In this paper I conduct a philosophical-physical analysis leading to the development of a philosophically justified form of Coulomb's law on the basis of contents-form philosophy.. From this it follows that dimensionality of "electric charge" at the subatomic level of matter is g/s, i.e., the charge in fact represents the mass speed of exchange at the field level. Thus, the philosophiclogical solution to Coulomb's law on the basis of contents-form philosophy radically changes our conventional concepts about the microworld, the consequences of which will be considered in greater detail.

Continuous controversies about how Aristotle's teleological biology relates to modern biological science address some widely debated questions in contemporary philosophy of science. Three main groups of objections made by contemporary science against Aristotle's biology can be identified: 1) Aristotle's biological teleology is too anthropomorphic; 2) the idea is tied too substance based; 3) Aristotle's final ends contradict the mechanistic spirit of modern science, which is looking for physical causes. There are two ways of dealing with these objections. The first consists in showing misinterpretations of Aristotle's thought that underlie these arguments. A second line of defense explores the idea that teleological concepts are not only incorporated and widely used in contemporary science, but that in fact biology does not have to renounce teleology in order to reconcile with the modern scientific mind. I suggests that a complete understanding of complex biological phenomena can only be achieved by combining different approaches to this issue.

La incidencia de la educación humanista, en su vertiente filosófica, sobre algunos de los físicos que formaron parte de la creción de la teoría de los quanta-reconocida unánimemente como la más fértil de la historia de la física-es un dato innegable. En este trabajo no pretendemos argumentar a favor o en contra de las dos posturas en pugna, que se observan desde los inicios de esta teoría, sino denunciar algunos de los malentendidos que prácticamente han sepultado el pensamiento de uno de los integrantes más conspicuos de la denominada 'Escuela de Copenhague' y que es Werner Heisenberg. La razón para semejante trvestismo conceptual, bien pudo haberse debido según nuestro criterio, a que su perspectiva filosófica no se habría prestado a ser aprehendida por los Denksysteme que subyacen a las corrientes epistemológicas tradicionales. Esta es la razón por la cual nos ceñiremos estrictamente a sus escritos, subrayando sus reflexiones sobre el pragmatismo y el positivismo y que, paradójicamente, han servido para tildarlo de tal. Sin intención de hacer gala de un inocuo ejercicio de erudición solamente pretendemos mostrar la convicción más profunda de nuestro autor, a saber, que la ciencia nace en diálogo, en la frontera con la filosofía, sin la cual la primera no sería posible.

For two centuries Kant's first Critique has nourished various turns against transcendent metaphysics and realism. Kant was scandalized by reason's impotence in confronting infinity (or finitude) as seen in the divisibility of particles and in spatial extension and time. Therefore, he had to regard the latter as subjective and reality as imponderable. In what follows, I review various efforts to rationalize Kant's antinomies-efforts that could only flounder before the rise of Einstein's general relativity and Hawking's blackhole cosmology. Both have undercut the entire Kantian tradition by spawning highly probable theories for suppressing infinities and actually resolving these perplexities on a purely physical basis by positing curvatures of space and even of time that make them reëntrant to themselves. Heavily documented from primary sources in physics, this paper displays time’s curvature as its slowing down near very massive bodies and even freezing in a black hole from which it can reëmerge on the far side, where a new universe can open up. I argue that space curves into a double Möbius strip until it loses one dimension in exchange for another in the twin universe. It shows how 10-dimensional GUTs and the triple Universe, time/charge/parity conservation, and strange and bottom particle families and antiparticle universes, all fit together.

Can there be scientific theories in psychology, medicine or psychiatry? I approach this question through an in-depth analysis of a typical experiment for clinical depression involving the monoamine hypothesis, drug action, and placebos. I begin my discussion with a reconstruction of Adolph Grünbaum's conceptual analysis of 'placebo,' and then use his notion of "intentional placebo" to discuss a typical experiment using the monoamine hypothesis, two drugs and a placebo. I focus on the theoretical aspects of the experiment, especially on the notion of causal explanation. I then raise five conceptual and methodological problems for theory construction. These problems focus on questions of the causal efficacy of placebos and drugs; ad hoc versus ceteris paribus explanations in biomedicine and psychology; and the falsifiability of the monoamine hypothesis. I conclude by pointing out the need for further, rigorous philosophical analysis concerning the possibility of theory construction in psychology, medicine, or psychiatry.

In modern physics the common relational approach should be extended to the concepts of element and set. The relationalization of the concepts of element and set means that in the final analysis the World exists as an indivisible whole, not as a set (of one or another kind of elements). Therefore, we have to describe quantum systems in terms of potentialities and probabilities: since quantum systems cannot be analyzed completely into sets of elements, we can speak only of the potentialities of isolating elements and sets within their structure. On the other hand this quantum property of the world as an indivisible whole accounts for the astonishing logical properties of the structure of the potentialities of quantum systems which it brings forth. This has been confirmed by quantum-correlation experiments (A.Aspect and oth.). These effects have a relational nature, not a physical-causal or material one, and they are brought forth by the changes (resulting from measurement or physical interaction) in the structure of the relations of the mutually complementary sides of reality. One of these sides expresses an actually existing structure of the system as a real (and physically verifiable) but only relatively separable set, and the other expresses the sets of potentialities in it which arise from the astonishing property of finite non-analyzability of the system into elements and sets (i.e. by the quantum property of the world as an indivisible unit).

In this paper I deal with the status of science in Heidegger's thought. Particularly, I pose to Heidegger the question whether science can constitute a problem for philosophy, once one has cast doubt on philosophy's rank as first science whose prerogative is to establish the truth-criteria of the particular sciences. To express it with the convenience cliches always afford, this is the question of knowledge in the postmodern epoch. The paper traces the transition from the early "fundamental ontology" to the late notion of a thinking that is to come at the end of philosophy. It will include some reflections on the role of an education for science at the end of modernity. The texts analyzed include Being and Time, "What calls for thinking," and "The end of philosophy and the task of thinking."

In this paper we suggest that the contemporary global intellectual crisis of our (Western) civilization consists in the fundamental transformation of the classical (both Ancient and Modern) types of rationality towards the nonclassical one. We give a brief account of those classical types of rationality and focus on the more detailed description of the contemporary process of the formation of the new HTR which we label as nonclassical. We consider it to be one of the historical possibilities that might radically transform the fundamentals of our human world; in fact, this process has already begun. The paper mentions some of the main features of this process, such as formation of a new type of scientific object; new conceptual schemes; new logical and methodological equipment of scientific research; and new understanding of human nature, human mind, human action, and social order.

Traditional convictions regarding science (such as universalism, necessity and eternal validity) are currently in doubt. Relativism seems to destroy scientific claims to rationality. This paper shows a way to keep the traditional convictions of scientific knowledge while acknowledging relativism. With reference to the practicing scientist, we replace descriptivism with constructivism; we modify relative validity with the claim to understanding; and, we offer methodological strategies for acquiring understanding. These strategies we call strangification, which means taking a scientific proposition system out of its context and putting it in another context. We can thus see the implicit presuppositions of the given proposition system by means of the problems arising out of the application of this procedure. Such a change in the understanding of science holds important consequences.

This paper examines how such fundamental notions as causality and determinism have undergone changes as a direct result of empirical discoveries. Although such notions are often regarded as metaphysical or a priori concepts, experimental discoveries at the beginning of this century—radioactive decay, blackbody radiation and spontaneous emission—led to a direct questioning of the notions of causality and determinism. Experimental evidence suggests that these two notions must be separated. Causality and indeterminism are compatible with the behavior of quantum-mechanical systems. The argument also sheds some light on the Duhem-Quine thesis, since experimental results at the periphery of the conceptual scheme directly affect conceptions at the very core.

In order to understand the rationality of scientific creation, we must first clarify the following: (1) the historical structure of scientific creation from starting point to breakthrough, and then to establishment; (2) the process from the primary through the productive aspects of the scientific problem, the idea of creation, the primary conjecture, the scientific hypothesis, and finally the emergence of the genetic structure establishing the theory; and (3) the problem threshold of rationality in scientific creation. Given that the theory of scientific creation adopts the descriptive viewpoint of rationality, it therefore establishes rational principles such as the following: (1) a superlogical mode of thinking; (2) an analysable genetic structure which consists of the primary and productive aspects (including experiential facts, background theory, operational means, higher irrational factors, etc.); (3) a means of recourse to the effect of incubation of a higher idea; (4) a movement in thinking from generality to particularity; and (5) the replacement of irrational by rational factors.