Joseph Agassi

Basic research or fundamental research is distinct from both pure and applied research, in that it is pure research with expected useful results. The existence of basic or fundamental research is problematic, at least for both inductivists and instrumentalists, but also for Popper. Assuming scientific research to be the search for explanatory conjectures and for refutations, and assuming technology to be the search of conjectures and some corroborations, we can easily place basic or fundamental research between science and technology as a part of their overlap. As a bonus, the present view of basic or fundamental research as an overlap explains the specific hardship basic research workers encounter.

The variety of languages in the world is considered a curse by some, who view the phenomenon as a Tower of Babel. Others consider it the most characteristic quality of human language as opposed to animal languages, which are supposedly species specific. The variety is viewed as a symptom of human caprice, arbitrariness, or dependence on mere historical accident by some; and as a symptom of human freedom and of the creative aspect of language by others. And, of course, the human limitation caused by the variety of languages and the peculiarities of traditions within languages, as instanced by Sir Winston Churchill's The History of the English Speaking People, are again viewed by different thinkers from different philosophical viewpoints.

Within ontology new theories are extremely rare. Hacking bravely claims to have one: "historical ontology" or "dynamic nominalism." Regrettably, he uses "nominalism" idiosyncratically, without explaining it or its qualifier. He does say what historical ontology is: it is "the presentation of the history of ontology in context." This idea is laudable, as it invites presenting idealism as once attractive but no longer so (due to changes in perception theory, for example). But this idea is a proposal, not a theory, muchless an ontological theory, as it does not say what things are made of. Also, Hacking's details are often misleading. Thus, he falsely hints that he respects Wittgenstein and that he agrees with him. Considered as a study of ontology sans its (often amusing) incidental material, it appears surprisingly thin and repetitious. The study is either excessively opaque or quite clear but stale: the choice between these options is open. Key Words: Ian Hacking • Michel Foucault • ontology • contextualism.

The word "brain-washing", translated from Chinese communist jargon, is a very strong metaphor, first popularized by Robert Jay Lifto n. It vividly describes one person interfering with the personality make-up of another, removing the other's ideology and replacing it, and similarly tampering with the other's tastes, pool of information to rely upon and whatever else goes into the make-up of the other's personality. Clearly, in some sense or another everyone interferes with the personality of people with whom they interact; yet what is meant here is something much more drastic than friends influencing one another's tastes or opinions; it is something more dramatic and more large scale.

The idea of verisimilitude is implicit in the writings of Albert Einstein ever since 1905, when he declared the distribution of field energy according to Maxwell's theory an approximation to that according to quantum-radiation theory, and Newtonian kinetic energy an approximation to his relativistic mass-energy. All his life Einstein presented new ideas as yielding older established ones as special cases and first approximations. The news has reached the philosophical community via the writings of Sir Karl Popper half-a-century after Einstein's trailblazing conception — first in his epoch-making "Note on Berkeley as a Precursor to Mach" and then in his classic "Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge"

Regrettably, Wittgenstein did not consider the possibility that his early effort was both significant and a failure. So he replaced its content with its approach: the concern of philosophy is (not with thought but) with language, questioning whether a sentence has truth-value before questioning whether it is true. To view Wittgenstein’s work as philosophy of life is to admit defeat. The paradox of analysis is satisfactorily answerable, providing scope to the techniques of Wittgenstein and of his followers. The most ambitious example of this is logical atomism. It failed. Mature Wittgenstein offered examples of techniques for analysing sentences; it is questionable.