KNIGHT, DAVID M. and EDDY, MATTHEW D. Science and beliefs: from Natural Philosophy to Natural Science 1700–1900

David Hull’s Natural Philosophy of Science

From philosophy to science (to natural philosophy): evolutionary developmental perspectives.

This paper focuses on abstraction as a mode of reasoning that facilitates a productive relationship between philosophy and science. Using examples from evolutionary developmental biology, I argue that there are two areas where abstraction can be relevant to science: reasoning explication and problem clarification. The value of abstraction is characterized in terms of methodology (modeling or da...

Why natural science needs phenomenological philosophy.

Through an exploration of theoretical physics, this paper suggests the need for regrounding natural science in phenomenological philosophy. To begin, the philosophical roots of the prevailing scientific paradigm are traced to the thinking of Plato, Descartes, and Newton. The crisis in modern science is then investigated, tracking developments in physics, science's premier discipline. Einsteinia...

Science and Natural History

P rior to the blight epidemic, American chestnut (Castanea dentata Borkh.) was one of the most important timber and nut-producing tree species in eastern North America (U.S. Census Bureau 1908). Its native range extended from southern Maine and Ontario in the north to Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi in the south (Sargent 1905). It now exists primarily as stump sprouts across its entire native ...

Natural science.