Natural novelty : the newness manifest in existence / Richard Boyle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Boyle, Richard, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Philosophy--History.

Philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (233 p.)

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : University Press of America, Inc., 2016.

Summary:

Why do new things happen? Boyle answers through consideration of a conceptual history of the new, logical formalization of how novelty occurs, discussion of the relevance of novelty to scientific questions surrounding Earth, life and consciousness, and integrative reading of the respective philosophies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger.

Contents:

PREFACE; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS; CHAPTER SUMMARIES; PRELUDE: RECURRENCE AND RECOMBINATION; A FORMAL ABSTRACT SCHEME FOR NOVELTY; Summary in words; Expansion using a logical formalism; THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS RELATING TO REAL INSTANCES OF NOVELTY DURING THE HISTORY OF LIFE ON EARTH; Life: Nature's most novel process; Information and homeostasis; The origin of heritable variation in fitness; Consciousness: The most novel property of life; Earth: The most novel known planet; Conclusion

NOVELTY, MEANINGFUL LANGUAGE, SUBJECTIVITY AND TIME: A COMPARATIVE READING OF SELECTED WORKS BY LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN AND MARTIN HEIDEGGERWittgenstein; Tractatus Logico Philosophicus: Kicking away a ladder of nonsense; Philosophical investigations: Meaning is use, use is contextual and evolving; Remarks on the foundations of mathematics: Foundationless useful conventions; Zettel: Mind, body and language; On Certainty: The relativity of knowledge to the possibility of doubt; Heidegger; Being and Time; Previous comparison between Wittgenstein and Heidegger: Groundless Grounds by Lee Braver

Reflections and suggestionsNovelty necessitates the evolution of meaningful language over time; Novelty is the reason that we can sometimes think what we cannot say; The boundary separating the describable from the ineffable changes over time, due to the reality of novelty; Novelty explains why there is an aspect of disclosure to truth; CONCLUSION: AN UNANSWERABLE QUESTION; BIBLIOGRAPHY

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed January 15, 2016).

ISBN:

0-7618-6709-0