Download or read book PSA 1986 Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting written by Philosophy of Science Association and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book PSA 1986 Contributed papers written by Philosophy of Science Association. Meeting and published by Philosophy of Science Assn. This book was released on 1986 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book PSA 1986 Symposia and invited papers written by Philosophy of Science Association. Meeting and published by Philosophy of Science Assn. This book was released on 1986 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book PSA written by and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book PSA written by Philosophy of Science Association and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Making 20th Century Science written by Stephen G. Brush and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-13 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historically, the scientific method has been said to require proposing a theory, making a prediction of something not already known, testing the prediction, and giving up the theory (or substantially changing it) if it fails the test. A theory that leads to several successful predictions is more likely to be accepted than one that only explains what is already known but not understood. This process is widely treated as the conventional method of achieving scientific progress, and was used throughout the twentieth century as the standard route to discovery and experimentation. But does science really work this way? In Making 20th Century Science, Stephen G. Brush discusses this question, as it relates to the development of science throughout the last century. Answering this question requires both a philosophically and historically scientific approach, and Brush blends the two in order to take a close look at how scientific methodology has developed. Several cases from the history of modern physical and biological science are examined, including Mendeleev's Periodic Law, Kekule's structure for benzene, the light-quantum hypothesis, quantum mechanics, chromosome theory, and natural selection. In general it is found that theories are accepted for a combination of successful predictions and better explanations of old facts. Making 20th Century Science is a large-scale historical look at the implementation of the scientific method, and how scientific theories come to be accepted.
Download or read book The Uses of Experiment written by David Gooding and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-05-18 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned scholars in history, sociology, philosophy and anthropology consider seventeenth and twentieth century weapon testing, particle physics, biology and other topics in an account of important and often famous experiments.
Download or read book Scientific Realism in Particle Physics written by Matthias Egg and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-08-19 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Particle physics studies highly complex processes which cannot be directly observed. Scientific realism claims that we are nevertheless warranted in believing that these processes really occur and that the objects involved in them really exist. This book defends a version of scientific realism, called causal realism, in the context of particle physics. The first part of the book introduces the central theses and arguments in the recent philosophical debate on scientific realism and discusses entity realism, which is the most important precursor of causal realism. It also argues against the view that the very debate on scientific realism is not worth pursuing at all. In the second part, causal realism is developed and the key distinction between two kinds of warrant for scientific claims is clarified. This distinction proves its usefulness in a case study analyzing the discovery of the neutrino. It is also shown to be effective against an influential kind of pessimism, according to which even our best present theories are likely to be replaced some day by radically distinct alternatives. The final part discusses some specific challenges posed to realism by quantum physics, such as non-locality, delayed choice and the absence of particles in relativistic quantum theories.
Download or read book Realism and Anti Realism in the Philosophy of Science written by Robert S. Cohen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beijing International Conference, 1992
Download or read book Articulating Intersex A Crisis at the Intersection of Scientific Facts and Social Ideals written by Natalie Delimata and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the ethical dilemma clinicians may face when disclosing a diagnosis of atypical sex. The moment of disclosure reveals an epistemic incompatibility between scientific fact and social meaning in relation to sex. Attempting to assess the bio-psychosocial implications of this dilemma highlights a complex historic antagonism between fact and meaning making satisfactory resolution of this dilemma difficult. Drawing on David Hume, WVO Quine and Michel Foucault the author presents an integrative model, which views scientific fact and social meaning as codetermining threads in one fabric of knowledge. From this epistemic perspective, the ethical dilemma is understood as a tear in the fabric signifying a rupturing of ontological integrity. To mend this tear and resolve the ethical dilemma three metaphysical perspectives are considered: essentialism, naturalism and emergentism. The book’s unique features include: an exploration of the impact of diagnostic disclosure on people with atypical sex (intersex); a synthesis of the epistemic perspectives of social and natural science facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration; a critical evaluation of three metaphysical perspectives on atypical sex (intersex); the application of Hume’s epistemological and moral distinctions to contemporary biomedicine and bioethics. The book’s target audience includes academics, students and professionals whose work intersects the natural and social sciences, and individuals interested in the metaphysics, epistemology and meta-ethics of sex.
Download or read book Explaining Human Actions and Environmental Changes written by Andrew P. Vayda and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this selection of essays from the past two decades, Vayda focuses on research and explanation concerned with causes of concrete events, especially human actions and the environmental changes brought about by them.
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 Philosophical Letters of David K Lewis written by David K. Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Kellogg Lewis (1941-2001) was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. He made significant contributions to almost every area of analytic philosophy including metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science, and set the agenda for various debates in these areas which carry on to this day. In several respects he remains a contemporary figure, yet enough time has now passed for historians of philosophy to begin to study his place in twentieth century thought. His philosophy was constructed and refined not just through his published writing, but also crucially through his life-long correspondence with fellow philosophers, including leading figures such as D.M. Armstrong, Saul Kripke, W.V. Quine, J.J.C. Smart, and Peter van Inwagen. His letters formed the undercurrent of his published work and became the medium through which he proposed many of his well-known theories and discussed a range of philosophical topics in depth. A selection of his vast correspondence over a 40-year period is presented here across two volumes. As metaphysics is arguably where Lewis made his greatest contribution, this forms the focus of Volume 1. Arranged under the broad areas of Causation, Modality, and Ontology, the letters offer an organic story of the origins, development, breadth, and depth of his metaphysics in its historical context, as well as a glimpse into the influence of his many interlocutors. This volume will be an indispensable resource for contemporary metaphysics and for those interested in the Lewisian perspective.
Download or read book Towards a Theory of Development written by Alessandro Minelli and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible to explain and predict the development of living things? What is development? Articulate answers to these seemingly innocuous questions are far from straightforward. To date, no systematic, targeted effort has been made to construct a unifying theory of development. This novel work offers a unique exploration of the foundations of ontogeny by asking how the development of living things should be understood. It explores the key concepts of developmental biology, asks whether general principles of development can be discovered, and examines the role of models and theories. The two editors (one a biologist with long interest in the theoretical aspects of his discipline, the other a philosopher of science who has mainly worked on biological systems) have assembled a team of leading contributors who are representative of the scientific and philosophical community within which a diversity of thoughts are growing, and out of which a theory of development may eventually emerge. They analyse a wealth of approaches to concepts, models and theories of development, such as gene regulatory networks, accounts based on systems biology and on physics of soft matter, the different articulations of evolution and development, symbiont-induced development, as well as the widely discussed concepts of positional information and morphogenetic field, the idea of a 'programme' of development and its critiques, and the long-standing opposition between preformationist and epigenetic conceptions of development. Towards a Theory of Development is primarily aimed at students and researchers in the fields of 'evo-devo', developmental biology, theoretical biology, systems biology, biophysics, and the philosophy of science.
Download or read book Nature Cognition and System II written by M.E. Carvallo and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: is both a player and a spectator, is explained here illuminatingly. With regard to logical ambiguities and paradoxes, which may show up in all these topics, he, like Locker, is of the opinion that, philosophically speaking all apory of a lower level have to be accepted an a higher level of thinking. After the above expositions of a more general purport we turn now to two contributions which are particularly focused on Bohr's concept of complementarity. First is the article of Hilgevoord who briefly and non-technically describes a short curriculum vitae of the concept beginning with Planck through Bohr to Heisenberg and Schrodinger. Included in this short story, of course, is the famous wave-particle duality and the paradox inherent in it many physicists are still saddled with. How this paradox was solved is explained here simply and clearly: first, generally by quantum mechanics where the disturbance theory of measurement was supposed to be of some relevance, and secondly, where this theory is further refmed leading to Bohr's conclusion of the essential unsolvability, and accordingly the completeness, of the statistical element of quantum mechanics. The reading of this short article may arouse questions and surmises whether complementarity has been ruminated by Bohr to tame the law of excluded middle dividing the well-defined content of position measurement from that of momentum measurement, just to mention one. Whatever it may be the idea of complementarity betrays the perplexity of the observing system in dealing with nature's complexity.
Download or read book The End of the World written by John Leslie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-08 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are we in imminent danger of extinction? Yes, we probably are, argues John Leslie in his chilling account of the dangers facing the human race as we approach the second millenium. The End of the World is a sobering assessment of the many disasters that scientists have predicted and speculated on as leading to apocalypse. In the first comprehensive survey, potential catastrophes - ranging from deadly diseases to high-energy physics experiments - are explored to help us understand the risks. One of the greatest threats facing humankind, however, is the insurmountable fact that we are a relatively young species, a risk which is at the heart of the 'Doomsday Argument'. This argument, if correct, makes the dangers we face more serious than we could have ever imagined. This more than anything makes the arrogance and ignorance of politicians, and indeed philosophers, so disturbing as they continue to ignore the manifest dangers facing future generations.
Download or read book Time Reality and Experience written by Craig Callender and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-08-15 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does time seem to flow in one direction? Can we influence the past? Is only the present real? Does relativity conflict with our common understanding of time? Could science do away with time? These questions and others about time are among the most puzzling problems in philosophy and science. In this exciting collection of original articles, eminent philosophers propose novel answers to these and other questions. Based on the latest research in philosophy and physics, these essays will be enjoyable to anyone with a speculative turn of mind.
