Current Work in Natural Philosophy
Especially since the mid-20th-century European crisis, researchers have begun recognizing the importance of looking at nature from a broader, philosophical perspective rather than the narrow, positivist approach that relies implicitly on a hidden, unexamined philosophy. One line of thought grows from the thought of Edmund Husserl, especially as expressed in The Crisis of European Sciences. Students of his such as Jacob Klein and Hans Jonas pursued his ideas.
Brian David Ellis has categorized more recent efforts as the "New Essentialism." Nancy Cartwright, David Oderberg, and John Dupré are some of the more prominent thinkers who can arguably be classed as generally adopting this open approach to the natural world.
Read more about this topic: Natural Philosophy
Famous quotes containing the words current, work, natural and/or philosophy:
““I” is a militant social tendency, working to hold and enlarge its place in the general current of tendencies. So far as it can it waxes, as all life does. To think of it as apart from society is a palpable absurdity of which no one could be guilty who really saw it as a fact of life.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)
“It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal, that we can understand our past through a male lens—if we are unaware that women even have a history—we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)