This article investigates why Humboldtian Science, as a heuristic concept, has gained prominence in the historiography of science and requires clarification. It offers an ideal-type model of comparative research and exact measurements across vast spaces, which Susan F. Cannon and others tied to Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Yet, he himself was less “Humboldtian” than this concept suggests. The article proposes to disentangle Humboldtian Science from Humboldt’s science, which constituted a set of individual research (...) practices that defied the ideal of precision. Humboldt’s science was often impromptu, marked by epistemological and personal insecurities, and embedded in the protagonist’s peripatetic way of living and frequently erratic writing style. Historicizing Humboldt’s science undermines the exceptionalism that elevates the Prussian savant above his contemporaries and casts him as a singular figure. This critical reflection encourages biographical approaches to the history of science, balancing heuristic generalizations and attention to individual research styles. (shrink)

Humboldtian science Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9480-6 Authors David Oldroyd, School of History and Philosophy, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052 Australia Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

The connections between “the Humboldtian tradition” and very important cultural layers of the European anti-Enlightenment movement can provide a powerful alternative to the mainstream in today’s social sciences. This tradition should be seen, though, in its concrete historicity and the political and theoretical blind spots which are part of this tradition ought to be carefully reconsidered. This anthropological tradition can be “unpacked” by bringing it closer to other theoretical trends which try to address modernity’s inconsistencies and lack of unity (...) - in order to deconstruct its national closure and its administrative and state oriented background. One of the geographical, historical and social areas where alternative modernities , and Humboldtian traditions seem to intersect each other is the East European peasantry. (shrink)

This reply to Finn Collin’s critically sympathetic review of my Back to the University’s Future: The Second Coming of Humboldt, addresses some of the tensions involved in realizing “Humboldt 2.0” in today’s higher education environment. Its focus is largely on the academic’s sense of researcher as being one of learner. In other words, the Humboldtian sees research as the necessary complement to teaching, not something radically distinct from it.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

Language and thought are intimately related: philosophers have long debated how a given language may condition the oral and written expression of thought. The language chosen to communicate scientific discoveries may facilitate or impede international access to such knowledge. Vector and message may become intertwined in ways not yet fully understood: comparing and contrasting dictionary definitions of key terms, such as the Humboldtian Weltansicht, may provide useful insights into this process. Semantic prosody, a linguistic phenomenon brought to light by (...) corpus linguistics through the analysis of ever vaster corpora, may have unsuspected and even unconscious impacts on the perception of a message. A case study of data from WebsTerre, a diachronic corpus of geological English, explores a twentieth-century Kuhnian paradigm shift in Earth Science, from continental drift to plate tectonics, to demonstrate how interactions between semantic prosody and translation have the potential to alter the history of science. (shrink)

There have been constant and multiple endeavours to argue for Darwin's both epistemic and practical debt to Romanticism. Almost all of these arguments emphasise Darwin's theoretical and aesthetic associations with Alexander von Humboldt, who, from a prevailing Darwin-centred perspective, is in turn usually oversimplified as an undisputed incarnation of Romanticism. The antagonistic view, however, develops nothing other than another stereotype of Humboldt as an anti-idealistic, pro-French, and even highly Anglophone empiricist naturalist, and accordingly rejects the claim of a romantic Darwin (...) in terms of his Humboldtian inheritance. In this paper, I will first portray a balanced figure of Humboldt in terms of both his critical incorporation of romantic philosophy and the idiosyncratic history of his science. Then, I will thematically compare Darwin with Humboldt and other romantics so as to elucidate Darwin's peculiar appropriation of romantic tenets. Three interrelated romantic themes are examined, along with a discrimination of different senses in which the term romanticism is used: a) the literature-science relation, b) the pursuit of the unity in and through multiplicity, and c) the epistemic role of imagination. On the basis of this triadic dissection, both Humboldt's and Darwin's adherence to and departure from romanticism are reevaluated. (shrink)

Throughout the medieval and modern periods, in various sacred and secular guises, the unification of all forms of knowledge under the rubric of ‘science’ has been taken as the prerogative of humanity as a species. However, as our sense of species privilege has been called increasingly into question, so too has the very salience of ‘humanity’ and ‘science’ as general categories, let alone ones that might bear some essential relationship to each other. After showing how the ascendant Stanford (...) School in the philosophy of science has contributed to this joint demystification of ‘humanity’ and ‘science’, I proceed on a more positive note to a conceptual framework for making sense of science as the art of being human. My understanding of ‘science’ is indebted to the red thread that runs from Christian theology through the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment to the Humboldtian revival of the university as the site for the synthesis of knowledge as the culmination of self-development. Especially salient to this idea is science‘s epistemic capacity to manage modality (i.e. to determine the conditions under which possibilities can be actualised) and its political capacity to organize humanity into projects of universal concern. However, the challenge facing such an ideal in the twentyfirst century is that the predicate ‘human’ may be projected in three quite distinct ways, governed by what I call ‘ecological’, ‘biomedical’ and ‘cybernetic’ interests. Which one of these future humanities would claim today’s humans as proper ancestors and could these futures co-habit the same world thus become two important questions that general philosophy of science will need to address in the coming years. (shrink)

By resituating Alexander von Humboldt in the “working world” of mining, this essay offers a case study of the way in which industry has shaped practice and theory in the history of science. While Humboldt’s experience as a miner in Saxony and Prussia provided him a venue in which to study fossilized vegetation, revealing a fundamental link between the migrations of plants and of peoples, industrial concerns about miners’ safety inspired a study of the interplay between plants and people (...) that shaped his later articulation of the verticality of plant distribution. Moreover, the cartographic methods Humboldt employed during his American journey depended as much on drawing practices indebted to mining as they did on patterns of vertical mobility above and below the surface of the earth. These arguments ultimately encourage a departure from “Humboldtian Science,” a term that has veiled an originally Prusso-Saxon science beneath a set of Anglo-American connotations. (shrink)

The insight that scientific theories are “practice-laden” has animated scholarship in the history of science for nearly three decades. This article examines a style of geographical thought that was, I argue, movement-laden. The thought-style in question has been described as a “vertical consciousness that engulfed science in the early nineteenth century,” and is closely associated with the geographical vision of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Humboldt’s science spanned nature’s horizontal and vertical axes, from Saxon mines to Andean summits, (...) and from the currents of the ocean to those of the aerial ocean. In probing the origins of Humboldt’s vertical thinking, this article opens up a broader history about the industrial practices and travel cultures that originally animated it. Humboldt’s “global physics” first emerged within a context of vertical travel, up mountains and into mines and caverns. Rhythms of the body—lethal for some, “sublime” for others—became rhythms of the mind. A view of nature as set of vertically complementary spaces rippled through mining culture, Romantic art, and the geographical sciences. To trace the earliest routes of Humboldt’s science is to acknowledge the many actors—some celebrated, most unsung—who took part in the making of a vertical consciousness. (shrink)

Sir Roderick Murchison's Humboldtian belief in a close linkage between the sciences of geology and physical geography finds its best illustration in his prediction of the three-dimensional structure of Africa in 1852 from explorers' reports, fossil discoveries, and a theory of crustal uplift and fracturing elaborated by the Cambridge mathematician William Hopkins. From this remarkably accurate hypothesis and other theories which he had developed concerning the occurrence of coal and gold, Murchison concluded that exploitable deposits of economic minerals which (...) might justify the foundation of a series of new British colonies could be systematically discovered around the continent's elevated rim. As the simultaneous President of the Royal Geographical Society and Director-General of the British Geological Survey, Murchison subsequently organized the dispatch of numerous scientific exploring expeditions to test his theory and reconnoitre commercial opportunities in Africa. While widening the frontier of British science, he thus schooled the imperial government in the belief that science could serve the drive for national expansion. His views on the physical, biological, and cultural conservatism of Africa also provided scientific justification for Victorian schemes of improvement, and his promotional activities helped set the stage for the British annexations in the continent during its fin de siècle partition by the European powers. (shrink)

Historians of science have attributed the emergence of ecology as a discipline in the late nineteenth century to the synthesis of Humboldtian botanical geography and Darwinian evolution. In this essay, I begin to explore another, largely neglected but very important dimension of this history. Using Sergei Vinogradskii’s career and scientific research trajectory as a point of entry, I illustrate the manner in which microbiologists, chemists, botanists, and plant physiologists inscribed the concept of a “cycle of life” into their (...) investigations. Their research transformed a longstanding notion into the fundamental approaches and concepts that underlay the new ecological disciplines that emerged in the 1920s. Pasteur thus joins Humboldt as a foundational figure in ecological thinking, and the broader picture that emerges of the history of ecology explains some otherwise puzzling features of that discipline – such as its fusion of experimental and natural historical methodologies. Vinogradskii’s personal “cycle of life” is also interesting as an example of the interplay between Russian and Western European scientific networks and intellectual traditions. Trained in Russia to investigate nature as a super-organism comprised of circulating energy, matter, and life; over the course of five decades – in contact with scientists and scientific discourses in France, Germany, and Switzerland – he developed a series of research methods that translated the concept of a “cycle of life” into an ecologically conceived soil science and microbiology in the 1920s and 1930s. These methods, bolstered by his authority as a founding father of microbiology, captured the attention of an international network of scientists. Vinogradskii’s conceptualization of the “cycle of life” as chemosynthesis, autotrophy, and global nutrient cycles attracted the attention of ecosystem ecologists; and his methods appealed to practitioners at agricultural experiment stations and microbiological institutes in the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union. (shrink)

The role of verticality in 19th- and 20th-century fields of knowledge-making has received increased attention among historians of science. Correspondingly, cultural historians have explored the growing importance of a bird's eye view in popular culture throughout the 1800s. The elevated positions created in science and public discourse have both contributed to a modern ability to see the bigger picture. This article investigates how the Swedish geographer Sven Hedin produced an elevated view through his expedition to the Karakoram mountain (...) range in Tibet between 1906 and 1908. Focusing on his travel narrative as a place where the elevated view was created and defined, I interpret Hedin's expedition as a part of initiatives in geography, at the turn of the 20th century, to find a vertical means of representing the world. In particular, this article demonstrates how the overview, both literally and metaphorically, became an ideal in Hedin's narrative. Moreover, I argue that Hedin's elevated view contributed to an emotional economy of elevation. The alleged rational gaze of the overview was combined with emotions and experiences of cold climate, thin mountain air, vertigo, and awe. This article indicates how affective states were included in the collection of data, even when they threatened to blur the sensorium of the observer. Third, through the analytical lens of an emotional economy of elevation, I argue that Hedin's elevated view mimicked the affective language of a Humboldtian tradition, while at the same time it contributed to the popular culture of the late 19th century with its fascination for ascents and bird's-eye views. As a European celebrity, Hedin reached massive crowds and contributed to the establishment of the outlook from above as a crucial technique for understanding nature. (shrink)

By now scholars agree that the foundation of the University of Berlin in 1810 and its glorification through the “Humboldtian myth” must be viewed separately. Nevertheless, ever since the 1910 centennial, historiography has rarely gone beyond references to the historical documents edited by Rudolf Köpke and Max Lenz. Analyzing the lectures announced in the university calendar for the fall semester 1810/11, the essay shows that applied science and vocational training played a larger role than assumed. In founding the (...) university, it seems, the authorities looked rather for the advancement of the common public interest than for the realization of a “Bildungsideal”. This essay pleads, therefore, for a comprehensive reassessment of the historical documents from the planning and founding stages of the University of Berlin. (shrink)

In the course of the nineteenth century the study of literature was professionalized. There was a concerted attempt to make the study of literature an academic pursuit, ‘a particular branch of learning or science’, to turn it into ‘literary studies’ or, as it was called in German, Literaturwissenschaft. 1 This attempt was ultimately successful in the sense that literary studies became a recognized and established discipline within the new Humboldtian kind of university. However, this success brought troubles of (...) its own. Among other things, the arrival of the academic discipline of literary studies not only required a method of study but also a determinate field of study. In order to delimit such a field, a clear and well-defined concept of literature was needed. This meant that academic literary studies would have to transform, for its own specific purposes, such concepts as ‘literary work’ and ‘literary text’ as well as the concept of ‘literature’, from broad, vague, non-theoretical, everyday notions into something like well-designed theoretical tools. Though it has not always been recognized, this transformation has presented a major theoretical problem for literary studies, and it is arguable that to this day no satisfactory solution has been found. (shrink)

German educators have long been concerned with the didactics of scientific education. Shortly after the Humboldtian reforms of the early nineteenth century, university science professors realized that they had to rely on teachers in the Gymnasien for well-prepared students. By mid-century, these teachers responded with treatises on the pedagogy of scientific education, treatises whose ideas, when implemented, guaranteed scientifically literate students who would later lead Germany to her first place position in the scientific world by 1900. Now, in (...) the twentieth century, two special conditions have changed the sense in which students could and should be scientifically literate. Logical positivism and its heirs inaugurated rigidly exact methodologies for questioning the foundation and content of science, while technological advances, specifically atomic and nuclear weaponry, raised anew the question of the role of science in modern culture, politics, and society. In recent years German citizens have had a special interest in the latter. (shrink)

This article aims to distinguish and depict the features of communications and collaborations in contemporary universities through the concept of trading zones. The author also considers the role that the idea of a digital university might play in shaping interactions in transforming local context where different actors can find a common ground of exchange. The new contexts, including the pragmatic orientation of contemporary society and new technologies and environments, contribute to reconsidering the idea of the classical university, in which interactions (...) between professors and students have outstepped customary collaborations in laboratories, as well as the idea of education and research integration. This article focuses on distinguishing new forms of interactions, boundary practices, and environments, which are suggested by today’s universities. Proceeding from them, the author argues that new concepts of the university, such as the digital university, and renovated campuses—to some extent—contribute to the adaptation of a renewed idea of Humboldt’s Bildung. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Society for Hermeneutics and Science.

Hermann's Weyl Das Kontinuum has inspired several studies in logic and foundations of mathematics over the last century. The book provides a remarkable reconstruction of a large portion of classical mathematics on a predicative basis. However, diverging interpretations of the predicative system formulated by Weyl have been proposed in the literature. In the present work, I analyze an early formalization of Weyl's ideas proposed by [Casari, E. 1964. Questioni di Filosofia Della Matematica, Milano: Feltrinelli] and compare it with other, more (...) well-known, accounts, such as those proposed respectively by Feferman and Avron. In this way, I fill a gap in the literature on Weyl's predicative mathematics by shedding light on an interpretation that has never been studied. Moreover, Casari's work is plausibly the first systematic reconstruction of Weyl's system. In particular, I highlight the different insights about predicativity that can be found in Weyl's work. Casari's reconstruction focuses on the logical and mathematical processes described by Weyl in the first part of his book. Through the analysis of this unexplored perspective, I shed light on fundamental aspects of Weyl's work and elucidate the alleged ambiguities it presents. In particular, in line with Avron's most recent reconstruction of Weyl's ideas, this analysis supports a stronger conception of predicativity than what is commonly attributed to Weyl in the literature. As a result, this work not only provides an analysis of a neglected interpretation of Das Kontinuum, but also contributes to elucidating Weyl's classical conception of predicativity. (shrink)

Despite wide recognition that speculation is critical for successful science, philosophers have attended little to it. When they have, speculation has been characterized in narrowly epistemic terms: a hypothesis is speculative due to its (lack of) evidential support. These ‘evidence-first’ accounts provide little guidance for what makes speculation productive or egregious, nor how to foster the former while avoiding the latter. I examine how scientists discuss speculation and identify various functions speculations play. On this basis, I develop a ‘function-first’ (...) account of speculation. This analysis grounds a richer discussion of when speculation is egregious and when it is productive, based in both fine-grained analysis of the speculation’s purpose, and what I call the ‘epistemic situation’ scientists face. (shrink)

This text addresses the problems of complex systems in understanding natural phenomena and the behaviour of systems related to human activity, from a science and humanities perspective. It discusses molecular behaviour and structures, and offers examples of ecological and environmental modelling.

We all agree that democratic decision-making requires a factual input, and most of us assume that when the pertinent facts are not in plain view they should be furnished by well-functioning scientific institutions. But how should liberal democracy respond when apparently sincere, rational and well-informed citizens object to coercive legislation because it is based on what they consider a misguided trust in certain parts of science? Cases are familiar, the most prominent concerning climate science and evolution, but one (...) may also count GMO-skepticism and vaccine-skepticism, and there are plenty of others. The paper defends what I, borrowing an expression from Badiola, call Science as Public Reason, asserting roughly that some policy-relevant factual proposition P is part of public reason if and only if there is consensus about P among scientific experts in the relevant well-functioning scientific institutions. I defend this view against the controversiality objection claiming that scientific findings cannot in this general way pass as public reason as they are sometimes controversial among reasonable citizens. My preferred line of defense is what I call Dogmatism about Science as Public Reason, which roughly amounts to insisting on Science as Public Reason on the ground that it is a philosophically well-motivated view, while conceding that it may not be acceptable to all minimally rational and well-informed individuals. (shrink)

Contemporary scholarship concerning science diplomacy is increasingly taking a historical approach. In our introduction to this special issue, we argue that this approach promises insight into science diplomacy because of the tools historians of science bring to their work. In particular, we observe that not only are historians of science currently poised to chart the diplomatic aspects involved in the transnational circulation of technoscientific knowledge, materials, and expertise. They are ready to bring critical global analysis to (...) an important phenomenon that has too often been treated as a benign diplomacy device deployed by the Global North without equal reference to the Global South. Through cases discussed in the articles of the special issue, however, we see that historically, in the Global South as well as the Global North, science diplomacy has often functioned to mediate the circulation of technoscientific knowledge and materials, and its historical study helps to better illuminate the resulting knowledge-power nexus. (shrink)

This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Computer Science Logic, CSL '97, held as the 1997 Annual Conference of the European Association on Computer Science Logic, EACSL, in Aarhus, Denmark, in August 1997. The volume presents 26 revised full papers selected after two rounds of refereeing from initially 92 submissions; also included are four invited papers. The book addresses all current aspects of computer science logics and its applications and thus (...) presents the state of the art in the area. (shrink)

(1994). Annex: The survey questionnaires. World Futures: Vol. 39, The Evolution of European Identity: Surveys of the Growing Edge A Report by the European Culture Impact Research Consortium (EUROCIRCON), pp. 161-164.

A Clearly argued and easy to read defense of Karl Popper's philosophy.

This book, originally published in 1965, discusses the political implication of the spread of science in antiquity. It reveals how the real Greek spirit of scientific research was crushed by Plato and Aristotle, long thought-of as searchers for truth. Historian such as Polybius and Livey and the poets Pinder and Virgil are seen in a new light when set against this background of social struggle.

The study is dedicated to modelling the contemporary portrayal of the philosophy of science. The essence of its theses is elucidated through the following assertions: a) right from its beginning, a communicative potential was embedded within the philosophy of science; b) its origin arises from a culmination of predecessors’ accomplishments; c) the value of the communicative approach in the philosophy of science lies in its acceptance rather than opposition to the formal direction. The analysis is conducted retrospectively. (...) The emergence of ideas within communicative philosophy of science is noticeable in its relevant relationship with the evolution of theories in logical positivism, rhetoric, pragmatism, linguistics, philosophy of language, and sociology of science. Analytical, synthetic, historical, rhetorical and structural-functional methodologies were used in the investigation. The findings of the study confirmed the hypothesis: communicative philosophy of science represents a historical combination of the field’s achievements, incorporating rhetorical, universalistic and particularistic developmental perspectives. (shrink)

In response to recent critics, this is a vigorous defence of realism. The roles of abstraction, abstract objects and a priori methods are explored, demonstrating the ways in which science mirrors the world.

We often suppose that science forces our hand when it comes to theological options. Thus, in the twentieth century, some argued that Darwinian biology rules out the possibility of a loving, caring God, and that quantum mechanics, by disclosing the intrinsic chanciness of nature, problematizes the traditional Christian belief of God’s providential involvement in our lives. Yet science underdetermines religious belief--the so-called scientific evidence is insufficient to rule out belief in divine providence. If we choose not to believe (...) in such, we choose freely, not because science constrains us. If anything, the choice not to believe precedes scientific judgment, not the other way around. To illustrate this thesis, one may compare the religious world-views of Charles Darwin and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The striking difference between the two is not the result of scientific discovery, but rather a shift in Western culture regarding the propriety of letting God figure into scientific explanations of nature. (shrink)

This case study examines differences between how the animal-behavior-research fields of ethology and sociobiology account for female ornamental traits. I address three questions: 1) Why were female traits noted in early animal-behavior writings but not systematically studied like male traits? 2) Why did ethology attend to female signals before sexual-selection studies did? 3) And why didn't sexual-selection researchers cite the earlier ethological literature when they began studying female traits? To answer these questions, I turn to feminist and other science-studies (...) scholars and philosophers of science. My main framework is provided by Bruno Latour, whose model I position within relevant feminist critique . This approach provides an interactive account of how scientific knowledge develops. I argue that this embedded approach provides a more compelling reading of the relationship between gender and science than does focusing on androcentric biases. My overall aim is to counter arguments by some feminist biologists that feminist tools should emphasize the correction and removal of biases, and to address their fears that more rigorous critiques would lead to relativism or otherwise remove science as a tool for feminist use. (shrink)

London ed. pub. under title: Science versus idealism.

Of all the species that live on this planet, as far as we know, man is the only one capable of awareness; observing the sky, understanding its beauty, and asking questions about the meaning of life and that of death, on the beginning and the end, both about the Universe and man himself. The questions range in all directions: why is there something instead of nothing? Who is the architect of reality, and why does it appear to us as it (...) does, rather than in some other way? What's the point of all this? Where does life originate, and what are the origins of the Universe that encompasses it? This book aims to introduce and address the questions that are often asked and answer with the knowledge that science provides us. Where does all the matter we are made of come from and what constitutes the Universe? Is it true that there is matter and energy whose existence can be intuited only indirectly, as the existence of the wind is deduced from leaves' motion? Einstein was right in his revolutionary description of reality, on nature of space and time, inextricable units in their apparent dichotomy. Does each observer truly observe a 'different' time from another observer? Can we move back and forth in the time? How space and time are modified by astronomical objects such as black holes, and what is the nature of the latter? Will time and the Universe end and how did they originate? The Universe is incredibly vast, housing hundreds of billions of galaxies within the observable Universe alone. Beyond what we can observe, there may exist an unimaginably vast expanse that extends infinitely and beyond our imagination. Our Universe, enormous as it may be, is not the only one. That's all predicted by certain cosmological and physical theories. Is life unique to Earth, or does the Universe harbor other forms of life that remain undiscovered to us? Finally, we are confronted with the most intriguing and elusive question of all: was all of this deliberately planned by some higher power, or is it merely a result of natural processes? Each of these questions touch on a fundamental aspect of our perception of the Universe and our quest to comprehend humanity's place in the cosmos. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Despite the increasing interest in science exhibitions, there has been hardly any work on mobile science exhibitions and their role within science diplomacy – a gap this thematic issue is meant to fill. Atomic mobile exhibitions are seen here not only as cultural sites but as multifaceted strategic processes of transnational nuclear history. We move beyond the bipolar Cold War history that portrays propagandist science exhibitions as instances of a one-way communication employed to promote the (...) virtues of the two major and conflicting political powers. Instead, Science Diplomacy on Display follows mobile atomic exhibitions as they move across national borders and around the world, functioning as spaces for diplomatic encounters. Exhibitions play a vital role not only in the production of knowledge and the formation of political worldviews but also as assets in diplomatic negotiations and as promoters of a new worldview in which nuclear stands at the centre. They are powerful iconic diplomatic devices, that is systems of representations that capture the diplomatic processes in action and make the nitty-gritty details of international relations visible. This issue seeks to trace the multiple and often contradictory meanings that mobile exhibitions took on for various actors. (shrink)

There are some indications that the philosophy of science is reaching the age of discretion. Now, as I understand it, the age of discretion is characterized by self-examination. Youth is a period of blundering enthusiasm. But maturity demands the sobering influence of principles, perspectives and techniques. The adult must put away childish things. This does not demand the elimination of spontaneity and imagination, but it does require their chastening according to the principles of propriety. It seems time to ask (...) ourselves whether the philosophy of science ought to be allowed henceforth just to grow, like Topsy, or whether a serious attempt ought not to be made to determine its nature and task. (shrink)

This volume, modeled after those published in The Library of Living Philosophers, attempts to provide a coherent statement of the work of Abraham Edel in moral and political theory, and on the impact of his work on such diverse areas as education, law, and social science. The methodological element of Edel's work is to see ethical and social theory in the full context of human life; specifically how twentieth-century modes of analysis impact classical concerns about right and wrong, good (...) and evil. The volume is tightly integrated from start to finish, and has the benefit of Edel's thoughtful and thoroughgoing response to critics. In short, while this work is a tribute to the work of a scholar, it aims to serve as a basic guide through the labyrinthian world of contemporary ethical theory and social practice. Contents: Beryl Harold Levy, "Reflective Culture as Philosophy of Law"; Betty A. Sichel, "Abraham Edel's Contribution to Philosophy of Education"; Gerald E. Myers, "Person and Personality--and Respect for Both"; Mihailo Markovic, "Abraham Edel on the Method of Ethical Theory"; Helen Block Lewis, "Consequences for Ethical Theory of a Focus on the Psychology of Shame and Guilt"; Edmund L. Pincoffs, "Ethics as an Explanatory Undertaking"; Standish Thayer, "The Network of Concepts: A New View of Aristotle"; Mortimer R. Kadish, "Abraham Edel and the Dream of Science"; Michael Levin, "Reflections on Non-Cognitivism"; Ralph W. Sleeper, "Naturalizing Legal Positivism"; Irving Louis Horowitz, "The Political Philosophy of Abraham Edel"; Finbarr W. O'Connor, "Network Analysis in Ethics"; Elizabeth Flower, "A Moral Agenda for Ethical Theory"; Abraham Edel, "Responses to Critics"; "An Edel Bibliography.". (shrink)

In an exciting study that bridges science and religion, physicists think about the connection between physics and faith and biologists discuss evolution, ethics, and the future. Complementing these viewpoints, theologians address these same issues from a religious standpoint. Chapter authors include Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of the laser, Charles Townes, along with Pope John Paul II.