Download or read book Knowledge and Error written by Ernst Mach and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge written by Deborah G. Mayo and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-07-15 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preface1: Learning from Error 2: Ducks, Rabbits, and Normal Science: Recasting the Kuhn's-Eye View of Popper 3: The New Experimentalism and the Bayesian Way 4: Duhem, Kuhn, and Bayes 5: Models of Experimental Inquiry 6: Severe Tests and Methodological Underdetermination7: The Experimental Basis from Which to Test Hypotheses: Brownian Motion8: Severe Tests and Novel Evidence 9: Hunting and Snooping: Understanding the Neyman-Pearson Predesignationist Stance10: Why You Cannot Be Just a Little Bit Bayesian 11: Why Pearson Rejected the Neyman-Pearson (Behavioristic) Philosophy and a Note on Objectivity in Statistics12: Error Statistics and Peircean Error Correction 13: Toward an Error-Statistical Philosophy of Science ReferencesIndex Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Download or read book Of Literature and Knowledge written by Peter Swirski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-02-12 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Of Literature and Knowledge looks ... like an important advance in this new and very important subject... literature is about to become even more interesting." – Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University. Framed by the theory of evolution, this colourful and engaging volume presents a new understanding of the mechanisms by which we transfer information from narrative make-believe to real life. Ranging across game theory and philosophy of science, as well as poetics and aesthetics, Peter Swirski explains how literary fictions perform as a systematic tool of enquiry, driven by thought experiments. Crucially, he argues for a continuum between the cognitive tools employed by scientists, philosophers and scholars or writers of fiction. The result is a provocative study of our talent and propensity for creating imaginary worlds, different from the world we know yet invaluable to our understanding of it. Of Literature and Knowledge is a noteworthy challenge to contemporary critical theory, arguing that by bridging the gap between literature and science we might not only reinvigorate literary studies but, above all, further our understanding of literature.

Download or read book The Philosophy of Joseph Petzoldt written by Chiara Russo Krauss and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-01-12 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first English resource to shed light on the philosophy of Joseph Petzoldt (1862-1929), the main pupil of Ernst Mach and founder of the Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, later the association of Berlin logical positivists. A central figure in the early debate on the theory of relativity, his work was praised by Einstein himself. Tracing the development of Petzoldt's ideas, starting from his early acceptance of materialism and Kantian agnosticism, Chiara Russo Krauss presents a comprehensive reconstruction of his philosophy in the context of the German milieu. She examines his attempt to develop a new philosophy following Gustav Fechner and the empiriocriticism of Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach. In the final chapter, she sets out how Petzoldt proposed relativistic positivism as the official interpretation of Einstein's relativity. By illuminating key elements of Petzoldt's work, this is a valuable case study for students and scholars of philosophy of science and late 19th-century and early 20th-century philosophy. It reveals the complex interplay of two different tendencies of the time: neo-Kantianism and its struggle to overcome the notion of thing-in-itself, as well as the need for an epistemological foundation for the new advances of science.

Download or read book Radical Behaviorism and Cultural Analysis written by Kester Carrara and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how the three-term contingency paradigm created by B.F. Skinner can be applied to describe and explain cultural practices phenomena produced by complex relations between behavior and environment. It updates the academic debate on the best paradigm to analyze complex social interactions (contingency or metacontingency), arguing that Skinner’s three-term contingency - the conceptual tool created to analyze human behavior by decomposing it in three parts: discriminative stimulus, operant response and reinforcement/punishment - is the best unit of analysis since what is selected in social interactions are not the actions of the group but of individuals gathered in a group situation to form an articulated and interlocked behavioral practice. The author argues in favor of a relational approach to study behavior and identifies its theoretical foundations in the philosophy of Ernst Mach, especially in Mach’s concept of functional relations and its influence on Skinner. Departing from this theoretical framework, the author argues that behavior can only be studied through the analysis of how it emerges from relations, and cannot be explained by hypothetical constructs such as cognitive maps, personality formation mechanisms, drives, traits and preconceived motivational forces. Radical Behaviorism and Cultural Analysis will be of interest to psychology researchers and students interested in the theoretical foundations of behavior analysis, as well as to social scientists and policy makers from other areas interested in how behavior analysis can be used to study complex social interactions and how it can be applied to build a more fair and sustainable society through cultural planning and the development of prosocial behavior.

Download or read book Interpreting Mach written by John Preston and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-18 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of new essays on Ernst Mach's scientific and philosophical thought by leading Mach scholars.

Download or read book Reason and Reasonabless sic written by Riccardo Dottori and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2005 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains the Proceedings of the fourth Meeting Italian/American Philosophy on the theme "Reason and Reasonableness" that took place in Rome from October 8-11, 2003. To be reasonable does not mean anymore to follow steady rules but it meant to tray to understand the different point of view and widening our cultural criteria in order to find a common evaluation.

Download or read book Insights of Genius written by Arthur I. Miller and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, distinguished science historian Arthur I. Miller delves into the connections between modern art and modern physics. He takes us on a wide-ranging study to demonstrate that scientists and artists have a common aim: a visual interpretation of both the visible and invisible aspects of nature. Along the way, we encounter the philosophy of mind and language, cognitive science and neurophysiology in our search for the origins and meaning of visual imagery. At a time when the media are overeager to portray science as a godless, dehumanising exercise undermining the very fabric of society, this sixth book by Professor Miller shows how scientists are struggling to understand nature, convince their peers, inform the public and deal with the reactions to their research. Thus, Insights of Genuis must interest everyone who cares about science and its place in our culture.

Download or read book Literary Neurophysiology written by Randall Knoper and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigating the relations between American literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the sciences of the brain and the nervous system, this volume shows how literary authors investigated, used and challenged this emerging neurophysiology.

Download or read book Victorian Relativity written by Christopher Herbert and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the articles of faith of twentieth-century intellectual history is that the theory of relativity in physics sprang in its essentials from the unaided genius of Albert Einstein; another is that scientific relativity is unconnected to ethical, cultural, or epistemological relativisms. Victorian Relativity challenges these assumptions, unearthing a forgotten tradition of avant-garde speculation that took as its guiding principle "the negation of the absolute" and set itself under the militant banner of "relativity." Christopher Herbert shows that the idea of relativity produced revolutionary changes in one field after another in the nineteenth century. Surveying a long line of thinkers including Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Alexander Bain, W. K. Clifford, W. S. Jevons, Karl Pearson, James Frazer, and Einstein himself, Victorian Relativity argues that the early relativity movement was bound closely to motives of political and cultural reform and, in particular, to radical critiques of the ideology of authoritarianism. Recuperating relativity from those who treat it as synonymous with nihilism, Herbert portrays it as the basis of some of our crucial intellectual and ethical traditions.

Download or read book Ernst Mach A Deeper Look written by J.T. Blackmore and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ernst Mach -- A Deeper Look has been written to reveal to English-speaking readers the recent revival of interest in Ernst Mach in Europe and Japan. The book is a storehouse of new information on Mach as a philosopher, historian, scientist and person, containing a number of biographical and philosophical manuscripts publihsed for the first time, along with correspondence and other matters published for the first time in English. The book also provides English translations of Mach's controversies with leading physicists and psychologists, such as Max Planck and Carl Stumpf, and offers basic evidence for resolving Mach's position on atomism and Einstein's theory of relativity. Mach's scientific, philosophical and personal influence in a number of countries -- Austria, Germany, Bohemia and Yugoslavia among them -- has been carefully explored and many aspects detailed for the first time. All of the articles are eminently readable, especially those written by Mach's sister. They are deeply researched, new interpretations abound, and the bibliography includes recent works by and about Mach from over a dozen countries. The book also contains many articles by or about Mach's contemporaries, including Ostwald, Dingler, Weichert and, especially, Einstein. Finally, and most intriguingly, the original ideas of Japanese scholars are presented, built on Mach's philosophy. These demonstrate how Mach's world view is currently contributing to the solution of contemporary philosophical problems.

Download or read book Design and Information in Biology written by J. A. Bryant and published by WIT Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlighted with individual contributions from eminent specialists, these multiauthored volumes combine authority, inspiration and state-of-the-art knowledge. Both informative and inspiring they are designed to appeal to scientists and interested laypeople alike. Volume 2 complements and extends the scope of the first, with the biological viewpoint being stressed. Following an introductory chapter on design as understood in biology, the various aspects of the biological information revolution are addressed. Areas discussed include molecular structure, the genome, development, and neural networks. A section on information theory provides a link with engineering, and the scope is also broadened to include the implications of motion in nature and engineering.

Download or read book Historical Perspectives on Erkl ren and Verstehen written by Uljana Feest and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-12-15 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: twentieth-century literature about the distinction between explanation and und- standing)? Second, can we do justice to a particular writer’s notion of that category by taking at face value what he writes about his own motivation for adopting it? In response to both types of questions, there is by now a consensus amongst many historians of science and of philosophy that (a) intellectual history – like other kinds of history – has to be careful not to uncritically adopt actors’ categories, and (b) more generally, even the actors’ own thinking about a particular issue has to be contextualized vis-à-vis their other intellectual commitments and interests, as well as the complex conditions that make the totality of their commitments possible. Such conditions include cognitive as well as practical, institutional, and cultural factors. The articles in this volume respond to these challenges in several ways. For example, one author (Christopher Pincock) seeks to read some of the nineteen- century philosophical writings about Erklären and Verstehen as standing for a more fundamental problem, which he terms the problem of the “unity of experience”.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments written by Michael T Stuart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-20 with total page 709 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thought experiments are a means of imaginative reasoning that lie at the heart of philosophy, from the pre-Socratics to the modern era, and they also play central roles in a range of fields, from physics to politics. The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments is an invaluable guide and reference source to this multifaceted subject. Comprising over 30 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Companion covers the following important areas: · the history of thought experiments, from antiquity to the trolley problem and quantum non-locality; · thought experiments in the humanities, arts, and sciences, including ethics, physics, theology, biology, mathematics, economics, and politics; · theories about the nature of thought experiments; · new discussions concerning the impact of experimental philosophy, cross-cultural comparison studies, metaphilosophy, computer simulations, idealization, dialectics, cognitive science, the artistic nature of thought experiments, and metaphysical issues. This broad ranging Companion goes backwards through history and sideways across disciplines. It also engages with philosophical perspectives from empiricism, rationalism, naturalism, skepticism, pluralism, contextualism, and neo-Kantianism to phenomenology. This volume will be valuable for anyone studying the methods of philosophy or any discipline that employs thought experiments, as well as anyone interested in the power and limits of the mind.

Download or read book The Turing Test Argument written by Bernardo Gonçalves and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-12 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book departs from existing accounts of Alan Turing's imitation game and test by placing Turing's proposal in its historical, social, and cultural context. It reconstructs a controversy in England, 1946–1952, over the intellectual capabilities of digital computers, which led Turing to propose his test. It argues that the Turing test is best understood not as a practical experiment, but as a thought experiment in the modern scientific tradition of Galileo Galilei. The logic of the Turing test argument is reconstructed from the rhetoric of Turing’s irony and wit. Turing believed that learning machines should be understood as a new kind of species, and their thinking as different from human thinking and yet capable of imitating it. He thought that the possibilities of the machines he envisioned were not utopian dreams. And yet he hoped that they would rival and surpass chauvinists and intellectuals who sacrifice independent thinking to maintain their power. These would be transformed into ordinary people, as work once considered 'intellectual' would be transformed into non-intellectual, 'mechanical' work. The Turing Test Argument will appeal to scholars and students in the sciences and humanities and all those interested in Turing's vision of the future of intelligent machines in society and nature.

Download or read book Formal and Informal Methods in Philosophy written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the tension between formal and informal methods in philosophy. The rise of analytic philosophy was accompanied by the development of formal logic and many successful applications of formal methods. But analytical philosophy does not rely on formal methods alone. Elements of broadly understood informal logic and logical semiotics, procedures used in natural sciences and humanities, and various kinds of intuition also belong to the philosopher’s toolkit. Papers gathered in the book concern the opposition formality–informality as well as other pairs, such as methodology versus metaphilosophy, interdisciplinarity versus intradisciplinarity, and methodological uniformity versus diversity of sciences. Problems of the nature of logic and the explanatory role of mathematical theories are also discussed.

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.