The Understanding Of Nature

No student or colleague of Marjorie Grene will miss her incisive presence in these papers on the study and nature of living nature, and we believe the new reader will quickly join the stimulating discussion and critique which Professor Grene steadily provokes. For years she has worked with equally sure knowledge in the classical domain of philosophy and in modern epistemological inquiry, equally philosopher of science and metaphysician. Moreover, she has the deeply sensible notion that she should be a critically intelligent learner as much as an imaginatively original thinker, and as a result she has brought insightful expository readings of other philosophers and scientists to her own work. We were most fortunate that Marjorie Grene was willing to spend a full semester of a recent leave here in Boston, and we have on other occasions sought her participation in our colloquia and elsewhere. Now we have the pleasure of including among the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science this generous selection from Grene's philosophical inquiries into the understanding of the natural world, and of the men and women in it. Boston University Center for the R. S. COHEN Philosophy and History of Science M. W. W ARTOFSKY April 1974 PREFACE This collection spans - spottily - years from 1946 ('On Some Distinctions between Men and Brutes') to 1974 ('On the Nature of Natural Necessity').

Science is not the only route to understanding nature. This volume presents a series of case studies in comparative epistemology, critically comparing the works of prominent representatives of the life sciences, such as Aristotle, Darwin, and Mendel, with the writings of literary masters, such as Andersen, Melville, Verne, and Ibsen. It constitutes a major contribution to the growing field of science and literature studies.

Scientific thinking must be understood as an activity. The acts of interpretation, representation, and explanation are the cognitive processes by which scientific thinking leads to understanding. The book explores the nature of these processes and describes how scientific thinking can only be grasped from a pragmatic perspective.

From the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century Japan saw the creation, development, and apparent disappearance of the field of natural history, or "honzogaku." Federico Marcon traces the changing views of the natural environment that accompanied its development by surveying the ideas and practices deployed by "honzogaku" practitioners and by vividly reconstructing the social forces that affected them. These include a burgeoning publishing industry, increased circulation of ideas and books, the spread of literacy, processes of institutionalization in schools and academies, systems of patronage, and networks of cultural circles, all of which helped to shape the study of nature. In this pioneering social history of knowledge in Japan, Marcon shows how scholars developed a sophisticated discipline that was analogous to European natural history but formed independently. He also argues that when contacts with Western scholars, traders, and diplomats intensified in the nineteenth century, the previously dominant paradigm of "honzogaku "slowly succumbed to modern Western natural science not by suppression and substitution, as was previously thought, but by creative adaptation and transformation.

"This collection of 39 short stories gives the reader a unique opportunity to take a look at the scientific philosophy of Vladimir Arnold, one of the most original contemporary researchers. Topics of the stories included range from astronomy, to mirages, to motion of glaciers, to geometry of mirrors and beyond. In each case Arnold's explanation is both deep and simple, which makes the book interesting and accessible to an extremely broad readership. Original illustrations hand drawn by the author help the reader to further understand and appreciate Arnold's view on the relationship between mathematics and science."--

This book is an exploration of human understanding, from the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, biology and theology. The six contributors are among the most internationally eminent in their fields. Though scholarly, the writing is non-technical. No background in psychology, philosophy or theology is presumed. No other interdisciplinary work has undertaken to explore the nature of human understanding. This book is unique, and highly significant for anyone interested in or concerned about the human condition.

Understanding the Nature of Law explores methodological questions about how best to explain law. Among these questions, one is central: is there something about law which determines how it should be theorized? This novel book explains the importance of

Ecology is an historical science in which theories can be as difficult to test as they are to devise. This volume, intended for ecologists and evolutionary biologists, reviews ecological theories, and how they are generated, evaluated, and categorized. Synthesizing a vast and sometimes labyrinthine literature, this book is a useful entry into the scientific philosophy of ecology and natural history. The need for integration of the contributions to theory made by different disciplines is a central theme of this book. The authors demonstrate that only through such integration will advances in ecological theory be possible. Ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and other serious students of natural history will want this book.