Philosophy of Science Commons^™

Patrick Aidan Heelan’S The Observable: Heisenberg’S Philosophy Of Quantum Mechanics, Paul Downes

Research Resources

The publication of Patrick Aidan Heelan’s The Observable, with forewords from Michel Bitbol, editor Babette Babich and the author himself, offers a timely invitation to reconsider the relation between quantum physics and continental philosophy.

Patrick Heelan does so, as a contemporary of and interlocutor with Werner Heisenberg on these issues, as a physicist himself who trained with leading figures of quantum mechanics (QM), Erwin Schrödinger and Eugene Wigner. Moreover, Heelan highlights Heisenberg’s interest in phenomenology as ‘a friend and frequent visitor of Martin Heidegger’ (55). Written originally in 1970 and unpublished then for reasons Babich explicates in her foreword, …

The Uncertainty Relations, Patrick Heelan

Research Resources

Patrick Aidan Heelan, The Observable: Heisenberg’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. With a foreword by Michel Bitbol. Edited and with a foreword by Babette Babich. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015.

The Philosophical Differences Between Heisenberg And Bohr, Patrick Heelan

Research Resources

Chapter from: Patrick Aidan Heelan, The Observable: Heisenberg’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. With a foreword by Michel Bitbol. Edited and with a foreword by Babette Babich. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015.

Consciousness, Quantum Physics, And Hermeneutical Phenomenology, Patrick Aidan Heelan S.J.

Research Resources

Two hundred years ago Friedrich Schleiermacher modified Kant’s notion of anthropology—‘hermeneutically,’ as he said — so as to make it inclusive of the tribes that Captain Cook found in the South Sea Islands. This paper honors the late Joseph J. Kockelmans for making a similar hermeneutic move to update Kant’s notion of natural science so as to make it inclusive of the phenomenological lifeworld (For ‘lifeworld,’ see Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy, 1954, 121–148, and the ‘lifeworld’ theme throughout the Crisis. ) syntheses of classical, relativity, and quantum physics. The new synthesis is in …

Constellating Technology: Heidegger’S Die Gefahr/The Danger, Babette Babich

Research Resources

Heidegger’s question concerning technology was originally posed in lectures to the Club of Bremen. This essay considers the totalizing role of technology in Heidegger’s day and our own, including a discussion of radio and calling for a greater integration of Heidegger’s thinking and critical theory. Today’s media context and the increasing ecological pressures of our time may provide a way to think, once again, the related notions of event [ Ereignis] and ownedness [ Eigentlichkeit ].

Heidegger And Our Twenty-Fi Rst Century Experience Of Ge-Stell Theodore Kisiel, Theodor Kisiel

Research Resources

I propose an etymological translation of Ge-Stell, Heidegger’s word for the essence of modern technology, from its Greek and Latin roots as “synthetic com-posit[ion]ing,” which presciently portends our twenty-first century experience of the internetted WorldWideWeb with its virtual infinity of websites in cyberspace, Global Positioning Systems, interlocking air traffic control grids, world-embracing weather maps, the 24-7 world news coverage of cable TV-networks like CNN, etc., etc.—all of which are structured by the complex programming based on the computerized and ultimately simple Leibnizian binary-digital logic generating an infinite number of combinations of the posit (1) and non-posit (0). The sharp …

The Universality Of Hermeneutics In Joseph Kockelmans’S Version Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Dimitri Ginev

Research Resources

In an autobiographical sketch, Joseph Kockelmans (2008) reflects on his Denkweg in a manner that allows him to delineate the profile of his version of hermeneutic phenomenology. Based essentially on this sketch, I should like in what follows to bring into focus three principal moments of his “journey into phenomenological philosophy” that allude to his idea of the universality of interpretation in all culturally specified modes of being-in-the-world. I will call these moments respectively (a) the phenomenological reformulation of the Greek episteme; (b) the integration of the ontological difference in the theory of scientific truth; and (c) the historicity of …

The Multidimensionality Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology: From Philology Through Science And Technology To Theology, Babette Babich

Research Resources

Studies of hermeneutics have historically invoked and even enumerated dimensions and hermeneutic phenomenology is inherently multidimensional. In part this is due to the essential connection between hermeneutics and philology, which one cannot overlook. But it is also the legacy of Wilhelm Dilthey in particular. Hence Joseph J. Kockelman’s 2003 *Ideas for a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of the Natural Sciences* invokes “The Importance of Methodical Hermeneutics.” With this description, echoing the contributions of his friend and long-time colleague, Thomas Seebohm, Kockelmans relates Dilthey to Boeckh and thus to the classic tradition of hermeneutics including but also well in advance of Gadamer. Hence …

The Universality Of Hermeneutics In Joseph Kockelmans’ Version Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Dimitri Ginev

Research Resources

There is in Professor Kockelmans’s works from the 1950s a gradual transition from Nikolai Hartmann’s theory of the ontological modalities and categories (addressed in its capacity to serve as a prerequisite for reconstructing the ontological assumptions of basic scientifi c theories) to a kind of hermeneutic ontology. This transition is especially palpable in his reading of Hartmann’s “Philosophy of Nature.” In Hartmann’s categorial metaphysics of knowledge Dasein and Sosein (as ways of being) are subordinated to the modes and spheres of being. The transition was by no means accomplished via a direct borrowing of Heidegger’s concept of Dasein . It …

Review Of Patrick Heelan, Space-Perception And The Philosophy Of Science, Cliff Hooker

Research Resources

Heelan has taken a rich philosophical framework and within its categories woven a marvellously detailed and wondrously wide tapestry. That tapestry includes an exciting illumination of Western art and pictorial understanding generally; the sweep of history, scientific and cultural; the enterprise of science and the nature and roles of technology in both science and culture. Heelan's book then has interest at several different levels; in ascending order: there are the specific theses about vision and about science; there is the connecting of philosophy of visual art and philosophy of science; there is Heelan's attempt to set both of these latter …

“The Problem Of Science” In Nietzsche And Heidegger, Babette Babich

Research Resources

Nietzsche and Heidegger pose important philosophical questions to science and its technological projects. The resultant contributes to what may be called a continental philosophy of science and I argue that only such a rigorously critical approach to the question of science permits a genuinely philosophical reflection on science. The resultant contributes to what may be called a continental philosophy of science and I argue that only such a rigorously critical approach to the question of science permits a genuinely philosophical reflection on science. More than a thoughtful reflection on science, however, the heart of philosophy is also at stake in …

In-Between Science And Religion, Dominic Balestra

Research Resources

This paper traces the demise of the demarcation between science and non-science by falsifiability in early Popper through sophisticated revisions which results in transforming Popperian falsifiability into a historical situated criticizability, and one which retains a Duhemian requirement of subjectivity. This transformation opens a revised Popperian standpoint to the disciplinary rationality of theology, with important implications for reconsidering the relation between science and religion. It is then concluded that a significant, intellectual relationship of either dialogue or convergence between science and theology requires something like Patrick Heelan's hermeneutical philosophy of science for the standpoint in-between science and religion.

Was Heisst Das -- Die Bewandtnis? Retranslating The Categories Of Heideggers Hermeneutics Of The Technical, Theodore Kisiel

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

Abstracting Aristotle’S Philosophy Of Mathematics, John J. Cleary

Research Resources

In the history of science perhaps the most influential Aristotelian division was that

between mathematics and physics. From our modern perspective this seems like an unfortunate deviation from the Platonic unification of the two disciplines, which guided Kepler and Galileo towards the modern scientific revolution. By contrast, Aristotle’s sharp distinction between the disciplines seems to have led to a barren scholasticism in physics, together with an arid instrumentalism in Ptolemaic astronomy. On the positive side, however, astronomy was liberated from commonsense realism for the conceptual experiments of Aristarchus of Samos, whose heliocentric hypothesis was not adopted by later astronomers because …

Afterword: The Hermeneutics Of Natural Science, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

A Husserlean intentionality analysis of the early Bohr-Heisenberg view of the quantum theory; of quantum logic as a context logic of differently embodied inquirers; of the problems of causality and localization in quantum mechanics.

Heideggerian analysis of the ontological status of measurement and laboratory data. The Husserlean group transformation structure of perceptual objects in general, and of theoretically denominated laboratory entities construed as perceptual objects.

A critique of David Marr’s program for machine perception.

A study of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, Bedroom at Arles (1888), of the art and aesthetics of the (negatively curved) local Riemannian pictorial space achieved by …

Sokal’S Hermeneutic Hoax: Physics And The New Inquisition, Babette Babich

Research Resources

“The Hermeneutics of a Hoax: Physics and the New Inquisition” offers a rhetorical analysis and hermeneutics reading of the parodic character of Sokal's "hoax." From the perspective of a philosopher of science, it is argued that it is important to attend both to the rhetorical level of philosophy and science. In addition it is important to consider the culture of status (Bourdieu) as well as the self-reflective weaknesses of the culture of physics including those of (traditionally) physics-dominated philosophy of science. Echoing some of the criticisms and highlighting the points of social advocacy of the late Paul Feyerabend underscores the …

Heidegger Circle Conference 2001 - Proceedings, Babette Babich

Research Resources

Heidegger on Science and Technology. Proceedings of the 35th annual meeting of the North American Heidegger Conference at Fordham University: May, 2001. Convenor: Babette Babich

The Scope Of Hermeneutics In Natural Science, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

THE SCOPE OF HERMENEUTICS IN NATURAL SCIENCE Hermeneutics or interpretation is concerned with the generation, transmission, and acceptance of meaning within the lifeworld and was the original method of the human sciences stemming from F. Schleiermacher and W. Dilthey. Hermeneutic philosophy refers mostly to M. Heidegger’s. This paper addresses natural science from the perspective of Heidegger’s analysis of meaning and interpretation. Its purpose is to incorporate into the philosophy of science those aspects of historicality, culture, and tradition that are absent from the traditional analysis of theory and explanation, to re-orient the current discussion about scientific realism around the hermeneutics …

The Question Of Hermeneutics, Timothy Stapleton

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

Philosophies Of Science: Mach Duhem Bachelard, Babette Babich

Research Resources

approaches reflect the philosophical reflections on science expressed from the tradition of continental thought. In this context, the philosophical reflections on science to be found in Mach, Duhem and Bachelard may be mined for what should prove to be a productive

historical foundation between these two traditions addressed to a common focus.

Mach, Duhem and Bachelard among other thinkers have argued that science itself is more critical, indeed more inherently ‘hermeneutic’, than philosophy. But this point is problematic, and not only because of its counter-intuitive content -- whereby science ends up with the virtue of being more hermeneutic than hermeneutics …

Hermeneutical Phenomenology And The Philosophy Of Science, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

Continental philosophy from the start sees science as an institution in a cultural, historical, and hermeneutical setting. The domain of its discourse is values, subjectivity, Life Worlds, history, and society, as these affect the constitution of scientific knowledge. Its notion of truth is that which pertains to history, political power, and culture. Its concern with science is to interpret its historical conditions within human society -- usually in Western culture. Science, from this perspective, is a human, social -- and fallible -- enterprise. A concern of continental philosophy of science will include social failure as a possible indictment of scientific …

Hermeneutics Of Experimental Science In The Context Of The Life-World, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

Science is distinguished as an element of our total contemporary culture, or “historical science,” from science as the professional business of natural scientists, or “experimental science.” Phenomenology has always taken a very critical stance against certain defects or biases -- objectivism, scientism, technicism -- it has found in historical science. It is my purpose to show that these defects and biases, associated historically with physical science, are not necessary parts of physical science, and consequently, that physics, especially experimental physics, has all of those hermeneutical, ontological, historical and dialectical dimensions negated by historical science. The notion of dialectic is given …

Hermeneutics Of Experimental Science In The Context Of The Life-World, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

As an element of our total contemporary culture, "historical science" may be distinguished from "experimental" science as the professional business of natural scientists. Phenomenology has always taken a very critical stance against certain defects or biasses -- objectivism, scientism, techicism -- it has found in historical science. I show that these defects and biasses, associated historically with physical science, are not necessary parts of physical science, and consequently, that physics, especially experimental physics, has all of those hermeneutical, ontological, historical and dialectical dimensions negated by historical science.

Scientific Objectivity And Framework Transpositions, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

Truth-invariance relative to synchronous communities of knowers in all countries of the world seems to be one of the striking facts about science that distinguishes it from common sense or even from philosophy. Science is international, cosmopolitan and has, it is claimed, but one language. So pervasive is this belief about the one language of science that it might seem to be almost part of what we mean by the scientific enterprise, and it was indeed a part of the classical philosophy of Newton, Descartes and Kant which supported the scientific enterprise in the first three hundred years of its …

Horizon, Objectivity And Reality In The Physical Sciences, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

An exploration of the utility of a phenomenological style of philosophizing about nature called the analysis of horizons. The name refers to a banner of philosophical reflection practiced by many philosophers mostly of European origin who have been influenced by the Husserlian tradition, like Heidegger, de Waelhens, Gurwitsch, Merleau-Ponty, Luijpen, to mention but a few. To philosophize about science in a phenomenological vein, one must begin with a phenomenological description of the form of life of scientific research, because it is only within a form of life, that is, within a way of experiencing objects, that objects present themselves as …

The Discovery Of Quantum Mechanics, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

In this chapter Heelan discusses how Heisenberg's insight of 1925, that physics should concern itself henceforth only with relations between observables, changed the intentionality-structure of physics. This insight led Heisenberg to the construction of a quantum mechanics of observables. Heelan briefly discusses the significance of his insighand of his rejection of Schrödinger's wave mechanics; the novelty of quantum mechanics as a physical theory, and the meaning he attributed to its most surprising result, viz., the Indeterminacy Relations. The crisis was a crisis of the rationalism inherent in the outlook of classical physics, and Heisenberg's insistence on "observable quantities" was a …

Quantum Mechanics And Objectivity - Table Of Contents And Preface And Acknowledgments, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

This book deals with the 'crisis of objectivity' and the 'crisis of realism' which overtook physics when Heisenberg and Bohr consciously rejecting the intentionality-structure of classical physics, gave physics a new form and a new philosophy. The new physics was called quantum mechanics and the new philosophy was called complimentarity. Using the method 'analysis of horizons,' the author attempts to disentangle the epistemological and ontological pesuppositions of Heisenberg's view of complementarity. A similar analysis of Bohr's view of complimentarity reveals a remarkable contrast in basic philosophy between the two founders of quantum physics. The author distinguishes various kinds of objectivity …

Complementarity And The Scientific Method: A Criticism, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

In this chapter "Conplementarity and the Scientific Method" of his Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity, Heelan argues that the philosophy of complementarity, although successful in providing physicists with a common language with which to describe quantum phenomena, also contains a theory about scientific method and about human knowing which is open to criticism. Heelan here criticises the following points arising out of the philosophy of complementarity: psycho-physical parallelism; the view that quantum mechanical properties are to be defined classically; and the perturbation theory of measurement. In the course of the criticism, he elaborates the distinction between two types of concepts …

Reality In Heisenberg's Philosophy - Chapter Eight Of Heelan's Quantum Mechanics And Objectivity, Patrick Heelan

Research Resources

This chapter contains a study of Heisenberg's views of the ontological content of quantum mechanics from I925 until the present day. During the quantum revolution of I925, he began by accepting a Berkeley-type empiricism in which the reality of a quantum mechanical system was reduced to that of a set of observation events, which were, however, acausally connected and in consequence did not constitute a stable phenomenal object of experimental knowledge. After 1955, he professed a modified form of Kantian philosophy whose starting point was the existence of universal and necessary scientific laws. Those universal and necessary scientific laws from …

Classical Mechanics And Quantum Mechanics, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

Given that quantum mechanics is validly applicable wherever classical mechanics is applicable, how are they related to one another? A consideration of this question leads to a reflection on the Correspondence Principle. We conclude that the most basic formulation of the Correspondence Principle refers to the continuity of formulae when applied to marginal matter, taking into account the differences in correspondence rules between a typical classical theory and QM.