Peter Rickman tells us why it isn’t. I was slightly taken aback when I heard a speaker at a psychology lecture meeting claiming confidently that psychology was a science. Of course, if we define science broadly, as the systematic search for knowledge, psychology would qualify for that label. But it is not terminology that is …
Mihail Evans studies art to understand politics. The work of Frank Ankersmit on representation and democracy is surprisingly little known even among academics working in political theory. At the end of the 1990s, already one of the most eminent figures globally in the philosophy of history, this professor at the University of Groningen in the …
Matt Qvortrup argues that Aristotle’s political philosophy is surprisingly modern. The son of a doctor, Aristotle was born in the city of Stagira in Macedonia in the year 384 BC, and was educated at Plato’s Academy. When his mentor Plato died in 347 BC, the Macedonian went home and became the tutor of Alexander, the …
Aristotle’s Philosophy of Equality, Peace, & Democracy Read More »
Sam Woolfe says that we’re deluding our selves. In our day-to-day lives, it always appears that there is an I who is thinking, perceiving, and interacting with the world. Even the language we use assumes that there is a self – a distinct conscious entity: when we talk to each other we say, ‘I think…’, …
Chris Durante asks himself just what makes him the person he used to be. Stepping into a park I had frequented as a little boy, memories of my childhood began to flood my mind, each one a rich story of a distant past. As I continued to reminisce, each story flowed into the next, and …
Water has puzzled scientists for decades. For the last 30 years or so, they have theorized that when cooled down to a very low temperature like -100C, water might be able to separate into two liquid phases of different densities. Like oil and water, these phases don’t mix and may help explain some of water’s …
Using machine learning to better understand how water behaves Read More »
Tim Delaney foresees five threats to sustaining global civilization. For centuries, social thinkers have pondered whether the Earth’s carrying capacity is being compromised by human overpopulation. For example, in his An Essay on the Principles of Population (1798), Thomas Malthus claimed that the world’s population was growing too quickly in proportion to the growth in …
Sándor Szegláb decodes the hidden message of the Tractatus. The statements of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus start with index numbers. It is taken for granted that this indexing is used in such a way that 1.1 is a comment on or elaboration of 1, 1.11 and 1.12 comment on 1.1, and so forth. With Wittgenstein, …
José Zalabardo investigates which problem Wittgenstein is trying to solve. For many contemporary interpreters of the Tractatus, its ultimate goal is not to answer philosophical questions or solve philosophical problems. Rather, Wittgenstein’s aim is therapeutic – to make his readers see that philosophy is not a legitimate pursuit: the problems are fictitious, the questions are …
Carlos Muñoz-Suárez guides us on a trip down the linguistic rabbit hole. “Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language.”Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 4.03 On 13th March 1919, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote a letter telling Bertrand Russell that he had completed a book entitled Logisch-Philosophische …