Bibliography: p. 313-324. / xii, 324 p., [31] leaves of plates : col. ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2005

Orientador: José Carlos Pinto de Oliveira / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T06:04:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Menna_SergioHugo_D.pdf: 2716382 bytes, checksum: 6142783b3c83d2ad782502cfe287dbb6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: A historiografia contemporânea da metodologia herdou vários 'enigmas' a serem resolvidos sobre as ideias e contribuições de Francis Bacon. Qual é a estrutura do seu método de indução, qual é a natureza de sua 'lógica da descoberta', qual o valor que ele concedeu às hipóteses e conjeturas na investigação científica, qual o papel de Bacon na história da metodologia, qual sua dívida com seus predecessores, qual a influência que exerceu sobre os pensadores que o sucederam etc. Na presente Tese farei uso de estudos históricos e críticos contemporâneos a fim de analisar a obra metodológica de Bacon e determinar a influência das 'artes' heurísticas antigas e medievais no seu método indutivo. Em particular, tentarei mostrar que ainda que Bacon tenha ampliado o 'poder criativo' das 'artes' da invenção, e tenha estendido seu raio de aplicação ao domínio científico, não as formalizou nem substituiu o caráter falível das mesmas. Também, e destacando o importante papel criativo concedido por Bacon e outros autores da Modernidade a 'virtudes' ou 'desiderata' como, por exemplo, a analogia ou a simplicidade, argumentarei contra as principais interpretações rivais existentes sobre a estrutura e dinâmica do método baconiano. Especificamente, me situarei em oposição à interpretação 'geracionista mecânica' -que afirma que o método de Bacon funciona como uma máquina que produz teorias de forma automática- e à interpretação 'hipotetista' -que entende que o método de Bacon funciona só no processo de avaliação de teorias, deixando a tarefa de descoberta ao gênio criativo. Tentarei defender que Bacon esteve particularmente interessado em fornecer heurísticas -isto é, guias ou máximas criativas e avaliativas- para que os homens, trabalhando metodologicamente, e reunidos em comunidades de pesquisa, pudessem construir hipóteses científicas de qualidade. Esta argumentação supõe fazer observações sobre a natureza das regras no século XVII, sobre as relações entre experiência e teoria, e introduzir precisões dentro do domínio das inferências ampliativas, além de esclarecer a posição de Bacon com relação a termos chaves como 'verdade', 'hipótese' e 'conhecimento'. Por último, com esta concepção heurística da indução baconiana, examinarei as interpretações clássicas sobre o papel desempenhado por Bacon na Revolução científica e sua importância na difusão da ideia de progresso. Esta interpretação da herança e da metodologia de Bacon, e de sua recepção e influência em autores posteriores, tal como defenderei, permite compreender e avaliar melhor o significado desse autor para o pensamento científico da Modernidade, e possibilita reavaliar de maneira mais adequada as categorias estabelecidas para a metodologia da descoberta de Bacon por alguns de seus críticos passados e contemporâneos / Abstract: The contemporary historiography of methodology inherited various 'puzzles' to be solved about the ideas and contributions of Francis Bacon, such as: What is the structure of his method of induction?; what is the nature of his 'logic of discovery'?; what value did he attach to hypotheses and conjectures in scientific research?; what is the role of Bacon in the history of methodology?; what are his debts to his predecessors?; what is the influence he had upon the thinkers that followed him? and so on. In this thesis I will make use of contemporary historical and critical studies in order to analyze the methodological work of Bacon and the influence of the ancient and medieval heuristic 'arts' on his inductive method. In particular, I will try to show that although Bacon extended the 'creative power' of the 'arts' of invention, and extended their scope of application to the scientific field, he did not formalize nor replace the fallible nature of them. Also, by highlighting the importance of the creative role given by Bacon and other authors of Modernity to 'virtues' or 'desiderata' as, for example, analogy or simplicity, I will argue against major rival interpretations that exist on the structure and dynamics of the Baconian method. Specifically, I will situate my position in opposition to the 'mechanical-generative' interpretation -which claims that Bacon's method works like a machine that produces theories automatically-, and the 'hypothetist' interpretation -which holds that Bacon's method works only in the process of evaluating theories, leaving the task of discovering to the creative genius. I will try to argue that Bacon was particularly interested in providing heuristics -in other words, creative and evaluative guides or principles- so that men, working methodically, could build high-quality scientific hypotheses. This argumentation presupposes the need to make remarks on the nature of rules in the seventeenth century, on the relationship between experience and theory, and also presupposes the provision of more details within the domain of the ampliative inferences, besides clarifying the position in the light of key terms used by Bacon, such as 'truth', 'hypothesis' and 'knowledge'. Finally, on the basis of this heuristic conception of Baconian induction, I will examine the classic interpretations of the role played by Bacon in the Scientific Revolution and his importance in spreading the idea of progress. This interpretation of Bacon's heritage and methodology, and Bacon, and their reception by, and influence on later writers, I will set out to argue, allows us to understand and evaluate in the best way the significance of this author for the scientific thought of Modernity, and enables us, in the most appropriate way, to reassess the categories established for Bacon's methodology of discovery by some of his critics, both past and contemporary / Doutorado / Epistemologia / Doutor em Filosofia

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor : James Egan. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-268).

“Circulating Knowledges: Literature and the Idea of the Library in Renaissance England” pairs literary texts and libraries to illustrate how literary creation and library building in England from 1500 to 1700 were deeply invested in one another. The history of English Renaissance libraries has generally been analyzed from the viewpoints of religious history and historiography, seen by scholars as a story of Protestant librarians attempting to preserve (or invent) a history of Protestant England. Many literary critics —citing Thomas Bodley’s notorious distaste for “stage plaies”—have typically reduced institutional libraries to elitist boogeymen hostile to popular or vernacular literature. Revising these narratives, this dissertation brings together a large corpus, including works by Thomas More, John Lyly, Edmund Spenser, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, and Margaret Cavendish, to illustrate how literary depictions of England’s fledgling libraries shaped their creation and development, while the practices of these inchoate libraries in turn influenced literary texts. “Circulating Knowledges” advances its argument on several fronts. First, I show that developments (or a perceived lack of development) in library organization, access, and use appeared in literary texts, which often depicted literary libraries in response to these developments. Second, I home in on moments when literary texts that seem not at all interested in libraries become unexpectedly fruitful texts through which to develop literary thinking about libraries. In the process of excavating this literary interest in libraries, I demonstrate that Renaissance literature concerns itself not only with depicting, commenting on, or objecting to the developments in library creation happening during the period, but also in imagining alternative possibilities for how libraries might function, conceptions of a library that often outstripped what was materially possible in the period: these conceptions I term “the idea of the library.” In detailing literature’s preoccupation with developments in Renaissance library systems, I offer new perspectives on the period’s literary attitudes toward the creation, transmission, and protection of knowledge, all questions which the building—or imagining—of a library brings to the forefront.

This is a dissertation about human separatism. Human separatism is the social imaginary according to which Humanity should aim to use technology to “separate” itself from nature. It is incoherent and self-undermining. But it has also proven persistent and resilient, and appears to be intensifying in the face of fears about phenomena like climate change. In chapter 1 I unpack three distinct conceptions of “separation” that I argue have prevailed at different times in European philosophical and cultural history. The first is ontological, or related to being; the second is epistemological, or related to knowing; and the third is “nomological”, or related to law-making and laws. These correspond roughly to Ancient thought (in Plato and Augustine), Early Modern thought (in Bacon and Descartes) and Modern thought (in Kant and the contemporary “Ecomodernists”), respectively. I also offer some reasons for concluding that the concept of separation is in general incoherent. In chapter 2 I reflect upon why this imaginary has proven so difficult to overcome. Specifically, following existential psychology, I propose that it is a perverse manifestation of terrors that are central to the human condition. In particular it is a manifestation of the fears we have as human beings about our limited agency and our mortality or finitude. These fears are powerful enough to override rational thinking. Insofar as fantasies about separation from nature provide a salve for them, these fantasies persist over time. Insofar as fears of death and mortality are more and more front-and-centre for us as individuals and collectives, these fantasies become ever-more resilient to critique, and continue to intensify. In chapter 3 I consider some challenges that emerge when we attempt to gather resources for imaginative alternatives to separatism. I consider the ideas that we might either (a) invent a new story from whole cloth, or (b) appropriate the stories and theories of other cultures and attempting to graft them onto our own. I reject these approaches, and explore some resources from critical ecofeminism as intellectual tools to understand them, and develop some design parameters for alternative approaches. In chapter 4, I explore the narratives of some First Nations Australian cosmologies as they speak to the relationship between human beings and the natural world in the work of the First Nations writers Mary Graham and Tyson Yunkaporta. I then consider what might be involved in presenting some of these same insights in terms that adhere to the design parameters I set out in chapter 3. I propose that the genre of narrative tragedy is a powerful place to do some of this work. To flesh out this claim, I offer a series of detailed reflections on narrative tragedy, drawing on the work of Julian Young, and suggest that tragic narratives offer a powerful place for metabolizing existential anxieties, for coming to terms with ecological reality, and for encouraging and engaging in dialogue about imaginative alternative futures.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The history of Western civilisation is generally demarcated into three broad epochs: ancient, Christian and modern. These eras are usually defined in political terms, but they may also be differentiated in terms of fundamental differences in the nature of the organisations that constitute civil society in each age, how they defined the public good, and even what they consider philanthropic. In the nineteenth century, for instance, 'Scientific philanthropy' displaced 'Christian charity' as the dominant model for charitable giving; a development accompanied by a number of other secularising trends in Western civil society, generally understood as a broad cultural shift in conceptions of public good, from religious to scientific. From the fourth to the sixth century CE, by comparison, another broad cultural shift, from paganism to Christianity, also led to fundamental changes in the nature and composition of ancient civil society. A central premise of this dissertation is that fundamental historical transformations in Western civilisation – from pagan to Christian, to modern, to post-modern – may be traced to the influence of some of the most important philosophers in the Western philosophical tradition, among them: Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Francis Bacon and Friedrich Nietzsche. Each of these philosophers may be seen to have promulgated their teachings in a consciously Promethean manner; as gifts of fire, understood as philosophical teachings intended to be promulgated for the wider benefit of humankind. In Greek myth, Prometheus, whose name is traditionally thought to have literally meant 'forethought', is the one who steals fire from the gods and gives it to humans. Prometheus is also the first figure in history to be described as "philanthropic" (Prometheus Bound, 11 & 28). Plato, Bacon and Nietzsche all employ significant variants of the Promethean mũthos in their philosophical works, and may be seen to personally identify with the figure of Prometheus, as an allegorical figure depicting the situation of the wise, particularly in relation to political power. This dissertation thus closely analyses the Promethean mũthos in order to cast light on the philosophical philanthrôpía and Promethean ambitions of Protagoras, Socrates and Plato, and to provide the basis for consideration of the same in Bacon and Nietzsche.