Texts, articles and reviews under label: 'positivism'.
Recent
Faith and science: no more reasons for conflict
summary: Review of the alleged problems between faith and science (the alleged obscurantism of the Middle Ages, the Galileo case, evolutionism, the big bang and the existence of God, neuroscience and the spiritual, etc.). The conclusion is that these are avoidable misunderstandings.
Author: Gabriel Zanotti.
Lesson 2015: Can we talk about God in the context of contemporary science?
summary: Science, by its method, cannot directly study God as an object. However, the activity of the scientist has some fields which, although they are not scientific, are open to God: references to the absolute, the contingency of the physical, the intelligibility of the world and its dialogical otherness.
Author: Prof. Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti
Positivist scientism and positive science today
summaryScientism, definition, origins and development, and a practical example of scientism in positive science.
Author: Carlos A. Marmelada
E. Mach and P. Duhem: The Philosophical Significance of the History of Science
summaryErnst Mach (1838-1916) and Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) can be considered as parallel figures. Both lived at the same time, died in the same year, were prominent physicists, conducted research on the history of science, and related that work to their ideas on the philosophy of science. As if this were not enough, both asserted that scientific theories are neither true nor false. It is not surprising, therefore, that their names are commonly associated in the epistemological literature and that they are presented as prominent representatives of conventionalism. However, there are important differences between them. Mach's ideas are closely related to an evolutionary and empiricist perspective, where science represents a useful tool for survival and there is no place for metaphysics; Mach's influence was naturally prolonged in the neo-positivism of the Vienna Circle. In contrast, Duhem harmonised his epistemology with a realist philosophical perspective, emphasised in his historical research the importance of Christianity in the birth of modern science, and affirmed the coherence between science, philosophy and Christianity.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Emergence and reduction in morphogenetic theories
summaryThe origin of the universe and of man are the limit cases of the evolutionary worldview, whose main task consists in the formulation of morphogenetic theories explaining how new levels emerge from more basic ones. In this context, the problems of emergence and reduction occupy a central place. The following reflections first allude to the difficulties of classical analyses of reductionism and suggest that the problem of reduction finds its proper place within the analysis of relations between levels. These considerations are applied, secondly, to the examination of certain morphogenetic theories. And they are also applied, finally, to the problem of ontological emergence, including the evaluation of some proposals about the origin of the universe and of man.
Author: Mariano Artigas
summaryThe problem of scientific truth lies at the heart of our culture. The enormous progress of the sciences and the reliability of the knowledge they provide has led to serious perplexities. For some, experimental science would be the only valid access to reality or, at least, the paradigm to be imitated by any pretension of knowledge rigorous. For others, experimental science would be a second-rate knowledge limited to discovering rather superficial aspects of reality.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Religion in the face of scientific progress.
En torno a un libro-survey by José María Gironella
summaryAs the book is voluminous (486 pages, but with many photos), I first looked for the people I found most interesting; I suppose this is what almost everyone does. When I had read a few answers, I seemed to notice that the interviewees who are scientists or have studied science do not see any opposition between science and religion, and that, on the contrary, those who think that such an opposition exists are people who, although educated, have not been involved in science. I found it interesting to test whether this hypothesis was valid, and I set about testing it at test by studying all the responses. My conclusion was that the hypothesis holds up quite well.
Author: Mariano Artigas
The limits of scientific language
summarySince its systematic birth in the 17th century, modern science has become a source of perplexities. Kepler and Galileo were convinced that nature is like a book written in mathematical language. But the establishment of the new physics rightly led to doubts that it could be properly understood in this way: how to explain that highly abstract and sophisticated theoretical constructs could be successfully applied in the real world? This question became a source of questions that persist to this day.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Assumptions and implications of scientific progress
summaryThe methods and results of experimental science play a very important role in shaping contemporary culture. They are sometimes used to support naturalistic doctrines that dispense with divine action because they consider it impossible or useless in the light of scientific progress. In the reflections that follow I suggest that the analysis goal of that progress rather leads to the opposite conclusion. More specifically, I argue that the analysis of the assumptions and implications of scientific progress leads to a perspective that is fully consistent with the affirmation of a personal creator God, with the recognition of the spiritual dimensions of the human person, and with the existence of ethical values related to the objective search for truth and service to humanity.
Author: Mariano Artigas