In 1543, Copernicus publicly defended geokinetic and heliocentric universe. This book examines why and how he became a Copernican and what his affirmation of heliocentrism means in the context of the Scientific Revolution. Close reading of Copernicus’ texts and examination of his sociocultural context reveals his commitment to the Platonist program of True Astronomy, which is to discover the well-proportioned, harmonious universe, hidden beyond visible appearances, but accessible through mathematical reasoning. The principal goal of the work is to show that the hypothesis of Copernicus’ Platonism brings unity and internal coherence to his project and provides historical background of his contributions to the Scientific Revolution.
COBISS.SI-ID: 37042221
The aim of the book is to bring together on the one hand the philosophical tradition of reflections on the void, from antiquity up to its contemporary developments, and on the other hand the problem of the void as it is posed in science, both historically and particularly in its present stage. There is the full recognition of the fact that the two languages, coming from the philosophical and the scientific side, are incommensurate, and the project doesn’t cater for any easy synthesis; but neither does it consent to the dialogue of the deaf. New questions about defining the void are posed by science itself, and the new ways in which philosophy can treat this one of its ancient problems can be brought to the point of a mutual clarification.
COBISS.SI-ID: 270731264
At the end of the legendary session on repetition, in his Seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan evokes, in a few condensed and enigmatic sentences, three terms of ancient philosophy, tyche, clinamen and den, indicating that the fate of idealism and materialism is there at stake. The implication, not quite explicit, is that the three terms have to be read together, that they intersect and designate a space where the question of materialism can be raised in its minimal form. The present paper takes up the two terms of clinamen and den, it traces their history and attempts to explore their implications for the concepts of object a, the signifier, repetition and ultimately the concept of being.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1623886
Today we are witnessing a quite common Manichean break-up of science on natural sciences and the humanities. Natural sciences play the role of useful,clinically clean, objective and exact activity, while humanism is reduced to a useless conglomerate of subjective, ideologically motivated constructs. Following Althusser, I aim to show that this delineation is false - not because humanism is not entangled with ideologies, but because the same holds for science: scientists are as scientists not immune to their personal beliefs and worldviews that can always be reduced to very concrete positions within philosophy (say, Spinozism in Einstein's case, rationalism in Gödel's, or materialism in Heisenberg's). I claim that the break-up of science leads toan illegitimate naturalisation of society that serves as the framework of the neoliberal worldview within science and other fields.
COBISS.SI-ID: 49708898