Newton and Empiricism

Newton and Empiricism PDF Author: Zvi Biener
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199337101
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
This volume of original papers by a leading team of international scholars explores Isaac Newton's relation to a variety of empiricisms and empiricists. It includes studies of Newton's experimental methods in optics and their roots in Bacon and Boyle; Locke's and Hume's responses to Newton on the nature of matter, time, the structure of the sciences, and the limits of human inquiry. In addition it explores the use of Newtonian ideas in 18th-century pedagogy and the life sciences. Finally, it breaks new ground in analyzing the method of evidential reasoning heralded by the Principia, its nature, strength, and development in the subsequent three centuries of gravitational research. The volume will be of interest to historians of science and philosophy and philosophers interested in the nature of empiricism.

Newton and Empiricism

Newton and Empiricism PDF Author: Zvi Biener
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199337101
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume of original papers by a leading team of international scholars explores Isaac Newton's relation to a variety of empiricisms and empiricists. It includes studies of Newton's experimental methods in optics and their roots in Bacon and Boyle; Locke's and Hume's responses to Newton on the nature of matter, time, the structure of the sciences, and the limits of human inquiry. In addition it explores the use of Newtonian ideas in 18th-century pedagogy and the life sciences. Finally, it breaks new ground in analyzing the method of evidential reasoning heralded by the Principia, its nature, strength, and development in the subsequent three centuries of gravitational research. The volume will be of interest to historians of science and philosophy and philosophers interested in the nature of empiricism.

Newton and Empiricism

Newton and Empiricism PDF Author: Zvi Biener
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199337098
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
This is the first volume of original commissioned papers on the subject of Newton and empiricism. The chapters, contributed by a leading team of both established and younger international scholars, explore the nature and extent of Newton's relationship to a variety of empiricisms and empiricists. Among the many significant contributions of the volume are a detailed engagement with Newton's optical writings, a careful contextualization of Newton's methods in seventeenth century context, a critical analysis of the ways in which Locke and Hume responded to Newton, and a history of the reception of Newton's methods in astronomy.

Introducing Empiricism

Introducing Empiricism PDF Author: Dave Robinson
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
ISBN: 1785780174
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
Our knowledge comes primarily from experience – what our senses tell us. But is experience really what it seems? The experimental breakthroughs in 17th-century science of Kepler, Galileo and Newton informed the great British empiricist tradition, which accepts a 'common-sense' view of the world – and yet concludes that all we can ever know are 'ideas'. In Introducing Empiricism: A Graphic Guide, Dave Robinson - with the aid of Bill Mayblin's brilliant illustrations - outlines the arguments of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, J.S. Mill, Bertrand Russell and the last British empiricist, A.J. Ayer. They also explore criticisms of empiricism in the work of Kant, Wittgenstein, Karl Popper and others, providing a unique overview of this compelling area of philosophy.

On Theories

On Theories PDF Author: William Demopoulos
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674237579
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
A renowned philosopher’s final work, illuminating how the logical empiricist tradition has failed to appreciate the role of actual experiments in forming its philosophy of science. The logical empiricist treatment of physics dominated twentieth-century philosophy of science. But the logical empiricist tradition, for all it accomplished, does not do justice to the way in which empirical evidence functions in modern physics. In his final work, the late philosopher of science William Demopoulos contends that philosophers have failed to provide an adequate epistemology of science because they have failed to appreciate the tightly woven character of theory and evidence. As a consequence, theory comes apart from evidence. This trouble is nowhere more evident than in theorizing about particle and quantum physics. Arguing that we must consider actual experiments as they have unfolded across history, Demopoulos provides a new epistemology of theories and evidence, albeit one that stands on the shoulders of giants. On Theories finds clarity in Isaac Newton’s suspicion of mere “hypotheses.” Newton’s methodology lies in the background of Jean Perrin’s experimental investigations of molecular reality and of the subatomic investigations of J. J. Thomson and Robert Millikan. Demopoulos extends this account to offer novel insights into the distinctive nature of quantum reality, where a logico-mathematical reconstruction of Bohrian complementarity meets John Stewart Bell’s empirical analysis of Einstein’s “local realism.” On Theories ultimately provides a new interpretation of quantum probabilities as themselves objectively representing empirical reality.

Experimental Philosophy and the Birth of Empirical Science

Experimental Philosophy and the Birth of Empirical Science PDF Author: Michael Ben-Chaim
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351937758
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
How did empirical research become the cornerstone of modern science? Scholars have traditionally associated empirical research with the search for knowledge, but have failed to provide adequate solutions to this basic historical problem. This book offers a different approach that focuses on human understanding - rather than knowledge - and its cultural expression in the creation and social transaction of causal explanations. Ancient Greek philosophers professed that genuine understanding of a particular subject was gained only when its nature, or essence, was defined. This ancient mode of explanation furnished the core teachings of late medieval natural philosophers, and was reaffirmed by early modern philosophers such as Bacon and Descartes. Yet during the second half of the 17th century, radical transformation gave rise to innovative research practices that were designed to explain how empirical properties of the physical world were correlated. The study unfolded in this book centres on the works of Robert Boyle, John Locke, and Isaac Newton - the most notable exponents of the 'experimental philosophy' in the late 17th century - to explore how this transformation led to the emergence of a recognizably modern culture of empirical research. Relating empirical with explanatory practices, this book offers a novel solution to one of the major problems in the history of western science and philosophy. It thereby provides a new perspective on the Scientific Revolution and the origins of modern empiricism. At the same time, this book demonstrates how historical and sociological tools can be combined to study science as an evolving institution of human understanding.

The Realistic Empiricism of Mach, James, and Russell

The Realistic Empiricism of Mach, James, and Russell PDF Author: Erik C. Banks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107073863
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
This book redevelops an important movement in philosophy for the first time, exploring the ways in which three of the greatest thinkers can be connected, and applying their ideas to contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science.

The Newtonian Revolution

The Newtonian Revolution PDF Author: I. Bernard Cohen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521273800
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
This volume presents Professor Cohen's original interpretation of the revolution that marked the beginnings of modern science and set Newtonian science as the model for the highest level of achievement in other branches of science. It shows that Newton developed a special kind of relation between abstract mathematical constructs and the physical systems that we observe in the world around us by means of experiment and critical observation. The heart of the radical Newtonian style is the construction on the mind of a mathematical system that has some features in common with the physical world; this system was then modified when the deductions and conclusions drawn from it are tested against the physical universe. Using this system Newton was able to make his revolutionary innovations in celestial mechanics and, ultimately, create a new physics of central forces and the law of universal gravitation. Building on his analysis of Newton's methodology, Professor Cohen explores the fine structure of revolutionary change and scientific creativity in general. This is done by developing the concept of scientific change as a series of transformations of existing ideas. It is shown that such transformation is characteristic of many aspects of the sciences and that the concept of scientific change by transformation suggests a new way of examining the very nature of scientific creativity.

Isaac Newton: Philosophical Writings

Isaac Newton: Philosophical Writings PDF Author: Isaac Newton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521538480
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This volume collects together Newton's principal philosophical writings for the first time.

Empiricist Devotions

Empiricist Devotions PDF Author: Courtney Weiss Smith
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813938392
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Featuring a moment in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England before the disciplinary divisions that we inherit today were established, Empiricist Devotions recovers a kind of empiricist thinking in which the techniques and emphases of science, religion, and literature combined and cooperated. This brand of empiricism was committed to particularized scrutiny and epistemological modesty. It was Protestant in its enabling premises and meditative practices. It earnestly affirmed that figurative language provided crucial tools for interpreting the divinely written world. Smith recovers this empiricism in Robert Boyle’s analogies, Isaac Newton’s metaphors, John Locke’s narratives, Joseph Addison’s personifications, Daniel Defoe’s diction, John Gay’s periphrases, and Alexander Pope’s descriptive particulars. She thereby demonstrates that "literary" language played a key role in shaping and giving voice to the concerns of eighteenth-century science and religion alike. Empiricist Devotions combines intellectual history with close readings of a wide variety of texts, from sermons, devotional journals, and economic tracts to georgic poems, it-narratives, and microscopy treatises. This prizewinning book has important implications for our understanding of cultural and literary history, as scholars of the period’s science have not fully appreciated figurative language’s central role in empiricist thought, while scholars of its religion and literature have neglected the serious empiricist commitments motivating richly figurative devotional and poetic texts. Winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an Outstanding Work of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Studies

Oxford Handbook of Newton

Oxford Handbook of Newton PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199930418
Category : Physics
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.