The World Observed/The World Conceived - Hardcover

Radder, Hans

9780822942849: The World Observed/The World Conceived

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822942844 ISBN 13: 9780822942849

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006

Observation and conceptual interpretation constitute the two major ways through which human beings engage the world. The World Observed/The World Conceived presents an innovative analysis of the nature and role of observation and conceptualization. While these two actions are often treated as separate, Hans Radder shows that they are inherently interconnected-that materially realized observational processes are always conceptually interpreted and that the meaning of concepts depends on the way they structure observational processes and abstract from them. He examines the role of human action and conceptualization in realizing observational processes and develops a detailed theory of the relationship between observation, abstraction, and the meaning of concepts.

This book provides a critical analysis of the work of various other philosophers and their accounts of scientific and ordinary-life observation and conceptualization. Radder discusses the formation and nature of concepts and demonstrates how concepts structure the phenomenal world. He then introduces and defines the notions of extensible concepts, abstraction and nonlocal meanings and explores the philosophical implications of his theory.

The World Observed/The World Conceived offers fresh insights in practices of observation and conceptualization, that will prove useful to many areas of scholarly study including ontology, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, science studies, and cognitive science.

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From the Back Cover:

"Hans Radder undertakes the investigation of one of the deepest questions in general philosophy, the relationship between the human observer and the material world, in the context of the philosophy of science. The argument moves from refining and defining the thesis that concepts are essential to observation to a demonstration of how concepts enter into the world as perceived. This original and powerful study includes not only a philosophical analysis of the concept of abstraction but also a discussion of the practical issue of patenting the products of concept-driven research. The book is strongly to be recommended for the breadth of its content and for the clarity of exposition." --Rom Harr�, Georgetown University

About the Author:

Hans Radder is professor of philosophy of science and technology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is the author of The Material Realization of Science, In and About the World, and The Philosophy of Scientific Experimentation.

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