What I Do Not Believe, and Other Essays
- PDF / 38,660,351 Bytes
- 397 Pages / 430.866 x 632.126 pts Page_size
- 7 Downloads / 204 Views
SYNTHESE LIBRARY MONOGRAPHS ON EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE AND OF KNOWLEDGE, AND ON THE MATHEMATICAL METHODS OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Editors: DONALD DAVIDSON,
J AAKKO
Rockefeller University and Princeton University
HINTIKKA,
Academy of Finland and Stanford University
GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, WESLEY
C.
SALMON,
University of Leyden Indiana University
NORWOOD RUSSELL HANSON
WHAT I DO NOT BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSAYS Edited by
STEPHEN TOULMIN Michigan State University
and
HARRY WOOLF Johns Hopkins University
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY / DORDRECHT-HOLLAND
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-154738 ISBN-I 3:978-94-010-3 110-3 001: 10.1007/978-94-010-3108-0
e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-3108-0
All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1971 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland Sofleover reprint of the hardcover Ist edition 197 I No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
This collection of essays by Norwood Russell Hanson is one of a pair of volumes being prepared for the Synthese Library from his posthumous papers. The present book comprises two major items which have not previously been published - the opening essay, entitled 'A Picture Theory of Theory-Meaning', and the set ofthree Harris Lectures on The Theory of Flight originally delivered at Northwestern University, and edited here by the Rev. Prof. Edward MacKinnon S.J., from a verbatim transcript together with some of Hanson's less readily accessible, or less well-known published papers and articles. The other, companion book will contain a single connected analysis of the historical deVelopment of ideas about scientific explanation, as exemplified in theories about planetary motion from the Greeks up to the seventeenth century. (We have provisionally entitled this companion volume Constellations and Conjectures: at the time of Hanson's death it had been almost completely re-edited by the author from an earlier manuscript, and it is being prepared for publication by Professor Willard C. Humphreys jr., who is familiar with Hanson's work in this area.) In making the selection of essays for this present book, we have been guided by two main considerations. In the first place, it is even truer of Russ Hanson than of most other men that Ie style, c'etait l'homme meme; and we have tried to choose items which are capable of conveying, to people who never knew Hanson the man, something of the individual flavour of his mind and personality. Robust, pugnacious, intolerant of humbug and self-deceit, he was quick to master any of the techniques (or games) of the scholarly and scientific life, but would never allow them to master him in turn. Thus, a few introductory undergraduate courses aside, Hanson's knowledge oftheoretical physics was largely self-taught; yet he was soon capable of discussing the philosophical significance and epistemological status of quantum physics
