Concrete observations come necessarily before any theoretical scientific modeling. One needs a large pool of empirically observed data on which a scientist builds his theory, that is to say, an imagined view of the world in which things are thought to be related mathematically. Science and rational imagination are a necessary conceptual pair. The principles …
We must acknowledge that the distinction between a priori and a posteriori raises many difficulties for an understanding of Hegel’s philosophy of nature. Some interpreters have contended that the a priori character of this philosophy makes it completely senseless in that it claims the legitimacy to replace empirical research of science with the pure logical …
There is an interesting misunderstanding concerning Hegel: the idea that he wanted to explain everything through his philosophical system, that he tried to raise himself to the absolute knowledge of God. Of course, this is also based on his own words, concepts, or expressions like ‘absolute knowledge’ that accompany his explanations concerning his philosophy. But …
Hegel describes very intuitively the essential conceptual features of each of the three dimensions of time (Hegel, 1970, p. 235): how do we think of the future, how do we think of the present, and how do we think of the past? Or rather, what the most elementary logical content is that we meet in …
In the overall architecture of being, time adds a new feature of externality to the externality of space: externality as succession. Whereas space was an externality as co-existence, time is an externality in which existing things, external to each other and therefore separated from each other, also succeed each other. This is a different feature …
Time and space, seen as contents of thought, are for Hegel, only possibilities. Both represent self-externalities, that is to say, magnitudes containing within themselves a multitude, a diversity of contents that cannot overlap. This is when we see time and space separately. Now, if we combine these two structures, the self-externality of space with the …
Why does hypnosis work? Although hypnotic suggestion is not very different from any other human communication, it can have tremendously different consequences. How can the hypnotist possibly make you behave differently than you expect yourself to do? A hypnotic suggestion is nothing more than a statement requiring you to do something. For example, lets’ suppose …
What is time? Saint Augustine, in antiquity, said that if no one asked him about the nature of time, he knew what time was. However, when someone asked him what time was, he could no longer answer that question. Apart from being only a rhetorical paradox, Saint Augustine’s words express our deep discomfort concerning such …
What does natural science do when interpreting human consciousness? It attempts to interpret it as a consequence or effect of the complex system that the brain is. In other words, it tries to obtain the mental state from the state of the brain and of the human body in general, similarly to how Laplace’s demon …
Whitehead considers that philosophy has a close relationship with religion and science. We could add in this respect that philosophy, like religion, aims at an integration of the individual into the universal. It aims at finding a general scheme of thought that can answer not only to the rational needs of the individual but also …