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The concept of form has been of central importance in philosophical and scientific reflection since its beginnings One thinks, for example, of the Ionian physicists and their hypothesis that many aspects of the world depend on the form of atoms. Similarly, innumerable variations on Plato's world of ideas/ forms and Aristotle's dialectic of matter/form have characterized Western thought throughout its history. Of universal currency is Galileo's thesis that the book of nature is written in the language of the geometric forms, and that it is only necessary to learn how to read it. The various theories of form that have been developed in the twenty-five centuries of Western civilization instruct us that there is no single or fundamental theory of forms. The problem thus becomes one of those theoretical cruxes that enable us to understand the meaning and deeper-lying characteristics of a theory. A book about form, therefore, may pursue the purely theoretical purpose of developing an aesthetics of knowledge, in the sense of analysis of the forms that emerge qualitatively from the physical level.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-2990-1_1

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