Download or read book The Formation of the Scientific Mind written by Gaston Bachelard and published by Clinamen Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gaston Bachelard is one of the indespensable figures in the history of 20th-century ideas. The broad scope of his work has had a lasting impact in several fields - notable philosophy, architecture and literature.
Download or read book The New Scientific Spirit written by Gaston Bachelard and published by Beacon Press (MA). This book was released on 1984 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Bachelard draws upon both his scientific training and his interest in the nonrational - which ultimately drew him toward the study of poetics - to explore the deeper meanings of the new physics. In Bachelard's view, the unpredictable behaviour of subatomic particles belies the seemingly neat, ordered, and mechanistic universe that the practical and empirical scientists of the nineteenth century thought they saw.
Download or read book Formation of the Scientific Mind written by Gaston Bachelard and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Feeling Knowing written by Antonio Damasio and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world’s leading neuroscientists: a succinct, illuminating, wholly engaging investigation of how biology, neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence have given us the tools to unlock the mysteries of human consciousness “One thrilling insight after another ... Damasio has succeeded brilliantly in narrowing the gap between body and mind.” —The New York Times Book Review In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In the forty-eight brief chapters of Feeling & Knowing, and in writing that remains faithful to our intuitive sense of what feeling and experiencing are about, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large. He combines the latest discoveries in various sciences with philosophy and discusses his original research, which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior. Here is an indispensable guide to understanding how we experience the world within and around us and find our place in the universe.
Download or read book A Physicist s View of Matter and Mind written by Chandre Dharma-wardana and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2013 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a highly interdisciplinary book straddling physics and complex systems such as living organisms. The presentation is from the perspective of physics, in a manner accessible to those interested in scientific knowledge integrated within its socio-cultural and philosophical backgrounds. Two key areas of human understanding, namely physics and conscious complex systems, are presented in simple language. An optional technical presentation is also given in parallel where it is needed.
Download or read book The Scientific Attitude written by Lee McIntyre and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that what makes science distinctive is its emphasis on evidence and scientists' willingness to change theories on the basis of new evidence. Attacks on science have become commonplace. Claims that climate change isn't settled science, that evolution is “only a theory,” and that scientists are conspiring to keep the truth about vaccines from the public are staples of some politicians' rhetorical repertoire. Defenders of science often point to its discoveries (penicillin! relativity!) without explaining exactly why scientific claims are superior. In this book, Lee McIntyre argues that what distinguishes science from its rivals is what he calls “the scientific attitude”—caring about evidence and being willing to change theories on the basis of new evidence. The history of science is littered with theories that were scientific but turned out to be wrong; the scientific attitude reveals why even a failed theory can help us to understand what is special about science. McIntyre offers examples that illustrate both scientific success (a reduction in childbed fever in the nineteenth century) and failure (the flawed “discovery” of cold fusion in the twentieth century). He describes the transformation of medicine from a practice based largely on hunches into a science based on evidence; considers scientific fraud; examines the positions of ideology-driven denialists, pseudoscientists, and “skeptics” who reject scientific findings; and argues that social science, no less than natural science, should embrace the scientific attitude. McIntyre argues that the scientific attitude—the grounding of science in evidence—offers a uniquely powerful tool in the defense of science.
Download or read book The Science of Mind Formation and the Process of the Reproduction of Genius Elaborated Involving the Remedy for All Our Social Evils written by Robert PEMBERTON (F.R.S.L.) and published by . This book was released on 1858 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Believing Brain written by Michael Shermer and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A wonderfully lucid, accessible, and wide-ranging account of the boundary between justified and unjustified belief.” —Sam Harris, New York Times–bestselling author of The Moral Landscape and The End of Faith In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world’s best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths. Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality. “A must read for everyone who wonders why religious and political beliefs are so rigid and polarized—or why the other side is always wrong, but somehow doesn’t see it.” —Dr. Leonard Mlodinow, physicist and author of The Drunkard’s Walk and The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking)
Download or read book Gaston Bachelard Revised and Updated written by Roch C. Smith and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2016-06-03 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive overview of the entire spectrum of works by one of twentieth-century Frances most original thinkers. Gaston Bachelard, one of twentieth-century Frances most original thinkers, is known by English-language readers primarily as the author of The Poetics of Space and several other books on the imagination, but he made significant contributions to the philosophy and history of science. In this book, Roch C. Smith provides a comprehensive introduction to Bachelards work, demonstrating how his writings on the literary imagination can be better understood in the context of his exploration of how knowledge works in science. After an overview of Bachelards writings on the scientific mind as it was transformed by relativity, quantum physics, and modern chemistry, Smith examines Bachelards works on the imagination in light of particular intellectual values Bachelard derived from science. His trajectory from science to a specifically literary imagination is traced by recognizing his concern with what science teaches about how we know, and his increasing preoccupation with questions of being when dealing with poetic imagery. Smith also explores the material and dynamic imagination associated with the four elementsfire, water, air, and earthand the phenomenology of creative imagination in Bachelards Poetics of Space, his Poetics of Reverie, and in the fragments of Poetics of Fire.
Download or read book Concept and Form Volume 1 written by Peter Hallward and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2012-12-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concept and Form is a two-volume monument to the work of the philosophy journal the Cahiers pour l’Analyse (1966–69), the most ambitious and radical collective project to emerge from French structuralism. Inspired by their teachers Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan, the editors of the Cahiers sought to sever philosophy from the interpretation of given meanings or experiences, focusing instead on the mechanisms that structure specific configurations of discourse, from the psychological and ideological to the literary, scientific, and political. Adequate analysis of the operations at work in these configurations, they argue, helps prepare the way for their revolutionary transformation. This first volume comprises English translations of some of the most important theoretical texts published in the journal, written by thinkers who would soon be counted among the most inventive and influential of their generation: Alain Badiou, Yves Duroux, Alain Grosrichard, Serge Leclaire, Jacques-Alain Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, and François Regnault.The book is complemented by a second volume, consisting of essays and interviews that assess the significance and legacy of the journal, and by an online edition of the full set of original Cahiers texts, produced by the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London and accessible at cahiers.kingston.ac.uk.
Download or read book Biographies of Scientific Objects written by Lorraine Daston and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-06-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at how whole domains of phenomena come into being and sometimes pass away as objects of scientific study. With examples from the natural and social sciences, ranging from the 16th to the 20th centuries, this book explores the ways in which scientific objects are both real and historical.
Download or read book Undeniable written by Bill Nye and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the host of "Bill Nye the Science Guy" comes an impassioned explanation of how the science of our origins is fundamental to our understanding of the nature of science
Download or read book The Psychology of Science and the Origins of the Scientific Mind written by Gregory J. Feist and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Gregory Feist reviews and consolidates the scattered literatures on the psychology of science, then calls for the establishment of the field as a unique discipline. He offers the most comprehensive perspective yet on how science came to be possible in our species and on the important role of psychological forces in an individual’s development of scientific interest, talent, and creativity. Without a psychological perspective, Feist argues, we cannot fully understand the development of scientific thinking or scientific genius. The author explores the major subdisciplines within psychology as well as allied areas, including biological neuroscience and developmental, cognitive, personality, and social psychology, to show how each sheds light on how scientific thinking, interest, and talent arise. He assesses which elements of scientific thinking have their origin in evolved mental mechanisms and considers how humans may have developed the highly sophisticated scientific fields we know today. In his fascinating and authoritative book, Feist deals thoughtfully with the mysteries of the human mind and convincingly argues that the creation of the psychology of science as a distinct discipline is essential to deeper understanding of human thought processes.
Download or read book From Brain to Mind written by James E. Zull and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-03 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for Foreword Magazine's 2011 Book of the YearWith his knack for making science intelligible for the layman, and his ability to illuminate scientific concepts through analogy and reference to personal experience, James Zull offers the reader an engrossing and coherent introduction to what neuroscience can tell us about cognitive development through experience, and its implications for education.Stating that educational change is underway and that the time is ripe to recognize that “the primary objective of education is to understand human learning” and that “all other objectives depend on achieving this understanding”, James Zull challenges the reader to focus on this purpose, first for her or himself, and then for those for whose learning they are responsible. The book is addressed to all learners and educators – to the reader as self-educator embarked on the journey of lifelong learning, to the reader as parent, and to readers who are educators in schools or university settings, as well as mentors and trainers in the workplace.In this work, James Zull presents cognitive development as a journey taken by the brain, from an organ of organized cells, blood vessels, and chemicals at birth, through its shaping by experience and environment into potentially to the most powerful and exquisite force in the universe, the human mind.Zull begins his journey with sensory-motor learning, and how that leads to discovery, and discovery to emotion. He then describes how deeper learning develops, how symbolic systems such as language and numbers emerge as tools for thought, how memory builds a knowledge base, and how memory is then used to create ideas and solve problems. Along the way he prompts us to think of new ways to shape educational experiences from early in life through adulthood, informed by the insight that metacognition lies at the root of all learning.At a time when we can expect to change jobs and careers frequently during our lifetime, when technology is changing society at break-neck speed, and we have instant access to almost infinite information and opinion, he argues that self-knowledge, awareness of how and why we think as we do, and the ability to adapt and learn, are critical to our survival as individuals; and that the transformation of education, in the light of all this and what neuroscience can tell us, is a key element in future development of healthy and productive societies.
Download or read book Paradigms and Barriers written by Howard Margolis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1993-08-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Paradigms and Barriers Howard Margolis offers an innovative interpretation of Thomas S. Kuhn's landmark idea of "paradigm shifts," applying insights from cognitive psychology to the history and philosophy of science. Building upon the arguments in his acclaimed Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition, Margolis suggests that the breaking down of particular habits of mind—of critical "barriers"—is key to understanding the processes through which one model or concept is supplanted by another. Margolis focuses on those revolutionary paradigm shifts— such as the switch from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican worldview—where challenges to entrenched habits of mind are marked by incomprehension or indifference to a new paradigm. Margolis argues that the critical problem for a revolutionary shift in thinking lies in the robustness of the habits of mind that reject the new ideas, relative to the habits of mind that accept the new ideas. Margolis applies his theory to famous cases in the history of science, offering detailed explanations for the transition from Ptolemaic to cosmological astronomy, the emergence of probability, the overthrow of phlogiston, and the emergence of the central role of experiment in the seventeenth century. He in turn uses these historical examples to address larger issues, especially the nature of belief formation and contemporary debates about the nature of science and the evolution of scientific ideas. Howard Margolis is a professor in the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies and in the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Selfishness, Altruism, and Rationality and Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition, both published by the University of Chicago Press.
Download or read book Gaston Bachelard written by Cristina Chimisso and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new study, Cristina Chimisso explores the work of the French Philosopher of Science, Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) by situating it within French cultural life of the first half of the century. The book is introduced by a study - based on an analysis of portraits and literary representations - of how Bachelard's admirers transformed him into the mythical image of the Philosopher, the Patriarch and the 'Teacher of Happiness'. Such a projected image is contrasted with Bachelard's own conception of philosophy and his personal pedagogical and moral ideas. This pedagogical orientation is a major feature of Bachelard's texts, and one which deepens our understanding of the main philosophical arguments. The primary thesis of the book is based on the examination of the French educational system of the time and of French philosophy taught in schools and conceived by contemporary philosophers. This approach also helps to explain Bachelard's reception of psychoanalysis and his mastery of modern literature. Gaston Bachelard: Critic of Science and the Imagination thus allows for a new reading of Bachelard's body of work, whilst at the same time providing an insight into twentieth century French culture.
Download or read book Reconsidering Historical Epistemology written by Matteo Vagelli and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
