Yorick's World

Science and the Knowing Subject

Peter Caws

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9780520912878
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Philosophie politique

Peter Caws provides a fresh and often iconoclastic treatment of some of the most vexing problems in the philosophy of science: explanation, induction, causality, evolution, discovery, artificial intelligence, and the social implications of technological rationality. Caws's work has been shaped equally by the insights of Continental philosophy and a concern with scientific practice. In these twenty-eight essays spanning more than a quarter of a century, he ranges from discussions of the work of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, to relations between science and surrealism, to the concept of intentionality, to the limits of quantitative description. A lively mix of history, theory, speculation, and analysis, Yorick's World presents a vision of science that includes human history and social life. It will interest professional philosophers and scientists, and at the same time its directness will make it readily accessible to nontechnical readers.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Explanation
• Preface to Part I
• 1. Aspects of Hempel's Philosophy of Science
• 2. Science and System:
• 3. Gosse's Omphalos Theory and the Eccentricity of Belief
• 4. Creationism and Evolution
• Part II: Hume's Problem
• Preface to Part II
• 5. The Paradox of Induction and the Inductive Wager
• 6. The Structure of Discovery
• 7. Induction and the Kindness of Nature
• Part III: Logic and Causality
• Preface to Part III
• 8. Three Logics, or the Possibility of the Improbable
• 9. Mach's Principle and the Laws of Logic
• 10. A Quantum Theory of Causality
• 11. A Negative Interpretation of the Causal Principle
• Part IV: Machines and Practices
• Preface to Part IV
• 12. Science, Computers, and the Complexity of Nature
• 13. Praxis and Techne
• 14. On the Concept of a Domain of Praxis
• 15. Individual Praxis in Real Time
• 16. Towards a Philosophy of Technology
• 17. Scientific Theory as an Historical Anomaly
• Part V: Scientific Knowledge— Its Scope and Limits
• Preface to Part V
• 18. Is There (Scientific) Knowledge? Who Knows?
• 19. The Law of Quantity and Quality, or What Numbers Can and Can't Describe
• 20. On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time
• 21. On a Circularity in Our Knowledge of the Physically Real
• 22. Truth and Presence
• Part VI. Science and Subjectivity
• Preface to Part VI
• 23. Science, Surrealism, and the Status of the Subject
• 24. Subjectivity in the Machine
• 25. Rethinking Intentionality
• 26. Yorick's World, or the Universe in a Single Skull
• 27. A Case for the Human Sciences
• Notes
• Notes on Sources
• Index