Download or read book Geometry and Chronometry in Philosophical Perspective written by Adolf Grünbaum and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Geometry and Chronometry in Philosophical Perspective written by Adolf Grunbaum and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1968-06-01 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geometry and Chronometry in Philosophical Perspective was first published in 1968. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. In this volume Professor Grünbaum substantially extends and comments upon his essay "Geometry, Chronometry, and Empiricism," which was first published in Volume III of the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Commenting on the essay when it first appeared J. J. C. Smart wrote in Mind (England): "In my opinion Adolf Grünbaum's paper ... supersedes nearly all that has been written on the logical status of physical geometry and chronometry." The full text of the essay is given here with the author's extension of it and his discussion of some of the critical comment it has evoked, particularly, a critique published by Hilary Putnam. Adolph Grünbaum is Andrew Mellon Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and the current president of the Philosophy of Science Association.
Download or read book Relativity and Geometry written by Roberto Torretti and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relativity and Geometry aims to elucidate the motivation and significance of the changes in physical geometry brought about by Einstein, in both the first and the second phases of relativity. The book contains seven chapters and a mathematical appendix. The first two chapters review a historical background of relativity. Chapter 3 centers on Einstein's first Relativity paper of 1905. Subsequent chapter presents the Minkowskian formulation of special relativity. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with Einstein's search for general relativity from 1907 to 1915, as well as some aspects and subsequent developments of the theory. The last chapter explores the concept of simultaneity, geometric conventionalism, and a few other questions concerning space time structure, causality, and time.
Download or read book Space Time and Geometry written by Patrick Suppes and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The articles in this volume have been stimulated in two different ways. More than two years ago the editor of Synthese, laakko Hintikka, an nounced a special issue devoted to space and time, and articles were solicited. Part of the reason for that announcement was also the second source of papers. Several years ago I gave a seminar on special relativity at Stanford, and the papers by Domotor, Harrison, Hudgin, Latzer and myself partially arose out of discussion in that seminar. All of the papers except those of Griinbaum, Fine, the second paper of Friedman, and the paper of Adams appeared in a special double issue of Synthese (24 (1972), Nos. 1-2). I am pleased to have been able to add the four additional papers mentioned in making the special issue a volume in the Synthese Library. Of these four additional articles, only the one by Fine has pre viously appeared in print (Synthese 22 (1971), 448-481); its relevance to the present volume is apparent. In preparing the papers for publication and in carrying out the various editonal chores of such a task, I am very much indebted to Mrs. Lillian O'Toole for her extensive assistance. INTRODUCTION The philosophy of space and time has been of permanent importance in philosophy, and most of the major historical figures in philosophy, such as Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, have had a good deal to say about the nature of space and time.
Download or read book Relativity The Theory and Its Philosophy written by Roger B. Angel and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relativity: The Theory and its Philosophy provides a completely self-contained treatment of the philosophical foundations of the theory of relativity. It also surveys the most essential mathematical techniques and concepts that are indispensable to an understanding of the foundations of both the special and general theories of relativity. In short, the book includes a crash course in applied mathematics, ranging from elementary trigonometry to the classical tensor calculus. Comprised of 11 chapters, this book begins with an introduction to fundamental mathematical concepts such as sets, relations, and functions; N-tuples, vectors, and matrices; and vector algebra and calculus. The discussion then turns to the concept of relativity and elementary foundations of Newtonian mechanics, as well as the principle of special relativity and its interpretation by means of empiricism and rationalism. Subsequent chapters focus on the status of the doctrine of conventionalism in the theory of special relativity; the commensurability of classical and relativistic mechanics; mathematical foundations of special relativistic physics; and the classical or Newtonian theory of gravitation. The principle of general covariance and its relation to the principle of general relativity are also examined. The final chapter addresses the fundamental question as to the actual information concerning the structure of spacetime that is conveyed to us through the theory of general relativity. This monograph will be of interest to students, teachers, practitioners, and researchers in physics, mathematics, and philosophy.
Download or read book Philosophical Problems of Space and Time written by Adolf Grünbaum and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 903 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is ten years since Adolf Griinbaum published the first edition of this book. It was promptly recognized to be one of the few major works in the philosophy of the natural sciences of this generation. In part, this is so because Griinbaum has chosen a problem basic both to philosophy and to the natural sciences - the nature of space and time; and in part, this is so because he so admirably exemplifies that Aristotelian devotion to the intimate and mutual dependence of actual science and philosophical understanding. More than this, however, the quality of his work derives from his achievement in combining detail with scope. The problems of space and time have been among the most difficult in contemporary and classical thought, and Griinbaum has been responsible to the full depth and complexity of these difficulties. This revised and enlarged second edition is a work in progress, in the tradition of reflective analysis of modern science of such figures as Ehrenfest and Reichenbach. In publishing this work among the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, we hope to contribute to and encourage that broad tradition of natural philosophy which is marked by the close collaboration of philoso phers and scientists. To this end, we have published the proceedings of our Colloquia, of meetings and conferences here and abroad, as well as the works of single authors.
Download or read book Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science written by Robert S. Cohen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fifth volume of Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, we have gathered papers about the logic and methods of the natural sciences. Along with the individual pieces, there are several which have originated as commentaries but are now supplementary contributions: those by Stachel and Putnam. Grlinbaum's long essay developed from a paper first suggested for our Colloquium some years ago, and we are glad of the occasion to publish it here. Several of the papers were not first presented to our Colloquium but they are the work of friends and scholars who have contributed to our discussions along similar lines. We are grateful to them for allowing us to publish their papers: L Bernard Cohen, Hilary Putnam, Mihailo Markovic. And we are also grateful to C. F. von Weizsacker for his paper, recently presented to the Boston philosophical and scientific community as a lecture at M. LT. With these few exceptions, the fifth volume presents work which was partially supported by a grant from the U. S. National Science Foundation to Boston University. Such support will conclude with the fourth volume of philosophical studies of psychology, the social sciences, history, and the inter-relationships of the sciences with ethics and metaphysics. Unimportant circumstances made it necessary to publish that fourth volume after this fifth volume, and perhaps this will mildly suggest that neither science nor the philosophy of science needs to be constrained by orthodoxy of procedure.
Download or read book Can Theories be Refuted written by Sandra Harding and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to a view assumed by many scientists and philosophers of science and standardly found in science textbooks, it is controlled ex perience which provides the basis for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable theories in science: acceptable theories are those which can pass empirical tests. It has often been thought that a certain sort of test is particularly significant: 'crucial experiments' provide supporting empiri cal evidence for one theory while providing conclusive evidence against another. However, in 1906 Pierre Duhem argued that the falsification of a theory is necessarily ambiguous and therefore that there are no crucial experiments; one can never be sure that it is a given theory rather than auxiliary or background hypotheses which experiment has falsified. w. V. Quine has concurred in this judgment, arguing that "our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not indi vidually but only as a corporate body". Some philosophers have thought that the Duhem-Quine thesis gra tuitously raises perplexities. Others see it as doubly significant; these philosophers think that it provides a base for criticism of the foundational view of knowledge which has dominated much of western thought since Descartes, and they think that it opens the door to a new and fruitful way to conceive of scientific progress in particular and of the nature and growth of knowledge in general.
Download or read book Poincar s Philosophy written by Elie Zahar and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henri Poincare (1854–1912) was one of the greatest mathematicians and philosophers of all time. He founded topology and made important contributions to theoretical physics. Yet despite his numerous achievements Poincare never constructed a systematic philosophy. In this book, Elie Zahar presents Poincare’s work for the first time as a unified system of thought.
Download or read book Observation and Theory in Science written by Ernest Sylvain Nagel and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1971. The three contributions collected in this volume deal with different aspects of a single theme—the logical status of scientific theories in their relation to observation. These lectures, authored by different thinkers, treat this theme in connection with some controversies in the philosophy of science. A nonspecialist who reads these lectures should realize that the theme itself is a perennial one with an ancient lineage. It has concerned philosophers from the earliest era of philosophy on down through the centuries. A central philosophical issue at stake in the lectures is the question of whether scientific theories are testable in terms of our observations such that we can know whether some theories are true and others false. Although differing in their emphases, all three contributors seek a more plausible and nonskeptical philosophical account of the status of scientific theories in relation to observation.
Download or read book Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy written by Edward Craig and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 920 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume seven of a ten volume set which provides full and detailed coverage of all aspects of philosophy, including information on how philosophy is practiced in different countries, who the most influential philosophers were, and what the basic concepts are.
Download or read book The Scientific World Perspective and Other Essays 1931 1963 written by J. Giedymin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though with considerable delay, most of the writings of Polish logicians of the inter-war period are now available in English. This is not yet true of Polish philosophy. In the present volume English-speaking readers will fmd, for the first time, a sizeable collection of the articles of one of the most original and distinguished of Poland's philosophers of the present century, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890-1963). To be sure, Ajdukiewicz was a philosopher-logician from the beginning of his career. His first work of some importance, a monograph entitled From the Methodology of the Deductive Sciences (1921 post-dated; two abstracts published in 1919/20) exhibited two features which were to become charac teristic of the style of his later philosophy: On the one hand the monograph was the result of Ajdukiewicz's deep interest in the systems of modern logic, the foundations of mathematics, in the properties of deductive systems and their relevance to philosophy; on the other hand the monograph was an attempt at developing an 'understanding methodology' (in the sense of Gennan 'Verstehende Methodologie') of deductive sciences, i. e. a pragmatic study of axiomatic systems which would supplement purely formal investiga tions of those systems. The fonner made him a close ally oflogical empiricists; the latter was rooted in the henneneutic tradition of the second half of the 19th century (Dilthey) which spilled over into the 20th century (Spranger) and which was not cherished at all by logical empiricists.
Download or read book PSA 1970 written by R.C. Buck and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the papers presented at the second biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, held in Boston in Fall, 1970. We have added the paper by Jaakko Hintikka which he was unable to present due to illness, and we have unfortunately not received the paper of Michael Scriven. Otherwise, these proceedings are complete so far as formal presentations. The meeting itself was dedicated to the memory of Rudolf Carnap. This great man and distinguished philosopher had died shortly before. The five talks from the session devoted to recollections of Professor Carnap are printed at the beginning of this book, and they are followed by eight other tributes and memories. We are particularly grateful to Wolfgang Stegmiiller for permitting us to include a translation of his eloge which was broadcast in Germany. The photographs were kindly contributed by Hannah Thost-Carnap. ROGER C. BUCK Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University ROBER T S. COHEN Boston Center for the Philosophy of Science, Boston University Photograph by Francis Schmidt, 1935 Photograph by Adya, 1962 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE v HOMAGE TO RUDOLF CARNAP XI Herbert Feigl, Carl G. Hempel, Richard C. Jeffrey, W. V. Quine, A. Shimony, Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, Herbert G. Bohnert, Robert S. Cohen, Charles Hartshorne, David Kaplan, Charles Morris, Maria Reichenbach, Wolfgang Stegmiiller SYMPOSIUM: THEORETICAL ENTITIES IN STATISTICAL EXPLANATION JAMES G. GREENO / Theoretical Entities in Statistical Explanation 3 WESLEY C. SALMON / Explanation and Relevance: Comments on James G.
Download or read book Foundations of Space Time Theories written by John Earman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1977-11-25 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foundations of Space-Time Theories was first published in 1977. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The essays in this volume are based on the papers given at a conference on the philosophical aspects of the space-time theory held under the auspices of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science.
Download or read book Conceptual Change and the Philosophy of Science written by David J. Stump and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, David Stump traces alternative conceptions of the a priori in the philosophy of science and defends a unique position in the current debates over conceptual change and the constitutive elements in science. Stump emphasizes the unique epistemological status of the constitutive elements of scientific theories, constitutive elements being the necessary preconditions that must be assumed in order to conduct a particular scientific inquiry. These constitutive elements, such as logic, mathematics, and even some fundamental laws of nature, were once taken to be a priori knowledge but can change, thus leading to a dynamic or relative a priori. Stump critically examines developments in thinking about constitutive elements in science as a priori knowledge, from Kant’s fixed and absolute a priori to Quine’s holistic empiricism. By examining the relationship between conceptual change and the epistemological status of constitutive elements in science, Stump puts forward an argument that scientific revolutions can be explained and relativism can be avoided without resorting to universals or absolutes.
Download or read book Conceptual Change written by G.A. Pearce and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During Hallowe'en of 1970, the Department of Philosophy of the Univer sity of Western Ontario held its annual fall colloquium at London, On tario. The general topic of the sessions that year was conceptual change. The thirteen papers composing this volume stem more or less directly from those meetings; six of them are printed here virtually as delivered, while the remaining seven were subsequently written by invitation. The programme of the colloquium was to have consisted of major papers delivered by Professors Wilfrid Sellars, Stephan Korner, Paul Ziff and Hilary Putnam, with shorter commentary thereupon by Professors Robert Binkley, Joseph Ullian, Jerry Fodor and Robert Barrett, respec tively. And that is the way it happened, with one important exception: at the eleventh hour, Sellars and Binkley exchanged roles. This gave Binkley the rather unusual and challenging task of providing a suitable Sellarsian answer to a question not of his own asking - for Binkley's paper was written under Sellars' original title. Sellars' own contribution to the vo lume is perhaps more nearly what he would have presented as main speaker than a direct response to Binkley. However, it has seemed best, on balance, to attempt no further stylistic accommodation of the one paper to the other; their mutual philosophical relevance will be evident in any case. The editors would here like to extend special thanks to both Sellars and Binkley for their extraordinary efforts under the circumstances.
Download or read book Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers written by John R. Shook and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 2759 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers includes both academic and non-academic philosophers, anda large number of female and minority thinkers whose work has been neglected. It includes those intellectualsinvolved in the development of psychology, pedagogy, sociology, anthropology, education, theology, politicalscience, and several other fields, before these disciplines came to be considered distinct from philosophy in thelate nineteenth century.Each entry contains a short biography of the writer, an exposition and analysis of his or her doctrines and ideas, abibliography of writings, and suggestions for further reading. While all the major post-Civil War philosophers arepresent, the most valuable feature of this dictionary is its coverage of a huge range of less well-known writers,including hundreds of presently obscure thinkers. In many cases, the Dictionary of Modern AmericanPhilosophers offers the first scholarly treatment of the life and work of certain writers. This book will be anindispensable reference work for scholars working on almost any aspect of modern American thought.
