Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) experience, living through events and the impression on a person or animal of events. In epistemology, a distinction is made between things known inductively, from experience, and those known deductiv...

(Encyclopedia) Maimon, Salomon mīˈmôn [key], c.1754–1800, German philosopher, b. Polish Lithuania. He received a Jewish religious education and was influenced by the Talmudic tradition and particularly by Maimo...

(Encyclopedia) Nelson, Leonard, 1882–1927, German philosopher. On the faculty of the Univ. of Göttingen from 1909, he was interested in the use of critical method to establish a scientific foundation for philosop...

(Encyclopedia) agnosticism ăgnŏsˈtĭsĭzəm [key], form of skepticism that holds that the existence of God cannot be logically proved or disproved. Among prominent agnostics have been Auguste Comte, Herbert Spenc...

(Encyclopedia) Broch, Hermann hĕrˈmän brôkh [key], 1886–1951, Austrian novelist. Broch is one of the masters of European modernism. Influenced by Immanuel Kant and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Kraus, and the Vien...

(Encyclopedia) causality, in philosophy, the relationship between cause and effect. A distinction is often made between a cause that produces something new (e.g., a moth from a caterpillar) and one that produces a c...

(Encyclopedia) Fichte, Johann Gottlieb yōˈhän gôtˈlēp fĭkhˈtə [key], 1762–1814, German philosopher. After studying theology at Jena and working as a tutor in Zürich and Leipzig, he became interested in K...

(Encyclopedia) dualism, any philosophical system that seeks to explain all phenomena in terms of two distinct and irreducible principles. It is opposed to monism and pluralism. In Plato's philosophy there is an ulti...

(Encyclopedia) aesthetics ĕsthĕtˈĭks [key], the branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature of art and the criteria of artistic judgment. The classical conception of art as the imitation of nature was...

(Encyclopedia) dialectic dīəlĕkˈtĭk [key] [Gr.,= art of conversation], in philosophy, term originally applied to the method of philosophizing by means of question and answer employed by certain ancient philosop...