Bulgarian Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 236)

This volume attempts to provide a new articulation of issues surrounding scientific realism, scientific rationality, the epistemology of non-classical physics, the type of revolutionary changes in the development of science, the naturalization of epistemology within frameworks of cognitive science and structural linguistics, models of the information technology revolution, and reconstructions of early modern logical systems. A common denominator of the authors' positions is the rejection of the post-modern deconstruction of the "global philosophical accounts" of science's cognitive structure and dynamics. The volume takes on a dual task: it deals with major perspectives on philosophy of science "after the end of post-positivism", and it represents basic philosophical controversies in an Eastern-European society "after the end of state socialism". Front Matter....Pages i-xii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 The Danger of Catching Nature in Contradiction....Pages 3-15 Scientific Rationality, Decision and Choice....Pages 17-29 The Information Technology Revolution: A New Techno-Economic Paradigm....Pages 31-41 Are Bifurcations of Human Knowledge Possible?....Pages 43-49 Front Matter....Pages 51-51 The Proliferation and Synthesis of Physical Theories....Pages 53-68 On Human Agency in Physics....Pages 69-82 Front Matter....Pages 83-83 Leibniz’s Logical Systems: A Reconstruction....Pages 85-93 The Logic between Two Centuries....Pages 95-125 Front Matter....Pages 127-127 Idealized Cognitive Models and Other Mental Representations....Pages 129-140 Philosophy of Science Meets Cognitive Science: The Categorization Debate....Pages 141-162 Three Words: Hypertext and Argumentation Readings of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus....Pages 163-166 Front Matter....Pages 167-167 On Kant’s Conception of Space and Time....Pages 169-185 How to be Simultaneously an Antiessentialist and a Defender of Science’s Cognitive Specificity....Pages 187-205 Back Matter....Pages 207-221