Rochelle's Philosophy Web Site
Welcome to my Web Site
This site deals with various matters concerning history, philosophy, quantum physics, anthropology and sociology. It particularly deals with two major questions.
The first question concerns the causes of historical change or at least certain types of historical change. It deals with historical social and cultural change and as such involves issues in sociology and macrosociology concerning social change and in anthropology concerning the evolution of cultures. It attempts to explain how and why we changed from being stone age hunter-gatherers to living in agrarian and industrial societies. A number of papers are offerred on this subject, but the principal paper is that entitled A Theory of History. The other papers are subsidiary to that paper. The paper A Problem with some Philosophies of History is intended to show a problem that a number of philosophies of history contain and which the paper A Theory of History is offerred as a solution. The papers on the
Discovery of Agriculture,
The Invention of the Steam Engine and The History of Chemistry from the Phlogiston theory to the Periodic Table are intended to illustrate the points made in A Theory of History in more detail than is shown in that paper. These papers are not necessarily complete, one of the benefits of the internet is that work can continually be updated. in particular A Problem with some Philosophies of History needs a section added dealing with the functionalist theory of social change. A Theory of History needs an indepth analysis of the reasons for the order of discovery of knowledge and all the papers could generally do with tidying up.
The other philosophical issue I am interested in is the debate concerning the nature of reality. The paper
Sense Perception and Reality suggests the universe is observer dependent and uses arguments both from philosophy and from quantum physics in reaching that conclusion. It seems remarkable to me that such a counter-intuitive idea should emerge quite independently from sources as diverse as 20th century quantum physics and 17th and 18th century philosophy. Most works on this subject are written by philosopers with little or no knowledge of science or by physicists with little or no knowledge of philosophy. I have attempted to bring together the quantum physics and philosophy arguments into hopefully one coherent system that applies equally to our macro world and to the micro world of quantum physics. I have also produced a paper on the Bohr-Einstein debate on quantum theory which is also available.
All Rights Reserved