Download or read book Explanation in the Special Sciences written by Marie I. Kaiser and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-29 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biology and history are often viewed as closely related disciplines, with biology informed by history, especially in its task of charting our evolutionary past. Maximizing the opportunities for cross-fertilization in these two fields requires an accurate reckoning of their commonalities and differences—precisely what this volume sets out to achieve. Specially commissioned essays by a team of recognized international researchers cover the full panoply of topics in these fields and include notable contributions on the correlativity of evolutionary and historical explanations, applying to history the latest causal-mechanical approach in the philosophy of biology, and the question of generalized laws that might pertain across the two subjects. The collection opens with a vital interrogation of general issues on explanation that apart from potentially fruitful areas of interaction (could the etiology of the causal-mechanical perspective in biology account for the historical trajectory of the Roman Empire?) this volume also seeks to chart relative certainties distinguishing explanations in biology and history. It also assesses techniques such as the use of probabilities in biological reconstruction, deployed to overcome the inevitable gaps in physical evidence on early evolution. Methodologies such as causal graphs and semantic explanation receive in-depth analysis. Contributions from a host of prominent and widely read philosophers ensure that this new volume has the stature of a major addition to the literature. ​

Download or read book Special Sciences and the Unity of Science written by Olga Pombo and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science is a dynamic process in which the assimilation of new phenomena, perspectives, and hypotheses into the scientific corpus takes place slowly. The apparent disunity of the sciences is the unavoidable consequence of this gradual integration process. Some thinkers label this dynamical circumstance a ‘crisis’. However, a retrospective view of the practical results of the scientific enterprise and of science itself, grants us a clear view of the unity of the human knowledge seeking enterprise. This book provides many arguments, case studies and examples in favor of the unity of science. These contributions touch upon various scientific perspectives and disciplines such as: Physics, Computer Science, Biology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, and Economics.

Download or read book Logical Empiricism and the Special Sciences written by Sahotra Sarkar and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1996 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-nine collected essays represent a critical history of Shakespeare's play as text and as theater, beginning with Samuel Johnson in 1765, and ending with a review of the Royal Shakespeare Company production in 1991. The criticism centers on three aspects of the play: the love/friendship debate.

Download or read book Foundational Problems in the Special Sciences written by Robert E. Butts and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science was held at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 27 August to 2 September 1975. The Congress was held under the auspices of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, and was sponsored by the National Research Council of Canada and the University of Western Ontario. As those associated closely with the work of the Division over the years know weIl, the work undertaken by its members varies greatly and spans a number of fields not always obviously related. In addition, the volume of work done by first rate scholars and scientists in the various fields of the Division has risen enormously. For these and related reasons it seemed to the editors chosen by the Divisional officers that the usual format of publishing the proceedings of the Congress be abandoned in favour of a somewhat more flexible, and hopefully acceptable, method of pre sentation. Accordingly, the work of the invited participants to the Congress has been divided into four volumes appearing in the University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science. The volumes are entitled, Logic, Foundations of Mathematics and Computability Theory, Foun dational Problems in the Special Sciences, Basic Problems in Methodol ogy and Linguistics, and Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science.

Download or read book Ceterus Paribus Laws written by John Earman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2002 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural and social sciences seem very often, though usually only implicitly, to hedge their laws by ceteris paribus clauses - a practice which is philosophically very hard to understand because such clauses seem to render the laws trivial and unfalsifiable. After early worries the issue is vigorously discussed in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mind since ca. 15 years. This volume collects the most prominent philosophers of science in the field and presents a lively, controversial, but well-integrated, highly original and up-to-date discussion of the issue. It will be the reference book in the coming years concerning ceteris paribus laws.

Download or read book Scientific Explanation in Biology written by Roger Deulofeu Batllori and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Understanding how scientists explain has been one of the major goals of the philosophy of science. Given that explaining is one of the most important tasks that scientists aim at and given the high specialization that currently affects all scientific disciplines, we encounter what might at first glance appear to us as many different types of explanations and very different ways of explaining natural phenomena. This suggests a pluralist picture regarding scientific explanation, particularly in biology, namely the existence of different accounts of explanation that do not share an interesting common core. However, the main goal of the traditional analysis of scientific explanation was to elaborate a monist theory of explanation according to which all scientific explanations share a common core that makes them what they are - i.e. that they can be identified by a commonly shared set of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. The monist accounts mainly draw on examples from physics to illustrate how this is supposed to work, leaving examples from the special science, like biology, aside.In the last twenty years, nonetheless, the rise of the New Mechanism philosophy, with its notion of mechanistic explanation, has become the dominant and widely accepted account among the philosophers of science to analyze scientific explanation in biology, challenging the pluralist view. The New mechanist account of scientific explanation is essentially monist since their defenders claim that mechanisms are all what really matters to explanation. According to mechanistic explanation, in order to explain a biological phenomenon, we have to discover the mechanism that is responsible for it. Further, we have to decompose this mechanism in order to identify its component parts and identify the causal story that connects the components with the phenomenon. Mechanistic explanations are thus considered causal explanations.The New Mechanism philosophy has arguably been very successful in analyzing how explanation works in a huge diversity of models in biology, suggesting that their account of mechanistic explanation is the only legitimate of in biology. Furthermore, New Mechanism philosophy provides a new framework that contributed to tackle traditional problems of the philosophy of science related to notions such as laws of nature, function, causation, etc.Although mechanistic explanation has proved very successful in analyzing the explanatory force of many biological models, its scope in biology is still under discussion. In the last few years, there has been voices limiting the extension of this account. On the one hand, there has been philosophers claiming that in some biological models, mathematics plays not only a representational role but an explanatory role, suggesting that those models provide explanations that rather than identifying a mechanism with its components and causal story, identify mathematical properties that are explanatory of some phenomenon. They claim that in those explanations, the system under analysis has a mathematical structure whose mathematical properties are explanatory of a particular range of explananda. On the other hand, and despite the claim widely accepted that there are no laws in biology, some philosophers claim we can still consider that some biological models explain by appeal to laws of nature, suggesting covering law accounts of scientific explanation.The present thesis dissertation is a contribution to the aforementioned debate. It provides examples of biological models whose explanatory power does not lie in its identification of mechanisms with its parts and causal story, even if the models look somehow mechanistic. I claim they provide non-mechanistic (and non-causal) explanations, in so far as the models, even if they could identify a mechanism, do not explain by pinpointing information about its causal story."-- TDX.

Download or read book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions written by Thomas S. Kuhn and published by Chicago : University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1969 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Rethinking Explanation written by Johannes Persson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-05-16 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nature of scientific explanation has been an important topic in philosophy of science for many years. This book highlights some of the conceptual problems that still need to be solved and points out a number of fresh philosophical ideas to explore.

Download or read book The Concept of Scientific Law in the Philosophy of Science and Epistemology written by Igor Hanzel and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1999-11-30 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this book Igor Hanzel reconstructs the developmental stages of scientific law, working both with the history of different conceptions of scientific explanation and also within the limitations of each, which then demand further sophistication. As one basic argument of this work, which is deeply analytic as well as dialectical, the author shows that the natural and the social sciences do not operate exclusively with one type of scientific law, nor do they explain phenomena by means of one exclusive method. Thus science is not mono-paradigmatic, but poly-paradigmatic."--Jacket.

Download or read book The Knowledge Machine How Irrationality Created Modern Science written by Michael Strevens and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Knowledge Machine is the most stunningly illuminating book of the last several decades regarding the all-important scientific enterprise.” —Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex A paradigm-shifting work, The Knowledge Machine revolutionizes our understanding of the origins and structure of science. • Why is science so powerful? • Why did it take so long—two thousand years after the invention of philosophy and mathematics—for the human race to start using science to learn the secrets of the universe? In a groundbreaking work that blends science, philosophy, and history, leading philosopher of science Michael Strevens answers these challenging questions, showing how science came about only once thinkers stumbled upon the astonishing idea that scientific breakthroughs could be accomplished by breaking the rules of logical argument. Like such classic works as Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The Knowledge Machine grapples with the meaning and origins of science, using a plethora of vivid historical examples to demonstrate that scientists willfully ignore religion, theoretical beauty, and even philosophy to embrace a constricted code of argument whose very narrowness channels unprecedented energy into empirical observation and experimentation. Strevens calls this scientific code the iron rule of explanation, and reveals the way in which the rule, precisely because it is unreasonably close-minded, overcomes individual prejudices to lead humanity inexorably toward the secrets of nature. “With a mixture of philosophical and historical argument, and written in an engrossing style” (Alan Ryan), The Knowledge Machine provides captivating portraits of some of the greatest luminaries in science’s history, including Isaac Newton, the chief architect of modern science and its foundational theories of motion and gravitation; William Whewell, perhaps the greatest philosopher-scientist of the early nineteenth century; and Murray Gell-Mann, discoverer of the quark. Today, Strevens argues, in the face of threats from a changing climate and global pandemics, the idiosyncratic but highly effective scientific knowledge machine must be protected from politicians, commercial interests, and even scientists themselves who seek to open it up, to make it less narrow and more rational—and thus to undermine its devotedly empirical search for truth. Rich with illuminating and often delightfully quirky illustrations, The Knowledge Machine, written in a winningly accessible style that belies the import of its revisionist and groundbreaking concepts, radically reframes much of what we thought we knew about the origins of the modern world.

Download or read book A Framework for K 12 Science Education written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-02-28 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to solving many of humanity's most pressing current and future challenges. The United States' position in the global economy is declining, in part because U.S. workers lack fundamental knowledge in these fields. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, A Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. A Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science through their common application across science and engineering; scientific and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas in the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences and for engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, be careful consumers of scientific and technical information, and enter the careers of their choice. A Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that can inform state-level decisions and achieve a research-grounded basis for improving science instruction and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, teachers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, state and district science administrators, and educators who teach science in informal environments.

Download or read book The Unity of Science written by Rudolf Carnap and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a leading member of the Vienna Circle, Rudolph Carnap's aim was to bring about a "unified science" by applying a method of logical analysis to the empirical data of all the sciences. This work, first published in English in 1934, endeavors to work out a way in which the observation statements required for verification are not private to the observer. The work shows the strong influence of Wittgenstein, Russell, and Frege.

Download or read book Philosophy of Natural Science written by Carl Gustav Hempel and published by Prentice Hall. This book was released on 1966 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the logic and methodology of scientific inquiry rather than its substantive results.

Download or read book A New Kind of Science written by Stephen Wolfram and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 1197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work presents a series of dramatic discoveries never before made public. Starting from a collection of simple computer experiments---illustrated in the book by striking computer graphics---Wolfram shows how their unexpected results force a whole new way of looking at the operation of our universe. Wolfram uses his approach to tackle a remarkable array of fundamental problems in science: from the origin of the Second Law of thermodynamics, to the development of complexity in biology, the computational limitations of mathematics, the possibility of a truly fundamental theory of physics, and the interplay between free will and determinism.

Download or read book The Nature of Scientific Theory written by Lawrence Sklar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About the Series Contemporary philosophy of science combines a general study from a philosophical perspective of the methods of science, with an inquiry, again from the philosophical point of view, into foundational issues that arise in the various special sciences. Methodological philosophy of science has deep connections with issues at the center of pure philosophy. It makes use of important results, for example, in traditional epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of language. It also connects in various ways with other disciplines such as the history and sociology of the sciences, with pure logic, and with such branches of mathematics as probability theory. These volumes are, for the most part, devoted to readings in the methodological aspects of the philosophy of science. One volume, however, takes up the philosophical issues in the foundations of a particularly important special science, that is the issues in the foundations of theories of contemporary physics. The methodological volumes cover a number of crucial general problem areas. The first volume takes up issues in the nature of scientific explanation, and the related issues of the nature of scientific law and of the casual relation among events. The second volume explores issues in the nature and structure of scientific theories. The third volume collects inquiries into the nature of scientific change, as one theory is replaced by another. Volume four is devoted to readings concerning the nature of probability and the nature and justification of inductive reasoning in science. The following volume continues the exploration of the issue of confirming and rejecting theories with a series of readings devoted to Bayesian methodologies in science and to the exploration of non-inductive strategies for rationalizing belief. Finally, volume six explores three major problem areas in the foundation of physics: the nature and rationale for physical theories of space and time; the interpretive problems arising out of the quantum theory; and some puzzles arising out of statistical mechanical theories of physics. The readings are selected and arranged to provide the user with systematic access to the most important contemporary themes in methodological philosophy of science and in philosophy of physics. The selections include many recent contributions to the field, as well as papers and extracts from books and journals otherwise not easily available.

Download or read book Idealization and the Aims of Science written by Angela Potochnik and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-09-23 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science is the study of our world, as it is in its messy reality. Nonetheless, science requires idealization to function—if we are to attempt to understand the world, we have to find ways to reduce its complexity. Idealization and the Aims of Science shows just how crucial idealization is to science and why it matters. Beginning with the acknowledgment of our status as limited human agents trying to make sense of an exceedingly complex world, Angela Potochnik moves on to explain how science aims to depict and make use of causal patterns—a project that makes essential use of idealization. She offers case studies from a number of branches of science to demonstrate the ubiquity of idealization, shows how causal patterns are used to develop scientific explanations, and describes how the necessarily imperfect connection between science and truth leads to researchers’ values influencing their findings. The resulting book is a tour de force, a synthesis of the study of idealization that also offers countless new insights and avenues for future exploration.

Download or read book Science And Human Behavior written by B.F Skinner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-18 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The psychology classic—a detailed study of scientific theories of human nature and the possible ways in which human behavior can be predicted and controlled—from one of the most influential behaviorists of the twentieth century and the author of Walden Two. “This is an important book, exceptionally well written, and logically consistent with the basic premise of the unitary nature of science. Many students of society and culture would take violent issue with most of the things that Skinner has to say, but even those who disagree most will find this a stimulating book.” —Samuel M. Strong, The American Journal of Sociology “This is a remarkable book—remarkable in that it presents a strong, consistent, and all but exhaustive case for a natural science of human behavior…It ought to be…valuable for those whose preferences lie with, as well as those whose preferences stand against, a behavioristic approach to human activity.” —Harry Prosch, Ethics