The Genealogy of Knowledge

The essays in this collection deal with questions at the borderline of science and philosophy. The essays range through Aristotle, the sceptics, Galileo, Descartes, Euler, Vico, Marx, and Nietzsche. Some look at attempts to provide philosophical clarification of scientific questions such as Aristotle on the nature of numbers and Euler's attempt to provide foundations for physical theory. Others look at attempts to question the value of a scientific model for enquiry such as Vico's argument that the human sciences require a different foundation from the natural sciences, and Neitzsche's attempt to show that science's attempt to uncover the reality beneath the appearances is fundamentally misguided. Other explore the relationship between the humanities and the science such as Descartes' use of rhetorical theory to explain the nature of scientific demonstration, and Marx's attempt to combine a metaphysical theory about how human being's constitute themselves through production with an economic theory of production.