Reforging the great chain of being : studies of the history of modal theories
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Reforging the great chain of being : studies of the history of modal theories
(Synthese historical library, v. 20)
D. Reidel , Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Boston, c1981
Available at 27 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographies and indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
A sports reporter might say that in a competition all the participants realize their potentialities or possibilities. When an athlete performs far below his usual standard, it can be said that it was possible for him to do better. But the idea of fair play requires that this use of 'possible' refers to another com petition. It is presumed that the best athlete wins and that no real possibility of doing better is left unrealized in a competition. Here we have a use of language, a language game, in which modal notions are used so as to imply that if something is possible, it is realized. This idea does not belong to the general presuppositions of current ordinary usage. It is, nevertheless, not difficult to fmd other similar examples outside of the language of sports. It may be that such a use of modal notions is sometimes calculated to express that in the context in question there are no real alternative courses of events in contradistinction to other cases in which some possible alternatives remain unrealized. Even though modal notions are currently interpreted without the presup position that each genuine possibility should be realized at some moment of the actual history, there are contemporary philosophical models of modalities which incorporate this presupposition. In his book Untersuchungen tiber den Modalkalkiil (Anton Hain, Meisenheim am Glan 1952, pp. 16-36), Oscar Becker presents a statistical interpretation of modal calculi.
Table of Contents
Gaps in the Great Chain. of Being: An Exercise in the Methodology of the History of Ideas.- Empty Forms in Plato.- Aristotle on the Realization of Possibilities in Time.- Aristotle and the Priority of Actuality.- Anselm's Modal Conceptions.- Time and Modality in Scholasticism.- Leibniz on Plenitude, Relations, and the 'Reign of Law'.- Kant on 'The Great Chain of Being' or the Eventual Realization of All Possibilities: A Comparative Study.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.
by "Nielsen BookData"