in response to existentialism: possibility vs. laws of nature

[tommylanders]

I just saw a show on a public access channel about existentialism, mainly about Jean-Paul Sartre. And I thought the following distinction might be a good starting point to illustrate my recent thoughts on philosophy, science, etc.: the universe as a realm of pure possibility (for instance, as described in Sartre's book Nausea), vs. the universe as

Comments

Reading list

[booksoverbombs]

Well, people have been concerned about these questions for some time now. Here's a reading list, more or less ad libitum, that might serve as an historical introduction to the history and philosophy of science. About a third of it should be readily available online, and the most important sections of other two thirds are usually anthologized in phil sci and epistemology surveys. Of what's below, Feyerabend, Snow, Waddington and Florman take more care to approach some of the questions you seem to be asking.

Bacon. Novum Organum.
Galileo. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
Descartes. Discourse on Method.
Hume. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
Burtt, E.A. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science.
Ayer. Language, Truth and Logic.
Popper. The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Lakatos. Proofs and Refutations.
Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Feyerabend. Against Method.
Westfall, R.S. The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanism and Mechanics
Waddington, C.H. The Scientific

Re: Reading list

[tcpip]

Damn good list, I must say.

Also, given the poster's interest in existentialism, Maurice Merleu-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception".

WRT to the original post it seems to be heading towards the argument that we do not so much discover the facts of reality, but rather we dispense with what is false about reality...

Re: Reading list

[booksoverbombs]

I'm having trouble reading that directly out of the OP, but ok.

M-P, sure. There's also a line of German psychophysics which the OP might find useful in asking his questions, some of which, I'm told, influenced the structure of Phenomenology of Perception.: Fechner's Elemente, Mueller's Handbuch, Mach's Analysis of Sensations, &c.

Re: Reading list

[tommylanders]

We do discover what may as well be called "facts of reality." However, our expression of those facts is bound to be limited by our own mode of expression, and by our own inability to "get it all right at once" (until, perhaps, we do get it right, still given the limitations of our notation).

Anyway, thanks for the reading list. If I could carefully read those books before I die, and maybe even write what I've understood of them, I'd be pleased.

[tommylanders]

I don't doubt that I misrepresent the existentialists, as I haven't read much of them