Lexington Books
Pages: 184
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4985-3884-8 • Hardback • March 2017 • $117.00 • (£90.00)
978-1-4985-3885-5 • eBook • March 2017 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
Edward M. Engelmann teaches philosophy at Merrimack College and Bridgewater State University.
Chapter 1. Second Acts, Expressive Causality, and Ontological Dependence in the Aristotelian Tradition
Chapter 2. Second Acts and Ontological Unification
Chapter 3. Theoria and Scientific Demonstration in Aristotle
Chapter 4. Aquinas and Duns Scotus on Creation and Things Created
Chapter 5. Mechanism, Substance, and Causality in the Seventeenth Century
Chapter 6. Techne in Aristotle and the Autonomous Artifact
Chapter 7. The Operative Intentional Orientation in Early Modernism
Chapter 8. Computational Theory and the Autonomous Artifact
Chapter 9. The Rise of the Artificial
In his very wide ranging book Englemann offers a new and original understanding of the transition from the sciences of Aristotle to the beginnings of the “new sciences” of the 17th century and traces the rise of the artificial as a preferred model for the explanation of nature. The power of the book lies in the details and insights he offers in his close examination of Aristotelianism, early modern science, and the sciences of the artificial. He begins with theories of causation in the middle ages and ends by considering consciousness in machines. A valuable contribution to both philosophy and the history of ideas.
— John Visvader, College of the Atlantic
Ed Engelmann's book Nature and the Artificial: Aristotelian Reflections on the Operative Imperative, is an erudite and challenging look at the roots of today's operative, and ultimately artificial intelligence. It traces the history of the Aristotelian worldview, and shows that our current paradigm it relation to it as image to original. It will provoke a much-needed reassessment of that tradition.
— Frederick Amrine, University of Michigan