The Concept of Nature, the Epistemic Ideal, and Experiment: Why is Modern Science Technologically Exploitable? [1989] (original) (raw)
Related papers
Defining Nature: From Aristotle to Philoponus to Avicenna [2015]
In: Aristotle and the Arabic Tradition. Edited by Ahmed Alwishah and Josh Hayes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015
Aristotle's definition of nature as a cause and principle of motion has been widely accepted by subsequent philosophers throughout the centuries despite the fact that it does not clearly state what kind of cause nature is or whether nature is involved in the production of motion as an active or a passive principle. John Philoponus availed himself of Aristotle's indefiniteness and developed nature into an active principle, which permeates and governs all objects within the natural world. His definition was equally successful as an emendation of Aristotle's original definition. Nature taken as an active principle was conceived as something similar to soul and was embedded into a larger framework of Neoplatonic cosmology until it was met with disapproval by Avicenna, who intended to dispel the idea of aligning soul with nature in order to provide his own novel definition of nature as part of a universal classification of natural powers.
The first argument in Physics ii.8 serves as the foundational text for understanding the domain, extent, and character of Aristotle's natural teleology. On the basis of this text, most scholars think that Aristotle's natural teleology applies exclusively to biological things (plants and animals) and that the elements (earth, air, fire, and water) either are not teleological or are teleological only in so far as they play a role in biological processes. In addition, some scholars think this text shows natural teleology to operate not only within an individual living thing, but also to extend throughout the scala naturae, with lower things (like elements) existing for the sake of higher things (like animals and plants, and ultimately humans). With what they take to be the domain and extent of natural teleology confirmed by this text, scholars look outside the Physics to deepen their understanding of the character of natural teleology (as well as related concepts such as cause, end, nature, chance, and necessity) through careful consideration of its application in particular explanatory contexts. Those convinced of the restriction of natural teleology to individual biological things seek clarification predominantly in the biological works, such as Generation of Animals and Parts of Animals, while those seeking, in addition, better understanding of a supposed commitment to an overarching teleology across the scala naturae turn also to such works as Metaphysics xii and even the Politics. 1
The Significance of the Idea of Impetus for the Development of Natural Science
2019
In the discourse around theories explaining scientific progress, natural philosophy of the Late Medieval Period is seen as playing the role of apologetics. For philosophers of science, with their repudiation of metaphysics, the task of providing a rational reconstruction of how scientific progress has occurred is nigh on impossible. Even explanations such as the Popperian and the Kuhnian strain under great difficulty and provide only partly satisfactory results. In his “Logik der Forschung” (1934) Karl Raimund Popper argues that metaphysics plays an accidental part in the emergence of new scientific ideas. Correspondingly, in “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (1962), by carrying out theoretical interpretations and classification of empirical facts without their metaphysical premises, Thomas Kuhn comes to the conclusion that natural science was formed under the influence of erroneous interpretations of Aristotelian natural philosophy presented by medieval natural philosophers. These are some of the reasons why medievalists are still made to defend late medieval natural philosophy from shallow convictions that at medieval universities nothing of any significance to contemporary science and philosophy took place at all. Seeking to render a fragment of a coherent reconstruction of the development of natural philosophy, I will investigate one idea of late medieval philosophy – the explanation of motion (impetus). The main statement of the paper holds that the ideas of late medieval natural philosophy have a decisive significance for the development of modern natural science instead of accidental or negative one. In the paper, following Aristotelian philosophical approach, premises of Jean Buridan’s theory of impetus will be exposed. Then, debates over the explanation of projectile motion are going to be presented, and finally, the necessary significance of this metaphysical idea on the modifications of natural philosophy is going to be ascertained.
2009
As Raymond Williams (1983) famously declared, nature is one of the most complex words in the English language-and, we may confidently predict, its Germanic relatives including Dutch. The workshop that took place in June 2007 in the Netherlands, from which this volume is derived, was based on an earlier program exploring connections between our concepts of nature and related concepts of science and religion. Though one may not immediately expect these three realms to be interrelated, countless examples suggest otherwise. Consider the journal Nature from December 1999, in which the DNA sequence of human chromosome 22 was published (Dunham et al., 1999). This historic event was visually represented on the cover of the issue by the famous Creation of Adam image painted by Michelangelo in the early 16th century in the Sistine Chapel, in which God's finger stretches to touch that of Adam. Here, on the cover of one of the top scientific journals in the world, a journal titled simply Nature, is one of the most famous religious images in the world. What is surprising, arguably, is not that we encounter so many instances in which nature, science, and religion are interwoven, but that we often defend these realms as separable-science and religion as diametrically opposed, for instance, or nature as some Romanticist notion far removed from the rigor and precision of scientific discourse. No matter how we tend to conceive of nature, science, and religion as differing realms, our ideas and practices related to nature say a great deal about the historic authorities underlying modern culture, science and religion; thus, one way to shed light on these domains of authority would be to look carefully at our assumptions regarding nature.
Apprehending Nature: Philosophical issues from Ancient to Early Modern Philosophy
STUDIES ON THE THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, 2022
This volume is sponsored by the Physis: Research Center on the History of the Philosophy of Nature of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). After its creation, Physis incorporated 2017 the Study Group on the History of the Philosophy of Nature and the group Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th Centuries: Origins, Influences and Bases, both led by Fátima Évora, accredited by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and certified by UNICAMP, the Metaphysics, and Politics Group, led by Marcio Damin Custódio, also certified by UNICAMP and accredited by CNPq. It also incorporated the Philoponus Latinus Study Group, coordinated by Fátima Évora and the Espinosa Research Group, coordinated by Márcio Damin Custódio. ÉVORA, Fátima; MARQUES, Thiago R; CUSTÓDIO, Márcio D; VERZA, Tadeu M. (Orgs.). Apprehending Nature: Philosophical issues from Ancient to Early Modern Philosophy. STUDIES ON THE THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. Campinas: Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH - Unicamp), 2022. 187 p. ISBN 978-65-87198-24-8.
Introduction and Table of Contents for Theory and Practice in Aristotle's Natural Science
Theory and Practice in Aristotle's Natural Science, 2015
Aristotle argued that in theory one could acquire knowledge of the natural world. But he did not simply provide a theoretical account of how to do this; he put his theories into practice. This volume shows how Aristotle’s natural science and philosophical theories shed light on one another. The contributors engage with Aristotle’s biological and non-biological scientific works and with a wide variety of his theoretical works, including Physics, Generation and Corruption, On the Soul, and Posterior Analytics. The chapters focus on a number of themes, including the sort of explanation provided by matter; the relationship between matter, teleology, and necessity; cosmic teleology; how an organism’s soul and faculties relate to its end; how to define things such as sleep, void, and soul; and the proper way to make scientific judgments. The resulting volume offers a rich and integrated view of Aristotle’s science and shows how it fits with his larger philosophical theories.