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
Epistemology Is the soul something we should be agnostic about? 27 May 201127 May 2011 In a piece on the Scientific American guest blog, the day before mine, Sean Carroll made an interesting argument: Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely… Read More
Biology Articles of faith: The theological and philosophical origins of the concept of species 22 Oct 201329 Oct 2013 It takes a while for the implications of one’s own work to sink in. In my 2009 book Species, a History of the Idea (see here), I argued that the notion that before Darwin people were essentialistic and fixist about species was false. A recent paper by Jack Powers about Mayr’s misreading… Read More
Philosophy Neurath on the surface 8 Sep 2009 Charles Wolfe pointed me at a comment of Otto Neurath’s: The scientific world conception is characterised not so much by theses of its own, but rather by its basic attitude, its points of view and direction of research. The goal ahead is unified science. The endeavour is to link and… Read More