Hegel And The Sciences (boston Studies In The Philosophy And History Of Science)

To the scientists and philosophers of our time, Hegel has been either a ne­ glected or a provocative thinker, a source of irrelevant dark metaphysics or of complex but insightful analysis. His influence upon the work of natural scientists has seemed minimal, in the main; and his stimulus to the nascent sciences of society and to psychology has seemed to be as often an obstacle as an encouragement. Nevertheless his philosophical analysis of knowledge and the knowing process, of concepts and their evolutionary formation, of rationality in its forms and histories, of the stages of empirical awareness and human practice, all set within his endless inquiries into cultural formations from the entire sweep of human experience, must, we believe, be confronted by anyone who wants to understand the scientific consciousness. Indeed, we may wish to situate the changing theories of nature, and of humankind in nature, within a philosophical account of men and women as social practi­ tioners and as sensing, thinking, feeling centers of privacy; and then we will see the work of Hegel as a major effort to mediate between the purest of epistemological investigations and the most practical of the political and the religious. This book, long delayed to our deep regret, derives from a Symposium on Hegel and the Sciences which was sponsored jointly by the Hegel Society of America and the Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science a decade ago. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Front Matter....Pages 1-1 The Scholar, The Liberal Ideal, and the Philosophy of Science....Pages 3-10 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 Conceptual Analysis and Scientific Theory in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature (With Special Reference to Hegel’s Optics)....Pages 13-36 A Comment on Buchdahl’s ‘Conceptual Analysis and Scientific Theory In Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature (With Special Reference To Hegel’s Optics)’....Pages 37-40 The Chemical System of Substances, Forces and Processes in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature and The Science of His Time....Pages 41-54 Hegel and the Celestial Mechanics of Newton and Einstein....Pages 55-85 The Hegelian Treatment of Biology and Life....Pages 87-100 More Comments on the Place of the Organic in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature....Pages 101-107 Hegel and the Organic View of Nature....Pages 109-121 Hegel’s Philosophical Understanding of Illness....Pages 123-141 On Hegel’s Significance for the Social Sciences....Pages 143-159 Hegel’s Conception of Psychology....Pages 161-191 Front Matter....Pages 193-193 The Dialectical Structure of Scientific Thinking....Pages 195-213 Is the Progress of Science Dialectical?....Pages 215-239 Some ‘Moments’ of Hegel’s Relation to the Sciences....Pages 241-270 Hegel’s ‘Deduction of the Concept of Science’....Pages 271-281 Theory and Praxis and the Beginning of Science....Pages 283-286 The First American Interpretation of Hegel in J. B. Stallo’s Philosophy of Science....Pages 287-299 Front Matter....Pages 301-301 Hegel’s Logic from A Logical Point of View1....Pages 303-310 The Dynamics of Hegelian Dialectics, and Non-Linearity in the Sciences....Pages 311-347 Mathematical Dialectics, Scientific Logic and the Psychoanalysis of Thinking....Pages 349-359 Front Matter....Pages 301-301 Comments on Kosok’s Interpretation of Hegel’s Logic....Pages 361-364 Back Matter....Pages 365-374