יום ב' ,   21.11.05,  
 

** שימו לב לשיוני - חדר 449, בניין גילמן  **

שתי הרצאות מיוחדות, לרגל ביקורם בארץ של שני חוקרים בולטים בתחומם:

בשעה 16:00:

Professor Jamil Ragep, The University of Oklahoma
"New Perspectives on the Connection between Islamic Astronomy and Copernicus"

בשעה 18:00:

Professor Olivier Rieppel, The University of Chicago and The Field Museum
"The Metaphysics of Evolving Entities"

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 Abstract:

Based upon research over the past half century, there has been a growing recognition that a number of mathematical hypotheses and astronomical models used by Copernicus had originally been developed by Islamic astronomers. These include such devices as the Tusi Couple and the `Urdi Lemma as well as a number of Copernicus’s planetary models. This has led to speculation about how Copernicus may have learned of these models and the role they played in the development of his revolutionary, heliocentric cosmology. Thus far most discussion of this connection has been confined to fairly technical issues related to these models. It has usually been assumed that “physical” or “cosmological” issues that led Copernicus to go from a geocentric to a heliocentric system were not important to Islamic astronomy since the latter remained geocentric. But new findings have called this into question, and this paper will argue that the connections may well go deeper, extending into the physics of a moving Earth, the development of a proposition that was crucial for the transformation from a geocentric to a heliocentric system, and the way in which astronomy itself was conceived. In addition to examining these connections, we will also discuss their historiographical implications for understanding the “Copernican Revolution.”

The Metaphysics of Evolving Entities (Olivier Rieppel)

Abstract:

In theories of developmental and evolutionary biology nature forms an encaptic system of hierarchically nested integrated objects such as taxa, species, organisms, organs, cells, and cell organelles.  Evolutionary change occurs at various levels of this hierarchy.  The metaphysics of evolving entities has been discussed most extensively with respect to developmental modules, homologues, and species.  It is generally accepted that evolving entities cannot be conceptualized as intensionally defined classes or extensionally defined sets in the classical, Aristotelian (Lockean, Millian) sense, since such classes or sets are spatiotemporally unrestricted and immutable.  A widely held alternative is to view evolving entities as particulars (historical individuals or historical objects).  Evolving entities as particulars are designated by proper names.  Applying Kripke’s analysis of proper names to species names in a temporal, instead of a modal, context, Hull concluded that species names are Millian proper names without connotation.  The proper names of evolving entities cannot be synonymous (in an extensional language) with definite descriptions given the contingency of the ongoing evolutionary process.  Descriptions furthermore issue predicates that would mark out classes, sets, or kinds.  The consequence of ‘bionominalism’ is an event ontology that reduces species, or evolving entities in general, to a field of passing occurrences governed by the laws of genealogy and tagged with a proper name.   Evolving entities become nondescript links – upon – links in the chain of genealogy. This contrasts with a more causal approach to evolutionary entities that conceptualizes those as homeostatic property cluster kinds. This view allows generalizations of variable scope across reference processes in which tokens of the respective kinds participate. In the case of evolving entities, the clustering of the relevant properties, of which common descent is one, is an ongoing process that can be historically delimited if the relevant clustering is so delimited.

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