Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T15:02:40.818Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Some Historical and Philosophical Reflections on Science and Enlightenment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Abner Shimony
Abner Shimony*
Affiliation:
Boston University
*
†Departments of Philosophy and Physics, Boston University; 8 Dover Road, Wellesley, MA 02181.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

I am grateful for the opportunity to share with you some of my convictions, anxieties, and hopes. My central conviction is the immense value of a mental outlook which can be called by the suggestive and historically recognized name Enlightenment, whose exact characterization, however, requires careful discussion. It is an outlook widely shared, though with innumerable personal variations, by the members of the Philosophy of Science Association, by the broader community of scientists, science teachers, and philosophers, and by an ill-defined part of the general public. My anxieties are that the cultivation and the influence of this mental outlook in our nation and in the world are threatened in various ways, among them ideological attacks, slackening of educational standards, and demoralization of its adherents. My central hope is that Enlightenment will prevail despite these threats.

Type
Presidential Address
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue S4: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Dec., 1997 , 1997 , pp. S1 - S14
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Professor Jerome Rothstein of Ohio State University—an imaginative and philosophically-minded scientist, an inventive technologist dedicated to the preservation of the environment, and an enlightened citizen.

References

Aristotle ([c.322 b.c.]1946), The Politics. Edited and Translated by Barker, E. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Bayes, T. (1763), “An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 53: 370–418.Google Scholar
Beccaria, C. ([1764]1995), On Crimes and Punishments, and Other Writings. Translated by R. Davies, V. Cox, and R. Bellamy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Berlin, I. (1956), The Age of Enlightenment. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Berlin, I. (1980), Against the Current. New York: Viking Press.Google Scholar
Bien, D. (1960), The Calas Affair. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cobban, A. (1960), In Search of Humanity. New York: George Braziller.Google Scholar
Diderot, D. ([c.1774]1966), Rameau's Nephew. Translated by L.W. Tancock. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Diderot, D. ([1796] 1955), Le Supplément au voyage de Bougainville. Edited by Dieckmann, H. Geneva: Droz.Google Scholar
Earman, J. (1992), Bayes or Bust? A Critical Examination of Bayesian Confirmation Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Franklin, A. (1986), The Neglect of Experiment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hampson, N. (1968), The Enlightenment. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Herder, J. G. ([1784–1791]1969), Herder on Social and Political Culture. Translated and edited by F.M. Barnard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, E. T. A. ([1813]1993), “Don Juan”, in Saemmtliche Werke, Band 2/1. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutsche-Klassiker Verlag.Google Scholar
Howson, C. and Urbach, P. (1989), Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach. La Salle: Open Court.Google Scholar
Hume, D. ([1748]1993), An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Hume, D. ([1751]1946), An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. La Salle: Open CourtGoogle Scholar
Jeffreys, H. (1961), Theory of Probability, 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. ([1788]1949), Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by L. Beck. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, S. ([1843]1944), Either/Or. Translated by D.F. Swenson. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Laplace, P. S. de (1820), Théorie Analytique des Probabilités, 3rd ed. Paris: Mme. V. Courcier.Google Scholar
Peirce, C.S. ([1877]1934), Collected Papers, v. 5. Edited by C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. (1987), The Many Faces of Realism. La Salle: Open Court.Google Scholar
Salomon, A. (1963), In Praise of Enlightenment. Cleveland: World Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Sapir, E. (1924), “Culture, Genuine and Spurious”, American Journal of Sociology American Journal of Sociology: 29–401. (I was introduced to this article by my wife, who was an anthropologist.)Google Scholar
Shimony, A. (1993), Search for a Naturalistic World View, v. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sokal, A. D. (1996), “Transforming the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”, Social Text Spring/Summer: 217–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stein, H. (1989), “Yes, but … —Some Skeptical Remarks on Realism and Anti-realism”, Dialectica 43: 47–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trilling, L. (1953), The Liberal Imagination. Garden City: Doubleday.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, B. (1980), The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voltaire, F.-M. de ([1763]1969), Traité sur la Tolérance. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Whitehead, A.N. (1925), Science and the Modem World. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Whitehead, A.N. (1929), Process and Reality. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar