Peter Munz - Böcker

Philosophers have not taken the evolution of human beings seriously enough. If they did, argues Peter Munz, many long standing philosophical problems would be resolved. One of philosophical concequences of biology is that all the knowledge produced in evolution is a priori , i.e., established hypothetically by chance mutation and selective retention, not by observation and intelligent induction. For organisms as embodied theories, selection is natural and for theories as disembodied organisms, it is artificial. Following Popper, the growth of knowledge is seen to be continuous from the amoeba to Einstein'. Philosophical Darwinism throws a whole new light on many contemporary debates. It has damaging implications for cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and questions attempts from within biology to reduce mental events to neural processes. More importantly, it provides a rational postmodern alternative to what the author argues are the unreasonable postmodern fashions of Kuhn, Lyotard and Rorty.

Philosophers have not taken the evolution of human beings seriously enough. If they did, argues Peter Munz, many long standing philosophical problems would be resolved. One of philosophical concequences of biology is that all the knowledge produced in evolution is a priori , i.e., established hypothetically by chance mutation and selective retention, not by observation and intelligent induction. For organisms as embodied theories, selection is natural and for theories as disembodied organisms, it is artificial. Following Popper, the growth of knowledge is seen to be continuous from the amoeba to Einstein'. Philosophical Darwinism throws a whole new light on many contemporary debates. It has damaging implications for cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and questions attempts from within biology to reduce mental events to neural processes. More importantly, it provides a rational postmodern alternative to what the author argues are the unreasonable postmodern fashions of Kuhn, Lyotard and Rorty.

First Published in 1952, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought unravels the historical background to some of Richard Hooker’s leading ideas. The volume throws light on his ideas by a clear appreciation of the philosophical issues he raised and the difficulties he had to face when he embraced the cause of Thomism in Elizabethan England. Peter Munz discusses themes like Hooker’s debt to St. Thomas, Hooker and Marsilius of Padua, Hooker’s historical sense, Hooker and Aristotle and Plato, Hooker and Locke, to determine his place in the history of thought. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Philosophy, Religion, Theology, Political Thought and Political Philosophy.

First Published in 1952, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought unravels the historical background to some of Richard Hooker’s leading ideas. The volume throws light on his ideas by a clear appreciation of the philosophical issues he raised and the difficulties he had to face when he embraced the cause of Thomism in Elizabethan England. Peter Munz discusses themes like Hooker’s debt to St. Thomas, Hooker and Marsilius of Padua, Hooker’s historical sense, Hooker and Aristotle and Plato, Hooker and Locke, to determine his place in the history of thought. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Philosophy, Religion, Theology, Political Thought and Political Philosophy.

This original, provocative study, first published in 1973, presents a new method of interpretation of mythology, and reveals the wide-ranging implications of this universal phenomenon for many disciplines. The volume begins with a sympathetic but critical examination of Lévi-Strauss’s interpretation of mythology. Professor Munz points out the deficiencies in structuralist interpretations, and takes Lévi-Strauss’s neglect of the historicity of all myths as a starting-point for an alternative approach to mythology. Myths, he argues, come in typological series. If the whole series is read forward to the most specific version, the myths will reveal their inherent meaning typologically.

This original, provocative study, first published in 1973, presents a new method of interpretation of mythology, and reveals the wide-ranging implications of this universal phenomenon for many disciplines. The volume begins with a sympathetic but critical examination of Lévi-Strauss’s interpretation of mythology. Professor Munz points out the deficiencies in structuralist interpretations, and takes Lévi-Strauss’s neglect of the historicity of all myths as a starting-point for an alternative approach to mythology. Myths, he argues, come in typological series. If the whole series is read forward to the most specific version, the myths will reveal their inherent meaning typologically.

Peter Munz, a former student of both Popper and Wittgenstein, begins his comparison of the two great twentieth-century philosophers, by explaining that since the demise of positivism there have emerged, broadly speaking, two philosophical options: Wittgenstein, with the absolute relativism of his theory that meaning is a function of language games and that social configurations are determinants of knowledge; and Popper’s evolutionary epistemology – conscious knowledge is a special case of the relationship which exists between all living beings and their environments. Professor Munz examines and rejects the Wittgensteinian position. Instead, Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge, first published in 1985, elaborates the potentially fruitful link between Popper’s critical rationalism and Neo-Darwinism. Read in the light of the latter, Popper’s philosophy leads to the transformation of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism into ‘Hypothetical Realism’, whilst the emphasis on the biological orientation of Popper’s thought helps to illumine some difficulties in Popper’s ‘falsificationism’.