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 Occult Chemistry, Instrumentation, and the Theosophical Science of Direct Perception

Mark S. Morrisson

in Modern Alchemy: Occultism and the Emergence of Atomic Theory

This chapter discusses how the close relationship between Theosophical theories of matter and the new atomic science led Theosophists to launch a decades-long research program of “clairvoyant ... More

This chapter discusses how the close relationship between Theosophical theories of matter and the new atomic science led Theosophists to launch a decades-long research program of “clairvoyant chemistry” in 1895. This research continued in the 20th century and has even occupied contemporary scientists in chemistry and physics.Less

Physical Causal Closure and the Invisibility of Mental Causation

E. J. Lowe

in Personal Agency: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action

This chapter develops more detailed models of mental causation of the kinds adumbrated, and explains why, if such models are correct, it should nonetheless appear to be the case, from the perspective ... More

This chapter develops more detailed models of mental causation of the kinds adumbrated, and explains why, if such models are correct, it should nonetheless appear to be the case, from the perspective of physical scientists, that all of the causation involved in human behaviour is purely physical in character. In other words, it is explained why mental causation, thus conceived, should be invisible from such a perspective — the implication being, of course, that its invisibility should not be regarded as compelling evidence of its non-existence. In this manner, it is hoped to take some of the wind out the sails of those physicalists who presume uncritically that ‘science is on their side’.Less

Disciplinary Boundaries and Border Disputes

Alice Jenkins

in Space and the 'March of Mind': Literature and the Physical Sciences in Britain 1815-1850

This chapter focuses on debates about the construction of boundaries between scientific disciplines in the period. Even as the physical sciences were rapidly separating into disciplines, each with ... More

This chapter focuses on debates about the construction of boundaries between scientific disciplines in the period. Even as the physical sciences were rapidly separating into disciplines, each with its own dialect and infrastructure, voices were being raised against the process. One powerful objection to specialization was the early 19th-century sense that nature constituted a single uniform field, governed by a very small number of universal laws. Carving science up into artificial disciplinary areas ran counter to the way nature itself worked. A further objection to disciplinization was that specialisms meant exclusivity and yet it was vital to keep the educated general reader abreast of the new scientific knowledge and alive to the growing confidence of scientific claims to cultural authority. The chapter shows how geographical imagery was used in this argument, with rhetoric based on borders, battlefields, nations, and kingdoms widely deployed to increase the emotional pressure on both sides.Less

Two Types of Science

Colin McGinn

in Basic Structures of Reality: Essays in Meta-Physics

The natural taxonomy of the empirical sciences would break the sciences down into three basic groups: the physical sciences (physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, metallurgy), the biological ... More

The natural taxonomy of the empirical sciences would break the sciences down into three basic groups: the physical sciences (physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, metallurgy), the biological sciences (zoology, botany, genetics, paleontology, molecular biology, physiology), and the psychological sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, maybe economics). Physics is interested in, for instance, electrical and magnetic force; biology will inquire into the function (and functioning) of, for exdample, as the heart; and psychology will deal with such things as visual perception. These more specific concepts—electromagnetic force, the heart, and vision—illustrate the region of empirical reality the science in question is concerned to understand. They are the kinds of concept that the relevant science is organized around. This chapter focuses on the nature of these concepts as cognitive entities, and what their cognitive nature tells us about the sciences that employ them. Specifically, it is interested in what kind of knowledge is possessed when these concepts are deployed. The chapter proposes that two very different kinds of knowledge are possessed—one kind in the physical sciences (remote knowledge), another in the biological and psychological sciences (intimate knowledge).Less

Intentional Error

Robert Rosenthal

in Artifacts in Behavioral Research: Robert Rosenthal and Ralph L. Rosnow's Classic Books

This chapter focuses on intentional error. Intentional error production on the part of the experimenter is probably as relatively rare an event in the psychological experiment as it is in the ... More

This chapter focuses on intentional error. Intentional error production on the part of the experimenter is probably as relatively rare an event in the psychological experiment as it is in the sciences generally. Nevertheless, any serious attempt at understanding the social psychology of psychological research must consider the occurrence, nature, and control of this type of experimenter effect. The control of intentional error is discussed.Less

The Experimenter as Observer

Robert Rosenthal

in Artifacts in Behavioral Research: Robert Rosenthal and Ralph L. Rosnow's Classic Books

This chapter discusses some of the disciplines that have shown a self-conscious awareness of the problem of observer effects. These include the physical sciences, biological sciences, behavioral ... More

This chapter discusses some of the disciplines that have shown a self-conscious awareness of the problem of observer effects. These include the physical sciences, biological sciences, behavioral sciences.Less

Interpretation of Data

Robert Rosenthal

in Artifacts in Behavioral Research: Robert Rosenthal and Ralph L. Rosnow's Classic Books

Identical observations are often interpreted differently by different scientists, and that fact and its implications are the subject of this chapter. Interpretation effects are most simply defined as ... More

Identical observations are often interpreted differently by different scientists, and that fact and its implications are the subject of this chapter. Interpretation effects are most simply defined as any difference in interpretations. The difference may be between two or more interpreters, or an interpreter and such a generalized interpreter as an established theory or an “accepted” interpretation of a cumulative series of studies. As in the observer effect, the interpreter effect, or difference, does not necessarily imply a unidirectional phenomenon. When observations are nonrandomly distributed around a true value, these are referred to as “biased observations.” Similarly, when interpretations do not vary randomly—and usually they do not—these are referred to as “biased”.Less

Mathematics and Physical Science

Christian Pfeiffer

in Aristotle's Theory of Bodies

The chapter concerns the relation between physical science and mathematics. There is no contradiction involved in the assumption that both the physicist and the mathematician study body and ... More

The chapter concerns the relation between physical science and mathematics. There is no contradiction involved in the assumption that both the physicist and the mathematician study body and magnitudes, but are nonetheless engaged in two distinct sciences. A physicist studies quantities insofar as they are the bodies and magnitudes of physical substances. A mathematician studies bodies, lines, and surfaces as if they were separate. Quantities are logically separable from physical substances and mathematics studies the quantitative aspect of physical substances in isolation. Since both the physicist and the mathematician are concerned with the same underlying reality, the physicist can draw on mathematical theorems. What holds of an object insofar as it is a body also holds of the object insofar as it is a movable body which belongs to a substance.Less

Mill's Radicalization of Induction

in Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society

This chapter discusses the reforms Mill proposed in science to counter the view of Whewell. It shows that his overriding desire was to expel the intuitionist philosophy from its “stronghold” in ... More

This chapter discusses the reforms Mill proposed in science to counter the view of Whewell. It shows that his overriding desire was to expel the intuitionist philosophy from its “stronghold” in physical science and mathematics, because he saw this as being the crucial precondition for reforming moral and political philosophy. The intuitionist epistemology led to political and social conservatism, Mill believed, by reassuring people that what they believed deeply must be true and necessary. Indeed, intuitionism allowed “every inveterate belief and every intense feeling” to be “its own all-sufficient voucher and justification.” If he could demonstrate that knowledge of physical science and even mathematics did not require any a priori axioms, Mill hoped, then he would have proved the superfluity of a priori elements in morality and political philosophy. It is because of this that Mill developed an ultra-empiricist, phenomenalist epistemology, and rejected necessity in mathematics and causal relations. He thus “radicalized” induction. The chapter also discusses Mill's “final and most elaborate protest against the Intuitionist school,” his Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865).Less

The Transnational Physical Science Study Committee: The Evolving Nation in the World of Science and Education (1945–1975)

Josep Simon

in How Knowledge Moves: Writing the Transnational History of Science and Technology

The Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) was a major project that represents the rise of American science education as an influential international force during the Cold War. Its original ... More

The Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) was a major project that represents the rise of American science education as an influential international force during the Cold War. Its original conception responded to an agenda of nation building. For this reason, but also due to common historiographical practice, the PSSC has exclusively been studied in national perspective. In contrast, in this paper I focus on the international life of the PSSC. I consider how we can gain a fuller meaning of the PSSC by taking into account its different scales, including the local, national, regional, and international. I analyze the international agency of institutions such as the (US) National Science Foundation and UNESCO in the making of the PSSC worldwide and especially in Latin America. Finally, I examine the relevance of transnationalism for the PSSC by considering the role of actors such as the American (Mexican-born) Albert V. Baez (1912-2007) and the Israelite (German-born) Uri Haber-Schaim (1926-).Less

Motion, Change, and Physics

Colin McGinn

in Basic Structures of Reality: Essays in Meta-Physics

In his article on motion in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the distinguished historian and philosopher of physics Max Jammer writes: “The predominant role of the concept of motion in physical ... More

In his article on motion in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the distinguished historian and philosopher of physics Max Jammer writes: “The predominant role of the concept of motion in physical science poses a problem of great importance to philosophy. Why is it that all processes, laws, and formulas of physics—and modern physics is no exception—ultimately refer to motion, and why is it that even problems in statics, the science of equilibrium and absence of motion, are solved in terms of fictitious motions and virtual velocities?”. This chapter proposes an answer to this question.Less

Body in the Context of Physical Science

Christian Pfeiffer

in Aristotle's Theory of Bodies

Motion, the infinite, place, and time are part of the conceptual underpinnings of physical science. The chapter argues that in the same way the study of body should be seen as indispensable for the ... More

Motion, the infinite, place, and time are part of the conceptual underpinnings of physical science. The chapter argues that in the same way the study of body should be seen as indispensable for the physicist and part of the conceptual underpinnings of physical science. It is a study of body and magnitudes insofar as they are the bodies and magnitudes of physical substances. Since it is concerned with the physical nature of the substances to which body and magnitudes belong, it must be distinguished from a mathematical investigation. A physical substance has a body and it is the task of the physicist to consider the nature of body insofar as it belongs to a physical substance.Less

Introduction to Poincaré‎’s Science and Hypothesis

John J. McDermott (ed.)

in The Basic Writings of Josiah Royce, Volume II: Logic, Loyalty, and Community

This chapter studies Henri Poincaré's discussion of science and hypotheses. The useful hypotheses of science are of two kinds: the hypotheses which are valuable precisely because they are either ... More

This chapter studies Henri Poincaré's discussion of science and hypotheses. The useful hypotheses of science are of two kinds: the hypotheses which are valuable precisely because they are either verifiable or else refutable through a definite appeal to the tests furnished by experience; and the hypotheses which, despite the fact that experience suggests them, are valuable despite, or even because, of the fact that experience can neither confirm nor refute them. The first type of hypotheses are the ones which the textbooks of inductive logic and those summaries of scientific method which are customary in the course of the elementary treatises upon physical science are already accustomed to recognize and to characterize. However, Poincaré's treatment of the work of science is especially marked by the fact that he explicitly makes prominent both the existence and the scientific importance of hypotheses of the second type.Less

Laws, Vindication, and Ontology

Steven Horst

in Laws, Mind, and Free Will

This chapter is concerned with the putative difference between psychology and the physical sciences. Although this difference has been viewed as problematic for psychology, it is yet to be seen why ... More

This chapter is concerned with the putative difference between psychology and the physical sciences. Although this difference has been viewed as problematic for psychology, it is yet to be seen why this should be so. Also considered here are the Weber-Fechner laws, a paradigm of psychophysical respectability which claims that the intensity of a percept is a logarithmic function of the intensity of the stimulus. Such laws are well established by repeated experiments, are robust across many subjects, and take the form of a mathematical equation. In short, they have many of the hallmarks of respectable scientific results. It is not true, however, that the intensity of the percept is always related to that of the stimulus in the manner which they predict.Less

Subjective Physicalism

Robert J. Howell

in The Case for Qualia

This chapter presents four theses with which most philosophers agree, namely, that the world is a world of physical things, that the physical sciences tell the complete causal story about the world, ... More

This chapter presents four theses with which most philosophers agree, namely, that the world is a world of physical things, that the physical sciences tell the complete causal story about the world, that there is such a thing as conscious experience, and that the nature of consciousness is not fully captured by descriptions in the physical sciences. Ironically, the debates regarding qualia and consciousness are puzzling in part because the majority of philosophers agree about the majority of facts. After the four theses presented above, one might think that the only remaining issue regarding the truth or falsity of physicalism is merely terminological. The real question is whether the four theses can be acknowledged by a monistic metaphysics. A closer look at this notion reveals several places that could engender disagreement over the consistency of qualia with physicalism.Less

Physical Sciences for Nonphysical Problems: Understanding and Controlling Human Disease

Lazaros K. Gallos

in Complex Systems and Population Health

To begin understanding noncommunicable diseases in a population, researchers must understand how people are connected to each other, how they interact with each other, and if there are external ... More

To begin understanding noncommunicable diseases in a population, researchers must understand how people are connected to each other, how they interact with each other, and if there are external influences. Heterogeneity and complexity in human disease suggest new methodological and analytical ways in which the physical sciences can assist research in areas such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases, psychiatric disorders, or cancer. As it is becoming clear that human morbid states are not strictly deterministic diseases, this chapter overviews how statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics (e.g., percolation, cascades, control theory) grounded in stochastic approaches can contribute to the delineation and control of an array of complex population health outcomes.Less