Dear Roger,

 

                  Boscovich is a hero of mine too - as I gather he is of yours.  Boscovich, it seems to me, put forward an idea for a physically comprehensible universe - one that has the great merit of being consistent, and able to do justice to both attractive and repulsive forces, and cohesive forces as well.  How many rival such ideas are there?  I know of none.  The idea of the point-particle embedded in a field creates ferocious self-interaction problems - not present in Boscovich's universe.  And the self-interacting field - Einstein's option - is not, I would think, free of problem's either.  (There is of course my propensiton universe - a bit primitive perhaps.)

 

                 Incidentally, you may be amused to hear that I have just started on a book to be called "In Praise of Natural Philosophy".  Here is the Preface:

 

Preface: In Praise of Natural Philosophy

 

This book seeks to redraw our intellectual landscape.  It leads to a transformation of science, and to a transformation of philosophy, so that these two distinct domains of thought become conjoined into one: natural philosophy.  This in turn has far-reaching consequences for the whole academic enterprise.  It transpires that we need an academic revolution.  We urgently need to reorganize universities so that they become devoted to seeking and promoting wisdom by rational means – as opposed to just acquiring knowledge, as at present.

Modern science began as natural philosophy.  In the time of Newton, what we call science and philosophy today – the disparate endeavours – formed one mutually interacting, integrated endeavour of natural philosophy: to improve our knowledge and understanding of the universe, and to improve our understanding of ourselves as a part of it.  Profound discoveries were made, indeed one should say unprecedented discoveries.  It was a time of quite astonishing intellectual excitement and achievement.

And then natural philosophy died.  It split into science on the one hand, and philosophy on the other.  This happened some time in the 19^th century, and the split is now built into our intellectual landscape.  But the two fragments, science and philosophy, are defective shadows of the glorious unified endeavour of natural philosophy.  Rigour, sheer intellectual good sense and decisive argument demand that we put the two together again, and rediscover the immense merits of the integrated enterprise of natural philosophy.  This requires an intellectual revolution, with dramatic implications for how we understand our world, how we understand and do science, and how we understand and do philosophy.  There are dramatic implications, too, for education.

And it does not stop there.  For, as I will show in the final chapter, resurrected natural philosophy has dramatic, indeed revolutionary methodological implications for social science and the humanities, indeed for the whole academic enterprise.  It means academic inquiry needs to be reorganized so that it comes to take, as its basic task, to seek and promote wisdom by rational means, wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge, technological know-how and understanding, but much else besides.

The outcome is institutions of learning rationally designed and devoted to helping us tackle our immense global problems in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, thus helping us make progress towards a good world – or at least as good a world as possible.

 

                              Best wishes,

 

                                         Nick

Website: www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk
Publications online: http://philpapers.org/profile/17092

----- Original Message -----

From: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">ROGER ANDERTON

To: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]

Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2011 9:13 AM

Subject: Boscovich Conference

Boscovich Conference I will be attending.