Bücher der Reihe Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

This book explores René Descartes¿s attempts to describe particular bodies, such as rocks, minerals, metals, plants, and animals, within the mechanistic interpretation of nature of his philosophical program. Despite his early rationalistic epistemology, Descartes¿s increasing attention to collections, histories, lists of qualities, and particular bodies results in a puzzling ¿short history of all natural phenomenä contained in the Principles of philosophy (1644). The present book outlines the role of Descartes's observations and experimentation as he aimed to construct a universal science of nature, ultimately revealing the mechanization of nature in detail, and for curious bodies such as the Bologna Stone or the sensitive herb. What results is a theoretical natural history consistent with the mechanical principles of his philosophy, ultimately shedding new light on his attempt to produce a complete philosophy of nature.

Today there are major Departments at the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales and the University of Wollongong, and smaller groups active in many other parts of Australia, and in New Zealand.

Australia and New Zealand boast an active community of scholars working in the field of history, philosophy and social studies of science. Each volume comprises a group theme, edited by an Australian or a New Zealander with special expertise in that particular area. In each volume, a majority of the contributors is from Australia or New Zealand.

Scientia is the term that early modern philosophers applied to a certain kind of demonstrative knowledge, the kind whose starting points were appropriate first principles. This book offers a variety of glimpses of this difference by exploring the works of individual philosophers as well as philosophical movements and groupings of the period.

Some think that issues to do with scientific method are last century's stale debate; Some of the papers reinvestigate issues in the debate over methodology, while others set out new ways in which the debate has developed in the last decade.

Some think that issues to do with scientific method are last century's stale debate; Some of the papers reinvestigate issues in the debate over methodology, while others set out new ways in which the debate has developed in the last decade.

Australia and New Zealand boast an active community of scholars working in the field of history, philosophy and social studies of science.

Causation and Laws of Nature is a collection of articles which represents current research on the metaphysics of causation and laws of nature, mostly by authors working in or active in the Australasian region.

Australia and New Zealand boast an active community of scholars working in the field of history, philosophy and social studies of science.

It was the desire to probe the underlying causes of the shift from the early modern 'nature-knowledge' to modern science that was one of the stimuli for the 'Origins of Modernity: Early Modern Thought 1543-1789' conference held in Sydney in July 2002.

This book integrates studies on the thought of Bernard de Mandeville and other philosophers and historians of Modern Thought.

This book addresses the mathematical rationality contained in the making of string figures.

Today there are major Departments at the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales and the University of Wollongong, and smaller groups active in many other parts of Australia and in New Zealand.

Contains papers which are presented by New Zealand and American philosophers of biology. This volume reflects the intellectual exchange between the two countries. It also discusses post-sociobiological treatments of cultural evolution.

Today there are major Departments at the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales and the University of W ollongong, and smaller groups active in many other parts of Australia and in New Zealand.

This book reconstructs aspects of the early career of Descartes, tracing the overlapping, intertwined development of his work in physico-mathematics, analytical mathematics, universal method and finally, systematic corpuscular-mechanical natural philosophy.

Fluid Mechanics, as a scientific discipline in a modern sense, was established between the last third of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century.

Today there are major Departments at the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales and the University of Wollongong, and smaller groups active in many other parts of Australia and in New Zealand.

Issues covered in this collection of essays include: the nature of physical laws; the basic entities that we can expect the world to consist of; the problem of induction; the aim(s) of science; the discovery of natural laws through scientific methods; and natural necessity and its status.

"Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science" aims to provide a distinctive publication outlet for Australian and New Zealand scholars working in the general area of history, philosophy and social studies of science.

Explores how the development of algebraic symbolism, logarithms, and the practical demands for an expanded number concept all contributed to a broadening of the number concept in early modern England.

Alan Musgrave has consistently defended two positions that he regards as commonsensical: critical realism and critical rationalism. Rather than a standard celebratory festschrift, this book offers a new examination of topics of current interest in philosophy. The contributory essays are followed by responses from Alan Musgrave himself.

This is a treatise devoted to the foundations of quantum physics and the role that causality plays in the microscopic world governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. The book is controversial and will engender some lively debate on the various issues raised.

Colin was until recently Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Otago, a department that can boast of many famous philosophers among its past and present faculty and which has twice been judged as the strongest research department across all disciplines in governmental research assessments.

This book offers a framework that presents imagination as founded in the placement of appearances, and traces the development of the concept from Plato to Descartes to Kant, and on through recent theorists as diverse as Wittgenstein, Benjamin and Bachelard.

Today there are major Departments at the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales and the University of Wollongong, and smaller groups active in many other parts of Australia, and in New Zealand.

This book provides an entirely new interpretation of the impact of the early-modern Aristotelian tradition upon the rise of British Empiricism. It also reexamines the fundamental shift from a humanist logic to epistemology and facultative logic.

This work counters historiographies that search for the origins of modern science within the experimental practices of Europe's first scientific institutions, such as the Cimento.

By offering a collection of new essays by leading scholars in early modern philosophy and specialists in contemporary philosophy, this volume goes beyond the point where nature and normativity came apart, and challenges the well-established opposition between these all too neatly separated realms.