文档介绍：Conceptual Systems
It is argued that the introduction of new concepts and the abandonment of
older concepts are persistent features of human thought as we discover new
phenomena and re-examine familiar phenomena in the light of develop-
ments in science, technology and society. In recent years conceptual change
and any consequent mensurability have e important topics in
philosophy and the philosophy of science. Conceptual Systems seeks to
understand how radically new concepts are introduced into our thinking while
maintaining sufficient continuity with older concepts to ensure intelligibility.
The book provides a unified account of the nature of concepts, with
particular emphasis on the development of scientific concepts. Harold I. Brown
establishes a database of examples of conceptual change in science, mathe-
matics, society, and philosophy, and critically examines the influential
theories of concepts in modern philosophy, documenting the way in which
different theories of concepts provide different criteria for a essful
conceptual analysis. The author then constructs a new theory of concepts
that builds on the work of Wilfrid Sellars. The theory is applied to two types
of problems: rethinking the nature and purpose of conceptual analysis, and
studying conceptual change in the history of science – a task that requires
analysis of the concepts being examined. Conceptual Systems then presents
two new studies of conceptual change in physics, developments in the seven-
teenth century from Galileo to Descartes to Newton and the conceptual
framework of the “standard model” in late twentieth-century high-energy
physics. These studies illustrate how the theory of concepts developed here
can guide historical studies while providing further tests of the adequacy of
the theory.
This book will be ed by philosophers, philosophers of science and
cognitive scientists interested in concepts.
Harold I. Brown is Professor Emeritus at Northern Illinois