Empiricisms

Empiricisms
Author: Barry Allen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2020-11-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197508944

In this sweeping volume of comparative philosophy and intellectual history, Barry Allen reassesses the values of experience and experiment in European and world traditions. His work traces the history of empirical philosophy from its birth in Greek medicine to its emergence as a philosophy of modern science. He surveys medical empiricism, Aristotlean and Epicurean empiricism, the empiricism of Gassendi and Locke, logical empiricism, radical empiricism, transcendental empiricism, and varieties of anti-empiricism from Parmenides to Wilfrid Sellars. Throughout this extensive intellectual history, Allen builds an argument in three parts. A richly detailed account of history's empiricisms in Part One establishes a context in Part Two for reconsidering the work of the radical empiricists--William James, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, and Gilles Deleuze, each treated in a dedicated chapter. What is "radical" about them is their effort to return empiricism from epistemology to the ontology and natural philosophy where it began. In Part Three, Allen sets empirical philosophy in conversation with Chinese tradition, considering technological, scientific, medical, and alchemical sources, as well as selected Confucian, Daoist, and Mohist classics. The work shows how philosophical reflection on experience and a profound experimental practice coexist in traditional China with no interaction or even awareness of each other, slipping over each other instead of intertwining as they did in European history, a difference Allen attributes to a different understanding of the value of knowledge. Allen's book recovers empiricism's neglected, multi-textured contexts, and elucidates the enduring value of experience, to arrive at an idea of what is living and dead in philosophical empiricism.

Cartesian Empiricisms

Cartesian Empiricisms
Author: Mihnea Dobre
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2013-11-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 940077690X

Cartesian Empiricisms considers the role Cartesians played in the acceptance of experiment in natural philosophy during the seventeenth century. It aims to correct a partial image of Cartesian philosophers as paradigmatic system builders who failed to meet challenges posed by the new science’s innovative methods. Studies in this volume argue that far from being strangers to experiment, many Cartesians used and integrated it into their natural philosophies. Chapter 1 reviews the historiographies of early modern philosophy, science, and Cartesianism and their recent critiques. The first part of the volume explores various Cartesian contexts of experiment: the impact of French condemnations of Cartesian philosophy in the second half of the seventeenth century; the relation between Cartesian natural philosophy and the Parisian academies of the 1660s; the complex interplay between Cartesianism and Newtonianism in the Dutch Republic; the Cartesian influence on medical teaching at the University of Duisburg; and the challenges chemistry posed to the Cartesian theory of matter. The second part of the volume examines the work of particular Cartesians, such as Henricus Regius, Robert Desgabets, Jacques Rohault, Burchard de Volder, Antoine Le Grand, and Balthasar Bekker. Together these studies counter scientific revolution narratives that take rationalism and empiricism to be two mutually exclusive epistemological and methodological paradigms. The volume is thus a helpful instrument for anyone interested both in the histories of early modern philosophy and science, as well as for scholars interested in new evaluations of the historiographical tools that framed our traditional narratives.

Empiricisms

Empiricisms
Author: Barry Allen
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 541
Release: 2020
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197508936

"Empiricisms reassesses the values of experience and experiment in European philosophy and comparatively. It traces the history of empirical philosophy from its birth in Greek medicine to its emergence as a philosophy of modern science. A richly detailed account in Part I of history's empiricisms establishes a context in Part II for reconsidering the work of the so-called radical empiricists-William James, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, and Gilles Deleuze, each treated in a dedicated chapter. What is "radical" about their work is to return empiricism from epistemology to the ontology and natural philosophy where it began. Empiricisms also sets empirical philosophy in conversation with Chinese tradition, considering technological, scientific, medical, and alchemical sources, as well as selected Confucian, Daoist, and Mohist classics. The work shows how philosophical reflection on experience and a profound experimental practice coexist in traditional China with no interaction or even awareness of each other. Empiricism is more multi-textured than philosophers tend to assume when we explain it to ourselves and to students. One purpose of Empiricisms is to recover the neglected context. A complementary purpose is to elucidate the value of experience and arrive at some idea of what is living and dead in philosophical empiricism"--

Fugitive Science

Fugitive Science
Author: Britt Rusert
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2017-04-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1479805726

Honorable Mention, 2019 MLA Prize for a First Book Sole Finalist Mention for the 2018 Lora Romero First Book Prize, presented by the American Studies Association Exposes the influential work of a group of black artists to confront and refute scientific racism. Traversing the archives of early African American literature, performance, and visual culture, Britt Rusert uncovers the dynamic experiments of a group of black writers, artists, and performers. Fugitive Science chronicles a little-known story about race and science in America. While the history of scientific racism in the nineteenth century has been well-documented, there was also a counter-movement of African Americans who worked to refute its claims. Far from rejecting science, these figures were careful readers of antebellum science who linked diverse fields—from astronomy to physiology—to both on-the-ground activism and more speculative forms of knowledge creation. Routinely excluded from institutions of scientific learning and training, they transformed cultural spaces like the page, the stage, the parlor, and even the pulpit into laboratories of knowledge and experimentation. From the recovery of neglected figures like Robert Benjamin Lewis, Hosea Easton, and Sarah Mapps Douglass, to new accounts of Martin Delany, Henry Box Brown, and Frederick Douglass, Fugitive Science makes natural science central to how we understand the origins and development of African American literature and culture. This distinct and pioneering book will spark interest from anyone wishing to learn more on race and society.

The Realistic Empiricism of Mach, James, and Russell

The Realistic Empiricism of Mach, James, and Russell
Author: Erik C. Banks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-09-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781107423763

In the early twentieth century, Ernst Mach, William James, and Bertrand Russell founded a philosophical and scientific movement known as 'neutral monism', based on the view that minds and physical objects are constructed out of elements or events which are neither mental nor physical, but neutral between the two. This movement offers a unified scientific outlook which includes sensations in human experience and events in the world of physics under one roof. In this book Erik C. Banks discusses this important movement as a whole for the first time. He explores the ways in which the three philosophers can be connected, and applies their ideas to contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science - in particular the relation of sensations to brain processes, and the problem of constructing extended bodies in space and time from particular events and causal relations.

Methodological Approaches to STEM Education Research Volume 3

Methodological Approaches to STEM Education Research Volume 3
Author: Peta J. White
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2022-09-30
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1527588459

We live in challenging and uncertain times, with profound implications for the purpose and nature of education. The crises of the Anthropocene, with the related climate-related challenges, biodiversity loss, a global pandemic, and changes to the world of work driven by science and technology innovation and the ascendency of data and knowledge, pressure us to rethink how we prepare people for such futures. This, in turn, has changed the landscape of educational research, perhaps particularly in the areas of mathematics, health and environmental education research that are so central to responding to these global pressures and potential solutions. We need to think critically about education research design and practice as part of a considered and robust discussion of education research theory and practice that will inform and help shape education systems into the future. This volume responds to these challenges, casting fresh light on contemporary methodologies fit for reconsidering education into the future. Chapters explore post-qualitative inquiry, with overviews and practices, arts-based and interdisciplinary methodologies, self-study and auto-ethnography for the Anthropocene, co-design with teachers, researching for system change, the ethics of ‘netnography’, and principles and practices of literature review.

Experimental Philosophy and the Origins of Empiricism

Experimental Philosophy and the Origins of Empiricism
Author: Peter R. Anstey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2023-02-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1316516466

This integrated history of early modern experimental philosophy explains one of the most significant developments in the early modern period.

Images of Empiricism

Images of Empiricism
Author: Bradley Monton
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2007-10-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191607665

Thirteen specially written essays discuss topics from the work of Bas C. van Fraassen, one of the most important contemporary philosophers of science. The central and unifying theme of the volume is empiricism, an approach which van Fraassen developed most fully in The Scientific Image and The Empirical Stance. Thirteen of the world's leading experts in the field examine van Fraassen's defence of scientific anti-realism (which he sees as a core tenet of empiricism), as well as his claim that adopting a philosophical position like empiricism does not consist in holding a particular set of beliefs, but is rather a matter of taking a stance. Images of Empiricism concludes with an extensive and intriguing reply by van Fraassen, in which he develops and corrects his old views, and offers new insights into the nature of science, empiricism, and philosophy itself.

The Routledge International Handbook of Learning with Technology in Early Childhood

The Routledge International Handbook of Learning with Technology in Early Childhood
Author: Natalia Kucirkova
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 517
Release: 2019-03-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1351389858

The Routledge International Handbook of Learning with Technology in Early Childhood focuses specifically on the most cutting-edge, innovative and international approaches in the study of children’s use of and learning with digital technologies. This edited volume is a comprehensive survey of methods in children’s technologies and contains a rich repertoire of studies from diverse fields and research, including both educational and developmental psychology, post-humanist literacy, applied linguistics, language and phenomenology and narrative approaches. For ease of reference, the Handbook's 28 chapters are divided into four thematic sections: introduction and opening reflections; studies answering ontological questions, which theorize how children take on original identities in becoming literate with technologies; studies answering epistemological questions, which focus on how children’s knowledge and learning are (co)constructed with a diverse range of technologies; studies answering practice-related questions, which explore the resources and conditions that create the most powerful learning opportunities for children. Expertly edited, this interdisciplinary and international compendium is an ideal introduction to such a diverse, multi-faceted field.

Religion and Radical Empiricism

Religion and Radical Empiricism
Author: Nancy Frankenberry
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 1987-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780887064081

Rarely in modern times has religion been associated with empiricism except to its own peril. This book represents a comprehensive and systematic effort to retrieve and develop the tradition of American religious empiricism for religious inquiry. Religion and Radical Empiricism offers a challenging account of how and why reflection on religious truth-claims must seek justification of those claims finally in terms of empirical criteria. Ranging through many of the major questions in philosophy of religion, the author weaves together a study of the varieties of empiricism in all its historical forms from Hume to Quine. She finds in James and Dewey; in Wieman, Meland, and Loomer of the Chicago School; in Whitehead; and in Abhidharma Buddhism constructive elements of a radically empirical approach to the controversial topic of religious experience. This work provides a strong counter-argument to critics of "revisionary theism," to caricatures of philosophy as "conversation," and to any collapse of the category of experience into its linguistic forms.