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[German Version] I. History The theory or philosophy of science is the theory of the conditions – in particular the structure, acquisition, and explication – of (institutionalized) scientific knowledge(Science); as such it is part of theoretical philosophy.…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Ethics – IV. Power of Imagination I. Philosophy Imagination or fantasy (Gk φαντασία/ phantasía, Lat. phantasia; Lat./Eng./Fr. imaginatio[n], “appearance, mental image, idea”; cf. also Gk φάντασμα/ phántasma, “appearance, dream image, vision”) is the primarily pictographic conception of things that dominates in memory and recreation (as in dreams). Its e…

[German Version] I. The Term and Its Impact Though there was scattered use of the term in German historiography (Ernst Bernheim) and 19th-century German and French philosophy (Conrad Herrmann, M. Blondel), the concept and term go back to C.S. Peirce (see also II below), who introduced the concept in How to Make Our Ideas Clear (1878), the term in 1902 in J. Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, and both …

[German Version] I. Philosophy Rationality is derived from Latin ratio (“calculation, consideration, reason”) and medieval Latin rationalitas (“reason, capacity for thought”). The term denotes various intellectual capacities that distinguish human beings as “rational animals” from the other more highly developed animals. In German, from the 18th century, these capacities were generally designated as Verstand (Intellect: I) and Vernunft (Reason: I). Under the influence of the English term rationality, and the usage of various scientific disciplines, especially s…

[German Version] I. Terminology The term sign usually means something perceptible to the senses that signifies something else, which gives it its specific meaning. In theological and philosophical usage, it differs from the term symbol (Symbols), although the latter is sometimes used synonymously with sign in semiotics and mathematics as well as in logic. While Aristotle used the term σημεῖον/ sēmeíon in various contexts – including his theory of conclusions –,Augustine of Hippo associated the theory of signs more closely with the theory of language (Philology). After the 13th century, signum no longer meant simply something like a sound or a letter perceptible to the senses but also a term or a meaning (Significance) itself. This usage set the course that has dominated the theory of signs (semiotics) down to the present. It is questionable, however, whether linguistic signs may be considered an ideal type for signs in general. In addition, the communicative potential of signs has become a problem. Finally, sign, concept, and object label the vertices of the so-called semiotic triangle, in which their relations…

[German Version] I. Natural Sciences The distinction between theory as a consistent linguistic or symbolic system of ordered statements about a par-¶ ticular subject area or phenomenal domain and practice (praxis) as technical action to produce quantifiable phenomena in an experiment, or at least observation against the background of a theory, is fundame…

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