An Intimate Relation

The best philosophy of science during the last generation has been highly historical; and the best history of science, highly philosophical. No one has better exemplified this intimate relationship between history and philosophy than has Robert E. Butts in his work. Through­ out his numerous writings, science, its philosophy, and its history have been treated as a seamless web. The result has been a body of work that is sensitive in its conception, ambitious in its scope, and illuminat­ ing in its execution. Not only has his work opened new paths of inquiry, but his enthusiasm for the discipline, his encouragement of others (particularly students and younger colleagues), and his tireless efforts to build an international community of scholars, have stimulated the growth of HPS throughout Europe and North America. Many of the essays in this volume reflect that influence. Our title, of course, is deliberately ambiguous. The essays herein are by colleagues and former students, all of us wishing to honour an intimate friend. Happy Birthday, Bob! IX INTRODUCTION The essays herein cover a variety of concerns: from Descartes to reduction, from Galileo to gambling, from Freud's psychoanalysis to Kant's thing-in-itself. But under this diversity there is an approach common to them all. Things are largely done with a concern for and a sensitivity to historical matters (including contemporary history, of course).

Contenu

Apologia pro Simplicio: Galileo and the Limits of Knowledge.- Cartesian Clarity and Cartesian Motion.- Hypotheses and Certainty in Cartesian Science.- Descartes and the Method of Analysis and Synthesis.- Physical and Metaphysical Atomism: 1666-1682.- The Foundation of All Philosophy: Newton's Third Rule.- Conscilience and Natural Kind Reasoning.- Leibniz's 'Hypothesis Physica Nova': A Conjunction of Models for Explaining Phenomena.- Russell's Conundrum: On the Relation of Leibniz's Monads to the Continuum.- The Philosophers of Gambling.- Reductive Realism and the Problem of Affection in Kant.- The Paradox of Transcendental Knowledge.- Mesmer in a Mountain Bar: Anthropological Difference, Butts and Mesmerism.- History, Discovery and Induction: Whewell on Kepler on the Orbit of Mars.- For Method: Or Against Feyerabend.- World Pictures: The World of the History and Philosophy of Science.- Learning from the Past.- Reduction Without Reductionism?.- Models of Scientific Knowledge.- Circles Without Circularity.- On Applying Learnability Theory to the Rationalism-Empiricism Controversy.- The Relationship between Consciousness and Language.- Realism for Shopkeepers: Behaviouralist Notes on Constructive Empiricism.- Why Thematic Kinships Between Events Do Not Attest Their Causal Linkage.- Neo-Darwinism: Form and Content.- Publications of Robert E. Butts.- Index of Names and Subjects.