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1409Der "Fuehrer" und seine Denker. Zur Philosophie des "Dritten Reichs"Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 47 (2): 223-252. 1999.Das Thema dieser Überlegungen ist die deutsche Philosophie und sind deutsche Philosophen im Nationalsozialismus. (Für unsere politisch korrekten Ohrenspitzer(innen): es war keine Frau dabei.)1 Vorweg sei gesagt, verbrecherische Schurken finden wir unter ihnen nicht, anders als bei z. B. Juristen und Medizinern. ,,Auschwitz" wurde nicht von Philosophen betrieben. Die Praxisferne der Philosophie hat manchmal eben auch Vorteile. Teil I beschäftigt sich mit Philosophie und Philosophen im „Dritten…Read more
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900Gentechnik: ethische und andere ProblemeEthik Und Sozialwissenschaften 2 (4): 626. 1991.This paper discusses ethical problems of genetic engineering.
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639Der Junge Carnap in Historischem Kontext: 1918–1935 / Young Carnap in an Historical Context: 1918–1935 (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2021.This Open Access volume is based on the 'Early Carnap in Context’ workshop that took place in Konstanz in 2017 and looks at Rudolf Carnap’s philosophy, documented in his recently released diaries, from a combination of historical, cultural and philosophical perspectives. It enables further evaluation of the diaries and traces newly found interrelationships and their systematic definition. From a cultural and historical point of view, Logical Empiricism and Carnap’s pivotal opus, The Logical Stru…Read more
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496Is There a European Philosophy Science?: A Wake-up CallVienna Circle Institute Yearbook 17 277-293. 2014.The short answer to this question is a firm and unambiguous “yes and no”. The long answer will take the whole talk. Indeed, it could easily take an entire book. It is therefore unavoidable to take recourse here and there to simplifying shortcuts and polemical exaggerations, in order to get the message clear
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461Hugo DinglerScience in Context 2 (2). 1988.This is an introduction to the English translation of Hogo Dingler's (1881-1954) grounsbreaking paper "Methodik statt Erkenntnistheorie und Wissenschaftslehre". Dingler is the founder of operationalism in physics and relatively little know in the Anglophone world.
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391Religiöse Ahnungen unter AufklärungsdruckIn Joachim Bromand & Guido Kreis (eds.), Was Sich Nicht Sagen Lässt: Das Nicht-Begriffliche in Wissenschaft, Kunst Und Religion, Akademie Verlag/de Gruyter. pp. 661-670. 2010.This paper deals with the fate of religious intuitions in enlightenment contexts
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351Ridurre il riduzionismo geneticoHumana Mente 2 (6). 2008.n this article the author develops a critique of reductionism in biological sciences from three different points of view. The first is related to the problem of reduction in the context of scientific theories. More specifically, reduction deals with a special form of intertheoretic relationship between molecular biology and the rest of biology. The second meaning of reductionism has to do with the significance of its genetic outfit for the ontogeny of an organism, i.e. its development from zygot…Read more
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254Una modernizzazione incompiuta: il programma di unificazione della scienzaNuova Civiltà Delle Macchine 10 (3/4): 90-98. 1992.The paper shows how logical empiricism aims at a modernization of philosophy.
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233Ernst Mach and the Theory of RelativityPhilosophia Naturalis 21 (2/4): 630-341. 1984.This article shows that those texts, attributed to Ernst Mach, that reject relativity theory are posthumous forgeries.
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223Un difficile ritorno a casa: la Filosofia della Scienza in Germania - Uneasy homecoming: Philosophy of science in germanyBollettino Della Società Filosofica Italiana (189): 37-50. 2006.The paper - originally a lecture in the "40th Anniversary Lecture Series 2001-2002" of the University of Pittsburgh (attached to the Italian text)- gives a survey of the development of philosophy of science in Germany and of the role tthe Pittsburgh Center for Philosophy of Science plays in this development.
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173Ambivalence and Conflict: Catholic Church and EvolutionIn Werner Arber, Nicola Cabibbo & Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo (eds.), Pntifical Academy of Sciences, Acta 20, Pontifical Academy of Sciences. pp. 450-475. 2009.Somewhat traumatized by the Galileo Affair the Church until recently showed low profile in the conflicts with science, evolutionary theory included. The talk presents a categorization of possible relationships between science and religion by distinguishing between "Galilean conflicts", which are about mutually exclusive statements about matters of fact, and Freudian conflicts where an empirical science tries to explain away religion as a phenomenon in its own right. In the light of this distinct…Read more
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130Mesmer in a Mountain Bar: Anthropological Difference, Butts, and Mesmerism in An Intimate Relation. Studies in the History and Philosophy of ScienceBoston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 116 259-282. 1989.This article gives an overview of Mesmer's theory.
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129This booklet deals in the form of "impromptus" with philosophy and philosophers in the "Third Reich" and the interesting story of post-war German philosophy to just ignore this topic.
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123O Happy Error. A Comment on Giora HonBoston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 232 295-300. 2003.This is a comment on Giora Hon's paper on scientific error
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105Science, Values, and Objectivity (edited book)University of Pittsburgh Press. 2004.Few people, if any, still argue that science in all its aspects is a value-free endeavor. At the very least, values affect decisions about the choice of research problems to investigate and the uses to which the results of research are applied. But what about the actual doing of science? As Science, Values, and Objectivity reveals, the connections and interactions between values and science are quite complex. The essays in this volume identify the crucial values that play a role in science, dist…Read more
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94Der junge Carnap in historischem Kontext: 1918-1935 / Young Carnap in an Historical Context: 1918–1935 (edited book)Springer. forthcoming.Im Zentrum dieses Bandes stehen die Beiträge einer Tagung, die im Oktober 2017 an der Universität Konstanz stattgefunden hat. Thema der Tagung war ein den historischen Kontext einbeziehender Blick auf den frühen Rudolf Carnap, vom Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Emigration Ende 1935. Der 1891 in Ronsdorf bei Wuppertal geborene Rudolf Carnap entschloss sich erst relativ spät zu einer Karriere als akademischer Philosoph, nämlich 1920, nachdem er sein durch den Krieg unterbrochenes Studium der P…Read more
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76Interpretation: Ways of Thinking About the Sciences and the Arts (edited book)University of Pittsburgh Press. 2010.The act of interpretation occurs in nearly every area of the arts and sciences. That ubiquity serves as the inspiration for the fourteen essays of this volume, covering many of the domains in which interpretive practices are found. Individual topics include: the general nature of interpretation and its forms; comparing and contrasting interpretation and hermeneutics; culture as interpretation seen through Hegel’s aesthetics; interpreting philosophical texts; methodologies for interpreting human …Read more
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66MachIn A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2000.Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach was born 18 February 1838 in the Moravian village of Chrlice (near Brno), at that time part of the Austrian Monarchy, now the Czech Republic, and died 19 February 1916 in Vaterstetten (near Munich). He enjoyed a very successful career as an experimental physicist (the unit for the velocity of sound has been named after him). His importance for the philosophy of science derives mainly from his “historico‐critical” writings (Mach 1872, 1883, 1896b, 1921). Mach stu…Read more
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61The epistemological roots of ecclesiastical claims to knowledgeAxiomathes 19 (4): 481-508. 2009.In theoretical matters, ecclesiastical claims to knowledge have lead to various conflicts with science. Claims in orientational matters, sometimes connected to attempts to establish them as a rule for legislation, have often been in conflict with the justified claims of non-believers. In addition they violate the Principle of Autonomy of the individual, which is at the very heart of European identity so decisively shaped by the Enlightenment. The Principle of Autonomy implies that state legislat…Read more
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53Hans Jonas’ Philosophical BiologyGraduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 23 (1): 85-98. 2001.Jonas' philosophical biology is an attempt to overcome the dualism, i.e., the alienation between man and world, which characterizes both Gnostic thinking and the Heiddegerian existentialist approach that Jonas had applied in its interpretation. This dualism leads both approaches to despise or, at least, to neglect nature.Jonas' philosophical biology is intended to provide an insight into the phenomenon of life that is more than a mere reflection of scientific epistemology. Rather, it regards …Read more
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46Globalized Parochialism: Consequences of English as Lingua Franca in Philosophy of ScienceInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 29 (2): 189-200. 2015.In recent decades, English has become the uncontestable lingua franca of philosophy of science and of most other areas of philosophy and of the humanities. To have a lingua franca produces enormous benefits for the entire scientific community. The price for those benefits, however, is paid almost exclusively by non-native speakers of English. Section 1 identifies three asymmetries that individual NoNES researchers encounter: ‘publication asymmetry’, ‘resources asymmetry’, and ‘team asymmetry’. S…Read more
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42Die pragmatische vollendung Des logischen empirismus. In memoriam Carl Gustav Hempel (1905–1997)Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 31 (2): 205-242. 2000.This paper documents the pragmatic turn in the later philosophy of C. G. Hempel.
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29The Catholic Church and Evolutionary Theory : A Conflict ModelIn Werner Arber, Nicola Cabibbo & Marcelo Sánchez-Sorondo (eds.), Pontificiae Academiae Acta Vol. 20, Pontifical Academy of Sciences. pp. 450-475. 2009.The arrticle deals with the ambivalent attitude of Church authorities towards evolutionary theory.
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24“Wrongful Life” Reloaded: Logical empiricism’s philosophy of biology 1934-1936Philosophia Scientiae 22 233-255. 2018.Ce chapitre reprend, en l’enrichissant, un article antérieur sur la philosophie de la biologie de l’empirisme logique, en en examinant les thèses centrales telles qu’elles sont exprimées lors des rencontres de Prague, de Paris et de Copenhague, rencontres décisives pour le développement du mouvement et son rayonnement dans le monde occidental. Je montre que l’empirisme logique n’a pas contribué au développement de la philosophie de la biologie, comme il l’a fait pour celui de la philosophie de l…Read more
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23Thinking about Causes: From Greek Philosophy to Modern Physics (edited book)University of Pittsburgh Pre. 2007.Emerging as a hot topic in the mid-twentieth century, causality is one of the most frequently discussed issues in contemporary philosophy. Thinking about Causes brings together top philosophers from the United States and Europe to focus on causality as a major force in philosophical and scientific thought.
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23Mach and Relativity Theory: ANeverending Story in HOPOSia?In Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Ernst Mach – Life, Work, Influence, Springer Verlag. 2019.Michael Ende’s bestseller/The Neverending Story/is set in a magical world called “Fantastica”. In Fantastica, there are heroes and villains, just as in the world of universities and academies. There is even an entity, or better: a non-entity of shaky existence, das Nichts, the Nothingness – loved by some philosophers like Martin Heidegger. In Fantastica Nothingness is able to create trouble and destruction. The same is true in the land of academic history and philosophy of science – let us call …Read more
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22Following the philosophical work of Jürgen Mittelstrass, the papers presented in this volume justify this thesis and differentiate it in both its historical and its systematic dimension (including its practical philosophical implications).
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18Inquiring into Space-Time, the Human Mind, and Religion: The Life and Work of Adolf GrünbaumJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (4): 409-427. 2019.Grünbaum's three chief fields of research were space-time philosophy, the methodological credentials of psychoanalysis, and reasons given in favor of the existence of God. Grünbaum defended the so-called conventionality thesis of physical geometry. He partially followed Hans Reichenbach in this respect but developed a new ontological argument for the conventionality claim in addition. In addressing the physical basis of the direction of time, Grünbaum advocated that there is a physical basis for…Read more
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17Concepts, Theories, and Rationality in the Biological Sciences (edited book)University of Pittsburgh Press/Universitätsverlag Konstanz. 1995.Leading biologists and philosophers of biology discuss the basic theories and concepts of biology and their connections with ethics, economics, and psychology, providing a remarkably unified report on the “state of the art” in the philosophy of biology
Konstanz, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Areas of Specialization
General Philosophy of Science |
Philosophy of Biology |
Atheism and Agnosticism |