Encouraging Openness: Essays for Joseph Agassi on the Occasion of His 90th Birthday

by Nimrod Bar-Am (Editor), Stefano Gattei (Editor)

Overview

This volume features forty-two essays written in honor of Joseph Agassi. It explores the work and legacy of this influential philosopher, an exciting and challenging advocate of critical rationalism. Throughout six decades of stupendous intellectual activity, Agassi called attention to rationality as the very starting point of every notable philosophical way of life.
The essays present Agassi’s own views on critical rationalism. They also develop and expand upon his work in new and provocative ways. The authors include Agassi's most notable pupils, friends, and colleagues. Overall, their contributions challenge the received view on a variety of issues concerning science, religion, and education.
Readers will find well-reasoned arguments on such topics as the secular problem of evil, religion and critical thinking, liberal democratic educational communities, democracy and constitutionalism, and capitalism at a crossroad.<To Joseph Agassi, philosophy is the practice of reason, where reason is understood as the relentless search for criticisms of the best available explanations that we have to the world around us. This book not only honors one of the most original philosophers of science today. It also offers readers insights into a school of thought that lies at the heart of philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319576695
Publisher:	Springer-Verlag New York, LLC
Publication date:	06/22/2017
Series:	Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science , #325
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	584
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Nimrod Bar-Am is a philosopher of science specializing in logic and communication. He is currently a senior lecturer at the communication department, Sapir College. He studies the history of scientific method in general and methodological challenges within the social sciences in particular. His most recent publication is In Search of a Simple Introduction to Communication (Springer 2016). He was Joseph Agassi's research assistant (1993-1998), and published a couple of peer-reviewed papers with him.
Stefano Gattei is a philosopher and historian of science, currently Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Edinburgh and Eleanor Searle Visiting Professor in History at the California Institute of Technology. He worked extensively on key issues and authors of contemporary philosophy of science, as well as on the history of early modern astronomy and cosmology. Most recently, he co-edited, with Joseph Agassi, the fourth volume of Paul Feyerabend’s collected philosophical papers: Physics and Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). His Early Biographies of Galileo is forthcoming with Princeton University Press; he is currently working on a book on Johannes Kepler and the role of engraved frontispieces and title-pages in the Scientific Revolution (under contract with Oxford University Press).

Table of Contents

Part 1. Reflections on Rationalism as a Tradition and a Choice.- Chapter 1. Why Don’t Scientists Respect Philosophers? (Mario Bunge).- Chapter 2. Evaluative Selection in Multimerit Situations (Nicholas Rescher).- Chapter 3. Joseph Agassi from Metaphysics to Politics (Christopher Donohue).- Chapter 4. Horror Dogmatis (Zuzana Parusniková).- Chapter 5. Comprehensively Critical Metapolitics (Michael Chiariello).- Chapter 6. Feng Shui: An Overlooked Topic for Examination by Critical Rationalists (Michael Matthews).- Part 2. The Sceptic Quest for a Sensible World.- Chapter 7. Verisimilitude: Why and How (Ilkka Niiniluoto).- Chapter 8. The Story of the German Translation of Tarski’s Book on Truth (Jan Woleński).- Chapter 9. Two Philosophical Contributions to Modern Physics (Jagdish Hattiangadi).- Chapter 10. Lessons from the Philosophy of Science to Data Mining and Vice Versa (Abraham Meidan).- Chapter 11. The Mystique of Computer Technology and the Waning of Critical Enquiry (Sheldon Richmond).- Chapter 12. Francis Bacon, Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and Modern Experimental Biology (Ute Deichman).- Chapter 13. Ebola in West Africa: Biosocial and Biomedical Reflections (Daniel Cohen).- Part 3. Making Sense of a Changing Past.- Chapter 14. Jacob&Esau Today (Malachi Hacohen).- Chapter 15. Charity, Logic, and Para-clericalism: Rereading Agassi on Koestler on Galileo (Maurice Finocchiaro).- Chapter 16. What is the Problem? Understanding the History of Ideas(William Berkson).- Chapter 17. Reflections on Science and Imagination(Robert S. Cohen).- Chapter 18. The Legends of One Methodology of Science Used throughout Its History and Its Independence from the Institutions in which Science Has Been Conducted (John Wettersten).- Chapter 19. Beyond Wavefunctions: A Time-Symmetric Nonlocal Ontology for Quantum Mechanics (Yakir Aharonov, Eliahu Cohen and Avshalom C. Elitzur).- Part 4. The Open Society and its Challenges.- Chapter 20. Critical Rationalism Applied: A Footnote to The Siblinghood of Humanity (Margaret Ng).- Chapter 21. En Route to the “Siblinghood of Humanity”? (Miriam Fahri Rodrig).- Chapter 22. The Perfect Mediator and His Limitations: Toward a Multifaceted Approach to Peacemaking in the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle (Sapir Handelman).- Chapter 23. Joseph Agassi’s Educational Thoughts in Interchange (1970-1987) (Ian Winchester).- Chapter 24. Can the Israeli Academia Replace Mandatory Conscription? (Amir Maytal).- Chapter 25. Education for Democracy (Ronald Swartz).- Chapter 26. How Can We Attain Both Democracy and Constitutionalism? (Kiichi Tachibana).- Chapter 27. Civil Nationalism: the Only Buffer against Fascism and Fundamentalism (Chen Yehezkely).- Chapter 28.Obstructing the Realization of Civil Responsibility: Political, Sociological, Historical, and Psychological Aspects of Civil Responsibility (Chemi Ben-Noon).- Chapter 29. The Secular Problem of Evil (John Kekes).- Part 5. The Human Study of Human Culture.- Chapter 30. Towards A General Sociology of Science (Ian Jarvie).- Chapter 31. Critical Rationalism in Sociology (Michael Banton).- Chapter 32. Worker Bees and Slave Labor (Hilde Hein).- Chapter 33. The Pitfall of Hypostatization and the Reality of Social Things (Fred Eidlin).- Chapter 34. On Being a Popperian Economist (Lawrence Boland).- Chapter 35. Capitalism at a Crossroad (Raphael Sassower).- Chapter 36. Notes on Revisiting Klappholz and Agassi’s “Methodological Prescriptions in Economics” (Lucien Foldes).- Chapter 37. Joseph Agassi, the M²T Seminar, and His Influence on My Work (Richard Lipsey).- Part 6. Philosophical Encounters.- Chapter 38. To Transcend the Popper-Agassi Impasse (Nathaniel Laor).-Chapter 39. Joe Agassi, Intellectual Irritant (Raf Champion).- Chapter 40. Critical Rationalism as Therapy (Michael Segre).- Chapter 41. Dungeons and Dragons: A Lesson in Etiquette from Professor Agassi (Joan Bailey).- Chapter 42. Drive around the Block (Charlie Sawyer).

Editorial Reviews

I fully recommend this book to those interested in Agassi’s philosophy, in twentieth- century philosophy of science, or in historical, sociological, and political approaches to science studies. … I can confirm that the book nicely illustrates Agassi’s optimistic stance on philosophical reflection on the sciences, along with the tolerance and impartiality that characterizes Agassi’s academic writings and life.” (Cristian Soto, Metascience, Vol. 28 (3), November, 2019)

From the Publisher