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The articles in this volume of ARCHIMEDES examine particular cases of `reception'in ways that emphasize pressing historiographical and methodological issues. Such issues arise in any consideration of the transmission and appropriation of scientific concepts and practices that originated in the several `centers'of European learning, subsequently to appear (often in considerably altered guise) in regions at the European periphery. They discuss the transfer of new scientific ideas, the mechanisms of their introduction, and the processes of their appropriation at the periphery. The themes that frame the discussions of the complex relationship between the origination of ideas and their reception include the ways in which the ideas of the Scientific Revolution were introduced, the particularities of their expression in each place, the specific forms of resistance encountered by these new ideas, the extent to which such expression and resistance displays national characteristics, the procedures through which new ways of dealing with nature were made legitimate, and the commonalities and differences between the methods developed by scholars for handling scientific issues.

It is a truism that philosophy and the sciences were closely linked in the age of Leibniz, Newton, and Kant; but a more precise determination of the structure and dynamics of this linkage is required. The subject matter of this volume is the interactions among the developments in philosophy and the transformations that the different branches of sciences, Baconian as well as classical, underwent during this period. Among the topics addressed are the transformations of metaphysics as a discipline, the emergence of analytical mechanics and its consequences for founding physics on metaphysics, the diverging avenues of 18th-century Newtonianism, the body-mind problem as dealt with by philosophers and physicians, and philosophical principles of classification in the life sciences. As an appendix, a critical edition and first translation into English of Newton's scholia from David Gregory's Estate on the Propositions IV through IX Book III of his Principia is added.

Schopenhauer's philosophy, at first sight so beautifully rounded, upon analysis reveals itself as the secret arena of two conflicting world-views. The present analysis considers the conflict by confronting Schopenhauer as a `disciple-of-sorts of Kant'with Schopenhauer as `Goethe's one-time collaborator on the theory of colour'. Here the two meet over profound issues which the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century has ineluctably put before us: what is the right level at which to apprehend nature; what is the proper foundation for a consistent ethics; how (if at all) to arrive at a unified conception of a world broken by modern science? In this deeply-delving, lucidly written, humane and erudite study, the history of philosophical currents is blended with history of science, with history of ideas generally, and (to elucidate relevant portions of Schopenhauer's biography and intellectual and social environment) with German history too. The analysis, while benefiting from the scholarly literature, is grounded primarily in original research among the collected works of Schopenhauer, Kant and Goethe, considered in all their philosophical, scientific, and literary variety.

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.

In the early 1980s the late Charles B. Schmitt and I discussed the fact that so much new research and new interpretations were taking place concerning various areas of modem skepticism that we, as pioneers, ought to organize a conference where these new findings and outlooks could be presented and discussed. Charles and I had both visited the great library at Wolfenbiittel, and were most happy when the Herzog August Bibliothek agreed to host the first conference on the history of skepticism, in 1984 (published as Skepticism from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. R. H. Popkin and Charles B. Schmitt [Wiesbaden, 1987, Wolfenbiitteler For­ schungen, vol. 35]) Charles and I projected a series of later conferences, the first of which would deal with skepticism and irreligion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Unfortunately, however, Charles died suddenly in 1986, while lecturing in Padua. Subsequent to his death Constance Blackwell, his companion of many years, established the Foundation for Intellectual History to support research and publica­ tion on topics in the history of ideas that continued Schmitt's interests. One of the first ventures was to arrange and fund the already planned conference on skepticism and irreligion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After many difficulties and problems, the conference was sponsored and funded by the Foundation for Intel­ lectual History, one of its first public activities. It was held at the lovely facilities of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Wassenaar in 1990.

This volume includes in its special part recent contributions to the philosophy of science from a historical point of view and of the highest topicality: the range of the topics is covering all fields in the philosophy of the science provided by authors from Europe, America and around the world focussing on ancient, modern and contemporary periods in the development of the science philosophy. It represents a distinguished selection of the'Third Biennial Meeting of the History of Philosophy of Science Working Group'in Vienna (HOPOS 2000), which was jointly organised by Vienna Circle Institute at the University of Vienna. The audience of this proceedings is the scientific community and students at graduate level as well as postdocs in this interdisciplinary field of research.The general part contains as usual a report/document section with special highlights - contributions on American philosophers (by Gerald Holton) and on Wittgenstein (David Stern) - as well as review articles and review related new publications and short documentation of Vienna Circle Institute's activities.

This is a book about dreaming and knowing, and about thinking that one can ascertain the difference. It is a book about the Bernards of the world who would have us believe that there is a humanly uncreated world existing en Boi that freely dis­ closes its forever fixed ontology, even though they too must accept that -many of the worlds we make as we try to under­ stand ourselves are counterfeit. It is a book about the real estate of the human mind. The book is about Leibniz and Kant, and about methods of science. It is also about what is now called pseudo-science. It tries to show how Kant struggled to mark the limits of the humanly knowable, and how thi s strug­ gle involved him in trying to answer questions of importance then and now. Some are philosophers'questions: the epistemo­ logical status of mathematics, the role of space and time in knowing, the nature of the conceptual constraints on our ef­ forts to hypothesize the possible. Some are questions of per­ ennial human interest: Can spirits exist? How is the soul re­ lated to the body? How can we legitimately talk about God, if at all? Finally, Kant teaches that these are all questions bearing on our entitlements in claiming to know. Leibniz fashioned a way of talking about nature and super­ nature that I call the Double Government Methodology.

Ideas for Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Natural Sciences (published in 1993 as volume 15 of this series) comprised mainly ontological reflections on the natural sciences. That book explained why the natural sciences must be considered inherently interpretive in character, and clarified the conditions under which scientific interpretations are'legitimate'and may be called'true'. This companion volume focuses on methodological issues. Its first part elucidates the methodical hermeneutics developed in the 19th century by Boeckh, Birt, Dilthey, and others. Its second part, through the use of concrete examples drawn from modern physics as it unfolded from Copernicus to Maxwell, clarifies and'proves'the main points of the ontologico-hermeneutical conception of the sciences elaborated in the earlier volume. It thereby both illuminates the most important problems confronting an ontologico-phenomenological approach to the natural sciences and offers an alternative to Kuhn's conception of the historical development of the natural sciences.