Historical Epistemology of Space

Historical Epistemology of Space
Author: Matthias Schemmel
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2015-12-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319252410

This monograph investigates the development of human spatial knowledge by analyzing its elementary structures and studying how it is further shaped by various societal conditions. By taking a thoroughly historical perspective on knowledge and integrating results from various disciplines, this work throws new light on long-standing problems in epistemology such as the relation between experience and preformed structures of cognition. What do the orientation of apes and the theory of relativity have to do with each other? Readers will learn how different forms of spatial thinking are related in a long-term history of knowledge. Scientific concepts of space such as Newton’s absolute space or Einstein’s curved spacetime are shown to be rooted in pre-scientific structures of knowledge, while at the same time enabling the integration of an ever expanding corpus of experiential knowledge. This work addresses all readers interested in questions of epistemology, in particular philosophers and historians of science. It integrates forms of spatial knowledge from disciplines including anthropology, developmental psychology and cognitive sciences, amongst others.

Spatial Thinking and External Representation

Spatial Thinking and External Representation
Author: Matthias Schemmel (Ed.)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2016
Genre: Knowledge, Theory of
ISBN:

Spatial knowledge takes different forms in different societies and at different times in history depending on the spatial experiences accounted for and the available means for the external representation of knowledge. The volume presents and analyses manifestations of spatial thinking in the language and practices of recent non-literate societies, in the administrative institutions of early civilizations, in discursive contexts of ancient Greece and China, in early modern natural philosophy and metaphysics, and in twentieth-century physics, and discusses their historical and structural relations.

Leibniz and the Structure of Sciences

Leibniz and the Structure of Sciences
Author: Vincenzo De Risi
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030255727

The book offers a collection of essays on various aspects of Leibniz’s scientific thought, written by historians of science and world-leading experts on Leibniz. The essays deal with a vast array of topics on the exact sciences: Leibniz’s logic, mereology, the notion of infinity and cardinality, the foundations of geometry, the theory of curves and differential geometry, and finally dynamics and general epistemology. Several chapters attempt a reading of Leibniz’s scientific works through modern mathematical tools, and compare Leibniz’s results in these fields with 19th- and 20th-Century conceptions of them. All of them have special care in framing Leibniz’s work in historical context, and sometimes offer wider historical perspectives that go much beyond Leibniz’s researches. A special emphasis is given to effective mathematical practice rather than purely epistemological thought. The book is addressed to all scholars of the exact sciences who have an interest in historical research and Leibniz in particular, and may be useful to historians of mathematics, physics, and epistemology, mathematicians with historical interests, and philosophers of science at large.

Space

Space
Author: Andrew Janiak
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2020-02-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199914109

The Ultimate Space Place presents information about the history of space flight, with emphasis on aviation, rocketry, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle.

Space, Imagination and the Cosmos from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

Space, Imagination and the Cosmos from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period
Author: Frederik A. Bakker
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2019-02-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030027651

This volume provides a much needed, historically accurate narrative of the development of theories of space up to the beginning of the eighteenth century. It studies conceptions of space that were implicitly or explicitly entailed by ancient, medieval and early modern representations of the cosmos. The authors reassess Alexandre Koyré’s groundbreaking work From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (1957) and they trace the permanence of arguments to be found throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. By adopting a long timescale, this book sheds new light on the continuity between various cosmological representations and their impact on the ontology and epistemology of space. Readers may explore the work of a variety of authors including Aristotle, Epicurus, Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, John Wyclif, Peter Auriol, Nicholas Bonet, Francisco Suárez, Francesco Patrizi, Giordano Bruno, Libert Froidmont, Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke. We see how reflections on space, imagination and the cosmos were the product of a plurality of philosophical traditions that found themselves confronted with, and enriched by, various scientific and theological challenges which induced multiple conceptual adaptations and innovations. This volume is a useful resource for historians of philosophy, those with an interest in the history of science, and particularly those seeking to understand the historical background of the philosophy of space.

The Emergence of Sexuality

The Emergence of Sexuality
Author: Arnold Ira Davidson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2001
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780674013704

Moving between philosophy and history, Arnold Davidson elaborates a powerful new method for considering the history of concepts and the nature of scientific knowledge, a method he calls "historical epistemology." He applies this method to the history of sexuality.

The Changing Faces of Space

The Changing Faces of Space
Author: Maria Teresa Catena
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2018-01-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3319669117

This book focuses on various concepts of space and their historical evolution. In particular, it examines the variations that have modified the notions of place, orientation, distance, vacuum, limit, bound and boundary, form and figure, continuity and contingence, in order to show how spatial characteristics are decisive in a range of contexts: in the determination and comprehension of exteriority; in individuation and identification; in defining the meaning of nature and of the natural sciences; in aesthetical formations and representations; in determining the relationship between experience, behavior and environment; and in the construction of mental and social subjectivity. Accordingly, the book offers a comprehensive review of concepts of space as formulated by Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Einstein, Heisenberg, Penrose and Thorne, subsequently comparing them to notions developed more recently, in the current age, which Foucault dubbed the age of space. The book is divided into four distinct yet deeply interconnected parts, which explore the space of life, the space of experience, the space of science and the space of the arts.