Witches, Scientists, Philosophers

by Butts, Robert E.; Solomon, Graham

• ISBN13: 9780792366089
• ISBN10: 0792366085
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

Robert E. Butts (1928-1997) was a philosopher and historian of science whose central concerns were the distinction between the rational and the irrational. He viewed scientific rationality as our major defence against the various conditions that encourage witch hunts and similar outbursts of irrationality, with all their attendant pain and terror. Butts saw himself as a pragmatic realist, combining what he took to be the best aspects of logical empiricism with a historically informed pragmatism, deeply appreciative of the methods of science, trying to describe a kind of rationality essential in the struggle to preserve human values. This volume gathers previously unpublished essays and lectures with some previously published, thematically related essays. It includes essays and lectures on philosophical aspects of the European witch hunt, on scientific rationality and methodology, and on the relationships between science and philosophy exhibited in the writings of such historically significant figures as Leibniz, D'Alembert, Hume, Kant, Carnap and Kuhn.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
PART I: WITCHES AND WITCH-HUNTERS
Two Stories About Evil: Christianity and the Creation of Witches	3	(34)
The Tamblyn Lectures: De Praestigiis Daemonum: Early Modern Witchcraft: Some Philosophical Reflections
`Who They be that are called Witches': The Ontology of Witches	11	(8)
The Witch as Other, the Witch as Body: The Phenomenology of Witchcraft	19	(8)
Causes and Signs: The Epistemology of Witchcraft	27	(10)
PART II: PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE FROM LEIBNIZ TO KANT
Leibniz' Monads: A Heritage of Gnosticism and a Source of Rational Science	37	(14)
Rationalism in Modern Science: d'Alembert and the ``esprit simpliste''	51	(12)
Hume's Scepticism	63	(8)
Husserl's Critique of Hume's Notion of Distinctions of Reason	71	(8)
The Role of Arational Factors in Interpretive History: The Case of Kant and ESP	79	(28)
Kant's Theory of Musical Sound: An Early Exercise in Cognitive Science	107	(20)
Kant's Dialectic and the Logic of Illusion	127	(12)
PART III: TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
The Hypothetico-Deductive Model of Scientific Theories: A Sympathetic Disclaimer	139	(20)
Methodology and the Functional Identity of Science and Philosophy	159	(14)
Sciences and Pseudosciences: An Attempt at a New Form of Demarcation	173	(20)
The Reception of German Scientific Philosophy in North America: 1930-1962	193