relation to ethical theory. The anthology however is useful in indicating the scope of Pepper's influence and the need to examine his contributions with reference to contemporary philosophical problems.--A.S.C. (shrink)

Peirceana provides a forum for the best current work on Peirce worldwide. Besides monographs, the series will publish thematically unified anthologies and edited volumes with a defined topical focus and untranslated English selections of Peirce's writings.

Volume 8 of this landmark edition follows Peirce from May 1890 through July 1892—a period of turmoil as his career unraveled at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. The loss of his principal source of income meant the beginning of permanent penury and a lifelong struggle to find gainful employment. His key achievement during these years is his celebrated Monist metaphysical project, which consists of five classic articles on evolutionary cosmology. Also included are reviews and essays from The Nation in (...) which Peirce critiques Paul Carus, William James, Auguste Comte, Cesare Lombroso, and Karl Pearson, and takes part in a famous dispute between Francis E. Abbot and Josiah Royce. Peirce's short philosophical essays, studies in non-Euclidean geometry and number theory, and his only known experiment in prose fiction complete his production during these years. Peirce's 1883-1909 contributions to the Century Dictionary form the content of volume 7 which is forthcoming. (shrink)

"Highly recommended." —Choice "... an important event for the world of philosophy. For the first time we have available in an intelligible form the writings of one of the greatest philosophers of the past hundred years." —The Times Literary Supplement Volume 5 of this landmark edition covers an important transition in Peirce's life, marked by a rekindled enthusiasm for speculative philosophy. The writings include essays relating to his all-embracing theory of categories as well as papers on logic and mathematics.

Volume 6 of this landmark edition contains 66 writings mainly from the unsettled period in Peirce’s life just after he moved from New York to Milford, Pennsylvania, followed shortly afterward by the death of his mother. The writings in this volume reveal Peirce’s powerful mind probing into diverse issues, looking for an underlying unity, but, perhaps, also looking for direction.

The PEIRCE EDITION contains large sections of previously unpublished material in addition to selected published works. Each volume includes a brief historical and biographical introduction, extensive editorial and textual notes, and a full chronological list of all of Peirce’s writings, published and unpublished, during the period covered.

This book presents a thorough overview of a model of human functioning based on the idea that behavior is goal-directed and regulated by feedback control processes. It describes feedback processes and their application to behavior, considers goals and the idea that goals are organized hierarchically, examines affect as deriving from a different kind of feedback process, and analyzes how success expectancies influence whether people keep trying to attain goals or disengage. Later sections consider a series of emerging themes, including dynamic (...) systems as a model for shifting among goals, catastrophe theory as a model for persistence, and the question of whether behavior is controlled or instead 'emerges'. Three chapters consider the implications of these various ideas for understanding maladaptive behavior, and the closing chapter asks whether goals are a necessity of life. Throughout, theory is presented in the context of diverse issues that link the theory to other literatures. (shrink)

"For anyone seriously interested in Peirce, or in nineteenth-century American philosophy, or in American intellectual history, or in philosophy in general, or in semiotics and its philosophical import, these volumes should be required reading." —Murray G. Murphey, Semiotica.

"The volumes are handsomely produced and carefully edited,... For the first time we have available in an intelligible form the writings of one of the greatest philosophers of the past hundred years... " —The Times Literary Supplement "... an extremely handsome and impressive book; it is an equally impressive piece of scholarship and editing." —Man and World.

An understanding of the nature of advanced industrial economies is derived from this extensive investigation of the ways in which the boundaries of the political have changed in Europe since the 1960s.

A reprint of the New American Library edition of 1970.

pt. 1. 1869-1893.--pt. 2. 1894-1900.--pt. 3. 1901-1908.

This review essay on R. Melvin Keiser's Roots of Relational Ethics: Responsibility in Origin and Maturity in H. Richard Niebuhr surveys selected works about Niebuhr, examines the strengths of Keiser's post-critical treatment of Niebuhr and raises questions about Keiser's views and about Niebuhr.

Foucault’s invitation to the subject is to become free of themselves by learning to think differently. Such a project has as its goal the mastery of the self, and can be understood as a Foucaultian ‘politics of ourselves’. Foucault’s ethical turn is an invitation for subjectivity to undertake its own radical education. Whilst this invitation has characteristics unique to Foucault’s philosophical discipline, I argue that it sheds light upon a diversity of practices of subjectivity from the psychotherapeutic and mystic traditions. (...) By seeing these currently available technologies of self in the Foucaultian lens we are given the opportunity to appreciate their work on subjectivity as necessarily political and social, a radical education not limited to the realm of individualistic aspiration and narcissistic temptations. The paper concludes by drawing attention to some implications for education, and for a teacher education that embraces the ‘radical reflexivity’ of some psycho-spiritual practices. (shrink)

This paper addresses John Burgess's answer to the ‘Benacerraf Problem’: How could we come justifiably to believe anything implying that there are numbers, given that it does not make sense to ascribe location or causal powers to numbers? Burgess responds that we should look at how mathematicians come to accept: There are prime numbers greater than 1010That, according to Burgess, is how one can come justifiably to believe something implying that there are numbers. This paper investigates what lies behind Burgess's (...) answer and ends up as a rebuttal to Burgess's reasoning. (shrink)

This first volume of the Logic of the Future edition collects Peirce's writings on the historical development, theory and application of his graphical method and diagrammatic reasoning. Its 28 selections of texts and extensive general and volume int.

In three comprehensive volumes, Logic of the Future presents a full panorama of Charles S. Peirce’s important late writings. Among the most influential American thinkers, Peirce took his existential graphs to be his greatest contribution to human thought. The manuscripts from 1895—1913, most of which are published here for the first time, testify the richness and open-endedness of his theory of logic and its applications. They also invite us to reconsider our ordinary conceptions of reasoning as well as the (...) conventional stories told about the evolution of modern logic. This second volume collects Peirce’s writings on existential graphs related to his Lowell Lectures of 1903, the annus mirabilis of his that became decisive in the development of the mature theory of the graphical method of logic. (shrink)