Download or read book On the Plurality of Worlds written by David Lewis and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2001-02-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a defense of modal realism; the thesis that our world is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that the individuals that inhabit our world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds. Lewis argues that the philosophical utility of modal realism is a good reason for believing that it is true.
Download or read book The Plurality of Worlds written by William Whewell and published by . This book was released on 1854 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds written by M. de Fontenelle (Bernard Le Bovier) and published by . This book was released on 1803 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plurality of Words written by Steven J. Dick and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1984-06-29 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the debate over extraterrestrial life from Aristotle to Kant.
Download or read book History of the Plurality of Worlds written by Pierre Connes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2021-06-25 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern research has demonstrated that many stars are surrounded by planets—some of which might contain the right conditions to harbor life. This has only reinforced a question that has been tormenting scientists, philosophers and priests since Antiquity: Are there other inhabited worlds beyond our own? This book analyzes the many ways that humans have argued for and depicted extraterrestrial life over the centuries. The first known texts about the subject date from as early as the 6th century BC. Since that time, countless well-known historical characters like Lucretius, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Cusanus, Bruno, Kepler, Descartes, and Huygens contributed to the debate; here, their lesser known opinions on the subject are studied in detail. It is often difficult for the modern mind to follow the thinking of our ancestors, which can only be understood when placed in the relevant context. The book thus extends its scope to the evolution of ideas about cosmology in general, as well as the culture in which these great thinkers wrote. The research is presented with the author's insights and humor, making this an easy and enjoyable read.
Download or read book On the Plurality of Actual Worlds written by Andrew L. Blais and published by Univ of Massachusetts Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the thesis that there is only one world, the author builds on Immanuel Kant's notion of metaphysical inversion to develop his idea that a world is the sum total of what exists in a particular time. In arguing that there are many representing beings, actual worlds, and truths, the author addresses ontological questions raised by Protagoras, Plato, and numerous contemporary philosophers. He concludes that there is no social and political reality independent of perspective. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book The Nature of Contingency written by Alastair Wilson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach to quantum theory and cutting-edge metaphysics and philosophy of science, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities, rather than as telling us solely about actuality. When quantum physics is taken seriously in the way first proposed by Hugh Everett III, it provides the resources for a new systematic metaphysical framework encompassing possibility, necessity, actuality, chance, counterfactuals, and a host of related modal notions. Rationalist metaphysicians argue that the metaphysics of modality is strictly prior to any scientific investigation; metaphysics establishes which worlds are possible, and physics merely checks which of these worlds is actual. Naturalistic metaphysicians respond that science may discover new possibilities and new impossibilities. This book's quantum theory of contingency takes naturalistic metaphysics one step further, allowing that science may discover what it is to be possible. As electromagnetism revealed the nature of light, as acoustics revealed the nature of sound, as statistical mechanics revealed the nature of heat, so quantum physics reveals the nature of contingency.
Download or read book Of the Plurality of Worlds an essay By W Whewell written by William Whewell and published by . This book was released on 1853 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Phenomenology of Plurality written by Sophie Loidolt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2018 Edwin Ballard Prize awarded by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology This book develops a unique phenomenology of plurality by introducing Hannah Arendt’s work into current debates taking place in the phenomenological tradition. Loidolt offers a systematic treatment of plurality that unites the fields of phenomenology, political theory, social ontology, and Arendt studies to offer new perspectives on key concepts such as intersubjectivity, selfhood, personhood, sociality, community, and conceptions of the "we." Phenomenology of Plurality is an in-depth, phenomenological analysis of Arendt that represents a viable third way between the "modernist" and "postmodernist" camps in Arendt scholarship. It also introduces a number of political and ethical insights that can be drawn from a phenomenology of plurality. This book will appeal to scholars interested in the topics of plurality and intersubjectivity within phenomenology, existentialism, political philosophy, ethics, and feminist philosophy.
Download or read book The Plurality of Worlds of Lewis written by Jacques Roubaud and published by Dalkey Archive Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The geometry of life in prose and poetry by a French mathematician. In The End of Clouds, he writes: "Solitude suited them. Not that they were faltering, but there are different ways of sliding across the sky. I would never have thought that such soft, cottony concentration could be reconciled with such an exigent geometry. But how, without any support, consent to dissolution?" By the author of Some Thing Black.
Download or read book Convention written by David Lewis and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Convention was immediately recognized as a major contribution to the subject and its significance has remained undiminished since its first publication in 1969. Lewis analyzes social conventions as regularities in the resolution of recurring coordination problems-situations characterized by interdependent decision processes in which common interests are at stake. Conventions are contrasted with other kinds of regularity, and conventions governing systems of communication are given special attention.
Download or read book Worlds and Individuals Possible and Otherwise written by Takashi Yagisawa and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takashi Yagisawa argues for a new version of modal realism, the view that non-actual possible worlds and individuals are as real as the actual ones. He asserts that the notion of reality is primitive, existence is a relation between a thing and a domain, and ordinary objects are extended in spatial, temporal, and modal dimensions.
Download or read book Space and Pluralism written by Stefano Moroni and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the social, functional and symbolic dimensions of urban space in today's world. The twelve essays are grouped in three parts, ranging from a conceptual framework to case descriptions rich with illustrations. They provide a valuable service in exploring the nature and significance of social space and particular aspects of its contemporary distribution and contestation. The book addresses a topic that is intrinsically interdisciplinary. Questions of space are examined from a rich variety of disciplinary perspectives in a welcome range from urban planning to political philosophy, shedding a good deal of light in the process. The issues in focus include the dichotomies of public and private space, discussion of rights and duties with regard to the use of space, or conflicts over its allocation. Well reasoned and presented discussion is offered from the perspective of basic values and rights. The policy issue of institutional recognition of the specifics of (minority community) identity is raised in opposition to abstract distributive accounts of justice.
Download or read book Other Worlds Than Ours written by Richard Anthony Proctor and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Concept of World from Kant to Derrida written by Sean Gaston and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-eighteenth century metaphysics was broadly understood as the study of three areas of philosophical thought: theology, psychology and cosmology. This book examines the fortunes of the third of these formidable metaphysical concepts, the world. Sean Gaston provides a clear and concise account of the concept of world from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century, exploring its possibilities and limitations and engaging with current issues in politics and ecology. He focuses on the work of five principal thinkers: Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida, all of whom attempt to establish new grounds for seeing the world as a whole. Gaston presents a critique of the self-evident use of the concept of world in philosophy and asks whether one can move beyond the need for a world-like vantage point to maintain a concept of world. From Kant to the present day this concept has been a problem for philosophy and it remains to be seen if we need a new Copernican revolution when it comes to the concept of world.
Download or read book Man s Place in the Universe written by Alfred Russel Wallace and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Duverger s Law of Plurality Voting written by Bernard Grofman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-03-05 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maurice Duverger is arguably the most distinguished French political scientist of the last century, but his major impact has, strangely enough, been largely in the English-speaking world. His book, Political Parties, first translated into English in 1954, has been very influential in both the party politics literature (which continues to make use of his typology of party organization) and in the electoral systems literature. His chief contributions there deal with what have come to be called in his honor Duverger’s Law and Duverger’s Hypothesis. The first argues that countries with plurality-based electoral methods will tend to become two-party systems; the second argues that countries using proportional representation (PR) methods will tend to become multi-party systems. Duverger also identifies specific mechanisms that will produce these effects, conventionally referred to as “mechanical effects”, and “psychological effects”. However, while Duverger’s Hypothesis concerning the link between PR and multipartism is now widely accepted; the empirical evidence that plurality voting results in two-party systems is remarkably weak—with the U.S. the most notable exception. The chapters in this volume consider national-level evidence for the operation of Duverger’s law in the world’s largest, longest-lived and most successful democracies of Britain, Canada, India and the United States. One set of papers involves looking at the overall evidence for Duverger’s Law in these countries; the other set deals with evidence for the mechanical and incentive effects predicted by Duverger. The result is an incisive analysis of electoral and party dynamics.
