Abstract
The division of 17th century natural philosophy into natural science on the one hand and philosophy on the other — two intellectual activities with different methodologies, different styles, and perhaps different subject matters — has a complex history which I shall not try to recapitulate. I wish only, as an introduction to a discussion of quantum mechanical holism, to remark that in recent decades, there seems to have been a moderate amount of recovery of the old unified discipline of natural philosophy. 20th century scientists have frequently cited classical philosophers not just for the sake of ornament but for the purpose of clarifying revolutionary ideas: e.g., Heisenberg (1962) cited Aristotle’s potentiality, d’Espagnat (1995) and others cited Kant’s distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal, Wigner (1960) cited Peirce’s evolutionary theory of concept formation, Weyl (1970) cited Pythagoras on intellectual harmony, Stapp (1993) cited James’ holistic theory of consciousness, and Primas (1983) frequently refers to classical as well as contemporary philosophical literature.
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Shimony, A. (1999). Holism. In: Atmanspacher, H., Amann, A., Müller-Herold, U. (eds) On Quanta, Mind and Matter. Fundamental Theories of Physics, vol 102. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4581-7_12
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