Encouraging Openness

Part 1. Reflections on Rationalism as a Tradition and a Choice.- Chapter 1. Why Don't Scientists Respect Philosophers? (Mario Bunge).- Chapter 2. Evaluative Selection in Multimerit Situations (Nicholas Rescher).- Chapter 3. Joseph Agassi from Metaphysics to Politics (Christopher Donohue).- Chapter 4. Horror Dogmatis (Zuzana Parusniková).- Chapter 5. Comprehensively Critical Metapolitics (Michael Chiariello).- Chapter 6. Feng Shui: An Overlooked Topic for Examination by Critical Rationalists (Michael Matthews).- Part 2. The Sceptic Quest for a Sensible World.- Chapter 7. Verisimilitude: Why and How (Ilkka Niiniluoto).- Chapter 8. The Story of the German Translation of Tarski's Book on Truth (Jan Wolenski).- Chapter 9. Two Philosophical Contributions to Modern Physics (Jagdish Hattiangadi).- Chapter 10. Lessons from the Philosophy of Science to Data Mining and Vice Versa (Abraham Meidan).- Chapter 11. The Mystique of Computer Technology and the Waning of Critical Enquiry (Sheldon Richmond).- Chapter 12. Francis Bacon, Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and Modern Experimental Biology (Ute Deichman).- Chapter 13. Ebola in West Africa: Biosocial and Biomedical Reflections (Daniel Cohen).- Part 3. Making Sense of a Changing Past.- Chapter 14. Jacob & Esau Today (Malachi Hacohen).- Chapter 15. Charity, Logic, and Para-clericalism: Rereading Agassi on Koestler on Galileo (Maurice Finocchiaro).- Chapter 16. What is the Problem? Understanding the History of Ideas(William Berkson).- Chapter 17. Reflections on Science and Imagination(Robert S. Cohen).- Chapter 18. The Legends of One Methodology of Science Used throughout Its History and Its Independence from the Institutions in which Science Has Been Conducted (John Wettersten).- Chapter 19. Beyond Wavefunctions: A Time-Symmetric Nonlocal Ontology for Quantum Mechanics (Yakir Aharonov, Eliahu Cohen and Avshalom C. Elitzur).- Part 4. The Open Society and its Challenges.- Chapter 20. Critical Rationalism Applied: A Footnote toThe

Nimrod Bar-Am is a philosopher of science specializing in logic and communication. He is currently a senior lecturer at the communication department, Sapir College. He studies the history of scientific method in general and methodological challenges within the social sciences in particular. His most recent publication is In Search of a Simple Introduction to Communication (Springer 2016). He was Joseph Agassi's research assistant (1993-1998), and published a couple of peer-reviewed papers with him.
Stefano Gattei is a philosopher and historian of science, currently Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Edinburgh and Eleanor Searle Visiting Professor in History at the California Institute of Technology. He worked extensively on key issues and authors of contemporary philosophy of science, as well as on the history of early modern astronomy and cosmology. Most recently, he co-edited, with Joseph Agassi, the fourth volume ofPaul Feyerabend's collected philosophical papers: Physics and Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). His Early Biographies of Galileo is forthcoming with Princeton University Press; he is currently working on a book on Johannes Kepler and the role of engraved frontispieces and title-pages in the Scientific Revolution (under contract with Oxford University Press).

"I fully recommend this book to those interested in Agassi's philosophy, in twentieth- century philosophy of science, or in historical, sociological, and political approaches to science studies. ... I can confirm that the book nicely illustrates Agassi's optimistic stance on philosophical reflection on the sciences, along with the tolerance and impartiality that characterizes Agassi's academic writings and life." (Cristian Soto, Metascience, Vol. 28 (3), November, 2019)