-
203In the 19th century, "Psychophysical Parallelism" was the most popular solution of the mind-body problem among physiologists, psychologists and philosophers. (This is not to be mixed up with Leibnizian and other cases of "Cartesian" parallelism.) The fate of this non-Cartesian view, as founded by Gustav Theodor Fechner, is reviewed. It is shown that Feigl's "identity theory" eventually goes back to Alois Riehl who promoted a hybrid version of psychophysical parallelism and Kantian mind-body theo…Read more
-
246The mind-body problem in the origin of logical empiricism: Herbert Feigl and psychophysical parallelismIn Logical Empiricism: Historical & Contemporary Perspectives, University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 233--262. 2003.It is widely held that the current debate on the mind-body problem in analytic philosophy began during the 1950s at two distinct sources: one in America, de- riving from Herbert Feigl's writings, and the other in Australia, related to writings by U. T. Place and J. J. C. Smart (Feigl [1958] 1967). Jaegwon Kim recently wrote that "it was the papers by Smart and Feigl that introduced the mind-body problem as a mainstream metaphysical Problematik of analytical philosophy, and launched the debate th…Read more
-
28NaturphilosophieIn Hans Jörg Sandkühler & Others (eds.), Enzyklopädie Philosophie, Meiner Verlag. 2010.
-
9Analogie und Quantifizierung Von Maxwell über Helmholtz zur MesstheorieIn Alina Noveanu, Dietmar Koch & Niels Weidtmann (eds.), Analogie: Zur Aktualität eines philosophischen Schlüsselbegriffs, Verlag Karl Alber. pp. 187-216. 2020.
-
6Zerspaltung und Einheit: vom logischen Aufbau der Welt zum PhysikalismusIn Hans J. Dahms (ed.), Philosophie, Wissenschaft, Aufklärung: Beiträge zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Wiener Kreises, De Gruyter. pp. 144-189. 1985.
-
16Contingent Laws of Nature in Émile BoutrouxIn Michael Heidelberger & Gregor Schiemann (eds.), The Significance of the Hypothetical in Natural Science, De Gruyter. pp. 99-144. 2009.In 1874, the French philosopher Émile Boutroux wrote a dissertationon the contingency of the laws of nature that highly influenced academic philosophy during the French Third Republic and led to a more hypothetical view of the natural sciences and mathematics. Boutroux took over the concept of contingency from the neo-Kantian philosopher Eduard Zeller who had insisted against Hegel on the role of contingency in history, and carried it over to nature. From this he tried to show that the science…Read more
-
126Introduction: The Significance of the Hypothetical in Natural ScienceIn Michael Heidelberger & Gregor Schiemann (eds.), The Significance of the Hypothetical in Natural Science, De Gruyter. pp. 1-6. 2009.
-
10Alternative Interpretationen der Repräsentationstheorie der MessungIn Georg Meggle & Ulla Wessels (eds.), Analyōmen 1 =, W. De Gruyter. pp. 310-323. 1994.
-
11Helmholtz' Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorie im Kontext der Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft des 19. JahrhundertsIn Lorenz Krüger (ed.), Universalgenie Helmholtz. Rückblick nach 100 Jahren., Akademie Verlag. pp. 168-185. 1994.
-
7Zur Logik Empirischer Theorien (edited book)De Gruyter. 1983.Das Buch besteht aus drei Teilen. Der erste Teil befasst sich mit der allgemeinen Struktur empirischer Theorie. Der zweite Teil beschäftigt sich mit den Problemen der Anwendung von Theorien und im dritten Teil werden Beispiele vorgestellt.
-
8History of Philosophy of Science: New Trends and Perspectives. Vienna Circle Institute yearbook (9) (edited book)Springer. 2002.This volume includes recent contributions to the philosophy of science from a historical point of view and of the highest topicality: the range of the topics covers all fields in the philosophy of the science provided by authors from around the world focusing on ancient, modern and contemporary periods in the development of the science philosophy. This proceedings is for the scientific community and students at graduate level as well as postdocs in this interdisciplinary field of research.
-
6Zur logischen Rekonstruktion wissenschaftlichen Wandels am Beispiel der „Ohm’schen Revolution“In Michael Heidelberger & Wolfgang Balzer (eds.), Zur Logik Empirischer Theorien, De Gruyter. pp. 281-303. 1983.
-
Experimentation and instrumentationIn Donald M. Borchert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Macmillan Reference. pp. 10--12. 2005.
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
Criticism of positivism : Emile Meyerson and Hélène MetzgerCorpus: Revue de philosophie 8 151-160. 1988.
-
44Some intertheoretic relations between ptolemean and copernican astronomyErkenntnis 10 (3). 1976.
-
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
-
University TübingenDepartment of Philosophy
Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München
Faculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Study of Religion
PhD, 1978
Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany