Evandro Agazzi

Solving the problem of the negative impact of science and technology on society and the environment is indeed the greatest challenge of our time. To date, this challenge has been taken up by few professional philosophers of science, making this volume a welcome contribution to the general debate. Agazzi's treatment involves viewing modern science and technology as each constituting systems. Against the background of this approach, he provides a penetrating analysis of science, technology and ethics, and their interrelations. Agazzi sees the solution to the problem as lying in the moral sphere and including a multilateral assumption of responsibility on the part of decision makers both within and outside of science.

The Ethical Dimensions of the Techno-scientific Enterprise

Right, Wrong and Science

The first part of this book is of an epistemological nature and develops an original theory of scientific objectivity, understood in a weak sense (as intersubjective agreement among the specialists) and a strong sense (as having precise concrete referents). In both cases it relies upon the adoption of operational criteria designed within the particular perspective under which any single science considers reality. The “object” so attained has a proper ontological status, dependent on the specific character of the criteria of reference (regional ontologies). This justifies a form of scientific realism. Such perspectives are also the result of a complex cultural-historical situation. The awareness of such a “historical determinacy” of science justifies including in the philosophy of science the problems of ethics of science, relations of science with metaphysics and social dimensions of science that overstep the traditional restriction of the philosophy of science to an epistemology of science. It is to this “context” that the second part of the book is devoted.

Scientific Objectivity and Its Contexts

Hans-Peter Grosshans

 Andreas Arndt

Die zweiundzwanzig Autorinnen und Autoren entfalten in ihren – dem kroatischen Philosophen Jure Zovko gewidmeten - Beiträgen zur Philosophie der Antike, des Deutschen Idealismus und des 20. Jahrhunderts, sowie zur Hermeneutik, zur Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorie, zur Metaphysik und zur Religionsphilosophie die Philosophie als Interpretation einer gemeinsamen Welt. Dabei wird deutlich: die Philosophie bleibt auch in der Vielfalt ihrer Stimmen letztlich immer Eine, wie auch die Welt als Bezugspunkt menschlichen Handelns und Denkens nur eine ist, die wir miteinander teilen und die wir zu erkennen und zu erhalten haben. In their contributions - dedicated to the Croatian philosopher Jure Zovko - on the philosophy of antiquity, German Idealism and the 20th century, as well as on hermeneutics, the theory of knowledge and science, metaphysics and the philosophy of religion, the twenty-two authors unfold philosophy as the interpretation of a common world. In the process, it becomes clear that philosophy, even in the diversity of its voices, ultimately always remains one, just as the world as a point of reference for human action and thought is only one, which we share with each other and which we have to recognise and preserve.

Interpretations of a Common World. From Antiquity to Modernity. Essays in honour of Jure Zovko

Interpretationen einer gemeinsamen Welt. Von der Antike bis zur Moderne. Festschrift für Jure Zovko

Realism and Quantum Physics

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

In medicine the understanding and interpretation of the complex reality of illness currently refers either to an organismic approach that focuses on the physical or to a 'holistic' approach that takes into account the patient's human sociocultural involvement. Yet as the papers of this collection show, the suffering human person refers ultimately to his/her existential sphere. Hence, praxis is supplemented by still other perspectives for valuation and interpretation: ethical, spiritual, and religious. Can medicine ignore these considerations or push them to the side as being subjective and arbitrary? Phenomenology/philosophy-of-life recognizes all of the above approaches to be essential facets of the Human Condition (Tymieniecka). This approach holds that all the facets of the Human Condition have equal objectivity and legitimacy. It completes the accepted medical outlook and points the way toward a new `medical humanism'.

Medicine and Philosophy in a Dialogue

Life Interpretation and the Sense of Illness Within the Human Condition

Luisa Montecucco

Complexity has become a central topic in certain sectors of theoretical physics and chemistry (for example, in connection with nonlinearity and deterministic chaos). Also, mathematical measurements of complexity and formal characterizations of this notion have been proposed. The question of how complex systems can show properties that are different from those of their constituent parts has nurtured philosophical debates about emergence and reductionism, which are particularly important in the study of the relationship between physics, chemistry, biology and psychology. This book offers a good presentation of those topics through a truly interdisciplinary approach in which the philosophy of science and the specialized topics of certain sciences are put in a dialogue. Contents:The Notions of Complexity and Emergence:What is Complexity? (E Agazzi)On Levels and Types of Complexity and Emergence (H Lenk & A Stephan)Formal Metatheoretical Criteria of Complexity and Emergence (C U Moulines)Beyond Reductionism and Holism. The Approach of Synergetics (B Kanitscheider)Kolmogorov Complexity (J Mosterín)Modèles de Structures Émergentes dans les Systèmes Complexes (J Petitot)Complexity and Emergence in Natural Science:Emergence in Physics: The Case of Classical Physics (R Omnés)Classical Properties in a Quantum-Mechanical World (A Cordero)Reduction, Integration, Emergence and Complexity in Biological Networks (J Ricard)The Emergence of the Mind:Complexity and the Emergence of Meaning: Toward a Semiophysics (F Tito Arecchi)Complexity and the Emergence of Intentionality: Some Misconceptions (M Casartelli)Can Supervenience Save the Mental? (L Montecucco)From Complexity Levels to the Separate Soul (G Del Re) Readership: Graduate students, academics and researchers. Keywords:

Complexity and Emergence

M. Pauri

The debate on realism in physics is usually focused on the reality of unobservable entities admitted in physical theories. This reality has been often denied (e.g., by Bas van Fraassen). The present book shows that observability is a very complex notion that does not really have direct implications on ontological issues related to the existence of the non-observable entities. This is shown through historical, philosophical and scientific considerations presented in the different parts of the book. Emphasis is also given to the role of experiments, measurement procedures and computer-analyzed data as interface between the theoretical and experimental cultures.

Evandro Agazzi

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