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Carnap And HeideggerIn Trish Glazebrook (ed.), Heidegger on Science, State University of New York Press. pp. 113-129. 2012.
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36Theories, Technologies, Instrumentalities of Color is the outcome of a workshop, held in Leuven, Belgium, in May 2000
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12The observable: Heisenberg's philosophy of quantum mechanicsPeter Lang. 2016.Patrick Aidan Heelan’s The Observable offers the reader a completely articulated development of his 1965 philosophy of quantum physics, Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity. In this previously unpublished study dating back more than a half a century, Heelan brings his background as both a physicist and a philosopher to his reflections on Werner Heisenberg’s physical philosophy. Including considerably broader connections to the contributions of Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and Albert Einstein, this s…Read more
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4Quantum Mechanics and the Social SciencesIn Babette Babich (ed.), Hermeneutic Philosophies of Social Science: Introduction, De Gruyter. pp. 51-62. 2017.
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7Science Unfettered: A Philosophical Study in Sociohistorical Ontology (review)Review of Metaphysics 55 (2): 403-404. 2001.The authors’ aim in this book is “to understand—from a philosophical standpoint—the social and historical nature of science, more precisely, its sociability and historicity”. “This book was created within a dialogue” between the two authors, and between our “friends”—those who supported a hermeneutic stance toward the natural sciences—and our “antagonists”—those belonging to the analytic philosophy of science. The dialogue took place at the University of Pittsburgh where McGuire is a Professor o…Read more
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13This richly textured book bridges analytic and hermeneutic and phenomenological philosophy of science. It features unique resources for students of the philosophy and history of quantum mechanics and the Copenhagen Interpretation, cognitive theory and the psychology of perception, the history and philosophy of art, and the pragmatic and historical relationships between religion and science.
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58The scope of hermeneutics in natural scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 29 (2): 273-298. 1998.Hermeneutics, or interpretation, is concerned with the generation, transmission, and acceptance of meaning within the lifeworld, and was the original method of the human sciences stemming, from F. Schleiermacher and W. Dilthey. The `hermeneutic philosophy' refers mostly to Heidegger. This paper addresses natural science from the perspective of Heidegger's analysis of meaning and interpretation. Its purpose is to incorporate into the philosophy of science those aspects of historicality, culture, …Read more
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12Towards a Hermeneutic of Natural ScienceJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 3 (3): 252-260. 1972.
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9Quantum Mechanics and the Social SciencesIn Babette E. Babich (ed.), Hermeneutic Philosophies of Social Science, De Gruyter. pp. 51-62. 2017.
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45Heisenberg and radical theoretic changeZeitschrift Für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 6 (1): 113-136. 1975.Heisenberg, in constructing quantum mechanics, explicitly followed certain principles exemplified, as he believed, in Einstein's construction of the special theory of relativity which for him was the paradigm for radical theoretic change in physics. These were the principles of scientific realism, stability of background knowledge, E-observability, contextual re-interpretation, pragmatic continuity, model continuity, simplicity. Fifty years later, in retrospect, Heisenberg added the following tw…Read more
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29Comments on professor Kisiel's commentaryZeitschrift Für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 5 (1): 135-137. 1974.
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80Hermeneutics of experimental science in the context of the life-worldZeitschrift Für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 5 (1): 123-124. 1974.
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9Quantum mechanics and objectivityM. Nijhoff. 1965.Quantum mechanics has raised in an acute form three problems which go to the heart of man's relationship with nature through experimental science: (r) the public objectivity of science, that is, its value as a universal science for all investigators; (2) the empirical objectivity of scientific objects, that is, man's ability to construct a precise or causal spatio-temporal model of microscopic systems; and finally (3), the formal objectivity of science, that is, its value as an expression of wha…Read more
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253Natural science as a hermeneutic of instrumentationPhilosophy of Science 50 (2): 181-204. 1983.The author proposes the thesis that all perception, including observation in natural science, is hermeneutical as well as causal; that is, the perceiver (or observer) learns to 'read' instrumental or other perceptual stimuli as one learns to read a text. This hermeneutical aspect at the heart of natural science is located where it might be least expected, within acts of scientific observation. In relation to the history of science, the question is addressed to what extent the hermeneutical compo…Read more
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80The scope of hermeneutics in natural scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 29 (2): 273-298. 1998.Hermeneutics, or interpretation, is concerned with the generation, transmission, and acceptance of meaning within the lifeworld, and was the original method of the human sciences stemming, from F. Schleiermacher and W. Dilthey. The `hermeneutic philosophy' refers mostly to Heidegger. This paper addresses natural science from the perspective of Heidegger's analysis of meaning and interpretation. Its purpose is to incorporate into the philosophy of science those aspects of historicality, culture, …Read more
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31Hermeneutics of experimental science in the context of the life-worldPhilosophia Mathematica (2): 101-144. 1972.
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18Comments and CritiqueScience in Context 3 (2): 477-488. 1989.The ArgumentIn this rejoinder to Gyorgy Markus, I argue that although there are nonphilosophical hermeneutical studies of communication among scientists from which much can be learned about scientific practices, there is also the philosophical genre of a hermeneutics of natural science, with which this paper is concerned. The former is the nonphilosophical use of hermeneutics in the study of texts and historical sources; the latter is a philosophy pursued within a working canon of philosophical …Read more
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31Perception as a Hermeneutical ActReview of Metaphysics 37 (1). 1983.IN A recent work I have attempted to show that visual space tends to have a Euclidean geometrical structure only when the environment is filled with a repetitive pattern of regularly faceted objects carpentered to exhibit simple standard Euclidean shapes, and tends to have a hyperbolic structure when vision is deprived of these clues. I conclude that visual perception--and by analogy, all perception--is hermeneutic as well as causal: it responds to structures in the flow of optical energy, but t…Read more
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159Hermeneutical Philosophy and Pragmatism: A Philosophy of Science (review)Synthese 115 (3): 269-302. 1998.Two philosophical traditions with much in common, (classical) pragmatism and (Heidegger's) hermeneutic philosophy, are here\ncompared with respect to their approach to the philosophy of science. Both emphasize action as a mode of interpreting experience.\nBoth have developed important categories – inquiry, meaning, theory, praxis, coping, historicity, life-world – and each has\noffered an alternative to the more traditional philosophies of science stemming from Descartes, Hume, and Comte. Pragma…Read more
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38Interpretation and the structure of space in scientific theory and in perceptionResearch in Phenomenology 16 (1): 187-199. 1986.
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194The role of consciousness as meaning Maker in science, culture, and religionZygon 44 (2): 467-486. 2009.Two hundred years ago, Friedrich Schleiermacher took critical issue with Immanuel Kant's intellectual notion of intuition as applied to human nature (Wellmon 2006). He found it necessary to modify—"hermeneutically," as he said—Kant's notion of anthropology by enabling it to include as human the new and strange human tribes Captain Cook found in the Pacific South Seas. A similar hermeneutic move is necessary if physics is to include the local contextual empirical syntheses of relativity and quant…Read more
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38Husserl and the Sciences: Selected Perspectives (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (3): 405-406. 2005.
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An Anti-epistemological or Ontological Interpretation of the Quantum Theory and Theories Like itIn Babette E. Babich, Debra B. Bergoffen & Simon Glynn (eds.), Continental and postmodern perspectives in the philosophy of science, Avebury. pp. 55--68. 1995.
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19The lifeworld and scientific interpretationIn Kay Toombs (ed.), Handbook of Phenomenology and Medicine, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 47--66. 2001.
Patrick A. Heelan
(1926 - 2015)
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Physical Science |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Continental Philosophy |