Dialogue and Universalism

The paper analyzes philosophy of nature viewing it as this part of philosophy which investigates the foundations of nature and the limits of its existence. The paper concerns the following issues: the historical forms of the philosophy of nature, its modern context and the embracing philosophy of nature in the frame of co-evolution strategy determining that nature is only a moment of interaction between mankind and the world outward. It is shown that “philosophy of nature” is an extremely general notion being filled with various historical, social and cultural senses. Nature is involved into the smithery of human activity and human relations. In cannot be understood beyond these relations, as well as beyond the historical and cultural spheres. Nature becomes the participant of human questioning which grows in certain social and cultural context and carries on itself its signs. Philosophy of nature begins to be built up on the basis of ontology of history, or, in other words, on the basis of the comprehension of ultimate characteristics of historic processes.

In everyday life, people grasp mainly short term events of their natural surroundings, since our perception of broad and long term behavior of natural systems has been, and still is, rather limited. Throughout our history there are numerous cases of unheeded environmental warnings. This paper provides an overview of earlier era forewarnings, to illustrate how understanding of past responses to natural predicaments may help enhance future curriculum and policy discussions.

Man is a biosocial entity, so, in the study of his adaptive peculiarities two directions, that is, biologic and social, can be determined. Within the biological framework (more correctly, natural, not restricted by the boundaries of biology as a science) it is possible to combine evolutionary, genetic, medical-biological and ecological investigations. Recently, the problem of man’s adaptation to profound changes taking place in the environment, under the impact of man’s activity, becomes of growing importance. The second direction of the man adaptation research may be called social or socio-cultural. In the course of social adaptation man acts as an adaptively-adapting entity, inasmuch as, unlike animals, he does not only adapt himself to the environment, but also transforms it in course of his activity, sometimes creating a new environment. The complex study of human being makes necessary a synthesis of natural-scientific and socialhumanitariansides of the man’s adaptation problem. The analysis of the above mentioned directions, of social and biological man’s adaptations research, enables us tocome to the conclusion that no one direction, taking separately, can resolve the problem of man’s adaptation, which has a complicated pattern with many aspects. The man’s adaptation problem emerged within the framework of biology, and during a long time it was of evolutionary-biological character. However, in the course of the development of science it has become an interdisciplinary issue. It may be conceived profoundly and with all aspects only by means of an interdisciplinary synthetic analysis.

The article considers historical and actual aspects of social biologism. The historical aspects of biologism should help to describe the social content and quasi-scientific basis of socio-biologistic ideas in the contemporary world. The author shows the connections between many forms of socio-biologistic discourses and the structure of (capitalist) social relations. He proves that ideas of social biologism function as an ideological justification for different phenomena of social inequality, but at the same time they formulate a condition for its material reproduction. The connection between sociobiologistic ideology and practice is shown by the examples of the main historical forms which social biologism took in the 19th century. These examples include colonial racism, class-racism, anti-Semitism, and psychiatric biologism.

The subject of the article is the conception of the Universe quantum origin. According to this conception, the Universe was formed as an effect of the quantum fluctuation of physical vacuum and can just be considered as such fluctuation. The first suggestion of such an origin of the Universe was made by M.G. Albrow. The views of A. Vilenkin, S.W. Hawking and J.B. Hartle, who combined this conception with the inflationary Universe theory, made the basis for the analysis of the contemporary version of the conception of the Universe quantum origin. Consequently, a new version of this conception was elaborated, which assumed that the Universe was formed from nothing as an effect of quantum tunneling passage. Followers of the conception of the Universe quantum origin suggest that the solution of the problem of the origin of the Universe on the basis of this conception is of absolute character. However, the philosophical analysis of the problem discussed in the article, which includes cosmological consequences of the idea of inexhaustibility of matter, proved that the solution of the problem proposedin the conception of the Universe quantum origin is not and cannot be of absolute character. In fact, the solution is a cosmological hypothesis describing one of theoretical variants of the relative origin of the Universe. At the end of the article, it was remarked that the development of the 20th century cosmology results in the necessity of modification of philosophical terminology used so far for the purpose of the analysis of the problem of the origin of the Universe.

The term ontology of cognition is introduced to promote a neo-Kantian approach to epistemological questions. Following the discussion of some aspects of philosophy of cognitive subject authors claim that the most appropriate approach requires turning attention to a whole human species as a governed by the evolution rules collective, cognitive subject rather than individual one.

The spontaneity of natural life is the only property which differs this type of life from artificial life. However, it may be the main basis to understand life. Artificial life is constructed by living beings; it is a part of the natural life process, and its properties are not an effect of its own restrictions but of external assumptions. Therefore the investigation of artificial life is not a safe way of searching for basic properties of natural life. The purposefulness appears only in the area of a life process. We generalize the notion of information and encoding to apply them to the physical phenomena description. We use them to define the purposeful information—its example is a biological information, its quantity is an Eigen’s information value. Next we investigate properties of the spontaneous process of purposeful information collecting. In effect we get such properties of this process as: a goal “to exist”, reproduction and the Darwinian mechanism of randomchangeability and elimination. In this process a natural identity criterion of the evolving object connected with the “small change tendency” appears.

The essence of the science dealing with the origin of life, called protobiology, is based on the idea of the evolutionary formation of the first living beings from non-living matter. This thesis is generally accepted by both scientists and philosophers. However, the agreement stops at the same point at which it begins. At least this is the case for the scientists. Meanwhile, the philosophers appear to be amazingly concordant where the consensus, owing to their different orientations, might be rather unexpected. I demonstrate that at the source of many recently declared views concerning the philosophical foundations of origins-of-life studies—views both of scientists and philosophers—there is a misconception of a fundamental nature. I also try to reveal some sources of this misconception and its sometimes peculiar consequences.

In the article I undertake the question of the Ockham’s razor. I consider the basic version of this methodological postulate: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. I propose to interpret this postulate as a criterion of non-existence. In this context I analyse the matter of accidental entities as well as the ontological principle of economy.

An inspection into the contemporary theory of knowledge shows that a new methodological stance, that is, the so called evolutionary epistemology or, equivalently, evolutionary theory of knowledge, which is a version of “naturalistic” turn has been established. This stance tends to consider various philosophical problems from concrete scientific positions and by means of scientific knowledge. This interdisciplinary enterprise has determined as its purposes the researches of biological preconditions of human knowledge and the explanation of its features on the basis of the modern synthetic theory of evolution.The paper discusses the ideas of K. Lorenz, G. Vollmer, D.T. Campbell, H.R. Maturana, F.J. Varela. Especially, the paper concerns the thesis that the reality cognizable by man is the reality designed, created during his personally involved communicative activity. In this perspective, the question “What is the object of knowledge?” becomes inappropriate. The reliability of knowledge consists in being able to behave adequately in individual enterprising and in co-operation with other subjects.

Discussions on original sin conduced over the last 50 years yield the conclusion that the second half of the 20th century brought about the most far-reaching changes in the perception of original sin since the times of St. Augustine. In spite of these profound changes, the matter in question continues to give rise to controversies. Thus, Alfred Vanneste considers the omission of monogenism in the Catechism of the Catholic Church 2 to be a gross oversight on the part of the drafting committee. During deliberations on the transformations of modern culture, an issue may arise, which implied that the notion of human nature encumbered with the weakness of original sin is one of the truths of highest empirical confirmation. It should be noted, however, that an immense diversity of standpoints In expressing his truth exist.

Despite changeability of the world, the human mind also ponders on those quantities that remain constant over time. This was the case in ancient times, in the middle ages, and the same applies in modern physics. This paper discusses i.a. Zenon paradoxes, the principle of inertia, and the Emma Noether theorem, ending with the modern, so-called Zeno’s quantum effect. The foot-notes concern the ancient “Achilles” paradox, spot speed, as well as some of the facts taken out of the life-history of Emma Noether, as well as the example of applying her theorem.

Certain aspects of time physics were considered within the framework of quantum cosmology of the closed universe. Based on the general relativity we know that total energy of the closed universe is precisely equal to zero. This fact allows interpreting the creation of the closed universe as a spontaneous, causeless occurrence of respective quantum fluctuation, without any energy input. However, in such a universe the unitary evolution is “frozen”—no changes may occur, i.e. the universal cosmic time, which numbers the changes in the state of the universe, cannot exist. This conclusion is obviously contrary to the experiment. For this reason the changes observed in the closed universe may be generated solely by non-unitary, irreversible and jumpwise evolution, associated with quantum measurement, which cannot be caused by any element of reality liable to linear laws of quantum theory. Therefore, quantum cosmology does not generate a closed thinking system. In consequence, this leads to an ontology called objective idealism.

Our article is an overview of a selection of findings in physics relating to the issue of time—we do not present in it any “time theory” of our own. After making some general remarks on the issue of time, we present historical outline and a brief description of the current state of time interval measurements. Subsequently, we go on to discuss certain (relating to the concept of time) consequences of both theories of relativity: special and general. Here, time is a geometrical component of space-time continuum. Following section is dedicated to time in the so-called Hamiltonian formulations of the theory of particles, where it appears as a parameter of evolution. The last section contains remarks referring to certain attempts of going beyond the recognized physical theories relating to the question of time.

The time of mechanics is the eternal and unchangeable time of Parmenides, it is Plato’s idea of time, whereas the time of thermodynamics is Heraclitus’ flowing time, Thomas Aquinas’ time measured by various phenomena. I once wrote [2] that people who are not used to a physicist’s way of thinking are (at best) confused by the idea of a symmetrical time of mechanics. Physicists on the other hand often believe that the time of thermodynamics (irreversibility) does not really exist, and is merely an illusion. It seems therefore that both of these aspects of time, the time of mechanics and the time of thermodynamics, should be treated as complementary, in anticipation of a future “theory of everything” which will somehow reconcile them.

The issue of infinity appeared in cosmology in the form of a question on spatial and time finiteness or infinity of the universe. Recently, more and more talking is going on about “other universes” (different ones from “our”), the number of which may be infinite. Speculations on this topic emerged in effect of the discussions on the issue of the anthropic principle, and the so-called inflation scenario. In truth, this kind of speculations are hardly recognized as scientific theories, however, they may be included in a sort of “scientific fringe” fulfilling a beneficial heuristic function.All of the speculations regarding numerous universes boil down to the juggling of probabilities, i.e. to the applying of the theory of probability to the universes’ set. However, without probabilistic measure being introduced onto this “set” (as it is not known whether it is a set in a technical sense of this term)—and there is no knowledge at all as to how to do this—such considerations may not go beyond a vague intuition.The producing of other universes usually results from an assumption that the disturbing of original circumstances, of values of physical constants, or of other parameters characterizing the universe is possible. On the other hand, the idea of the final theory seems to assume that the mathematical structure of this theory should be rigid, i.e. that the disturbing of its parameters leads on to the very same structure. This would have eliminated the possibility of the existence of other universes.The idea of infinite number of universes sometimes has an anti-theological undertone: there is no need for assuming purposeful acting of the Creator, since all possibilities are fulfilled. The reaction of a theologian may be as follows: Just the same, God may create just a single universe, as much as an infinite number of universes. What’s more, one may risk saying that God is not interested in nothing that may be short of infinity.

I shall outline the topic from a historical perspective, placing the main emphasis on the hundred years’ period spanning 1870–1970.

In his classic essay Man and Time, Roman Ingarden outlines two contradictory experiences of time. The paper presents and investigates them.