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On Physicalistic Models of Non-Physical Terms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Gustav Bergmann
Gustav Bergmann*
Affiliation:
State University of Iowa
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Extract

Some of the objections most frequently raised against the thesis of physicalism can be summarized as follows:

(V) The notions of the biological and social sciences, as e. g. organic whole and Gestalt, means and ends, leadership and hierarchical order, the entire structure and meaning of these scientific systems, are of a type essentially different from those of physics. Consequently they can not be expressed by means of the mathematical language used by physics, and it is “logically impossible” to reduce these sciences to physics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 1940 , pp. 151 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1940

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References

∗ To appear in the Journal for Unified Science.

1 It might be that this interpretation covers also a possible meaning of “conceptual properties of constructs”, a term frequently used by Lewin in his works on theoretical psychology.

2 E. Zilsel, Die Naturwissenschaften, 15, 1927, p. 280f.

3 F. Heider, Psychological Review, 46, 1939, p. 383-410.