ISBN:
9789401135986
Language:
English
Pages:
Online-Ressource (XII, 466 p)
,
digital
Edition:
Springer eBook Collection. Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
Series Statement:
Synthese Library, Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science 217
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als
Keywords:
Philosophy (General)
;
Science Philosophy
;
Philosophy of nature
;
Mathematical physics.
;
Science—Philosophy.
;
Gravitation.
Abstract:
The Universe as a Scientific and Philosophical Problem -- The Geometric Structure of the Universe -- Superstring Unification and the Existence of Gravity -- The Universe of Modern Science and its Philosophical Exploration -- From Molecules to Life -- Meta-Neuroanatomy: The Myth of the Unbounded Main/Brain -- Emergence and Reduction in Morphogenetic Theories -- What can we know about the Universe? -- The Universe as a Scientific Object -- General Laws of Nature and The Uniqueness of the Universe -- The Anthropic Principle and its Epistemological Status in Modern Physical Cosmology -- Evolutionary Ideas and Contemporary Naturalism -- Origin and Evolution of the Universe and Mankind -- Index of Names.
Abstract:
It has often been noted that a kind of double dynamics char- terizes the development of science. On the one hand the progress in every discipline appears as the consequence of an increasing specialization, implying the restriction of the inquiry to very partial fields or aspects of a given domain. On the other hand, an opposite (but one might better say a complementary) trend points towards the construction of theoretical frameworks of great ge- rality, the aim of which seems to correspond not so much to the need of providing «explanations» for the details accumulated through partial investigation, as to the desire of attaining an - rizon of global comprehension of the whole field. This intell- tual dialectics is perceivable in every discipline, from mathe- tics, to physics, to biology, to history, to economics, to sociology, and it is not difficult to recognize there the presence of the two main attitudes according to which human beings try to make «intelligible» the world surrounding them (including themselves), attitudes which are sometimes called analysis and synthesis. They correspond respectively to the spontaneous inclination which pushes us to try to understand things by seeing «how they are made», in the sense of «looking into them» and breaking them into their constitutive parts, or rather to encompass things in a global picture, where they are accounted for as occupying a place, or playing a role, which are understandable from the point of view of the whole.
DOI:
10.1007/978-94-011-3598-6
URL:
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