University of Bonn, Germany; Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany.
Stud Hist Philos Sci. 2024 Apr;104:48-60. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2023.12.008. Epub 2024 Mar 8.
Hermann Weyl's philosophical reflections remain a topic of considerable interest in the history and philosophy of science. In particular, Weyl's commitment to a form of idealism, as it pertains to his reading of Husserl and Fichte, has garnered much discussion. However, much less attention has been given to Weyl's later, and at that only partial, turn towards a form of empiricism (i.e. from the late 1920s onward). This lack of focus on Weyl's later philosophy has tended to obscure some of the most significant lessons that Weyl sought to draw from his decades of research in the foundations of mathematics and physics. In this paper, I develop some aspects of what I will term as Weyl's 'modest' empiricism. I will argue that Weyl's turn toward empiricism can be read in the context of a development of Helmholtz's epistemological program and his unique form of 'Kantianism'. The hope is that this reading will not only provide a better understanding of Weyl's later thought, especially his (1954) criticism of Cassirer, but that it may also provide the basis for a novel 'Weylian' account of the mathematization of nature underwriting the group-theoretic methodology of parts of modern physics.
赫尔曼·外尔的哲学反思在科学史和科学哲学中仍然是一个相当有兴趣的话题。特别是，外尔对胡塞尔和费希特的解读所体现的唯心主义倾向引起了广泛的讨论。然而，人们对外尔后来的、而且只是部分的经验主义倾向（即从 20 世纪 20 年代末开始）关注较少。这种对外尔后期哲学的关注不足，往往掩盖了外尔从他几十年的数学和物理基础研究中试图得出的一些最重要的教训。在本文中，我将阐述我所谓的外尔“适度”经验主义的一些方面。我将论证，在外尔向经验主义的转变可以在赫尔姆霍茨认识论计划的发展及其独特形式的“康德主义”的背景下进行解读。希望这种解读不仅能对外尔后期的思想，特别是他（1954 年）对卡西尔的批评，有一个更好的理解，而且还能为现代物理学部分的群论方法所支持的自然数学化提供一种新颖的“外尔式”解释。
