The piece discusses both resistance to and advocacy of incorporation of science studies, history,... more The piece discusses both resistance to and advocacy of incorporation of science studies, history, philosophy, and social studies of science in natural science courses. An example of U. of S. Maine is described.
A critique of David Geary's evolutionary psychology solely adaptationist explanation of contempor... more A critique of David Geary's evolutionary psychology solely adaptationist explanation of contemporary male female differences in mathematical test results.
The Need for Science Studies: Broadening the View of Scientific Illiteracy For scientific literac... more The Need for Science Studies: Broadening the View of Scientific Illiteracy For scientific literacy, knowledge of the sociocultural contexts of science is at least as important as the content of science. The inte gration of science studies in general education reform efforts is a way to increase the disciplinary and interdisciplinary grappling that both humanists and scientists need to do with the ethical and social issues of science and technology. Many of the issues in contemporary politics and social policy hinge on the social consequences of science and technology. Many contemporary social issues and controversies in today's media head lines?global warming, stem cell research, cloning, genetically engineered foods, the implications of computers in the workplace and in education, missile defense systems?center on science and technology. Opinion polls and the votes of average citizens deter mine the funding and implementation of many policies that involve science and technology. Nonscientists need to distinguish scientific evidence from political propaganda and pseudoscientific quackery, and need to separate, at least in the most obvious cases, the genuine scientific data appealed to in the advocacy of a policy or a legal case from the rhetoric and propaganda that interested parties, including famed scientists or technologists, apply in congressional testimony or legal cases. With the ever-growing body of scientific knowledge and the growing importance of science and technology to society, ironically, there is even less room in specific science courses to cover the social and ethical issues of science and technology.
for his justification of claims concerning the biological factors in the superior performance of ... more for his justification of claims concerning the biological factors in the superior performance of boys in mathematics is that of human evolutionary scenarios. He claims that superior geometric skills in males are due to evolutionary selection for spatial orientation during foraging. For this claim to be valid, females must not have foraged away from the base camp. Geary cites Lovejoy's (1981) scenario and Symons's (1979) account (Geary, sects. 3.3 and 3.2, respectively). The evidence is poor for the relative sedentariness of hominid females. The older justification of this was the "man the hunter" hypothesis. However, big game hunting (in which males are conceded to play a preeminent role) is a feature of only certain phases of later human evolution. Early hominids probably hunted small game or scavenged, and females would be quite capable of this. Plant gathering by females has also been emphasized. All these involve foraging away from the home base. Lovejoy's (1981a) scenario has been criticized as more of a reading of 1950 U.S. nuclear family models into the distant past than a viable scenario. The fact that one of its footnotes contains a false citation that was really a sexist "joke" (later admitted to be such by the author: see Turtle 1981b) suggests the nonscientific influences on the theory. Geary (sect. 3.2) appeals to Chagnon's (1977) accounts of the Yanomamo concerning competition for mates. Chagnon's sociobiological explanation of the Yanomamos' behavior has likewise been questioned. Ferguson (1985) notes that the tribe was forced deeper into the jungle hundreds of years ago by European explorers , slavers, and settlers and by rubber tappers and gold miners. The introduction of trade goods, the restriction of available areas for migration, and the introduction of diseases accounts for much of the violence and competition seen by Chagnon. Geary's citations (sects. 2.1 and 5.2.2) of early twentieth century psychologists such as Thurstone, Thorndike, and Spearman remind us that there is a long history (recounted by S. J. Gould, 1981) of using psychological studies of intelligence to jump to conclusions that reinforce stereotypes. Care should be taken in Geary's propagation of such speculations. While such speculations may be interesting hypotheses within the scientific community, they rapidly become "conclusions" that can mold public opinion and policy when picked up by the popular media. An example of this is the some 20 articles by Robert Sylwester (see, e.g., Sylwester 1995) in the influential journal Educational Leadership. These articles, as well as his talks at workshops for educators, present exaggerated popularizations of questionably accurate research on human differences to influence educational policy-makers. Even though genuinely "treating students as individuals" would circumvent stereotypes based on the alleged inabilities of females, in fact teachers are influenced in their treatment of individual students by expectations based on group generalizations. [See Rosenthal & Rubin: "Interpersonal Expectancy Ef-fects" 1(3)1978.]
This chapter is a Postscript, which includes an interview with Fuller that will involve his refle... more This chapter is a Postscript, which includes an interview with Fuller that will involve his reflections on the path his social epistemology has taken to date.
These are six responses plus my reply to my original guest editorial that examined Twitter in rel... more These are six responses plus my reply to my original guest editorial that examined Twitter in relation to the aphorism in philosophy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2022.2109461
Patrick Heelan, with background in quantum theory and in hermeneutic phenomenology, investigated ... more Patrick Heelan, with background in quantum theory and in hermeneutic phenomenology, investigated not only the hermeneutical philosophy of science but also the parallels between quantum mechanics and human experience in general and the logic of changes of worldview. Heelan's closeness to Aristotle and Lonergan, often neglected, is discussed, and issues concerning Heelan's treatment of the social context of science are raised.
... By Christy Hammer and R* Valentine Dusek ... Newsmagazines including both Newsweek (Begley) a... more ... By Christy Hammer and R* Valentine Dusek ... Newsmagazines including both Newsweek (Begley) and US News (Leo) trumpeted this conclusion with headlines such as "Born Dumb." The studies which our speaker reported have no more credibility than the elusive male math ...
A history, survey, critical commentary and bibliography of all the English language literature on... more A history, survey, critical commentary and bibliography of all the English language literature on sociobiology from 1974 to 1980.
This session is on the issues included in Francis Remedios and Val Dusek’s book, which covers Ste... more This session is on the issues included in Francis Remedios and Val Dusek’s book, which covers Steve Fuller’s work since 2000 and will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017. Remedios and Dusek argue that Fuller’s vision of social epistemology continues the political and policy focus of his earlier work, but since 2000 it has been increasingly founded in the changing conception of humanity, especially as these project into a ‘post-‘ or ‘trans-‘ human future. We assess Fuller’s work on the following issues: STS, the university and intellectual life, neo-liberal political economy, intelligent design, Cosmism, Gnosticism, agent-oriented epistemology, proactionary vs precautionary principles and Welfare State 2.0. We are especially concerned with Fuller’s response to the changing boundary conditions of the knower due to anticipated changes in humanity coming from the nanosciences, neuroscience, synthetic biology and computer technology. For Fuller, the result is an extended sense of the knower, or ‘humanity 2.0’, which Fuller himself identifies with transhumanism. Other than Fuller’s work, there is no other discussion in the recent literature of sociology STS, philosophy of science, or analytic social epistemology which brings such a wide range of resources and considerations to an assessment of the impact of the technosciences on the concept of humanity – especially the extent to which these changes might constitute ‘improvements’ to the human condition. At the same time, Fuller’s turn in this direction has invited at least as much criticism as his earlier work. The panel will explore these matters from a range of perspectives that correspond to the breadth of Fuller’s work, to which Fuller will then respond.
This chapter is on agent-oriented social epistemology, which emphasizes epistemic agency or the k... more This chapter is on agent-oriented social epistemology, which emphasizes epistemic agency or the knower as ontologically open. This is from Fuller’s move to transhumanist in which to knower is enhanced to become disembodied. Fuller views the epistemic agent to make knowledge to act in the world as contrasted to analytic social epistemology’s epistemic agent, who is a human knower with beliefs and does not make knowledge through construction of reality. There is also a discussion of cognitive economics in which the epistemic agent makes knowledge and leverages beliefs to action instead of the epistemic agent having beliefs to access knowledge.
This chapter is on Fuller’s view that the university is the premier site of knowledge production ... more This chapter is on Fuller’s view that the university is the premier site of knowledge production for the public good. Fuller defends the university against the impact of neoliberalism in which clients influence how academic knowledge is produced. In this context “interdisciplinarity” becomes a battleground. Fuller prefers a version of interdisciplinarity that is regenerative of the university in which academics reach beyond their own fields to a neoliberal version of interdisciplinarity in which academics work in teams for clients on projects. With agent-oriented social epistemology, Fuller’s view of interdisciplinarity is that it is internal to agent to organize the disciplines versus object-oriented social epistemology in which disciplines are organized externally by experts. Fuller’s view of interdisciplinarity is contrasted to Frodeman’s view of transdisciplinarity.
This chapter is on an exploration of Fuller’s version of Cosmism. This movement, based in part on... more This chapter is on an exploration of Fuller’s version of Cosmism. This movement, based in part on the Russian Orthodox concept of theosis as moving toward a union with God, advocates space travel and the scientific pursuit of immortality. This resembles Fuller’s humanity 2.0. There are charges of Gnosticism, which is the Christian heresy holding that the creator of the world was an evil creature and God is beyond this realm and with knowledge (gnosis), one can move beyond this world to a higher form of being, against Fuller’s transhumanism. Fuller has been accused of Gnosticism, though the Gnosticism of which he is accused is really eschatology. Fuller himself criticizes biologists who publicly deny biological race differences of being Gnostics. This view is critically analyzed.
In the late 1970s I attended meetings at which sociobiologists EO Wilson and David Barash, critic... more In the late 1970s I attended meetings at which sociobiologists EO Wilson and David Barash, critic Stephen J. Gould, and others were on a panel. Standing blocked by the crowd in the hall outside the doorway to the packed hall I was unable hear the speakers. I spied a little ...
This chapter is Fuller’s version of Intelligent Design (ID) in opposition to evolutionary theoris... more This chapter is Fuller’s version of Intelligent Design (ID) in opposition to evolutionary theorists, and the controversy concerning it is discussed. This chapter discusses why ID is important to Fuller in terms of defending the spiritual distinctiveness of humanity. He claims doing science is to participate in the mind of God, since humanity is created in the image and likeness of God. Fuller contrasts what he claims is the natural history approach of Darwin and evolutionists with molecular biology, claiming ID is linked to the latter. Fuller’s claims concerning the scientific status of evolutionary theory are criticized.
The piece discusses both resistance to and advocacy of incorporation of science studies, history,... more The piece discusses both resistance to and advocacy of incorporation of science studies, history, philosophy, and social studies of science in natural science courses. An example of U. of S. Maine is described.
A critique of David Geary's evolutionary psychology solely adaptationist explanation of contempor... more A critique of David Geary's evolutionary psychology solely adaptationist explanation of contemporary male female differences in mathematical test results.
The Need for Science Studies: Broadening the View of Scientific Illiteracy For scientific literac... more The Need for Science Studies: Broadening the View of Scientific Illiteracy For scientific literacy, knowledge of the sociocultural contexts of science is at least as important as the content of science. The inte gration of science studies in general education reform efforts is a way to increase the disciplinary and interdisciplinary grappling that both humanists and scientists need to do with the ethical and social issues of science and technology. Many of the issues in contemporary politics and social policy hinge on the social consequences of science and technology. Many contemporary social issues and controversies in today's media head lines?global warming, stem cell research, cloning, genetically engineered foods, the implications of computers in the workplace and in education, missile defense systems?center on science and technology. Opinion polls and the votes of average citizens deter mine the funding and implementation of many policies that involve science and technology. Nonscientists need to distinguish scientific evidence from political propaganda and pseudoscientific quackery, and need to separate, at least in the most obvious cases, the genuine scientific data appealed to in the advocacy of a policy or a legal case from the rhetoric and propaganda that interested parties, including famed scientists or technologists, apply in congressional testimony or legal cases. With the ever-growing body of scientific knowledge and the growing importance of science and technology to society, ironically, there is even less room in specific science courses to cover the social and ethical issues of science and technology.
for his justification of claims concerning the biological factors in the superior performance of ... more for his justification of claims concerning the biological factors in the superior performance of boys in mathematics is that of human evolutionary scenarios. He claims that superior geometric skills in males are due to evolutionary selection for spatial orientation during foraging. For this claim to be valid, females must not have foraged away from the base camp. Geary cites Lovejoy's (1981) scenario and Symons's (1979) account (Geary, sects. 3.3 and 3.2, respectively). The evidence is poor for the relative sedentariness of hominid females. The older justification of this was the "man the hunter" hypothesis. However, big game hunting (in which males are conceded to play a preeminent role) is a feature of only certain phases of later human evolution. Early hominids probably hunted small game or scavenged, and females would be quite capable of this. Plant gathering by females has also been emphasized. All these involve foraging away from the home base. Lovejoy's (1981a) scenario has been criticized as more of a reading of 1950 U.S. nuclear family models into the distant past than a viable scenario. The fact that one of its footnotes contains a false citation that was really a sexist "joke" (later admitted to be such by the author: see Turtle 1981b) suggests the nonscientific influences on the theory. Geary (sect. 3.2) appeals to Chagnon's (1977) accounts of the Yanomamo concerning competition for mates. Chagnon's sociobiological explanation of the Yanomamos' behavior has likewise been questioned. Ferguson (1985) notes that the tribe was forced deeper into the jungle hundreds of years ago by European explorers , slavers, and settlers and by rubber tappers and gold miners. The introduction of trade goods, the restriction of available areas for migration, and the introduction of diseases accounts for much of the violence and competition seen by Chagnon. Geary's citations (sects. 2.1 and 5.2.2) of early twentieth century psychologists such as Thurstone, Thorndike, and Spearman remind us that there is a long history (recounted by S. J. Gould, 1981) of using psychological studies of intelligence to jump to conclusions that reinforce stereotypes. Care should be taken in Geary's propagation of such speculations. While such speculations may be interesting hypotheses within the scientific community, they rapidly become "conclusions" that can mold public opinion and policy when picked up by the popular media. An example of this is the some 20 articles by Robert Sylwester (see, e.g., Sylwester 1995) in the influential journal Educational Leadership. These articles, as well as his talks at workshops for educators, present exaggerated popularizations of questionably accurate research on human differences to influence educational policy-makers. Even though genuinely "treating students as individuals" would circumvent stereotypes based on the alleged inabilities of females, in fact teachers are influenced in their treatment of individual students by expectations based on group generalizations. [See Rosenthal & Rubin: "Interpersonal Expectancy Ef-fects" 1(3)1978.]
This chapter is a Postscript, which includes an interview with Fuller that will involve his refle... more This chapter is a Postscript, which includes an interview with Fuller that will involve his reflections on the path his social epistemology has taken to date.
These are six responses plus my reply to my original guest editorial that examined Twitter in rel... more These are six responses plus my reply to my original guest editorial that examined Twitter in relation to the aphorism in philosophy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2022.2109461
Patrick Heelan, with background in quantum theory and in hermeneutic phenomenology, investigated ... more Patrick Heelan, with background in quantum theory and in hermeneutic phenomenology, investigated not only the hermeneutical philosophy of science but also the parallels between quantum mechanics and human experience in general and the logic of changes of worldview. Heelan's closeness to Aristotle and Lonergan, often neglected, is discussed, and issues concerning Heelan's treatment of the social context of science are raised.
... By Christy Hammer and R* Valentine Dusek ... Newsmagazines including both Newsweek (Begley) a... more ... By Christy Hammer and R* Valentine Dusek ... Newsmagazines including both Newsweek (Begley) and US News (Leo) trumpeted this conclusion with headlines such as "Born Dumb." The studies which our speaker reported have no more credibility than the elusive male math ...
A history, survey, critical commentary and bibliography of all the English language literature on... more A history, survey, critical commentary and bibliography of all the English language literature on sociobiology from 1974 to 1980.
This session is on the issues included in Francis Remedios and Val Dusek’s book, which covers Ste... more This session is on the issues included in Francis Remedios and Val Dusek’s book, which covers Steve Fuller’s work since 2000 and will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017. Remedios and Dusek argue that Fuller’s vision of social epistemology continues the political and policy focus of his earlier work, but since 2000 it has been increasingly founded in the changing conception of humanity, especially as these project into a ‘post-‘ or ‘trans-‘ human future. We assess Fuller’s work on the following issues: STS, the university and intellectual life, neo-liberal political economy, intelligent design, Cosmism, Gnosticism, agent-oriented epistemology, proactionary vs precautionary principles and Welfare State 2.0. We are especially concerned with Fuller’s response to the changing boundary conditions of the knower due to anticipated changes in humanity coming from the nanosciences, neuroscience, synthetic biology and computer technology. For Fuller, the result is an extended sense of the knower, or ‘humanity 2.0’, which Fuller himself identifies with transhumanism. Other than Fuller’s work, there is no other discussion in the recent literature of sociology STS, philosophy of science, or analytic social epistemology which brings such a wide range of resources and considerations to an assessment of the impact of the technosciences on the concept of humanity – especially the extent to which these changes might constitute ‘improvements’ to the human condition. At the same time, Fuller’s turn in this direction has invited at least as much criticism as his earlier work. The panel will explore these matters from a range of perspectives that correspond to the breadth of Fuller’s work, to which Fuller will then respond.
This chapter is on agent-oriented social epistemology, which emphasizes epistemic agency or the k... more This chapter is on agent-oriented social epistemology, which emphasizes epistemic agency or the knower as ontologically open. This is from Fuller’s move to transhumanist in which to knower is enhanced to become disembodied. Fuller views the epistemic agent to make knowledge to act in the world as contrasted to analytic social epistemology’s epistemic agent, who is a human knower with beliefs and does not make knowledge through construction of reality. There is also a discussion of cognitive economics in which the epistemic agent makes knowledge and leverages beliefs to action instead of the epistemic agent having beliefs to access knowledge.
This chapter is on Fuller’s view that the university is the premier site of knowledge production ... more This chapter is on Fuller’s view that the university is the premier site of knowledge production for the public good. Fuller defends the university against the impact of neoliberalism in which clients influence how academic knowledge is produced. In this context “interdisciplinarity” becomes a battleground. Fuller prefers a version of interdisciplinarity that is regenerative of the university in which academics reach beyond their own fields to a neoliberal version of interdisciplinarity in which academics work in teams for clients on projects. With agent-oriented social epistemology, Fuller’s view of interdisciplinarity is that it is internal to agent to organize the disciplines versus object-oriented social epistemology in which disciplines are organized externally by experts. Fuller’s view of interdisciplinarity is contrasted to Frodeman’s view of transdisciplinarity.
This chapter is on an exploration of Fuller’s version of Cosmism. This movement, based in part on... more This chapter is on an exploration of Fuller’s version of Cosmism. This movement, based in part on the Russian Orthodox concept of theosis as moving toward a union with God, advocates space travel and the scientific pursuit of immortality. This resembles Fuller’s humanity 2.0. There are charges of Gnosticism, which is the Christian heresy holding that the creator of the world was an evil creature and God is beyond this realm and with knowledge (gnosis), one can move beyond this world to a higher form of being, against Fuller’s transhumanism. Fuller has been accused of Gnosticism, though the Gnosticism of which he is accused is really eschatology. Fuller himself criticizes biologists who publicly deny biological race differences of being Gnostics. This view is critically analyzed.
In the late 1970s I attended meetings at which sociobiologists EO Wilson and David Barash, critic... more In the late 1970s I attended meetings at which sociobiologists EO Wilson and David Barash, critic Stephen J. Gould, and others were on a panel. Standing blocked by the crowd in the hall outside the doorway to the packed hall I was unable hear the speakers. I spied a little ...
This chapter is Fuller’s version of Intelligent Design (ID) in opposition to evolutionary theoris... more This chapter is Fuller’s version of Intelligent Design (ID) in opposition to evolutionary theorists, and the controversy concerning it is discussed. This chapter discusses why ID is important to Fuller in terms of defending the spiritual distinctiveness of humanity. He claims doing science is to participate in the mind of God, since humanity is created in the image and likeness of God. Fuller contrasts what he claims is the natural history approach of Darwin and evolutionists with molecular biology, claiming ID is linked to the latter. Fuller’s claims concerning the scientific status of evolutionary theory are criticized.
The Chinese language has propensities toward treatment of the world as a continuum, and to the de... more The Chinese language has propensities toward treatment of the world as a continuum, and to the denial of separate, internal ideas or external, abstract propositions. The lines between poetry and prose, art and science are blurred by the ideographic nature of Chinese writing. The first and last of these characteristics of Chinese, especially, make a holistic approach to reality easier than in Indo-European languages.
the most important suggestions concerning the influence of Chinese language on thought is Hansen'... more the most important suggestions concerning the influence of Chinese language on thought is Hansen's claim that Chinese nouns in general behave like "mass nouns." Most ordinary English nouns are "count nouns." These nouns can be preceded by numbers, such as "one pencil, two pencils," "one woman, two women." "Mass terms, on the other hand, such as water, sand or grass, are not properly preceded by numbers. One cannot say "one water, two waters," unless one means kinds of waters or species of grasses. One can say one glass of water, two glasses of water, or one bushel of grass, two bushels of grass. Similarly although count nouns admit singular and plural, mass nouns do not admit singular or plural. Again, two sands does not make sense (unless one is speaking of kinds of sand) but two buckets of sand makes sense. In addition, the indefinite article does not apply to mass terms. One does not say a water, but a glass of water, or a bucket of water. The hypothesis that Chinese nouns are mass nouns has a number of interesting consequences with respect to Chinese metaphysics or the implicit worldview of the Chinese language. Entities treated as mass terms would not be considered built up from discrete individuals, as in the count noun paradigm. In Chinese the word for "a human" and for "humans" in general, either as a class or as an abstraction, is the same. One has to say something like "two head of humans" the way one says "two head of cattle" in order (unnaturally) to get the count noun effect. Hansen's claim accounts for the atomistic bias of Western thought (in which count nouns are typical and paradigmatic for nouns) and for the continuist or holistic bias of Chinese thought (in which mass nouns would be the standard nouns). The world presupposed by Chinese is not an aggregate of things, but a continuous stuff (say, ch'i) that is divided up in various ways. The principle of division is relative to our purposes, giving the sort of perspectivalism that one finds in Chuang Tzu. To reject an absolute perspective and to recognize different ways of classifying things for different purposes need not be a nihilistic, self-refuting relativism, but pragmatism. Hansen's thesis was criticized by one of the foremost grammarians of Chinese, Christoph Harbsmeier. The latter argued that more recent studies of Chinese nouns such as his own have shown that there is a distinction between count nouns and mass nouns in Chinese. Hansen somewhat modified his position in response to the criticism. He still argues that Chinese nouns in general behave like mass nouns in English rather than like count nouns in English, even if Chinese has a subtle implicit distinction built into its usages. Chinese lacks singular versus plural and lacks the indefinite article. Abstractions in Chinese are generally denoted by the same word that denotes an individual. Hansen's revised, weakened thesis does still effectively capture the tendency of Chinese to treat the world as a continuous stuff that is then divided in various ways for various purposes, as opposed to an aggregate of atoms or individuals. Graham writes "The most interesting conclusion for Chinese philosophy drawn by Hansen from his mass noun hypothesis was that China tends to divide the world down into variously divisible and countable parts, the West tends to assemble it from individuals. This still holds if we reclassify philosophical terms as generic rather than mass nouns (few would be count nouns)." Graham thinks we that Davidson assumes a count noun-based model of the world as 'obviously' an aggregate of individuals in his critique of the Whorf hypothesis. Davidson writes, "We cannot attach a clear meaning to the notion of organizing a single object (the world, nature, etc.) unless that object is understood to contain or consist in other objects" Davidson's thought presupposes a language that sharply contrasts singular and plural, and that Davidson uses examples which show that he assumes wholes are made up out of prior, independent parts, rather than being continua (a closet full of objects but not the ocean). In summary, despite recent reaction against traditional claims in this regard, the structure of Chinese language, particularly the written language, would seem to predispose speakers and writers to certain emphases different from those of speakers of Indo-European languages. These include a closer unity of written language and picturing, such as painting, the role of written Chinese as an inter-language means of communication, eliminating the need for abstract propositions or mental "idea," disassociation of the written form from the phonetics of spoken language, and a tendency to treat the world as continuous rather than discrete, viewed from different relative perspectives and divided into different classifications for pragmatic purposes.
section in "The Holistic Inspirations of Physics" Rutgers, 1999
It has been claimed that religious Taoism and philosophical Taoism are separate movements. Need h... more It has been claimed that religious Taoism and philosophical Taoism are separate movements. Need ham's claims about the relation of Taoism to traditional Chinese science have been criticized. This work argues that the various strands and versions of Taoism are closely connected.
Section in book "The Holistic Inspirations of Physics", 1999
Hansen's claim that many Chinese count nouns behave like mass terms fits with the continuum metap... more Hansen's claim that many Chinese count nouns behave like mass terms fits with the continuum metaphysics of much traditional Chinese philosophy. Arguments against the claim that similar depth structure makes the worldview implications of Chinese grammar no different from those of Indo-European languages are criticized.
A Philosophical Defense of implicit Ethnomathematics, 2022
The way that I am using the term ethnomathematics is the earlier one designating the mathematics ... more The way that I am using the term ethnomathematics is the earlier one designating the mathematics of non-literate indigenous peoples. I realize that just as anthropology in general has broadened from its earlier focus on indigenous people to include anthropology of industrialized societies, so has ethnomathematics. Also, ethnomathematics has sometimes been used for non-Western mathematics in general including the very rich and very advanced mathematics of traditional China and India, but as explicit, written mathematics this is not included I my
were the two major founders of "new quantum theory" in the period 1925-1927. Their formulations w... more were the two major founders of "new quantum theory" in the period 1925-1927. Their formulations were very different, and neither of them liked the other's formulation. Heisenberg, in a letter, called Schrödinger's formulation "repulsive," and characterized the physical interpretation as "crap."1 Schrödinger, without obscenity but in print, returned the compliment, saying he was "repelled" by Heisenberg's formulation and that it was "monstrous." 2 The two formulations were later proved to be equivalent. (Some qualifications must be added. Dirac, over three decades later, while recording his version of the equivalence proof to Thomas Kuhn, who was collecting interviews with the founders, claim that in systems with an infinite number of dimensions a term in the exponent did not carry over.)3 Despite their differences, both Heisenberg and Schrödinger were well-aware of the novelties and apparent paradoxes of the new quantum mechanics. complex valued terms, multidimensional character, was novel and counterintuitive. Heisenberg, allying himself with Bohr accepted these features as intrinsic to the subatomic world, while Schrödinger unsuccessfully attempted initially and successfully tried to further retrieve features of classical mechanics and to formulate wave mechanics in a continuous and deterministic form without quantum jumps, in "Are There Quantum Jumps?"4 Because of Schrödinger's continued support of the Law of Continuity and criticism of superposition he did not find the new quantum mechanics as radical a change from classical physics as much as Heisenberg. This may account of Schrödinger's interest not so much in the metaphysics of the Presocratics as was Heisenberg's, but in objectivity and knowledge common to all. But despite their differences in attitude toward the canonical form of the theory, both felt that quantum mechanics upset classical physics required new approaches to understanding different from those of classical particle physics such as atomism of particles. Schrödinger in a chapter titled "The Motives for Returning to Ancient Thought" states that in modern physics "The very foundations are shaken," and that "Quantum theory while extending atomism almost limitlessly, has plunged into a crisis more severe than most people are prepared to admit.5
This is an extraordinary book, the gold standard of phenomenological philosophy of science. Ryckm... more This is an extraordinary book, the gold standard of phenomenological philosophy of science. Ryckman examines the non-positivistic inspirations in the development and the interpretation of general relativity theory and early unified field theories. Ryckman is a partisan of transcendental idealism, and sees these all but forgotten developments as challenge to logical empiricism's account of the nature of Einstein's relativity theory. The author combines an understanding of phenomenological philosophy with a full grasp of the mathematical apparatus of general relativity theory and differential geometry. There are many riches in this text. It covers the major expositions and extensions of general relativity theory by Hermann Weyl and Arthur Stanley Eddington, whose texts are standard early surveys of the field, but whose philosophical motives and interpretations go unrecognized or are misunderstood.1 Beyond these there are discussions of Ernst Cassirer's neo-Kantian interpretations of general relativity, as well as Emile Myerson's idealistic construal. In the course of the work, Ryckman reviews debates between Weyl and the logical empiricist Hans Reichenbach (whose interpretation of general relativity theory became standard in philosophy of science courses) as well as Schlick's debate with Einstein on the interpretation of relativity.
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