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39Otto Neurath: Philosophy between Science and Politics (review)Philosophical Review 107 (2): 327. 1998.Four distinguished authors have been brought together to produce this elegant study of a much-neglected figure. The book is divided into three sections: Neurath's biographical background and the economic and social context of his ideas; his theory of science; and the development of his role in debates on Marxist concepts of history and his own conception of science. Coinciding with the emerging serious interest in logical positivism, this timely publication will redress a current imbalance in th…Read more
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34Norman Sieroka. Umgebungen: Symbolischer Konstruktivismus im Anschluss an Hermann Weyl und Fritz Medicus. Zurich: Chronos, 2010. Pp. 416. €43.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 3 (1): 164-168. 2013.
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46Invariance Principles as Regulative Ideals: From Wigner to Hilbert: Thomas RyckmanRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 63 63-80. 2008.Eugene Wigner's several general discussions of symmetry and invariance principles are among the canonical texts of contemporary philosophy of physics. Wigner spoke from a position of authority, having pioneered for recognition of the importance of symmetry principles from nuclear to molecular physics. But perhaps recent commentators have not sufficiently stressed that Wigner always took care to situate the notion of invariance principles with respect to two others, initial conditions and laws of…Read more
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60Metaphysics Avoidance: Mark Wilson and Ernst CassirerPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (2): 466-472. 2021.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 103, Issue 2, Page 466-472, September 2021.
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94Conditio sine qua non? Zuordnung in the early epistemologies of Cassirer and SchlickSynthese 88 (1). 1991.In early major works, Cassirer and Schlick differently recast traditional doctrines of the concept and of the relation of concept to intuitive content along the lines of recent epistemological discussions within the exact sciences. In this, they attempted to refashion epistemology by incorporating as its basic principle the notion of functional coordination, the theoretical sciences' own methodological tool for dispensing with the imprecise and unreliable guide of intuitive evidence. Examining t…Read more
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65Chaos, Clio, and Scientistic Illusions of UnderstandingHistory and Theory 34 (1): 30-44. 1995.A number of authors have recently argued that the mathematical insights of "chaos theory" offer a promising formal model or significant analogy for understanding at least some historical events. We examine a representative claim of each kind regarding the application of chaos theory to problems of historical explanation. We identify two lines of argument. One we term the Causal Thesis, which states that chaos theory may be used to plausibly model, and so explain, historical events. The other we …Read more
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175Mathematics and phenomenology: The correspondence between O. Becker and H. WeylPhilosophia Mathematica 10 (2): 130-202. 2002.Recently discovered correspondence from Oskar Becker to Hermann Weyl sheds new light on Weyl's engagement with Husserlian transcendental phenomenology in 1918-1927. Here the last two of these letters, dated July and August, 1926, dealing with issues in the philosophy of mathematics are presented, together with background and a detailed commentary. The letters provide an instructive context for re-assessing the connection between intuitionism and phenomenology in Weyl's foundational thought, and …Read more
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183Hilbert's 'foundations of physics': Gravitation and electromagnetism within the axiomatic methodStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39 (1): 102-153. 2008.
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10Hilbert on General Covariance and CausalityIn David E. Rowe, Tilman Sauer & Scott A. Walter (eds.), Beyond Einstein: Perspectives on Geometry, Gravitation, and Cosmology in the Twentieth Century, Springer New York. pp. 67-77. 2018.Einstein and Hilbert both struggled to reconcile general covariance and causality in their early work on general relativity. In Einstein’s case, this first led to his infamous “hole argument”, a stumbling block that persuaded him early on that generally covariant field equations for gravitation could never be found. After his breakthrough to general covariance in the fall of 1915, the resolution came in form of the “point-coincidence argument.” Hilbert from the beginning took a different view of…Read more
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43Einstein, Cassirer, and General Covariance — Then and NowScience in Context 12 (4): 585-619. 1999.The ArgumentRecent archival research has brought about a new understanding of the import of Einstein's puzzling remarks (1916) attributing a physical meaning to general covariance. Debates over the scope and meaning of general covariance still persist, even within physics. But already in 1921 Cassirer identified the significance of general covariance as a novel stage in the development of the criterion of objectivity within physics; an account of this development, and its implications, is the pr…Read more
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49Weyl, Reichenbach and the epistemology of geometryStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 25 (6): 831-870. 1994.
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What Carnap Might Have Learned from WeylIn Christian Damböck (ed.), Influences on the Aufbau, Springer Verlag. 2016.
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Grammar and Information: An Investigation in Linguistic MetatheoryDissertation, Columbia University. 1986.This work examines the foundations of linguistic theory, with particular reference to the status and justification of grammars and theories of language structure. A metatheoretical critique of generative grammar is followed by epistemological motivation for, and presentation of, an alternative conception of language structure due to Harris, together with an approach to its justification. It is proposed that grammars have an informational validity as structures comprised of maximally unredundant …Read more
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29The Millian Theory of Names and the Problems of Negative Existentials and Non-Referring NamesIn D. F. Austin (ed.), Philosophical Analysis, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 241--249. 1988.
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8Otto Neurath (review)Philosophical Review 107 (2): 327-329. 1998.This collaborative work provides an intellectual portrait of a man known to most students of philosophy today only as a lesser founding member of the Vienna Circle. It makes a strong case for the intrinsic interest and continuing relevance of much of Neurath’s thought to contemporary science studies, considered broadly. Together with several other recent works on Neurath, it forces a substantial revision in any assessment of the Vienna Circle and its legacy. Finally, it describes, in some detail…Read more
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60On believing, saying and expressingSynthese 79 (2). 1989.Examines the connections among believing, saying, and expressing in situations where the sentence used is a declarative sentence containing at least one proper name. Proposes a new way of understanding these connections. Develops an argument for the thesis that, although we typically believe the singular propositions expressed by our uses of name sentences, we rarely use such sentences because we believe those propositions.
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54Belief, linguistic behavior, and propositional contentPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2): 277-287. 1986.
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75Contingency, a prioricity and acquaintancePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (2): 323-343. 1993.