Did science, as we know it, have to be? The article explores a possible response in the negative, organized around a specific contingency: that of Greek mathematics or, even more specifically, that ...of the mathematics of the generation of Archimedes. The argument is that (1) Greek mathematics, seen against a cross-cultural comparison, is an anomaly, (2) the scientific revolution, as it in fact unfolded, was directly shaped by the anomaly of Greek mathematics, and (3) it is not clear that, absent Greek mathematics, an equivalent scientific revolution would have taken place. The argument is developed in some detail concerning the history of ancient Greek science, but more is said on the inevitably philosophical questions of counterfactuals in history and on the specific question of the contingency of science.
In response to the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, Immanuel Kant put forward a transcendental philosophy which distinguished between the appearance and the thing-in-itself (das Ding an ...sich), in the belief that people can only know appearances, but not thingsin- themselves. The fact that contemporary philosophy has gone far beyond transcendental philosophy can be seen clearly in the following respects: the response to the Scientific Revolution; the theory of primary and secondary qualities; the two concepts of the thing-in-itself; and how to know the thing-in-itself. In order to deepen the discussion of the thing-in-itself, it is necessary to introduce probing new questions and attempt to elucidate a switching theory of reality that distinguishes between the meaning-impoverished thing-in-itself and the meaning-rich thing-in-itself, and advocates placing the focus of philosophical thinking on the latter. Basing ourselves on the switching theory of reality and the concept of perspectival totality that it implies allows us to better understand man's place in the universe and the mission of philosophy in the post-metaphysical era.
How can we hold in the same view both cultural or historical constructs and generalities about social existence? Kinship, Law and the Unexpected takes up an issue at the heart of studies of society - ...the way we use relationships to uncover relationships. Relationality is a phenomenon at once contingent (on certain ways of knowing) and ubiquitous (to social life). The role of relations in western (Euro-American) knowledge practices, from the scientific revolution onwards, raises a question about the extent to which Euro-American kinship is the kinship of a knowledge-based society. The argument takes the reader through current issues in biotechnology, new family formations and legal interventions, and intellectual property debates, to matters of personhood and ownership afforded by material from Melanesia and elsewhere. If we are often surprised by what our relatives do, we may also be surprised by what relations tells us about the world we live in.
My point of departure is a conflict over images in the churches in Bergen, Norway in the 1560s, around 30 years after the Reformation. This introduced a brief period of iconoclasm in Denmark–Norway, ...inspired by Reformed theology. Soon, however, mainstream Lutheranism took over and statues and pictures were reintroduced. The different views on images in the two Protestant confessions – Lutheranism and Calvinism – are, of course, well known, as are also the various theological arguments in the debate between them. More interesting is the practical question of how it was possible to manage without images when addressing a largely illiterate audience. Here, Lutherans seemed to have basically the same attitude as Catholics, although they differed in the exact way the images were used. Both were ‘mass religions’, aiming at including the whole population and using whatever means necessary for this purpose. By contrast, Calvinism was an intellectual and elite religion, creating tight communities of true believers in accordance with the belief in Predestination. It has therefore been regarded as an important factor in modernization theories, from Weber’s explanation of capitalism to later theories of the link between Reformed Protestantism and modern science. Although there is little to indicate that pictures are an obstacle to science, the intellectual and elitist character of Reformed Protestantism may have contributed to the scientific revolution in the early modern period. Generally, the history of iconoclasm illustrates the fact that images are a powerful medium, particularly when most people are illiterate, and that a religion that abstains from this medium is faced with the challenge of finding a replacement for it.
Concepts are the products of the human mind and imagination that have emerged in the context of history-society. For this reason, their meaning contents also change throughout history. In this ...context, science and religion are two important concepts that the human mind has produced in history. However, both have found a wide application area in practical life and have influenced each other interactively throughout history. Until the emergence of scientific thought, religions have gained the power to organize human and social life by undertaking the task of meeting the need for knowledge of human beings. With the emergence of scientific thinking ability, the way religions describe and explain nature and its contents has also been discussed. However, the attempt to think scientifically, which took off in Ancient Greece in European history, could not show a significant presence during the Medieval Ages, when Christianity determined scientific thought. Some important scientific, social and economic developments that took place in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries led to the questioning of the authority of the Church, and brought the importance and value of scientific thought back to the agenda of the Western people. As the power of science to explain nature increased, the power of institutional religion to determine thought began to decline. However, when we look closely at this period, it can be seen that the leading figures of the scientific revolution - although they are free-thinking people - also have sincere religious and metaphysical beliefs, and the struggle is mostly tied around the “problem of authority”. In the following centuries, as modern science began to make itself felt more and more in public life with its spectacular achievements, institutional religion would have to largely leave the public sphere. From now on, science will claim to establish it on earth in return for the claim of heaven provided by religions in the next world. However, with the understanding that science cannot answer the existential problems of human beings and the need for certainty with the 20th century, the “sacred” has succeeded in reproducing itself in a new form. Thus, the history of science has clearly shown us once again that it is not possible to completely remove metaphysical beliefs from the human mind and scientific thought.
Kavramlar insan zihninin ve muhayyilesinin tarih-toplum bağlamı içinde ortaya çıkmış olan ürünleridir. Bu sebeple anlam içerikleri de tarih boyunca değişikliğe uğrar. Bilim ve din bu bağlamda insan zihninin tarih içerisinde ürettiği iki önemli kavramdır. Bununla birlikte her ikisi de pratik hayatta geniş bir uygulama alanı bulmuş ve tarih içerisinde interaktif bir etkileşim içerisinde olmuştur. Bilimsel düşünce ortaya çıkana kadar dinler, insanoğlunun bilme ihtiyacını giderme görevini de üstlenerek, insan ve toplum hayatını düzenleme gücü kazanmıştır. Bilimsel düşünme yeteneğinin ortaya çıkmasıyla birlikte, dinlerin doğayı ve içindekileri betimleme ve açıklama biçimi de tartışılmaya başlanmıştır. Bununla birlikte Avrupa tarihinde Antik Yunan’da uç veren bilimsel düşünme teşebbüsü, Hristiyanlığın bilimsel düşünceyi belirlediği Orta Çağ boyunca önemli bir varlık gösterememiştir. 15. ve 16. yüzyıl Avrupa’sında vuku bulan bazı önemli bilimsel, toplumsal ve ekonomik gelişmeler, Kilisenin otoritesinin sorgulanmasına yol açarken bilimsel düşüncenin önemini ve değerini yeniden Batı insanının gündemine taşımıştır. Bilimin doğayı açıklama gücü arttıkça kurumsal dinin düşünceyi belirleme üzerindeki gücü de azalmaya başlamıştır. Ancak bu döneme yakından bakıldığında, bilimsel devrimin öncü isimlerinin -özgür düşünceli insanlar olmakla birlikte- samimi dinsel ve metafizik inançlara da sahip oldukları ve mücadelenin daha çok “yetke sorunsalı” çerçevesinde düğümlendiği görülebilir. Sonraki yüzyıllarda modern bilim, göz alıcı başarıları ile kendisini toplum hayatında daha fazla hissettirmeye başladıkça, kurumsal din kamusal alanı büyük ölçüde terk etmek zorunda kalacaktır. Bundan böyle artık dinlerin öte dünyada temin ettiği cennet iddiasına karşılık, bilim bunu yeryüzünde tesis etme iddiasında bulunacaktır. Ancak 20. yüzyıl ile birlikte bilimin insanın varoluşsal sorunlarına ve kesinlik ihtiyacına cevap veremeyeceğinin anlaşılmasıyla “kutsal” kendini yeni bir formda yeniden üretmeyi başarmıştır. Böylece bilim tarihi bize açık bir biçimde, metafizik inançları insan zihninden ve bilimsel düşünceden tamamen çıkarıp atmanın mümkün olmadığını bir kez daha göstermiştir.
Postmodernism was marked by the tendency of redefining family, resizing of its role, but also by the apparition of many mutations at the level of people organizations or relations between the family ...members. As a complex institution that has its activity in a space merely exposed to changes and to pressures, family has the capacity to influence political decisions, both in the social sphere, but also in the educational and economical one. The changes caused by the technological era have also caused modifications related to the family, at many levels: the determinations of it, the modalities of its foundation, but they have also changed some of the regularities that are governing the function and the inter-relationships and the between its members. Technology, the IT systems (Internet, on-line communication, smartphone and s. o.), have generated multiple possibilities of knowledge and inter-relationship, of accessing and distribution of information, and they have encouraged the free expression of opinions, feelings and emotions. In one informational society like the today's one, accommodation and re-modulation processes are self-imposed; from there we have the necessity for long-live learning, of self-education. Personal development, as self-success is dependent by family life, values and by the type of relations promoted by them.
En este trabajo discutimos la extensión de la influencia que el pensamiento de Richard Owen tuvo sobre el de Charles Darwin. Además, se intentará mostrar lo heterogéneo de tal influencia, que va ...desde teorías específicas a giros retóricos. Esta influencia es en muchos casos subestimada, dando la sensación de que la novedad darwiniana consistió únicamente en mirar con ojos desprejuiciados lo que los otros no habían visto. Esta visión resulta injusta con Owen, y también con el esfuerzo conceptual llevado adelante por Darwin con las piezas brindadas por sus precursores. Finalmente, este es un caso interesante para entender el tipo de novedad aportada por las revoluciones científicas y el modo sofisticado en que tal novedad se sustenta sobre el trabajo de los enfoques previos.
The 'two cultures' in Australia Barnes, Joel
History of education (Tavistock),
11/2023, Letnik:
ahead-of-print, Številka:
ahead-of-print
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article considers Australian receptions of C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959), and of the controversy over the literary critic F. R. Leavis's combative 1962 ...response to it. Taking a lead from conceptual insights in global histories of science and the history of knowledge, the paper considers the ways knowledge claims iterate differently in different geographic and cultural contexts. Elements of the Snow-Leavis dispute resonated among Australian scientists, cultural critics, journalists and poets, while others did not. Snow's diagnosis of a disciplinary antagonism between the humanities and the sciences was central to Australian receptions of the controversy, but wider political issues, emphasised in much of the more sophisticated historiography of the 'two cultures' as a British-American controversy, were largely ignored. This reception reflected the post-war expansion of Australian higher education, and the shifting relations within it between the humanities and the sciences.
Critical responses by Marwala and Ntlatlapa challenged Moll's refutation of a contemporary technological revolution as a necessary but not sufficient stratum of a Fourth Industrial Revolution (S Afr ...J Sci. 2023;119(1/2)). This rejoinder suggests that they work with loose criteria about what counts as a 'revolution', and therefore confuse the character of industrial, scientific and technological revolutions. Therefore, their defence of the existence of a new, contemporary technological revolution, and a related economic, social and geopolitical revolution, rests on shaky conceptual ground. Neither the pandemic nor an unprecedented fusion of technologies has produced a 'Fourth Industrial Revolution'.
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