Laws and explanation in history 14 Jun 2009 One of the critical pieces on the philosophy of history was published as Laws and Explanation in History in 1957. Now the hist-analytic site, run by Stephen Bayne, has added the entirety of the book online to its growing list of significant philosophical contributions to the philosophy of history. Links to PDFs below the fold. Laws and Explanation in History by William Dray The Covering Law Model The Doctrine of Implicit Law Explaining and Prediction Causal Laws and Causal Analysis The Rationale of Actions Explaining Why and Explaining How Epistemology History Philosophy Science
History Copernicus did not demote humanity 5 Dec 2009 Stephen Jay Gould was fond of observing that of the two revolutions identified by Freud as having dethroned humanity – Copernicus, and Darwin’s – that Darwin’s was the more revolutionary, because (as he put it) Copernicus and Galileo merely changed our real estate, while Darwin changed our essence. But it… Read More
Philosophy “I suffer not a woman to teach” 9 Dec 2012 Christian attitudes to women are well known. Ever since St Paul, in his best Elizabethan English, made the above comment (I Timothy 2:12), Christians have constrained women and their freedoms, always making them subordinate to an “owning” male – father, husband, or even grown sons. Christianity is not unique in this respect – Judaism,… Read More
Epistemology Homology and analogy 27 Aug 201018 Sep 2017 Last time I noted that phylogenetic classification was based on homologies, which I have elsewhere discussed. Now I want to consider how we might generalise it across all the sciences. And in particular I want to consider the other form of classificatory activity, by analogy, might also generalise. This will… Read More