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436Alternative Interpretationen der Repräsentationstheorie der MessungIn Georg Meggle & Ulla Wessels (eds.), Analyōmen 1 =, W. De Gruyter. pp. 310-323. 1994.Four different interpretations of measurement are distinguished that are compatible with the formal frame of the representational theory of measurement: (1) the classical interpretation, the additive, (3) the operationalis, (4) the correlative one.
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4Review of Everett Mendelsohn and Yehuda Elkana: Sciences and Cultures: Anthropological and Historical Studies of the Sciences (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 34 (4): 406-410. 1983.
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234Functional relations and causality in fechner and MachPhilosophical Psychology 23 (2). 2010.In the foundations of Fechner's psychophysics, the concept of “functional relation” plays a highly relevant role in three different respects: (1) in respect to the principles of measurement, (2) in respect to the mind-body problem, and (3) in respect to the concept of a law of nature. In all three cases, it is important to explain the difference between a functional dependency of a variable upon another and a causal relationship between two (or more) variables. In all three respects, Ernst Mach …Read more
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8In philosophischen wie nichtphilosophischen Darstellungen wird heutzutage der Ursprung des Leib-Seele-Problems überwiegend mit dem kartesischen Dualismus in Verbindung gebracht. Es wird die Meinung vertreten, daß erst durch Descartes’ Aufteilung des Menschen (und damit der Welt) in die beiden einander ausschließenden Substanzen der res extensa und der res cogitans das philosophische Grundübel in die Leib-Seele-Philosophie gekommen sei.1 Folgerichtig ist man fest davon überzeugt, daß sich das Pro…Read more
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25Since the late 1950s one of the most important and influential views of post-positivist philosophy of science has been the theory-ladenness of observation. It comes in at least two forms: either as a psychological law pertaining to human perception (whether scientific or not) or as conceptual insight concerning the nature and functioning of scientific language and its meaning. According to its psychological form, perceptions of scientists, as perceptions of humans generally, are guided by prior …Read more
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377Büchner, Friedrich Karl Christian Ludwig (louis) (1824--99)In Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal, Routledge. pp. 48-51. 1996.Ludwig Büchner wrote one of the most popular and polemical books of the strong materialist movement in the later nineteenth-century Germany, his Kraft und Stoff (Force and Matter) (1855). He tried to develop a comprehensive worldview, which was based solely on the findings of empirical science and did not take refuge in religion or any other transcendent categories in explaining nature and its development, including human beings. When Büchner tried to expose the backwardness of traditional philo…Read more
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14Origins of Logical Empiricism (review)Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 6 307-311. 1999.Alan Richardson, one of the editors of the present volume, dryly remarks in a footnote to the introduction: “Logical empiricism remains alive in philosophical memory chiefly by the significance of its death.” I think that this pertinent paradox can be enlarged to generally characterise the relation of present-day philosophy of science to logical empiricism : the more philosophy of science has struggled in the past to distance itself from central tenets of the movement of LE, the more it had to r…Read more
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2Um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts tritt die Sinnesphysiologie in eine neue Phase ein. Sie löst sich allmählich von der akademischen Philosophie und bildet sich zu einer professionellen experimentellen Disziplin aus. Trotzdem ist die Philosophie aber nicht völlig aus dem Spiel; es kommt vielmehr zu einem Wettstreit physiologischer Schulen innerhalb der Physiologie selbst um ihre impliziten philosophischen Anschauungen. Außerdem liefern sich die längst etablierte Disziplinen der Physik, Physiologi…Read more
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507Hermann von Helmholtz, Philosophische und populärwissenschaftliche Schriften. 3 Bände. (edited book)Meiner. 2017.Aus dem vielfältigen Werk von Hermann von Helmholtz versammelt diese Ausgabe die im engeren Sinne philosophischen Abhandlungen, vor allem zur Wissenschaftsphilosophie und Erkenntnistheorie, sowie Vorträge und Reden, bei denen der Autor seine Ausnahmestellung im Wissenschaftsbetrieb nutzte, um die Wissenschaften und ihre Institutionen in der bestehenden Form zu repräsentieren und zu begründen. Ein Philosoph wollte Helmholtz nicht sein, aber er legte der philosophischen Reflexion wissenschaftlich…Read more
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Criticism of positivism : Emile Meyerson and Hélène MetzgerCorpus: Revue de philosophie 8 151-160. 1988.
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44Some intertheoretic relations between ptolemean and copernican astronomyErkenntnis 10 (3). 1976.
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67Applying models in fluid dynamicsInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 20 (1). 2006.The following article treats the 'applicational turn' of modern fluid dynamics as it set in at the beginning of the 20th century with Ludwig Prandtl's concept of the boundary layer. It seeks to show that there is much more to applying a theory in a highly mathematical field like fluid dynamics than deriving a special case from a general explanatory theory under particular antecedent conditions. In Prandtl's case, the decisive move was to introduce a model that provided a physical/causal concepti…Read more
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60In this paper, I would like to show that considering technological models as they arise in engineering disciplines can greatly enrich the philosophical perspective on models. In fluid mechanics, (at least) three types of models are distinguished: mathematical, computer and physical models. Very often, the choice of a particular mathematical, computer or physical model highly affects the type of solutions and the computational time needed for it. Technological models not only aim at a correct des…Read more
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2Wenn hier Fechners Philosophie als „wissenschaftlich-philosophische Weltauffassung“ bezeichnet wird, dann soll damit gesagt werden, dass Fechner mit seiner Philosophie einen wissenschaftlichen Anspruch verfolgt hat und dass sie tatsächlich auf einem weltanschauungsfreien Fundament ruht. Ich möchte sogar so weit gehen zu behaupten, dass Fechner damit zur Tradition der „wissenschaftlichen Philosophie“ des 19. Jahrhunderts zu rechnen ist, deren folgenreichstes späteres Produkt im 20. Jahrhundert de…Read more
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7EinleitungIn Michael Heidelberger & Wolfgang Balzer (eds.), Zur Logik Empirischer Theorien, De Gruyter. pp. 1-19. 1983.
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330The Significance of the Hypothetical in Natural Science (edited book)De Gruyter. 2009.How was the hypothetical character of theories of experience thought about throughout the history of science? The essays cover periods from the middle ages to the 19th and 20th centuries. It is fascinating to see how natural scientists and philosophers were increasingly forced to realize that a natural science without hypotheses is not possible.
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35Beziehungen zwischen Sinnesphysiologie und Philosophie im 19. JahrhundertIn H. J. Sandkühler (ed.), Philosophie und Wissenschaften, Peter Lang. pp. 37--58. 1997.
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139Origins of the logical theory of probability: Von Kries, Wittgenstein, WaismannInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 15 (2). 2001.The physiologist and neo-Kantian philosopher Johannes von Kries (1853-1928) wrote one of the most philosophically important works on the foundation of probability after P.S. Laplace and before the First World War, his Principien der Wohrscheinlich-keitsrechnung (1886, repr. 1927). In this book, von Kries developed a highly original interpretation of probability, which maintains it to be both logical and objectively physical. After presenting his approach I shall pursue the influence it had on Lu…Read more
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Force, law, and experiment: The evolution of helmholtz's philosophy of scienceIn David Cahan (ed.), Hermann Von Helmholtz and the Foundations of Nineteenth-Century Science, University of California Press. pp. 461-497. 1993.
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2Der Weltbildbegriff, wie er sich im 19. Jahrhundert herausgebildet hat, bezeichnet die zusammenfassende Darstellung der Welt gemäß den Ergebnissen der Naturwissenschaften. Mehr oder weniger untergründig ist damit aber noch mehr mitgemeint: eine aus der Wissenschaft fließende Weltdeutung, die sich an die Stelle der überkommenen Sinnorientierungen und deren Instanzen setzt. Die wissenschaftliche Forschung des späten 19. Jahrhunderts sah sich diesem Ziel der Weltdeutung aus Wissenschaft zum Greifen…Read more
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11Schwerpunkt: zum Wandel der Wissenschaftsauffassung im Späten 19. Jahrhundert: Hermann von Helmholtz'Erkenntnistheorie in der DiskussionDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 43 (5): 815-817. 1995.
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20Aspects of Current History of 19TH Century Philosophy of ScienceIn Thomas Uebel, Stephan Hartmann, Wenceslao Gonzalez, Marcel Weber, Dennis Dieks & Friedrich Stadler (eds.), The Present Situation in the Philosophy of Science, Springer. pp. 67--74. 2010.
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5Naturphilosophie refers to the philosophy of nature prevalent especially in German phi- losophy, science and literary movements from around 1790 to about 1830. It pleaded for an organic and dynamic worldview as an alternative to the atomist and mechanist outlook of modern science. Against the Cartesian dualism of matter and mind which had given way to the mechanist materialism of the French Encyclopedists, Spinoza’s dual aspect theory of mind and matter as two modes of a single substance was fav…Read more
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University TübingenDepartment of Philosophy
Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München
Faculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Study of Religion
PhD, 1978
Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany