Reason and Being

Boris Kuznetsov was a scientist among humanists, a philosopher among scientists, a historian for those who look to the future, an optimist in an age of sadness. He was steeped in classical European culture, from earliest times to the latest avant-garde, and he roamed through the ages, an inveterate time-traveller, chatting and arguing with Aristotle and Descartes, Heine and Dante, among many others. Kuznetsov was also, in his intelligent and thoughtful way, a Marxist scholar and a practical engineer, a patriotic Russian Jew of the first sixty years of the Soviet Union. Above all he meditated upon the revolutionary developments of the natural sciences, throughout history to be sure but particularly in his own time, the time of what he called 'non-classical science', and of his beloved and noblest hero, Albert Einstein. Kuznetsov was born in Dnepropetrovsk on October 5, 1903 (then Yekaterinoslav). By early years he had begun to teach, first in 1921 at an institute of mining engineering and then at other technological institutions. By 1933 he had received a scientific post within the Academy of Science of the U. S. S. R. , and then at the end of the Second World War he joined several colleagues at the new Institute of the History of Science and Technology. For more than 40 years he worked there until his death two years ago. Front Matter....Pages i-xx Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Introduction....Pages 3-28 Front Matter....Pages 29-29 The Heraclitean-Eleatic Clash....Pages 31-46 Paradoxes of Being....Pages 47-66 Einstein and Epicurus....Pages 67-108 The Rationalism of the Renaissance....Pages 109-147 Descartes....Pages 148-177 Spinoza and Einstein....Pages 178-210 The Genesis of Classical Science and the Problem of Nonidentity....Pages 211-238 Dynamism and the Critique of Stationary Being....Pages 239-275 Front Matter....Pages 277-277 Heterogeneous Being....Pages 279-297 Existence and Actuality....Pages 298-324 Understanding and Reason in Nineteenth- and Twentieth- Century Science....Pages 325-357 Nothing and the Vacuum....Pages 358-394 Afterword....Pages 395-426 Back Matter....Pages 427-444