During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one of the most controversial intellectual disputes was the question of method in natural philosophy, or physics. The tensions between observational experience and geometrization, demonstration from the effects and from the causes, and between Aristotle’s authority and new philosophical tendencies made some philosophers search for new solutions. Others criticized these new solutions and tried to show the validity of several medieval scholastic readings of Aristotle. With this article, I intend to present the role (...) of experience in the dispute between Nicoletto Vernia’s approach to the subject-matter of physics and Gomes of Lisbon’s response to it. While Vernia holds that the subject-matter of physics is mobile body, Gomes argues it is natural substance. What is at stake is how to combine experience, definition, and demonstration to obtain a consistent scientific method. Only through the study of this kind of text and discussion can we gather a solid background to elucidate what has changed and what has been inherited from the past in the scientific shift of the seventeenth century. (shrink)

There is empirical evidence suggesting a positive link between direct experiences in nature and people’s environmental attitudes (EA) and behaviors (EB). This has led researchers to encourage more frequent contact with nature, especially during childhood, as a way of increasing pro-environmentalism (i.e., pro-EA and pro-EB). However, the association between experiences in nature and EA/EB is complex, and specific guidelines for people’s everyday contact with nature cannot be provided. This article offers an overview of the research conducted (...) until know about the relation between experiences in nature and pro-environmentalism, and opens up new inquiries for future research. We begin with an introduction to people’s current tendency toward an alienation from the natural world and set out the objectives of the article. It is followed by three main sections. The first one reports on what experiences in nature refer to, how and where they occur. The second section describes the different approaches used to investigate and interpret the experiences in nature-EA and EB relation. The last section provides suggestions for future research. We close by making some final remarks about the importance of (re)stablishing a greater interaction with nature for people’s pro-EA and EB. (shrink)

This article explores the characteristics of research sites that scientists have called “natural experiments” to understand and develop usable distinctions for the social sciences between “Nature’s or Society’s experiments” and “natural experiments.” In this analysis, natural experiments emerge as the retro-fitting by social scientists of events that have happened in the social world into the traditional forms of field or randomized trial experiments. By contrast, “Society’s experiments” figure as events in the world that happen in circumstances that are already (...) sufficiently “controlled” to be open for direct analysis without reconstruction work. (shrink)

Dewey’s influence is seldom mentioned in the literature when the relationships between Wittgenstein and pragmatism are addressed. Yet, it should be known that Dewey’s philosophy is clearly echoed in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, as it is expressed in his Philosophical Investigations. In particular, Dewey’s Experience and Nature develops many creeds also taken up by Wittgenstein: for instance, the critic attitude towards artificial notions that break with primary experience (e.g., the “Self”), the will to bring philosophy back to the (...) ordinary, or the emphasis laid on the necessity to pay attention to what lies open to the view. Consequently, the influence of pragmatism on Wittgenstein is far from being limited to the influence of C. S. Peirce or of W. James. (shrink)

Enactive theory seems to be reaching a critical juncture in its evolution, as it expands beyond cognitive science to include a project that Shaun Gallagher has called “new naturalism”: a “phenomenologized” reconstruction of nature, directed by a distinctive view of experience that is itself a product of “naturalized phenomenology.” This article aims to contribute to conversations about how to move forward with this project by highlighting important parallels between the trajectory of enactive theory and the early history of (...) pragmatism. Pragmatism was first developed by Peirce, James, and Dewey out of a distinctive view of experience that strongly resembles that of enactive theory. Then, during the first third of the twentieth century, pragmatism evolved into a philosophy of nature and played a leading role in a reconstructive project much like the “new naturalism” proposed by Gallagher and others. Around midcentury, however, this project was largely abandoned as philosophers turned to problems of more limited scope. This history raises crucial questions for proponents of enactive “new naturalism”: Why did the pragmatist version of this project fail to achieve its aims? And how will it be different this time? (shrink)

The articles in the special issue "Experience in natural philosophy and medicine" discuss the roles and notions of experience in the works of a range of early modern authors, including Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, the Dutch atomist David Gorlaeus, William Harvey, and Christian Wolff. The articles extend the evidential basis on which we can rely to identify trends, changes and continuities in the roles and notions of experience in the period of the Scientific Revolution. They shed light (...) on the longstanding influence of traditional views and the emergence of early modern experimental philosophy. This introduction highlights the benefits of considering medicine in connection with natural philosophy when studying early modern views on experience and summarizes the articles. (shrink)

The paper investigates some mechanisms of thought-experimenting, and explores the role of perspective taking, in particular of mental simulation, in political thought-experiments, focusing for the most part on contractualist ones. It thus brings together two blossoming traditions: the study of perspective taking and methodology of thought-experiments. How do contractualist thought-experiments work? Our moderately inflationist mental modelling proposal is that they mobilize our imaginative capacity for perspective taking, most probably perspective taking through simulation. The framework suggests the answers to questions that (...) are often raised for other kinds of thought-experiments as well, concerning their source of data, heuristic superiority to deduction, experiential, qualitative character and ease in eliminating alternatives. In the case of contractualist political thought-experiments, the data come from perspective taking and the capacity to simulate. Mental simulation is way more accessible to subjects than abstract political reasoning from principles and facts. There is a new experience for the subject, the one of simulating. Simulation normally is quick and effortless; the simulator does not go through alternatives, but is constrained in an unconscious way. We distinguish two kinds of political thought-experiments and two manners of imagining political arrangements, building third-person mental models, and fi rst-person perspective taking. The two mechanisms, the fi rst of inductive model building, the second for simulation, and their combination(s), exhaust the range of cognitive mechanism underlying political thought-experimenting. (shrink)

Naturbegriffe beschreiben naturphilosophische Gegenstandsbereiche und fassen Resultate naturphilosophischer Diskurse zusammen. Gehört ihre Bestimmung zu den grundlegenden Aufgaben der Naturphilosophie, so stellt ihre gegenwärtige Vielfalt für die Naturphilosophie eine Herausforderung dar, Von kaum einer wirkungsgeschichtlich bedeutsamen Definition von Natur ist in den letzten Jahrzehnten behauptet worden, ihr komme keine Relevanz für den Diskurs zu. Der Beitrag zeigt Ordnungsstrukturen in der Pluralität der Verwendungsweisen auf und begründet den aktuellen Geltungsanspruch traditioneller Begriffe im Bezug auf spezifische Erfahrungsweisen. Nach einer Einführung beginne ich mit (...) der Unterscheidung von wissenschaftlicher und nichtwissenschaftlicher Naturerfahrung, beziehe auf diese Differenz die Aufgaben der Naturphilosophie und gehe dann mit einer Klassifikation von Naturbegriffen zum exemplarischen Teil über. In diesem diskutiere ich am Beispiel bestimmter Aspekte der Naturbegriffe von Aristoteles und Descartes ihre für die Gegenwart typischen Bedingungen der Verwendung in nichtwissenschaftlicher Erfahrung sowie darüber hinaus vorkommender Verwendungen. (shrink)

My theme is thought experiment in natural science, and its relation to real experiment. I shall defend the thesis that thought experiments that do not lead to theorizing and to a real experiment are generally of much less value that those that do so. To illustrate this thesis I refer to three examples, from three very different periods, and with three very different kinds of status. The first is the classic thought experiment in which Galileo imagined that he had, by (...) pure thought, demolished Aristoteles' dogma that heavier bodies fall more quickly than light ones. I will show that he was mistaken. The second is the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper purporting to show that quantum mechanics must be incomplete in its domain of application. This thought experiment is a very good one, not because its conclusions are correct, but precisely because it was fruitful, leading to theory and, above all, to a real experiment. Finally I discuss the modern string theory of everything, which, while it is regarded as a physical theory by its instigators, shares some properties of the least successful sort of thought experiment. (shrink)

John Dewey’s Experience and Nature has the potential to transform several areas of philosophy. The book is lengthy and difficult, but it has great importance for a knot of issues in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. It bears also on metaphilosophy, devoting many pages to the discipline’s characteristic pathologies, and advancing a view of what sort of guidance “naturalism” provides. Later chapters move on to discuss art, morality, and value. So this is a major statement by Dewey. (...) It may one day transform moral philosophy as he hopes, but this review will focus on the central ideas of the first two-thirds of the book. Here Dewey does succeed, I think, in motivating us to look at his core topics—experience and nature—in a new way. And though Dewey’s language is often obscure and unhelpful, some of the main ideas are simpler than they look.Earlier “pragmatist” philosophical work was novel in its focus on the relation between thought and action. This work had a broadly emp. (shrink)

Hacking has maintained that in experiments phenomena are created, not discovered, and that scientific entities are tools for doing. These claims undermine the distinction between the natural and the artificial: phenomena and scientific entities become artifacts. Hacking's view raises the question whether the distinction between the natural and the artificial has to be given up. The paper argues 1) that phenomena are created, but in a sense that does not undermine the distinction between the natural and the artificial, 2) that (...) scientific entities are used as tools instead of being tools, and 3) that Hacking's view on experiments may be reconciled with the traditional view provided the concept of nature be reinterpreted. (shrink)

The wilderness is one of the most widely recognized sources of transcendent emotion. Various recent studies have demonstrated nature’s power to induce intense emotions. The study at hand will generate conceptual and operational definitions of sublime emotion toward nature. Taking into consideration the recent research on feelings of awe, an instrument is devised to measure sublime emotion toward nature. The proposed scale’s reliability and validity is tested in a sample of 280 participants from the general population of (...) Madrid. Results show that sublime emotion was defined by two conceptual components: awe, and inspiring energy, both obtained using the computer program FACTOR. After reliability and validity analysis, the Sublime Emotion toward Nature (SEN) scale included 18 items, distributed into awe (6 items, α =.881) and inspiring energy (12 items, α=.933). Awe was defined by feelings of fear, threat, vulnerability, fragility, and respect for nature, which is perceived as vast, powerful, and mysterious. Inspiring energy was defined by feelings of vitality, joy, energy, oneness, freedom, eternity, and harmony with the universe. The SEN is an adequate instrument to measure transcendent emotions provoked by direct wilderness exposure or memory thereof. (shrink)

Although research in ecopsychology commonly identifies the value of spiritual experiences in nature for psychological well-being and environmental behaviour, previous research has not compared the outcomes of these experiences in natural and human-built settings. In the present study, the relationship between self-reported mystical experiences in natural and human-built environments for psychological well-being and environmental behaviour was investigated. A sample of 305 participants completed an amended version of Hood's Mysticism Scale, a measure of psychological well-being, and brief environmental behaviour scale. (...) Correlations indicated that mystical experiences in natural and in human-built environments both significantly predicted psychological well-being, but only mystical experiences in natural settings predicted environmental behaviour. This study suggests that mystical experiences in natural and human-built environments may be related to different outcomes. (shrink)

As 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of John Dewey’s Experience and Nature, the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale has developed this reader’s guide to support engagement with the book. The purpose of this guide is to provide chapter-by-chapter resources for individuals and reading groups who want to read Experience and Nature for the first time, as well as for those who are already familiar with the book and wish to (...) revisit it in order to gain a deeper understanding of it. Dewey is one of the most well-known philosophers, educators, and public intellectuals in American history, and recognition of his significance is on the rise. Dewey’s Experience and Nature provides the definitive statement of Dewey’s “empirical naturalism” (or “naturalistic humanism”), a metaphysical approach that recommends learning from the sciences without falling into reductionism or scientism. Dewey’s Experience and Nature attempts to overcome the tradition of philosophical theories that set humans against nature, society, and, ultimately, themselves. The work explores philosophical methods, the metaphysics of nature, and the philosophy of mind; it also situates Dewey’s theories of knowledge, meaning, art, and value within a naturalist-humanist metaphysics. Though long an object of study among Dewey scholars, the book’s significance for contemporary thought in a variety of fields remains underappreciated. Experience and Nature has much to offer contemporary discussions in philosophy, history, literary and aesthetic theory, psychology, and anthropology. This guide is divided into 13 weeks, most of which are focused on single chapters of Experience and Nature. For each week, we recommend additional readings that provide further insight into the focal reading; a brief discussion of the background of and a summary of the chapter; a list of major concepts introduced in the chapter, which you might attempt to define; and a list of questions for discussion for groups or individual reflection, as a prompt to deeper engagement. In this guide, references to Dewey’s work are to the comprehensive critical edition, The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953, edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969-1991, 2008; electronic edition published Charlottesville, Virginia, USA: InteLex Corporation, 2003). The Collected Works are published in three series: The Early Works (EW), The Middle Works (MW), and The Later Works (LW). Citations reference these series designations, followed by volume and page number. “(LW 1: 14),” for example, refers to The Later Works, volume 1, page 14. We recommend using the edition of Experience and Nature found in The Later Works of John Dewey volume 1. (shrink)

This chapter begins with a review of recent philosophical literature on religious experience, which has generally been concerned with experiences that focus on God or some other supernatural ‘thing’, and then considers other kinds of religious experience which should be of some interest for natural theology. It suggests that these kinds of religious experience invite a certain conception of God, namely, as an overarching meaning, rather than as a supernatural ‘object’, and also a correlative epistemology, one which (...) gives due acknowledgement to the sense-making capacities of the human body and of affective responses in particular. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine various philosophical approaches to religious experience and natural theology and look at some ways in which the former might be relevant for the latter. I argue that by thinking more about oft-overlooked or -underemphasized understandings of a) what might constitute religious experience and b) what functions natural theology might serve, we can begin to develop a more nuanced approach to natural theological appeals to religious experience — one that makes use of materially (...) mediated religious experience to develop a natural theology more sensitive to the varieties of experience of lived religion “on the ground”. (shrink)

Dewey’s formulation of a naturalistic account of experience has been criticized from time to time on the grounds that it is anthropomorphic, subjectivistic and idealistic. In this paper I wish to examine some of the issues associated with these charges in the light of two recent discussions of Dewey’s thought.

The paper investigates some mechanisms of thought-experimenting, and explores the role of perspective taking, in particular of mental simulation, in political thought-experiments, focusing for the most part on contractualist ones. It thus brings together two blossoming traditions: the study of perspective taking and methodology of thought-experiments. How do contractualist thought-experiments work? Our moderately inflationist mental modelling proposal is that they mobilize our imaginative capacity for perspective taking, most probably perspective taking through simulation. The framework suggests the answers to questions that (...) are often raised for other kinds of thought-experiments as well, concerning their source of data, heuristic superiority to deduction, experiential, qualitative character and ease in eliminating alternatives. In the case of contractualist political thought-experiments, the data come from perspective taking and the capacity to simulate. Mental simulation is way more accessible to subjects than abstract political reasoning from principles and facts. There is a new experience for the subject, the one of simulating. Simulation normally is quick and effortless; the simulator does not go through alternatives, but is constrained in an unconscious way. We distinguish two kinds of political thought-experiments and two manners of imagining political arrangements, building third-person mental models, and fi rst-person perspective taking. The two mechanisms, the fi rst of inductive model building, the second for simulation, and their combination(s), exhaust the range of cognitive mechanism underlying political thought-experimenting. (shrink)

It is almost a truism that nature is social, but by what means is nature made social at the level of the interactional encounter? While the transformation of society/nature relationships is often approached through the problematic of distance, and at the scale of macro-historical transformation, this article uses a conflict between American birdwatchers and ornithologists over scientific “collecting” (literally, the killing of birds) to examine the processes through which individuals come to know nature, and come to (...) know it so differently. With John Dewey’s (1958 [1925]) “experience” as the unit of analysis, I trace changes in each group’s experience with birds over the past century; the phenomenology of the resulting encounters; and the understanding that emerges from each in order to understand (1) how, empirically, these two very different loves of birds are formed, and (2) knowledge of nature as an affective sensibility shaped by experiences of closeness. (shrink)

What is the relationship between phenomenology and naturalism? Are they mutually exclusive or is a rapprochement possible between their approaches to consciousness and the natural world? Can phenomenology be naturalised and ought it to be? Or is naturalism fundamentally unable to accommodate phenomenological insights? How can phenomenological method be used within a naturalistic research programme? This cutting-edge collection of original essays contains brilliant contributions from leading phenomenologists across the world. The collection presents a wide range of fascinating and carefully argued (...) answers to these questions. (shrink)

Learning Love from a Tiger explores the vibrancy and variety of humans' sacred encounters with the natural world, gathering a range of stories culled from Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Mayan, Himalayan, Buddhist, and Chinese shamanic traditions. Readers will delight in tales of house cats who teach monks how to meditate, rivers that grant salvation, shamans who shape-shift into jaguars, crickets who perform Catholic mass, and many others. More than a collection of wonderful stories, this book introduces important concepts and approaches that (...) underlie much recent work in environmental ethics, religion, and ecology. Capper's light touch prompts readers to engage their own views of humanity's place in the natural world and in particular question longstanding assumptions of human superiority"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Roger Lundin traces how pragmatism and its reliance on experience eclipsed nature and religion as the ultimate moral authority. He explores why Americans prize experience as highly as they do, what they build out of it in works of culture and their daily lives, how they manage to make sense of it, and where people might turn when they reach the limits of experience.

What is the relationship between phenomenology and naturalism? Are they mutually exclusive or is a rapprochement possible between their approaches to consciousness and the natural world? Can phenomenology be naturalised and ought it to be? Or is naturalism fundamentally unable to accommodate phenomenological insights? How can phenomenological method be used within a naturalistic research programme? This cutting-edge collection of original essays contains brilliant contributions from leading phenomenologists across the world. The collection presents a wide range of fascinating and carefully argued (...) answers to these questions. (shrink)

A representative selection from Dewey's writings together with a lengthy and useful introduction, well-tailored to the needs of university students. All but one of the selections were written after 1925; together they present a clear picture of Dewey's philosophy in its maturest form. The editor has designed his collection to refute decisively all aspects of the 'Dewey Legend' of anti-intellectualism. But the chief aim of the selections is to document Dewey's comprehensive theory of experience and nature, which has (...) been neglected in favor of his educational and social philosophy.--D. D. O. (shrink)

Natural experiments are an increasingly popular research design in political science. This popularity raises a number of questions. First, what are natural experiments and why are they appealing? Second, what makes a good natural experiment? And finally, are natural experiments able to provide resources for knowledge production that other methodologies cannot or do not provide? Using Mary Morgan’s and Thad Dunning’s recent work on natural experiments, I offer answers to the first two questions and use the analysis to argue that (...) natural experiments highlight features of knowledge production that support methodological pluralism and the multiple aims of research. (shrink)

Initiatives advocating for nature-based solutions, such as increased urban biodiversity, aim to promote public health as a part of creating sustainable cities. These initiatives are supported by a plenitude of scientific literature demonstrating the link between human health and nature contact. Despite these findings, positive human-nature interactions are declining worldwide, negatively effecting human development and health. We support an embodied approach to mental health. Taking this approach seriously illuminates how cities can be enhanced by modifying environmental and (...) social affordances and the ways in which urban dwellers interact with urban natural greenspaces. We argue that urban nature experiences can be used to promote mental health, but that indicators of environmental injustice need to addressed. (shrink)

This article aims to challenge the thesis of the craft origins of scientific empiricism by demonstrating how the empirical practices of early experimentalism differed in significant ways from the activities of artisans. Through a phenomenological analysis of instrumental observation and experimental demonstrations, I aim to show how experimentalism privileged modes of experience that were foreign to craft traditions and which facilitated a newfound estrangement of human subjects from the objects of their knowledge. Firstly, we will review concerns surrounding the (...) promotion of optical instruments by early experimentalists to reveal how these technologies were understood not only to amplify the senses but also to obscure contextual and relative qualities available to unaided visual perception. Secondly, we will examine the experimental practices of the early Royal Society, to see how experimental demonstrations were deliberately structured to facilitate experiences of the natural world that were divorced from practical and personal contexts. It is here that the divergence from artisanal epistemology is rendered most apparent. For in contrast to craft practices, which favored forms of experience which were personal and engaged, I will argue that the new scientific practices of the 17th century played a central role in effecting the researcher's transformation into a new kind of epistemological subject – the spectator. (shrink)

Natural experiments wherein preferred marriage partners are co-reared play a central role in testing the Westermarck hypothesis. This paper reviews two such hitherto largely neglected experiments. The case of the Karo Batak is outlined in hopes that other scholars will procure additional information; the case of the Oneida community is examined in detail. Genealogical records reveal that, despite practicing communal child-rearing, marriages did take place within Oneida. However, when records are compared with first-person accounts, it becomes clear that, owing to (...) age- and gender-segregating practices, most endogamously marrying individuals probably did not share a history of extensive propinquity. (shrink)

From the “deep” ecological perspective, there is a dualism between an ecocentric and an anthropocentric perspective, and this dualism is reflected in the ideal of the bureaucratic experience. The bureaucrat lives by the myth of the human ability to control nature. An eco-myth is evolving that can offer one means of transcending the dominant bureaucratic mythic experience. This eco-myth movestoward a positive and sensitive human relationship with nature—a collective experience that values nature on its (...) own terms and not as standing reserve. This position is no less mythic than the one it is replacing, but it is a better myth, because, being non-dualist, it offers the prospect of a political society in harmony with nature. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In Germany, all-day care and all-day schooling are currently increasing on a large-scale. The extended time children spend in educational institutions could potentially result in limited access to nature experience for children. On the other hand, it could equally create opportunities for informal nature experience if school playgrounds have a specific nature-oriented design. This article is written from the perspective of a primary school teacher and presents the findings of a meta-analysis which looks at the (...) impact nature experience has on the development of children. Furthermore, the first results of a research study on green playgrounds in primary schools is discussed. The results so far seem to indicate that green school playgrounds have the potential of providing nature experience particularly for primary students. (shrink)