In The Foundations of Quantum Mechanics - Historical Analysis and Open Questions, leading Italian researchers involved in different aspects of the foundations and history of quantum mechanics are brought together in an interdisciplinary debate. The book therefore presents an invaluable overview of the state of Italian work in the field at this moment, and of the open problems that still exist in the foundations of the theory. Audience: Physicists, logicians, mathematicians and epistemologists whose research concerns the historical analysis of quantum mechanics.

A historical and philosophical reassessment of the impact of Aristotle and early-modern Aristotelianism on the development of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Kant and Aristotle reassesses the prevailing understanding of Kant as an anti-Aristotelian philosopher. Taking epistemology, logic, and methodology to be the key disciplines through which Kant’s transcendental philosophy stood as an independent form of philosophy, Marco Sgarbi shows that Kant drew important elements of his logic and metaphysical doctrines from Aristotelian ideas that were absent in other philosophical traditions, such as the distinction of matter and form of knowledge, the division of transcendental logic into analytic and dialectic, the theory of categories and schema, and the methodological issues of the architectonic. Drawing from unpublished documents including lectures, catalogues, academic programs, and the Aristotelian-Scholastic handbooks that were officially adopted at Königsberg University where Kant taught, Sgarbi further demonstrates the historical and philosophical importance of Aristotle and Aristotelianism to these disciplines from the late sixteenth century to the first half of the eighteenth century.

This book contains the Proceedings of the 2007 Conference of the Italian Systems Society. Papers deal with the interdisciplinary study of processes of emergence, considering theoretical aspects and applications from physics, cognitive science, biology, artificial intelligence, economics, architecture, philosophy, music and social systems. Such an interdisciplinary study implies the need to model and distinguish, in different disciplinary contexts, the establishment of structures, systems and systemic properties. Systems, as modeled by the observer, not only possess properties, but are also able to make emergent new properties. While current disciplinary models of emergence are based on theories of phase transitions, bifurcations, dissipative structures, multiple systems and organization, the present volume focuses on both generalizing those disciplinary models and identifying correspondences and new more general approaches. The general conceptual framework of the book relates to the attempt to build a general theory of emergence as a general theory of change, corresponding to Von Bertalanffy's project for a general system theory.

Hermeneutics was elaborated as a specific art of understanding in humanities. The discovered paradigmatic, historical characteristics of scientific knowledge, and the role of rhetoric, interpretation and contextuality enabled us to use similar arguments in natural sciences too. In this way a new research field, the hermeneutics of science emerged based upon the works of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Gadamer. A dialogue between philosophers and scientists begins in this volume on hermeneutic approaches to physics, biology, ethology, mathematics and cognitive science. Scientific principles, methodologies, discourse, language, and metaphors are analyzed, as well as the role of the lay public and the legitimation of science. Different hermeneutical-phenomenological approaches to perception, experiments, methods, discovery and justification and the genesis of science are presented. Hermeneutics shed a new light on the incommensurability of paradigms, the possibility of translation and the historical understanding of science.

Foundational questions in logic, mathematics, computer science and physics are constant sources of epistemological debate in contemporary philosophy. To what extent is the transfinite part of mathematics completely trustworthy? Why is there a general `malaise' concerning the logical approach to the foundations of mathematics? What is the role of symmetry in physics? Is it possible to build a coherent worldview compatible with a macroobjectivistic position and based on the quantum picture of the world? What account can be given of opinion change in the light of new evidence? These are some of the questions discussed in this volume, which collects 14 lectures on the foundation of science given at the School of Philosophy of Science, Trieste, October 1989. The volume will be of particular interest to any student or scholar engaged in interdisciplinary research into the foundations of science in the context of contemporary debates.