Taking Ex nihilo seriously : ontology and providence in creation

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Conceptual Modelling, Combinatorial Heuristics and Ars Inveniendi: An Epistemological History

(1) An introduction to the principles of conceptual modelling, combinatorial heuristics and epistemological history; (2) the examination of a number of perennial epistemological-methodological schemata: conceptual spaces and blending theory; ars inveniendi and ars demonstrandi; the two modes of analysis and synthesis and their relationship to ars inveniendi; taxonomies and typologies as two fundamental epistemic structures; extended cognition, symbolic systems and model-based reasoning

Conceptual Modelling, Combinatorial Heuristics and Ars Inveniendi: An Epistemological History (Ch 1 & 2)

(1) An introduction to the principles of conceptual modelling, combinatorial heuristics and epistemological history; (2) the examination of a number of perennial epistemological-methodological schemata: conceptual spaces and blending theory; ars inveniendi and ars demonstrandi; the two modes of analysis and synthesis and their relationship to ars inveniendi; taxonomies and typologies as two fundamental epistemic structures; extended cognition, cognitio symbolica and model-based reasoning; (3) Plato’s notions of conceptual spaces, conceptual blending and hypothetical-analogical models (paradeigmata); (4) Ramon Llull’s concept analysis and combinatoric spaces; (5) Gottfried Leibniz’s development of compositional analysis and synthesis as a general modelling method and a paradigm for ars inveniendi; (6) Fritz Zwicky’s revival of the morphological method of analysis and construction, and its subsequent computerised applications

Issues in the philosophical foundations of lexical semantics

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1993.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-159).by Brian Edward Ulicny.Ph.D

The reasonable effectiveness of Mathematics and its Cognitive roots 1

“At the beginning, Nature set up matters its own way and, later, it constructed human intelligence in such a way that [this intelligence] could understand it” [Galileo Galilei, 1632 (Opere, p. 298)]. “The applicability of our science [mathematics] seems then as a symptom of its rooting, not as a measure of its value. Mathematics, as a tree which freely develops his top, draws its strength by the thousands roots in a ground of intuitions of real representations; it would be disastrous to cut them off, in view of a short-sided utilitarism, or to uproot them from the ground from which they rose ” [H. Weyl, 1910]. Summary. Mathematics stems out from our ways of making the world intelligible by its peculiar conceptual stability and unity; we invented it and used it to single out key regularities of space and language. This is exemplified and summarised below in references to the main foundational approaches to Mathematics, as proposed in the last 150 years. Its unity is also stressed: in this paper, Mathematics is viewed as a "three dimensiona

From mathematics in logic to logic in mathematics : Boole and Frege

This project proceeds from the premise that the historical and logical value of Boole's logical calculus and its connection with Frege's logic remain to be recognised. It begins by discussing Gillies' application of Kuhn's concepts to the history oflogic and proposing the use of the concept of research programme as a methodological tool in the historiography oflogic. Then it analyses'the development of mathematical logic from Boole to Frege in terms of overlapping research programmes whilst discussing especially Boole's logical calculus. Two streams of development run through the project: 1. A discussion and appraisal of Boole's research programme in the context of logical debates and the emergence of symbolical algebra in Britain in the nineteenth century, including the improvements which Venn brings to logic as algebra, and the axiomatisation of 'Boolean algebras', which is due to Huntington and Sheffer. 2. An investigation of the particularity of the Fregean research programme, including an analysis ofthe extent to which certain elements of Begriffsschrift are new; and an account of Frege's discussion of Boole which focuses on the domain common to the two formal languages and shows the logical connection between Boole's logical calculus and Frege's. As a result, it is shown that the progress made in mathematical logic stemmed from two continuous and overlapping research programmes: Boole's introduction ofmathematics in logic and Frege's introduction oflogic in mathematics. In particular, Boole is regarded as the grandfather of metamathematics, and Lowenheim's theorem ofl915 is seen as a revival of his research programme

BEHAVIORISM AND LOGICAL POSITIVISM: A REVISED ACCOUNT OF THE ALLIANCE (VOLUMES I AND II)

The primary aim of this work is to show that the widespread belief that the major behaviorists drew importantly upon logical positivist philosophy of science in formulating their approach to psychology is ill-founded. Detailed historical analysis of the work of the neobehaviorists Edward C. Tolman, Clark L. Hull, and B. F. Skinner leads to the following conclusions: (1) each did have significant contact with proponents of logical positivism; but (2) their sympathies with logical positivism were quite limited and were restricted to those aspects of logical positivism which they had already arrived at independently; (3) the methods which they are alleged to have imported from logical positivism were actually derived from their own indigenous conceptions of knowledge; and (4) each major neobehaviorist developed and embraced a behavioral epistemology which, far from resting on logical positivist assumptions, actually conflicted squarely with the anti-psychologism that was a cornerstone of logical positivism. It is suggested that the myth of an alliance between behaviorism and logical positivism arose from the incautious interpretations of philosophical reconstructions as historical conclusions. This and other historiographical issues are discussed in the concluding chapter, where it is argued that the anti-psychologism of the logical positivists is an unnecessary impediment to a fuller understanding of the phenomenon of knowledge

Історія науки й техніки

The tutorial "History of Science and Technology" is intended for undergraduate students who study this academic subject in English. The material for each of the themes covers a specific historical period in the history of science and technology from ancient times to the present. The last theme is devoted to the study of the history of NTU "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute".Навчальний посібник "Історія науки і техніки" призначено для студентів-бакалаврів, які вивчають дисципліну англійською мовою. Матеріал для кожної із тем висвітлює певний історичний період розвитку історії науки і техніки від стародавніх часів до сьогодення. Остання тема присвячена вивченню історії НТУ "Харківський політехнічний інститут"

Science and the Spirit of the Age: Blake, Wordsworth, and the Romantic Scientific Paradigm

The reaction of the first wave of English Romantic poets to the Enlightenment scientific establishment is by this point well understood. As Blake once noted, All that is Valuable in Knowledge is / Superior to Demonstrative Science such as is Weighed or Measured, a view subsequently echoed by Wordsworth: How insecure, how baseless in itself, / Is the Philosophy whose sway depends / On mere material instruments. Not quite so clear, however, is the relation between these pre-eminent Romantic poets and the Romantic scientific paradigm emerging at the turn of the nineteenth century. Both in its mainstream version, which would become modern scientific praxis, and in its most extreme variant, the Naturphilosophie of Schelling, Oken, et al., Romantic science differed from its Enlightenment predecessor by positing organic metaphors over mechanical ones, a conception of nature as process rather than product, and a historicist rather than ahistorical view of the universe. Given this orientation, a question emerges: Why did the first wave of English Romantic poets, Blake and Wordsworth particularly, fail to embrace the new Romantic science as an alternative to Enlightenment science when so many of its aspects seemed to harmonize with their personal politics and sense of aesthetics-at least, as these beliefs are articulated in their works? Why, in fact, does it appear that they pointedly rejected it? Romantic science resonated with the Spirit of the Age, but within its view of a dynamic, evolving, and boundless universe-and the redefinition of materialism that this view engendered-were philosophical propositions even more dangerous to these poets than those within its Enlightenment counterpart. What is more, there is reason to believe that these poets had a clear sense, arrived at by the differing philosophic approaches that defined them, where this particular scientific revolution might be headed in the century to come-toward the production of a culture wherein science would be irrevocably dominant, spiritual endeavors discredited, and poetry marginalized