Download or read book Scientific Theories and Philosophical Stances written by Claus Beisbart and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-05-20 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the publication of his seminal monograph "The scientific image", Bas van Fraassen is a key figure in philosophy of science. In this book, other philosophers with various outlooks critically discuss his work on theories, empiricism and philosophical stances. The book starts with a new article by van Fraassen on his preferred account of theories, the so-called semantic view. This account is now 50 years old, and van Fraassen takes this anniversary as an opportunity to review the account, its history and the philosophical discussion about it. In the main part of the book, Nancy Cartwright, Finnur Dellsén, Matthias Egg, Steven French, Michael Friedman, Milena Ivanova and Michela Massimi discuss van Fraassen's contributions to philosophy. Three chapters focus on his engagement with realism (French, Friedman, Ivanova). Others study his voluntarism (Cartwright) and his view on representation (Massimi). Finally, there are contributions about his elaboration of empiricism (Dellsén) and his proposal to consider philosophical positions as stances (Egg). The volume includes a laudatio written by Steven French and finishes with a reply by van Fraassen to his critics.

Download or read book Science History and Social Activism written by Everett Mendelsohn and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2001 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights not only aspects of the career of Everett Mendelsohn, one of the premier historians of biology of our age, but also a wide range of topics that are now grouped under the general heading of science studies. This broad collection includes articles on the relations between science and the military, science as narrative, natural history and conservation, Marxism and science, the Human Genome Project, and the relation of philosophy to the study of embryonic development in the 18th century. This book is essential not only for those who admire Professor Mendelsohn's work but also for those who want a slice of the current field of science studies. Audience: The main readership of this volume consists of historians of science, technology, and medicine, and sociologists of science. The book will also appeal to philosophers of science and biologists. Those interested in Middle Eastern studies will find the discussion of Professor Mendelsohn's political work in this area, as well as the article dealing with his activism in general, of considerable interest.

Download or read book U S Officials and the Fall of the Shah written by Jean-Charles Brotons and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike the dominant trend in cognitive approach to foreign policy, the approach in this book is not guided by reflections in psychology. Like part of Jervis's work, it is inspired by reflections concerning the philosophy of science; yet not by Kuhn's or those of its most well-known critics, but by some more recent and formal reflections known as the AGM theory. The AGM theory, proposed in the 1980's by Alchourr-n, GSrdenfors, and Makinson, is the core of a most dynamic branch of logic, focusing on belief change. It has produced impressive formal results, with echoes in artificial intelligence, database management, and decision and game theory. This book shows how it can be used in political science. The book includes three parts. Part One is a twenty-page review of the AGM theory, avoiding a number of pitfalls, inaccuracies, and misunderstandings that are common elsewhere. Part Two is a review of U.S.-Iranian relations under the reign of the last shah, focusing on the last years of monarchy, and including an unconventional interpretation of U.S. intelligence performance in 1978. The essential part is Part Three, where an AGM model is tested, and intriguing results obtained in connection with U.S. perceptions of the Iranian revolution.

Download or read book Plant Breeding and Agrarian Research in Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes 1933 1945 written by Susanne Heim and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-03-27 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the agricultural sciences in Nazi Germany is presented in this book. The book analyzes scientific practice under the Nazi regime, Nazi agricultural policy and autarkic strategies, and the expansion policy in Eastern Europe. It offers new insights into the Auschwitz concentration camp and new perspectives on the cooperation between German elite scientists and the Nazi regime. The book goes on to dismiss the assumption that "Arian physics" were typical for Nazi Germany.

Download or read book Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics written by Ashtekar and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2) the globalization of capital has far outstripped the ability of current labor movements, organized at best on a national level, to conduct an effective defense of the interests of labor within capitalism, let alone to seriously challenge the cap italist system. To develop some form-or forms--of international organization of labor, long an ideological challenge ("Workers of the World Unite") has now become an urgent matter of survival for the labor movements of the world. Here is a challenge, on which I think broad agreement is possible: Even those who think capitalism is capable of indefinite survival must agree that it has functioned best in the past-for example, during the long period of post-World War II expansion when the power of capital has been effectively limited by the countervailing power of labor. Effective exercise of that power has always depended on overcoming the seg mentation of labor due to such factors as locality, race, gender, occupation, etc. , which stilIremain important. Above, I have singled out the two factors that today seem key to me: the split between mental and manual labor, and segmentation by nationality. Let all concerned about the current state of capitalism work to build up the countervailing power of labor, and let time show whether this results in nothing more than the better functioning of capitalism, or whether a new challenge to the system ultimately emerges.

Download or read book The Influence of Genetics on Contemporary Thinking written by Anne Fagot-Largeault and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-11-28 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary volume reflects on the effects of recent discoveries in genetics on a broad range of scientific fields. It shows the way in which those discoveries influence genetics itself and many other fields, and explains the impact of genetics on contemporary culture. The volume contains the most recent views of the Nobel Laureate François Jacob on genetics and the nature of living things.

Download or read book Computation Dynamics and Cognition written by Marco Giunti and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-06-26 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Currently there is growing interest in the application of dynamical methods to the study of cognition. Computation, Dynamics, and Cognition investigates this convergence from a theoretical and philosophical perspective, generating a provocative new view of the aims and methods of cognitive science. Advancing the dynamical approach as the methodological frame best equipped to guide inquiry in the field's two main research programs--the symbolic and connectionist approaches--Marco Giunti engages a host of questions crucial not only to the science of cognition, but also to computation theory, dynamical systems theory, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. In chapter one Giunti employs a dynamical viewpoint to explore foundational issues in computation theory. Using the concept of Turing computability, he precisely and originally defines the nature of a computational system, sharpening our understanding of computation theory and its applications. In chapter two he generalizes his definition of a computational system, arguing that the concept of Turing computability itself is relative to the kind of support on which Turing machine operate. Chapter three completes the book's conceptual foundation, discussing a form of scientific explanation for real dynamical systems that Giunti calls "Galilean explanation." The book's fourth and final chapter develops the methodological thesis that all cognitive systems are dynamical systems. On Giunti's view, a dynamical approach is likely to benefit even those scientific explanations of cognition which are based on symbolic models. Giunti concludes by proposing a new modeling practice for cognitive science, one based on "Galilean models" of cognitive systems. Innovative, lucidly-written, and broad-ranging in its analysis, Computation, Dynamics, and Cognition will interest philosophers of science and mind, as well as cognitive scientists, computer scientists, and theorists of dynamical systems. This book elaborates a comprehensive picture of the application of dynamical methods to the study of cognition. Giunti argues that both computational systems and connectionist networks are special types of dynamical systems. He shows how this dynamical approach can be applied to problems of cognition, information processing, consciousness, meaning, and the relation between body and mind.

Download or read book Japanese Studies in the Philosophy of Science written by F.G. Nagasaka and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The splendid achievements of Japanese mathematics and natural sciences during the second half of our 20th century have been a revival, a Renaissance, of the practical sciences developed along with the turn toward Western thinking in the late 19th century. The equally admirable results of Japanese philosophers (and historians) of science in our time followed upon a period less congenial to Western interests in the philosophical questions linked to modern science; and this reluctance to confront the epistemology, not even the humane significance, of the sciences went along with devotion to other Western trends. Thus, with the 'new' Japan of the Meiji restoration of 1868, and the early introduction of Western philosophy in the subsequent decade by Nishi Amane, a period of intellectual attraction to utilitarian, positivist, evolutionary, even materialist outlooks was soon replaced by devotion to scholarly work on Kant and Hegel, on ethical and general philosophical idealism. These studies often could emulate the critical spirit (the philosopher Onishe Hajime, praised for his own critical independence, was known as the Japanese Kant) but the neo Kantian and neo-Hegelian developments were not much affected by either empirical sciences or theoretical speculations about Nature. The pre-eminent philosopher of Japan ofthe first half of our century was Nishida Kitaro, with a pioneering treatise A Study of the Good, who, with his leading student Tanabe Hajime, formed the 'Kyoto School' of pre-war philosophy.

Download or read book In the Scope of Logic Methodology and Philosophy of Science written by Peter Gärdenfors and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2002-12-31 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first of two volumes containing papers submitted by the invited speakers to the 11th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, held in Cracow in 1999, under the auspices of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. The invited speakers are the leading researchers and accordingly the book presents the current state of the intellectual discourse in the respective fields. The papers delivered at the congress were divided into 17 sections. Thus the structure of the volume corresponds to the very schedule of the congress. Volume one contains the opening lecture by Andrzej K. Wróblewski as well as invited papers in sections of Proof Theory, Model Theory, Recursion Theory, Axiomatic Set Theory, Logic and Computation, Logic, Language and Cognition, Methodology, Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory, Philosophy of Logic, Mathematics, and Computer Science, and Philosophy of the Physical Sciences.

Download or read book Issues and Images in the Philosophy of Science written by D. Ginev and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Azarya Polikarov was born in Sofia on October 9, 1921. Through the many stages of politics, economy, and culture in Bulgaria, he maintained his rational humanity and scientific curiosity. He has been a splendid teacher and an accomplished critical philosopher exploring the conceptual and historical vicis situdes of physics in modern times and also the science policies that favor or threaten human life in these decades. Equally and easily at home both within the Eastern and Central European countries and within the Western world. Polikarov is known as a collaborating genial colleague, a working scholar. not at all a visiting academic tourist. He understands the philosophy of science from within, in all its developments, from the classical beginnings through the great ages of Galilean, Newtonian. Maxwellian science. to the times of the stunning discoveries and imaginative theories of his beloved Einstein and Bohr of the twentieth century. Moreover, his understanding has come along with a deep knowledge of the scientific topics in themselves. Looking at our Appendix listing his principal publications, we see that Polikarov's public research career, after years of science teaching and popular science writing, began in the fifties in Bulgarian, Russian and German journals.

Download or read book Reassessing the Paradigm of Economics written by Valeria Mosini and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-07-28 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher adopted the neoliberal doctrine as the paradigm of economics, there was no evidence that the move would have been successful, but thirty years on, the recurrent crises that culminated in 2008 suggest a serious mis-match between expectations and outcomes: a re-examination of the paradigm is in order. This book focuses on Milton Friedman’s formulation of the neoliberal doctrine, and analyses two aspects that were essential to turning it into a fully-fledged paradigm: the attribution of scientific status to positive economics, which led to informing public policies on the requirements of the market; and the characterisation of economic freedom as capable of promoting political freedom, which led to identifying free market with democracy. The book exposes Friedman’s methodological argument for attributing positive economics scientific status as a failure, and his characterisation of economic freedom as a delusion; it identifies in the emergence as the mainstream in economics of the neoclassical synthesis, which borrowed from Walras’ the mathematical treatment of equilibrium but not the ethical and social framework in which it was inscribed, a development that facilitated the transition from the Keynesian to the neoliberal paradigm. Dr. Mosini shows that the gigantic bail-outs carried out courtesy of the public purse, which institutionalised the practice of collectivising losses while keeping profits private, were no accident, but the consequence of the rethinking of the function of lender of last resort according to Friedman’s conception of rationality in relation to risk, combined with his interpretation of the 1930s recession. The book concludes that the neoliberal paradigm has served the interests of the economically powerful social strata it was designed to benefit extremely well, but that the deep, and deepening, injustice it has brought about calls for a complete rethinking of the paradigm of economics according to ethical principles respectful of human values. This book should be of interest to students and researchers of Political Economy, Economic Methodology, History of Economic Thought and Philosophy.

Download or read book Critical Rationalism Metaphysics and Science written by I.C. Jarvie and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I suppose Joseph Agassi's best and dearest self-description, his cher ished wish, is to practice what his 1988 book promises: The Gentle Art of Philosophical Polemics. But for me, and for so many who know him, our Agassi is tough-minded, not tender, not so gentle. True to his beloved critical thinking, he is ever the falsificationist, testing himself of course as much as everyone else. How, he asks himself, can he engage others in their own self-critical exploration? Irritate? Question their logic, their facts, their presuppositions, their rationales? Subvert their reasoning, uncover their motives? Help them to lose their balance, but always help them, make them do it to, and for, themselves. Out of their own mouths, and minds, and imagination. A unique teacher, in classroom and out; not for everyone. Agassi is not quite a tight textual Talmudist disputant, not quite the competitor in the marketplace of ideas offered for persuasive sale, not quite the clever cross-examining lawyer advocate, not quite a philosopher-scientist, not a sceptic more than necessary, not quite embat tled in the bloody world but not ever above the battle either . . . but a good deal of all of these, and steeped in intelligence and good will.

Download or read book Italian Studies in the Philosophy of Science written by Maria Luisa Dalla Chiara and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impressive record of Italian philosophical research since the end of Fascism thirty-two years ago is shown in many fields: esthetics, social and" personal ethics, history and sociology of philosophy, and magnificently, perhaps above all, in logic, foundations of mathematics and the philosophY, methodology, and intellectual history ofthe empirical sciences. To our pleasure, Maria Luisa Dalla Chiara of the University of Florence gladly agreed to assemble a 'sampler' of recent Italian logical and analytical work on the philosophical foundations of mathematics and physics, along with a number of historical studies of epistemological and mathematical concepts. The twenty-five essays that form this volume will, we expect, encourage English-reading philosophers and scientists to seek further works by these authors and by their teachers, colleagues, and students; and, we hope, to look for those other Italian currents of thought in the philosophy of science for which points of departure are not wholly analytic, and which also deserve study and recognition in the world wide philosophical community. Of course, Italy has long been related to that world community in scien titlc matters.

Download or read book A Bibliography of the Philosophy of Science 1945 1981 written by Richard J. Blackwell and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1983-08-26 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Product information not available.

Download or read book Classic Works of the Dempster Shafer Theory of Belief Functions written by Ronald R. Yager and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-02-22 with total page 813 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of classic research papers on the Dempster-Shafer theory of belief functions. The book is the authoritative reference in the field of evidential reasoning and an important archival reference in a wide range of areas including uncertainty reasoning in artificial intelligence and decision making in economics, engineering, and management. The book includes a foreword reflecting the development of the theory in the last forty years.

Download or read book Patrick Suppes Scientific Philosopher written by P. Humphreys and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1994-09-30 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patrick Suppes is a philosopher and scientist whose contributions range over probability and statistics, mathematical and experimental psychology, the foundations of physics, education theory, the philosophy of language, measurement theory, and the philosophy of science. He has also been a pioneer in the area of computer assisted instruction. In each of these areas, Suppes has provided seminal ideas that in some cases led to shaping the direction of research in the field. The papers contained in this collection were commissioned with the mandate of advancing research in their respective fields rather than retrospectively surveying the contributions that Suppes himself has made. The authors form an interesting mixture of researchers in both formal philosophy of science and science itself all of whom have been inspired by his ideas. To maintain the spirit of constructive dialogue that characterizes Suppes's intellectual style, he has written individual responses to each article. In Volume 1: Probability and Probabilistic Causality, nineteen distinguished philosophers and scientists focus their attention on probabilistic issues. In Part I the contributors explore axiomatic representations of probability theory including qualitative and interval valued probabilities as well as traditional point valued probabilities. Belief structures and the dynamics of belief are also treated in detail. In Part II the rapidly growing field of probabilistic causation is assessed from both formal and empirical viewpoints. For probability theorists, statisticians, economists, philosophers of science, psychologists and those interested in the foundations of mathematical social science. In Volume 2: Philosophy of Physics, Theory Structure, and Measurement Theory, fifteen distinguished philosophers and scientists cover a wide variety of topics. Part III covers issues in quantum theory, geometry, classical mechanics, and computational physics. Part IV explores Suppes's well known set-theoretic account of scientific theories which has served him well throughout his career. Suppes's contributions to measurement theory have been widely used in mathematical psychology and elsewhere, and this material is the subject of Part V. For physicists, logicians, workers in mathematical social sicence, and philosophers of science. In Volume 3: Philosophy of Language and Logic, Learning and Action Theory, fourteen distinguished philosophers and scientists explore issues in the philosophy of language, logic, and philosophical psychology. Suppes's suggestions that quantum theory requires a rethinking of classical logic form a particularly sharp account of that controversial thesis, and Part VI deals with this issue together with topics in the philosophy of language and logic, including relational grammars and anaphora. Part VII deals with issues in psychology, action theory, and robotics, while Part VIII concludes with a general survey of Suppes's views in the philosophy of science. A comprehensive chronological and topical bibliography of Suppes's writings is included in this volume. For philosophers of language, theoretical linguists, logicians, workers in mathematical social sciences, and philosophers of science.

Download or read book Teleological Language in the Life Sciences written by Lowell A. Nissen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1997 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking new study, Lowell Nissen explores the use of teleological language in the study of subjects such as behaviorism, negative feedback, and natural selection. He argues that all existing analyses fail to explain how teleological language can be used legitimately, and provides his own analysis in terms of intentionality.