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The Structure of the World

2014-01-30 Philosophy
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Release : 2014-01-30
Genre : Philosophy
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Book Rating : 725/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Structure of the World by : Steven French

Download or read book The Structure of the World written by Steven French. This book was released on 2014-01-30. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Structure of the World, Steven French articulates and defends the bold claim that there are no objects. At the most fundamental level, modern physics presents us with a world of structures and making sense of that view is the central aim of the increasingly widespread position known as structural realism. Drawing on contemporary work in metaphysics and philosophy of science, as well as the 'forgotten' history of structural realism itself, French attempts to further ground and develop this position. He argues that structural realism offers the best way of balancing our need to accommodate the results of modern science with our desire to arrive at an appropriately informed understanding of the world that science presents to us. Covering not only the realism-antirealism debate, the nature of representation, and the relationship between metaphysics and science, The Structure of the World defends a form of eliminativism about objects that sets laws and symmetry principles at the heart of ontology. In place of a world of microscopic objects banging into one another and governed by the laws of physics, it offers a world of laws and symmetries, on which determinate physical properties are dependent. In presenting this account, French also tackles the distinction between mathematical and physical structures, the nature of laws, and causality in the context of modern physics, and he concludes by exploring the extent to which structural realism can be extended into chemistry and biology.

The Poetic Structure of the World

1990 Philosophy
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Release : 1990
Genre : Philosophy
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Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Poetic Structure of the World by : Fernand Hallyn

Download or read book The Poetic Structure of the World written by Fernand Hallyn. This book was released on 1990. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Poetic Structure of the World is a major reconsideration of a crucial turning point in Western thought and culture: the heliocentric revolution of Copernicus and Kepler. Conceiving of their work not in terms of a history of science or astronomy, but as events embedded in a wider field of images, symbols, texts, and practices, Fernand Hallyn insists that these new representations of the universe cannot be explained by recourse to theories of "genius" and "intuition." The scientific imagination is not fundamentally different from a mythic or poetic imagination, and the work of Copernicus and Kepler, Hallyn contends, must be examined on the level of rhetorical structure. Thus the new sun-centered universe is shown to be inseparable from the aesthetic, epistemological, theological, and social imperatives of both Neoplatonism and Mannerism in the sixteenth century.

Making the Social World

2010-01-12 Philosophy
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Release : 2010-01-12
Genre : Philosophy
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 862/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Making the Social World by : John Searle

Download or read book Making the Social World written by John Searle. This book was released on 2010-01-12. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are few more important philosophers at work today than John Searle, a creative and contentious thinker who has shaped the way we think about mind and language. Now he offers a profound understanding of how we create a social reality--a reality of money, property, governments, marriages, stock markets and cocktail parties. The paradox he addresses in Making the Social World is that these facts only exist because we think they exist and yet they have an objective existence. Continuing a line of investigation begun in his earlier book The Construction of Social Reality, Searle identifies the precise role of language in the creation of all "institutional facts." His aim is to show how mind, language and civilization are natural products of the basic facts of the physical world described by physics, chemistry and biology. Searle explains how a single linguistic operation, repeated over and over, is used to create and maintain the elaborate structures of human social institutions. These institutions serve to create and distribute power relations that are pervasive and often invisible. These power relations motivate human actions in a way that provides the glue that holds human civilization together. Searle then applies the account to show how it relates to human rationality, the freedom of the will, the nature of political power and the existence of universal human rights. In the course of his explication, he asks whether robots can have institutions, why the threat of force so often lies behind institutions, and he denies that there can be such a thing as a "state of nature" for language-using human beings.

The Logical Structure of the World

2003 Philosophy
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Release : 2003
Genre : Philosophy
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 236/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Logical Structure of the World by : Rudolf Carnap

Download or read book The Logical Structure of the World written by Rudolf Carnap. This book was released on 2003. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle. In The Logical Structure of the World, Carnap adopts the position of "methodological solipsism" and shows that it is possible to describe the world from the immediate data of experience. In his Pseudoproblems in Philosophy, he asserts that many philosophical problems are meaningless.

The Structure of World History

2014-03-28 History
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Release : 2014-03-28
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 687/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Structure of World History by : Kojin Karatani

Download or read book The Structure of World History written by Kojin Karatani. This book was released on 2014-03-28. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this major, paradigm-shifting work, Kojin Karatani systematically re-reads Marx's version of world history, shifting the focus of critique from modes of production to modes of exchange. Karatani seeks to understand both Capital-Nation-State, the interlocking system that is the dominant form of modern global society, and the possibilities for superseding it. In The Structure of World History, he traces different modes of exchange, including the pooling of resources that characterizes nomadic tribes, the gift exchange systems developed after the adoption of fixed-settlement agriculture, the exchange of obedience for protection that arises with the emergence of the state, the commodity exchanges that characterize capitalism, and, finally, a future mode of exchange based on the return of gift exchange, albeit modified for the contemporary moment. He argues that this final stage—marking the overcoming of capital, nation, and state—is best understood in light of Kant's writings on eternal peace. The Structure of World History is in many ways the capstone of Karatani's brilliant career, yet it also signals new directions in his thought.

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