""Kuhn has the unmistakable address of a man, who, so far from wanting to score points, is anxious above all else to get at the truth of matters.""--Sir Peter Medawar, Nature.

Charles Coulston Gillispie (1918–2015) was Dayton-Stockton Professor Emeritus of History of Science at Princeton University. Theodore M. Porter is Distinguished Professor of History and the Peter Reill Chair in European History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Originally published in 1960, The Edge of Objectivity helped to establish the history of science as a full-fledged academic discipline. In the mid-1950s, a young professor at...

Yemima Ben-Menahem is professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of Conventionalism, the editor of Hilary Putnam, and the coeditor of Probability in Physics. This book explores the role of causal constraints in science, shifting our attention from causal relations between individual events--the focus of most philosophical treatments of causation-to a broad family of concepts and principles generating constraints...

This collection of 24 essays is a perfect introduction to the world of Lewis Thomas. Topics ranging from the riddle of smelling to nuclear proliferation carry the gentle, unassuming persuasiveness that characterizes the author's work. Here we are also introduced to the concerns that have distinguished Thomas' literary career: the natural altruism of organisms; the inter-relatedness of all creatures; the fragility of the human species; the uneasiness...

Provides the foundations of a genuine unified field theory. Ervin Laszlo, widely regarded as the founder of systems philosophy and general evolution theory, introduces the foundations of a genuine unified theory of the world in this pioneering treatise on the new sciences. In contrast to other unified theories that center mainly on physics, Laszlo's embraces quantum, cosmos, life, as well as consciousness. He delineates the principles of a new physics...

"Integralism is the application to the temporal, political order of the full implications of the revelation of man's supernatural end in Christ and of the divinely established means by which it is to be attained. These implications are identified by means of the philosophia perennis exemplified in the fundamental principles of St Thomas Aquinas. Since the first principle in moral philosophy is the last end, and man's last end cannot be known except...

Many people assume that the claims of scientists are objective truths. But historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science have long argued that scientific claims reflect the particular historical, cultural, and social context in which those claims were made. The nature of scientific knowledge is not absolute because it is influenced by the practice and perspective of human agents. Scientific Perspectivism argues that the acts of observing and...

The personal is not political, even if politics marks it and, in many cases, determines it. Infrapolitics seeks to understand conditions of existence that are not reducible to political life and that exceed any definition of world bound to political determinations. It seeks to mobilize an exteriority without, which politics could only be business or administration, that is, oppression. It demands a change in seeing and an everyday practice that subtracts...

The Concept of Nature by Alfred North Whitehead is a foundational work in the philosophy of science, offering a profound examination of how nature is understood and experienced. Published in 1920, this influential text challenges traditional notions of time, space, and perception, presenting a fresh and dynamic framework for understanding the natural world. Whitehead critiques the mechanistic view of nature, proposing instead that nature is a complex...

"For fifteen years, bestselling author Michael Shermer has written a column in Scientific American magazine that synthesizes scientific concepts and theory for a general audience. His trademark combination of deep scientific understanding and entertaining writing style has thrilled his huge and devoted audience for years. Now, in Skeptic, seventy-five of these columns are available together for the first time; a welcome addition for his fans and a...