Metaphor

By Martinich, A.P.

A standard dictionary definition describes a metaphor as ‘a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object is used in place ...

Ricoeur, Paul (1913–2005)

By Thompson, John B.

Paul Ricoeur is one of the leading French philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. Along with the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ricoeur is one of ...

Ricoeur, Paul (1913–2005)

Paul Ricoeur was one of the leading thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century and in the later part of his life was considered by some ...

Gender and science

By Harding, Sandra G.

Gender-based analyses of philosophies of science have arisen at the conjunction of two other movements. First, in the 1960s it became increasingly the accepted position that scientific claims ...

Language, medieval theories of

By Ebbesen, Sten

A great deal of theorizing about language took place in western Europe between 1100 and 1400. The usual social context of this theorizing was the teaching of grammar, ...

Natural kinds

Natural kinds are widely understood to be the real classifications of things that actually exist in the world. Natural kinds are the categories we tend to aim for ...

Davidson, Donald (1917–2003)

Donald Davidson is a central figure in twentieth-century American philosophy. Of the five volumes that make up Davidson’s collected essays, the best known are the first two, ...

Chaos theory

By Kellert, Stephen H.

Chaos theory is the name given to the scientific investigation of mathematically simple systems that exhibit complex and unpredictable behaviour. Since the 1970s these systems have been used ...

Goodman, Nelson (1906–98)

By Elgin, Catherine Z.

Nelson Goodman was an American philosopher who wrote important works in metaphysics, aesthetics and epistemology. Throughout his work runs a concern with the ways that the symbols we ...

Goodman, Nelson (1906–98)

Nelson Goodman (1906–98) was a twentieth century American philosopher who made important contributions to metaphysics, aesthetics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. His works display a concern with ...

Lacan, Jacques (1901–81)

By Pluth, Ed

Jacques Lacan, who in the mid-20th century urged psychoanalysts to ‘return to Freud’, infused psychoanalysis with ideas from structuralist linguistics and Hegelian philosophy. Feeling that psychoanalysts had both ...

Eighteenth-century aesthetics

By Townsend, Dabney

Article Summary ...

Evolutionary theory and social science

By Sober, Elliott

Ideas from evolutionary theory impinge on the social sciences in two ways. First, there is the research programme of sociobiology, which attempts to demonstrate the impact of biological ...

Knowledge by acquaintance and description

By Fumerton, Richard

The attempt to distinguish knowledge by acquaintance from knowledge by description is most closely associated with Bertrand Russell. The distinction is also crucial to one way of trying ...

Mental illness, concept of

By Neander, Karen

The mad were once thought to be wicked or possessed, whereas now they are generally thought to be sick, or mentally ill. Usually, this is regarded as a ...

Aesthetics and the philosophy of language

By Green, Mitchell

Article Summary ...

Theological realism

By Moore, Andrew

Theological realism typically involves three claims: that God exists independently of human beings (an ontological claim); that God can be known (an epistemological claim); and that God may ...

Emotions, philosophy of

By Solomon, Robert C.

Emotions have always played a role in philosophy, even if philosophers have usually denied them centre stage. Because philosophy has so often been described as first and foremost ...

Mauthner, Fritz (1849–1923)

By Bredeck, Elizabeth

The work of Fritz Mauthner helps document the phenomenon of ‘language crisis’ or Sprachkrise in German-Austrian letters at the beginning of the twentieth century. In his Beiträge ...

Music, aesthetics of

By Trivedi, Saam

Philosophical reflection on music goes back in the West at least as far as the Pythagoreans and Plato, and has undergone an exceptionally fertile period within analytic philosophy ...

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64)

By Hopkins, Jasper

Also called Nicolaus Cusanus, this German cardinal takes his distinguishing name from the city of his birth, Kues (or Cusa, in Latin), on the Moselle river between Koblenz ...

Theology, Rabbinic

By Botwinick, Aryeh

The Talmud, a shelf of folio volumes built up out of the expansive reflections of generations of scholar/thinkers whose discourse formed a commentary or complement (Gemara) to the ...

Theories, scientific

By Suppe, Frederick

The term ‘theory’ is used variously in science to refer to an unproven hunch, a scientific field (as in ‘electromagnetic theory’), and a conceptual device for systematically characterizing ...

Alchemy

By Pereira, Michela

Alchemy is the quest for an agent of material perfection, produced through a creative activity (opus), in which humans and nature collaborate. It exists in many cultures (China, ...

Music, aesthetics of

By Levinson, Jerrold

The aesthetics of music comprises philosophical reflection on the origin, nature, power, purpose, creation, performance, reception, meaning and value of music. Some of its problems are general problems ...