Probabilistic Thinking, Thermodynamics and the Interaction of the History and Philosophy of Science

Jaakko Hintikka is the author or co-author of thirty volumes and of some 300 scholarly articles in mathematical and philosophical logic, epistemology, language theory, philosophy of science, history of ideas and history of philosophy, including Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Peirce, The Bloomsbury Group, Husserl and Wittgenstein. He has also been active in international scholarly organizations, most recently as the First Vice-President of FISP, Vice-President of IIP and Co-Chair of the American Organizing Committee of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy. He has been Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal Synthese and the Managing Editor of Synthese Library since 1965.

Why Do We Find the Origin of a Calculus of Probabilities in the Seventeenth Century?.- Some Remarks on the Calculus of Probability in the Eighteenth Century.- Probability and the Problem of Induction.- Probabilities and Causes: On Life Tables, Causes of Death, and Etiological Diagnoses.- From the Emergence of Probability to the Erosion of Determinism.- John Venn’s Logic of Chance.- Robert Leslie Ellis and the Frequency Theory.- Reduction as a Problem: Some Remarks on the History of Statistical Mechanics from a Philosophical Point of View.- Boltzmann’s Conception of Theory Construction: The Promotion of Pluralism, Provisionalism, and Pragmatic Realism.- The Mach-Boltzmann Controversy and Maxwell’s Views on Physical Reality.- Boltzmann, Mach and Russian Physicists of the Late Nineteenth Century.- An Example of a Theory-Frame: Equilibrium Thermodynamics.- What Have the History and Philosophy of Science to Do for One Another?.- A Comment on E. Agazzi, ‘What Have the History and Philosophy of Science to Do for One Another?’.- Methodology and the Functional Identity of Science and Philosophy.- On Making History.- A Comment on J.D. North, ‘On Making History’.- Reply to J.D. North, ‘On Making History’.- Influences of Some Concepts of Biology on Progress in Philosophy.- Philosophy of Science, History of Science, and Science of Science.- Interrelations between History of Science and Philosophy of Science in Research in the Development of Technical Sciences.- From History of Science to Theory of Science: An Essay on V.I. Vernadsky’s Work (1863–1945).- Utility versus Truth: At Least One Reflection on the Importance of the Philosophy of Science for the History of Science.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.