Authors: Arturo Tozzi
The French-Swiss Professor in inductive philosophy Richard Avenarius (Paris, 1843- Zurich, 1896) and also the father of empirio-criticism together with Ernst Mach, is one of the most underrated and misunderstood philosophers ever. Nevertheless, influenced by the most innovative proposals of his times of transition between the idealistic/rationalist legacies and the new materialistic/scientific interpretation of the reality – i.e, by cultural evolutionism, linguistics, biomechanics, entropy/energy theories and, above all, by the newborn experimental psychology -, he produced a complete and innovative system of philosophy, aiming at investigate the laws of knowledge. Chunks of his original ideas can be found not only in theories of mind/brain after him - such as Gestalt, phenomenalism, behaviourism, functionalism and cybernetics, autopoiesis, dynamical systems theory, embedded/embodied approaches – but also in current neuroscientific approaches – nervous transduction, electric spikes, neural code, multisensory integration, free-energy principle -. Our aim is to provide the first chronological English summary of his masterpiece, the German-written “Kritik”, thus giving the possibility to the (almost) totally unaware English speakers to appreciate such a neglected and innovative thinker. The two books of the “Kritik der reinen Erfahrung” (Critique of Pure Experience), published respectively in 1888 and 1890, comprise a prologue and three parts, divided in 1040 short paragraphs. Each quoted paragraph will be put in bracket [ ]. In order to avoid Avenarius’ technicalities, we will use a simplified idiom. If he were alive today, I would have not agreed with such an oversimplification: indeed, the neologisms he used were partly necessary for the denomination of new phenomena, but partly resulted from the extreme care he took to prevent all possible changes as well in physiological as in psychological theories. We however hope he will forgive us: a better comprehension of his theory will make him a favour.
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