Philosophy and Unified Science (Set of 2 Books, An Old and Rare Book)

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An author is allowed to express gratitude to his sources and teachers without committing them to his opinions and methods.

My first thanks are to George Arthur Durland, Leila Dickie, Richard Waun and Dorothy Waun for having given me an education rich in contributions from both Eastern and Western worlds. Without their help and encouragement, this book could not have been conceived and written. First thanks will simultaneously go to my parents, whose interest in what is good in science and the humanities prevented overspecialization, and inspired me from the beginning of my life.

The University of California at Los Angeles provided instruction and conceptual materials unexcelled in the academic world. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Abrahan Kaplan who introduced me to symbolic logic, the philosophy of science and an understanding of Kantian epistemology.

Professor David Lee Hilliker of the Department of Mathematics at Cleveland State University made many valuable suggestions incorporated in the mathematical development in Chapter VI.

Mr. B. J. Russell of the Autonetics Division of North American Rockwell Corporation gave generously of his time in discussing my treatment of electricity and magnetism, and he also suggested the extension of symbolic logic to the development of computer science given in the Technical Appendix. The enhanced clarity and organization of these parts of my book are entirely to his credit.

Mr. Wing Poy Ng, also of the technical staff at Autonetics, discussed chemical thermodynamics and physical chemistry in relation to the chemical foundations of my book, and these discussions led to a unified treatment of chemical kinetics and periodic chemical reactions.

Mr. Adolph Gottfurcht, eminent research chemist and scholar, introduced me to many of the books listed in the Bibliography. His amazing knowledge of the literature of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and history contributed to the scope of my treatment.

Philosophy students in general, and those concerned with the philosophy of science in particular, have long needed a book which will provide a command of the fundamental concepts of mathematics and general science without on the one hand burying the reader in engineering detail, or on the other hand glossing over explanations required for full technical competence. This book is specifically designed to meet that end. The contents offer a good background in mathematics, physics, chemistry and the foundations of biology, insofar as these topics have a bearing upon the construction of philosophical Ideas and systems.

This is not a book in language analysis, although it does contain much of relevance to symbolic logic, including a discussion of the contributions of Kurt Godel. The emphasis Is upon providing methods, concepts and techniques suitable to philosophical research in the space age. And this means that the book is rich in mathematics and science in the material sense, but arranged and integrated in such a way that the work is unmistakably philosophical. If one philosopher's methods and ideals were to be cited as basic to the present book, these would belong to the German philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz. Much of the following work represents a realization and completion of his system, and if there is real value in the results, the credit for that value should go to him.

Students of science and philosophy will find the book a useful reference, whatever the philosophical position of the reader. Virtually all of the key equations of physics are fully derived, and divested of their mysteries. Relativity, quantum mechanics, high energy particle physics, general mechanics, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetic theory are developed, together with the foundations of chemistry and biology. Beyond this, the book is not merely encyclopaedic, there is full integration, and a world view in the manner and style of Leibniz, but of twentieth century substance.

Some persons have insisted over the past half-century that any such integration is doc ed to failure, due to the vast complexity forced upon scientific research by detailed specialization. It is the firm conviction of the author that this argument is not as sound as the frequency of its repetition implies. Physical science was always detailed and complex.

While much that is useful has emerged from the modern field called "the philosophy of science," the advantages gained are mainly in the area of clarification. Integration has largely been ignored. An integrative function has been denied to modern philosophy in order to discourage metaphysical speculation, and to make philosophy "respectable." The fear of ridicule from scientific circles has resulted in a bifurcation of "respectable" philosophy into two activities. On the one hand, philosophers become some kind of specialists in other fields, and hence cease being philosophers altogether. In this case we have philosophers as psychologists, physicists, archaeologists, philologists, historians, or whatever, and the result is a disintegration of philosophy into a set of specializations rightly belonging to other disciplines. On the other hand, philosophers become language analysts and enter the fields of foundations of mathematics or semantics.

Now let us be clear at the beginning in stating that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these activities. It is quite necessary to master subject matters of a specialized kind which are developed in the sciences, and it is equally important for the philosopher to be conversant with the techniques of language analysis, whether applied to the foundations of mathematics or to an examination of the foundations of physics, chemistry and biology. The problem is that, if these activities are divorced from the general aims of aistorical philosophy, the activity of philosophy as such will surely die. For some persons, indeed for all who hold philosophy in contempt, this is not to be regretted. For those of us who love philosophy, the result is a catastrophe.

With these points in mind, the reader will readily appreciate the author's return to "philosophy of science" as old-fashioned "philosophy of nature," or natural philosophy. Such a return will retain all that is significant in "modern philosophy." But more important, the activity classically associated with philosophy will also be retained.

The philosophy of science as developed in this book is the expression of pure analytic, algebraic and geometric structures as mathematics, the application of those structures leading to measurement, analysis, physical description, deduction from that description, engineering and aesthetic reconstruction, transformation and creation of real, concrete perceptive experience, and finally, the philosophy of science will include the analysis of those formal structures, both formally and materially. We shall thus sweep out, at least in essential outline, the methodological aspects of philosophy as pure mathematics, logic, epistemology, axiology and aesthetics, and the perspectival aspects of philosophy as cosmology, ontology and the development of art objects. (The analysis of aesthetic objects is properly called "aesthetics," but the construction of an expressive language for the construction of aesthetic objects falls in the application category with engineering.) We emphasize once more that the cosmology and ontology or "metaphysics" of our presentation is just general science.

The task which has always belonged to philosophy is task of integration, of seeing what is essential and profound in the logic and subject matter of science, and unifying the principles derived. The role of integrator is reasonable. It is not necessary to "know everything" in order to fulfill the genuine philosophical assignment. Indeed, the philosopher's art is precisely the ability to connect data without becoming lost in detail.