Download or read book Aesthetic Factors in Natural Science written by Nicholas Rescher and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 1990 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays originated from an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Pittsburgh. Contents: Aesthetic Factors in Natural Science, by Nicholas Rescher; Three Arguments against Simplicity, by Kristin Shrader-Frechette; Simplicity and the Aesthetics of Explanation, by Joseph C. Pitt; Simplicity as an Epistemic Virtue: The View from the Neuronal Level, by Paul M. Churchland; Taming a Regulative Principle: From Kant to Schlick, by Matti Sintonen; Simplicity and Distinctness: The Limits of Referential Semantics, by Ulrich Majer; The Aesthetics of Theory Testing: Economy and Simplicity, by Jane Duran; Simplicity in Evolutionary Explanations, by David B. Resnik; and The Role of Simplicity in Geology, by illiam R. Brice. Index. Co-published with Center for the Philosophy of Science.

Download or read book The Aesthetics of Science written by Milena Ivanova and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-16 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume builds on two recent developments in philosophy on the relationship between art and science: the notion of representation and the role of values in theory choice and the development of scientific theories. Its aim is to address questions regarding scientific creativity and imagination, the status of scientific performances—such as thought experiments and visual aids—and the role of aesthetic considerations in the context of discovery and justification of scientific theories. Several contributions focus on the concept of beauty as employed by practising scientists, the aesthetic factors at play in science and their role in decision making. Other essays address the question of scientific creativity and how aesthetic judgment resolves the problem of theory choice by employing aesthetic criteria and incorporating insights from both objectivism and subjectivism. The volume also features original perspectives on the role of the sublime in science and sheds light on the empirical work studying the experience of the sublime in science and its relation to the experience of understanding. The Aesthetics of Science tackles these topics from a variety of novel and thought-provoking angles. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in philosophy of science and aesthetics, as well as other subdisciplines such as epistemology and philosophy of mathematics.

Download or read book The Elusive Synthesis Aesthetics and Science written by A.I. Tauber and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tension between art and science may be traced back to the Greeks. What became "natural philosophy" and later "science" has traditionally been posed as a fundamental alternative to poetry and art. It is a theme that has commanded central attention in Western thought, as it captures the ancient conflict of Apollo and Dionysus over what deserves to order our thought and serve as the aspiration of our cultural efforts. The modern schi sm between art and science was again clearly articulated in the Romantic period and seemingly grew to a crescendo fifty years aga as a result of the debate concerning atomic power. The discussion has not abated in the physical sciences, and in fact has dramatically expanded most prominently into the domains of ecology and medicine. Issues concerning the role of science in modern society, although heavily political, must be regarded at heart as deeply embedded in our cultural values. Although each generation addresses them anew, the philosophical problems which lay at the foundation of these fundamental concerns always appear fresh and difficult. This anthology of original essays considers how science might have a greater commonality with art than was perhaps realized in a more positivist era. The contributors are concerned with how the aesthetic participates in science, both as a factor in constructing theory and influencing practice. The collec tion is thus no less than a spectrum of how Beauty and Science might be regarded through the same prism.

Download or read book Multidisciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity in Health written by Nima Rezaei and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 729 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributed volume "Multidisciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity in Health" is a health-centered volume of the Integrated Science Book series. Lack of confidence, lack of expertise, complexities of healthcare, the confusing nature of healthcare environments, and lack of organization and standardization can become obstacles to successful communication. This volume establishes how extensive is the interface between formal sciences and medical sciences on health-related issues. The book provides an overview of the value of the integration of formal, biological, and medical sciences and related products, i.e., health informatics and biomedical engineering, to frame a holistic approach to health systems, healthcare, medical practice, drug discovery, and medical device design. The book also focuses on innovative solutions to the most critical issues of different health crisis, including obesity, infectious outbreaks, and cancer that can be found by using an integrative approach. It also contains the fascinating crossroads between medical sciences, physics, and mind that is discussed from multiple perspectives on cognition, neuroscience, and psychiatry. These multidisciplinary considerations will expand the concepts of creativity, leadership, aesthetics, empathy and mental health.

Download or read book Science and the Quest for Reality written by Alfred I. Tauber and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science and the Quest for Reality is an interdisciplinary anthology that situates contemporary science within its complex philosophical, historical, and sociological contexts. The anthology is divided between, firstly, characterizing science as an intellectual activity and, secondly, defining its social role. The philosophical and historical vicissitudes of science's truth claims has raised profound questions concerning the role of science in society beyond its technological innovations. The deeper philosophical issues thus complement the critical inquiry concerning the broader social and ethical influence of contemporary science. In the tradition of the 'Main Trends of the Modern World' series, this volume includes both classical and contemporary works on the subject.

Download or read book The Elusive Synthesis written by A.I. Tauber and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1997-10-31 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology of 13 original essays clustering around two notions: that scientific experience is laden with an emotive content of the beautiful that is manifest both in the conceptualization and presentation of specific data and in the broader theoretical formulations that bind details into unitary wholes; and that science and aesthetics may share a deep philosophical foundation, but if so it has become increasingly difficult to discern in the 20th century. The topics include the aesthetic construction of Darwin's theory, form and function in the molecularization of biology, Kant's aesthetic-expressive vision of mathematics, and the art of displaying science in museum exhibitions. No subject index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Doing Philosophy of Technology written by Joseph C. Pitt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-03-24 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As science becomes more deeply embedded in a complex technological infrastructure, has this changed the relationship between the sciences and the various technologies that support them? As our technologies help shrink our world, can we restrict our ethical concerns or must we find a way to face the fact that we are now one world? What do new forms of architecture say about whom we are? Is the design process the new epistemological paradigm? The answers to all of these is "yes" according to Joseph C. Pitt (VirginaTech). Doing Philosophy of Technology presents an updated and integrated overview of the most important thinking from this prominent philosopher of technology. Throughout his career Joseph C. Pitt has defended the view that to say anything meaningful about the value of a technology one must know something about that technology and how it functions in the world. This starting point leads naturally to a pragmatist philosophical stance, since it is the real world consequences of introducing a technology that must be the basis for any further normative judgements. In the book we find an extended set of arguments that challenge the idea that there are eternal philosophical issues that transcend the impacts that technologies make on human beings and their world. Rather, it is claimed that as our technologies transform our world they transform us and the kinds of questions we find important to answer.

Download or read book On Aesthetics in Science written by Judith Wechsler and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1981 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There have been, in recent years, exhibitions that juxtapose abstract paintings with photographs taken through the electron microscope, and contemporary sculpture with molecular models, in order to demonstrate the closeness of modern art and the products of modern science (or the effect of nature seeming to imitate art). And parallels between Cubism and relativity, or between action painting and the indeterminate character of quantum phenomena, have been put forward as evidence of a twentieth century mentality that is embodied in both art and science.The essays included in "On Aesthetics in Science, " however, deal with the subject at a much deeper level, beyond these somewhat facile likenesses and parallels. The book is not so much concerned with the products and artifacts of science as it is with the concepts, models, and theories that make them possible. And beyond that, it is concerned with the "processes" by which individual scientists--passing their ideas and data through Poincare's irreducible "delicate sieve" of the aesthetic sensibility--create their concepts, models, and theories. Elegance, simplicity, economy, beauty, the sense of rightness, of inevitability, of perfect correspondence--these are the intuitive guides and formal goals that scientists have long recognized but have seldom explicitly articulated.Above all, the book treats aesthetics as a way of knowing, as fundamental to cognition. As the editor writes in her introduction, "The aesthetic factors in cognition--manifest in both art and science, though until recently more recognizable in art--are continuous, and broader than either.... Aesthetics is presented in this collection as a mode of cognition that focuses on forms and metaphors used in scientific conceptualizing and modeling.... Viewed as a way of knowing, aesthetics in science is concerned with the metaphorical and analogical relationship between reality and concepts, theories and models. As Cyril Smith points out, the search in science for models that illuminate nature seems to parallel certain crucial processes in art: they share a fundamental evocative quality."Aesthetic judgments in science are found to be as dependent on cultural context and personal style as they are in the arts. Thus, the book notes, although the "appreciation of elegance and economy is historically recurrent" and is certainly in accord with contemporary taste, whether conceptual or decorative, the Victorians "often preferred more complicated formulations" in their science. And while some individual scientists are guided by geometric intuitions that appeal to the visual cognitive mode (Kepler and the planetary orbits, Bohr and electron orbits), others are attracted to abstract mathematical formalisms (Newton and the universal laws of the cosmos, Heisenberg and "unvisualizable" particle of quantum mechanics). The book notes other such dualities that embody the dialectic of the scientific imagination.Just as art can be appreciated by those who did not engage in the process of its creation, so can the grandeur of the epoch-defining scientific theories. And in both cases an understanding of the appropriate aesthetics is recommended. That is why this book is for scientist and nonscientist alike--for all who would share the experience of the sudden eureka of discovery or the long evolution toward understanding.The book was developed from a course taught by the author at MIT."The essays: " Introduction, by "Judith Wechsler;" Structural Hierarchy in Science, Art, and History, by "Cyril Stanley Smith;" On Broken Symmetries, by " Philip Morrison;" Visualization Lost and Regained: The Genesis of the Quantum Theory in the Period 1913-1927, by "Arthur I. Miller;" The Mathematical Unconscious, by "Seymour A. Papert;" Darwin's "Tree of Nature" and Other Images of Wide Scope, by "Howard E. Gruber;" Rationality and Intuition, by "Geoffrey Vickers."

Download or read book On Aesthetics in Science written by WECHSLER and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1988-02-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Critical Scientific Realism written by Ilkka Niiniluoto and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1999-12-09 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ilkka Niiniluoto comes to the rescue of scientific realism, showing that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Philosophical realism holds that the aim of a particular discourse is to make true statements about its subject-matter. Niiniluoto surveys the different varieties of realism in ontology, semantics, epistemology, theory construction, and methodology. He then sets out his own original version, and defends it against competing theories in the philosophy of science. Niiniluoto's critical scientific realism is founded upon the notion of truth as correspondence between language and reality, and characterizes scientific progress in terms of increasing truthlikeness. This makes it possible not only to take seriously, but also to make precise, the troublesome idea that scientific theories typically are false but nevertheless close to the truth.

Download or read book Logic Language and the Structure of Scientific Theories written by Wesley C. Salmon and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 1994-01-15 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume honors and examines the founders of the philosophy of logical empiricism. Historical and interpretive essays clarify the scientific philosophies of Carnap, Reichenbach, Hempel, Kant, and others, while exploring the main topics of logical empiricist philosophy of science.

Download or read book Scientific Theories written by C. Wade Savage and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A whole new crop of worms from the philosophy of science can. Based on a two-year study, 15 essays look over the shoulder of scientists in biomedicine, economics, neuropsychology, physics, and other disciplines, and comment on how and why they devise, use, and legitimize their theories. Annotation c

Download or read book Evolution Cognition and Realism written by Nicholas Rescher and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 1990 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays originated from an interdisciplinary conference on 'Evolutionary Epistemology' held in Pittsburgh in December of 1988 under the sponsorship of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Philosophy of Science. Contents: Epistemological Roles for Selection Theory, by Donald T. Campbell; Evolutionary Models of Science, by Ronald N. Giere; Should Epistemologists Take Darwin Seriously? by Michael Bradie; Natural Selection, Justification, and Inference to the Best Explanation, by Alan H. Goldman; Interspecific Competition, Evolutionary Epistemology, and Ecology, by Kristin Shrader-Frechette; Toward Making Evolutionary Epistemology into a Truly Naturalized Epistemology, by William Bechtel; Confessions of a Creationist, by C. Kenneth Waters. Co-published with the Center for Philosophy of Science.

Download or read book Analytic Philosophy in Finland written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finland is internationally known as one of the leading centers of twentieth century analytic philosophy. This volume offers for the first time an overall survey of the Finnish analytic school. The rise of this trend is illustrated by original articles of Edward Westermarck, Eino Kaila, Georg Henrik von Wright, and Jaakko Hintikka. Contributions of Finnish philosophers are then systematically discussed in the fields of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, history of philosophy, ethics and social philosophy. Metaphilosophical reflections on the nature of philosophy are highlighted by the Finnish dialogue between analytic philosophy, phenomenology, pragmatism, and critical theory.

Download or read book Questions on Natural Science and the Harmonic Philosophy written by John Emmett Richardson and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Beauty and the Beast written by Ernst Peter Fischer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-11-09 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Showing how the aesthetic delights of thought, analysis, research, and discovery are leading components of the scientific mind and process, he examines everything from snowflakes to the overall makeup of the space-time continuum. He explores these concepts and others including the golden mean, evolution, symmetry in nature, as well as imaginary numbers and irrationality as proof of beauty in science. He presents truth as a state of beauty - and beauty as the embodiment of truth. This book will appeal to lay people and scientists alike.

Download or read book Beauty and Revolution in Science written by James W. McAllister and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explaining why he embraced the theory of relativity, the Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist P. A. M. Dirac stated, "It is the essential beauty of the theory which I feel is the real reason for believing in it." How reasonable and rational can science be when its practitioners speak of "revolutions" in their thinking and extol certain theories for their "beauty"? James W. McAllister addresses this question with the first systematic study of the aesthetic evaluations that scientists pass on their theories.Using a wealth of other examples, McAllister explains how scientists' aesthetic preferences are influenced by the empirical track record of theories, describes the origin and development of aesthetic styles of theorizing, and reconsiders whether simplicity is an empirical or an aesthetic virtue of theories. McAllister then advances an innovative model of scientific revolutions, in opposition to that of Thomas S. Kuhn.Three detailed studies demonstrate the interconnection of empirical performance, beauty, and revolution. One examines the impact of new construction materials on the history of architecture. Another reexamines the transition from the Ptolemaic system to Kepler's theory in planetary astronomy, and the third documents the rise of relativity and quantum theory in the twentieth century.