Download or read book From Summetria to Symmetry The Making of a Revolutionary Scientific Concept written by Giora Hon and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-07-09 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many literary critics seem to think that an hypothesis about obscure and remote questions of history can be refuted by a simple demand for the production of more evidence than in fact exists. The demand is as easy to make as it is impossible to satisfy. But the true test of an hypothesis, if it cannot be shown to con?ict with known truths, is the number of facts that it correlates and explains. Francis M. Cornford [1914] 1934, 220. It was in the autumn of 1997 that the research project leading to this publication began. One of us [GH], while a visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science (University of Pittsburgh), gave a talk entitled, “Proportions and Identity: The Aesthetic Aspect of Symmetry”. The presentation focused on a confusion s- rounding the concept of symmetry: it exhibits unity, yet it is often claimed to reveal a form of beauty, namely, harmony, which requires a variety of elements. In the audience was the co-author of this book [BRG] who responded with enthusiasm, seeking to extend the discussion of this issue to historical sources in earlier periods. A preliminary search of the literature persuaded us that the history of symmetry was rich in possibilities for new insights into the making of concepts. John Roche’s brief essay (1987), in which he sketched the broad outlines of the history of this concept, was particularly helpful, and led us to conclude that the subject was worthy of monographic treatment.
Download or read book From Summetria to Symmetry The Making of a Revolutionary Scientific Concept written by Giora Hon and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-07-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many literary critics seem to think that an hypothesis about obscure and remote questions of history can be refuted by a simple demand for the production of more evidence than in fact exists. The demand is as easy to make as it is impossible to satisfy. But the true test of an hypothesis, if it cannot be shown to con?ict with known truths, is the number of facts that it correlates and explains. Francis M. Cornford [1914] 1934, 220. It was in the autumn of 1997 that the research project leading to this publication began. One of us [GH], while a visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science (University of Pittsburgh), gave a talk entitled, “Proportions and Identity: The Aesthetic Aspect of Symmetry”. The presentation focused on a confusion s- rounding the concept of symmetry: it exhibits unity, yet it is often claimed to reveal a form of beauty, namely, harmony, which requires a variety of elements. In the audience was the co-author of this book [BRG] who responded with enthusiasm, seeking to extend the discussion of this issue to historical sources in earlier periods. A preliminary search of the literature persuaded us that the history of symmetry was rich in possibilities for new insights into the making of concepts. John Roche’s brief essay (1987), in which he sketched the broad outlines of the history of this concept, was particularly helpful, and led us to conclude that the subject was worthy of monographic treatment.
Download or read book Studies in the History of Culture and Science written by Resianne Fontaine and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-11-11 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An hommage to Gad Freudenthal, this volume offers studies on the history of science and on the role of science in medieval and early-modern Jewish cultures, investigating various aspects of processes of knowledge transfer and scientific cross-cultural contacts,
Download or read book Writings of Early Scholars in the Ancient Near East Egypt Rome and Greece written by Annette Imhausen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medicine, astronomy, dealing with numbers - even the cultures of the "pre-modern" world offer a rich spectrum of scientific texts. But how are they best translated? Is it sufficient to translate the sources into modern scientific language, and thereby, above all, to identify their deficits? Or would it be better to adopt the perspective of the sources themselves, strange as they are, only for them not to be properly understood by modern readers? Renowned representatives of various disciplines and traditions present a controversial and constructive discussion of these problems.
Download or read book Universal Aspects of Scientific Practice Commitment Methodology and Technique written by Giora Hon and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-06 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a unique contribution to philosophy of science from the perspective of the practice of science. It focuses on processes that generate scientific knowledge and seeks general and universal features that characterize scientific practice; features that are inherent to the practice of science. Science is an activity, and the scientist is an agent who pursues some practice, which in one way or another engages evidence. In science, claims to knowledge are typically supported by argument that engages evidence at some point in explanation, in prediction, or indeed in any mode of presenting data and its interpretation. Thus, the practice of science includes at least three elements so that an argument can be formulated: presuppositions, modes of inference, and consequences that relate to evidence. The authors discuss in detail eight cases in chronological order with which they illustrate how commitment, methodology, and technique come into play in the practice of an individual physicist or a group of researchers in the physical sciences. Each case highlights aspects of the roles these categories play in scientific practice, where the goal is to generate and extend scientific knowledge.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution written by David Marshall Miller and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-06 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of cutting-edge scholarship on the close interaction of philosophy with science at the birth of the modern age.
Download or read book Ether and Modernity written by Jaume Navarro and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-30 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ether and Modernity offers a snapshot of the status of an epistemic object, the "ether" (or "aether"), in the early twentieth century. The contributed papers show that the ether was often regarded as one of the objects of modernity, hand in hand with the electron, radioactivity or X-rays, and not simply as the stubborn residue of an old-fashioned, long-discarded science. The prestige and authority of scientists and popularisers like Oliver Lodge and Arthur Eddington in Britain, Phillip Lenard in Germany or Dayton C. Miller in the USA was instrumental in the preservation, defence or even re-emergence of the ether in the 1920s. Moreover, the consolidation of wireless communications and radio broadcasting, indeed a very modern technology, brought the ether into audiences that would otherwise never have heard about such an esoteric entity. The ether also played a pivotal role among some artists in the early twentieth century: the values of modernism found in the complexities and contradictions of modern physics, such as wireless action or wave-particle puzzles, a fertile ground for the development of new artistic languages; in literature as much as in the pictorial and performing arts. Essays on the intellectual foundations of Umberto Boccioni's art, the linguistic techniques of Lodge, and Ernst Mach's considerations on aesthetics and physics witness to the imbricate relationship between the ether and modernism. Last but not least, the ether played a fundamental part in the resurgence of modern spiritualism in the aftermath of the Great War. This book examines the complex array of meanings, strategies and milieus that enabled the ether to remain an active part in scientific and cultural debates well into the 1930s, but not beyond. This portrait may be easily regarded as the swan song of an epistemic object that was soon to fade away as shown by Paul Dirac's unsuccessful attempt to resuscitate some kind of aether in 1951, with which this book finishes.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Physics written by Robert W. Batterman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-04 with total page 701 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Oxford Handbook provides an overview of many of the topics that currently engage philosophers of physics. It surveys new issues and the problems that have become a focus of attention in recent years. It also provides up-to-date discussions of the still very important problems that dominated the field in the past. In the late 20th Century, the philosophy of physics was largely focused on orthodox Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory. The measurement problem, the question of the possibility of hidden variables, and the nature of quantum locality dominated the literature on the quantum mechanics, whereas questions about relationalism vs. substantivalism, and issues about underdetermination of theories dominated the literature on spacetime. These issues still receive considerable attention from philosophers, but many have shifted their attentions to other questions related to quantum mechanics and to spacetime theories. Quantum field theory has become a major focus, particularly from the point of view of algebraic foundations. Concurrent with these trends, there has been a focus on understanding gauge invariance and symmetries. The philosophy of physics has evolved even further in recent years with attention being paid to theories that, for the most part, were largely ignored in the past. For example, the relationship between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics---once thought to be a paradigm instance of unproblematic theory reduction---is now a hotly debated topic. The implicit, and sometimes explicit, reductionist methodology of both philosophers and physicists has been severely criticized and attention has now turned to the explanatory and descriptive roles of "non-fundamental,'' phenomenological theories. This shift of attention includes "old'' theories such as classical mechanics, once deemed to be of little philosophical interest. Furthermore, some philosophers have become more interested in "less fundamental'' contemporary physics such as condensed matter theory. Questions abound with implications for the nature of models, idealizations, and explanation in physics. This Handbook showcases all these aspects of this complex and dynamic discipline.
Download or read book Reflections on the Practice of Physics written by Giora Hon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-24 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph examines James Clerk Maxwell’s contributions to electromagnetism to gain insight into the practice of science by focusing on scientific methodology as applied by scientists. First and foremost, this study is concerned with practices that are reflected in scientific texts and the ways scientists frame their research. The book is therefore about means and not ends.
Download or read book The Frontiers of Ancient Science written by Brooke Holmes and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-03-30 with total page 718 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our understanding of science, mathematics, and medicine today can be deeply enriched by studying the historical roots of these areas of inquiry in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. The fields of ancient science and mathematics have in recent years witnessed remarkable growth. The present volume brings together contributions from more than thirty of the most important scholars working in these fields in the United States and Europe in honor of the eminent historian of ancient science and medicine Heinrich von Staden, Professor Emeritus of Classics and History of Science at the Institute of Advanced Study and William Lampson Professor Emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at Yale University. The papers range widely from Mesopotamia to Ancient Greece and Rome, from the first millennium B.C. to the early medieval period, and from mathematics to philosophy, mechanics to medicine, representing both a wide diversity of national traditions and the cutting edge of the international scholarly community.
Download or read book Cosmology in the Early Modern Age A Web of Ideas written by Paolo Bussotti and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-05 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume addresses the history and epistemology of early modern cosmology. The authors reconstruct the development of cosmological ideas in the age of ‘scientific revolution’ from Copernicus to Leibniz, taking into account the growth of a unified celestial-and-terrestrial mechanics. The volume investigates how, in the rise of the new science, cosmology displayed deep and multifaceted interrelations between scientific notions (stemming from mechanics, mathematics, geometry, astronomy) and philosophical concepts. These were employed to frame a general picture of the universe, as well as to criticize and interpret scientific notions and observational data. This interdisciplinary work reconstructs a conceptual web pervaded by various intellectual attitudes and drives. It presents an historical–epistemological unified itinerary which includes Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, Newton and Leibniz. For each of the scientists and philosophers, a presentation and commentary is made of their cosmological views, and where relevant, outlines of their most relevant physical concepts are given. Furthermore, the authors highlight the philosophical and epistemological implications of their scientific works. This work is helpful both as a synthetic overview of early modern cosmology, and an analytical exposition of the elements that were intertwined in early-modern cosmology. This book addresses historians, philosophers, and scientists and can also be used as a research source book by post-graduate students in epistemology, history of science and history of philosophy.
Download or read book What Science Knows written by James Franklin and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2009-11-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To scientists, the tsunami of relativism, scepticism, and postmodernism that washed through the humanities in the twentieth century was all water off a duck’s back. Science remained committed to objectivity and continued to deliver remarkable discoveries and improvements in technology. In What Science Knows, the Australian philosopher and mathematician James Franklin explains in captivating and straightforward prose how science works its magic. He begins with an account of the nature of evidence, where science imitates but extends commonsense and legal reasoning in basing conclusions solidly on inductive reasoning from facts. After a brief survey of the furniture of the world as science sees it—including causes, laws, dispositions and force fields as well as material things—Franklin describes colorful examples of discoveries in the natural, mathematical, and social sciences and the reasons for believing them. He examines the limits of science, giving special attention both to mysteries that may be solved by science, such as the origin of life, and those that may in principle be beyond the reach of science, such as the meaning of ethics. What Science Knows will appeal to anyone who wants a sound, readable, and well-paced introduction to the intellectual edifice that is science. On the other hand it will not please the enemies of science, whose willful misunderstandings of scientific method and the relation of evidence to conclusions Franklin mercilessly exposes.
Download or read book Enantioselective C C Bond Forming Reactions written by and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enantioselective C-C Bond Forming Reactions: From Metal Complex-, Organo-, and Bio-catalyzed Perspectives, Volume 73 in the Advances in Catalysis series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters on topics such as An introduction to Chirality, Metal-catalyzed stereoselective C-C-bond forming reactions, Enantioselective C-C bond forming reactions promoted by organocatalysts based on unnatural amino acid derivatives, Enantioselective C-C bond formation in complex multicatalytic system, Gold-based multicatalytic systems for enantioselective C-C Bond forming reactions, Novel enzymatic tools for C-C bond formation through the development of new-to-nature biocatalysis, and more. - Provides the authority and expertise of leading contributors from an international board of authors - Presents the latest release in Advances in Catalysis serials - Updated release includes the latest information in the field
Download or read book Modernity Frontiers and Revolutions written by Maria do Rosário Monteiro and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities (PHI) - MODERNITY, FRONTIERS AND REVOLUTIONS were compiled with the intent to establish a multidisciplinary platform for the presentation, interaction and dissemination of research. It also aims to foster awareness of and discussion on the topics of Harmony and Proportion with a focus on different visions relevant to Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Design, Engineering, Social and Natural Sciences, and their importance and benefits for the sense of both individual and community identity. The idea of modernity has been a significant driver of development since the Western Early Modern Age. Its theoretical and practical foundations have become the working tools of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who seek strategies and policies to accelerate the development process in different contexts.
Download or read book Metaphors and Analogies in Sciences and Humanities written by Shyam Wuppuluri and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-30 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly-interdisciplinary volume, we systematically study the role of metaphors and analogies in (mis)shaping our understanding of the world. Metaphors and Analogies occupy a prominent place in scientific discourses, as they do in literature, humanities and at the very level of our thinking itself. But when misused they can lead us astray, blinding our understanding inexorably. How can metaphors aid us in our understanding of the world? What role do they play in our scientific discourses and in humanities? How do they help us understand and skillfully deal with our complex socio-political scenarios? Where is the dividing line between their use and abuse? Join us as we explore some of these questions in this volume.
Download or read book The Generic Sublime written by Ciro Najle and published by Actar D, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Generic Sublime is the outcome of an investigation on extra-extra-large developmental typologies carried out at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Departments of Architecture, Urban Design and Planning, and Landscape Architecture, between the years 2010 and 2013. The book assembles this investigation and structures its materials, methods and outcomes along three parts. The first part includes a series of writings by the author and invited theoreticians and practitioners toward debating, substantiating or challenging the theory of the Generic Sublime, as presented by the book. The second part proposes three operative taxonomies, understood as the consecutive steps in a procedure going from the actual to the prospective by means of a process of abstraction and integration: a first one portraying a series of case studies that exemplify developmental phenomena currently at work around the globe; a second one presenting a set of organizational models and introducing an open manual of processes and techniques for breeding the contemporary sublime out of the ordinary; and a third part displaying propositions that singularize the investigation across a series of projects. The book ends with a third and final part, which includes a series of concluding open-ended texts: a public conversation on the sublime, a personal interview on methods, a dialogue-glossary of concepts, a technical-theoretical report, and a conclusive set of principles.
Download or read book Teleology First Principles and Scientific Method in Aristotle s Biology written by Allan Gotthelf and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-23 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents an interconnected set of sixteen essays, four of which are previously unpublished, by Allan Gotthelf—one of the leading experts in the study of Aristotle's biological writings. Gotthelf addresses three main topics across Aristotle's three main biological treatises. Starting with his own ground-breaking study of Aristotle's natural teleology and its illuminating relationship with the Generation of Animals, Gotthelf proceeds to the axiomatic structure of biological explanation (and the first principles such explanation proceeds from) in the Parts of Animals. After an exploration of the implications of these two treatises for our understanding of Aristotle's metaphysics, Gotthelf examines important aspects of the method by which Aristotle organizes his data in the History of Animals to make possible such a systematic, explanatory study of animals, offering a new view of the place of classification in that enterprise. In a concluding section on 'Aristotle as Theoretical Biologist', Gotthelf explores the basis of Charles Darwin's great praise of Aristotle and, in the first printing of a lecture delivered worldwide, provides an overview of Aristotle as a philosophically-oriented scientist, and 'a proper verdict' on his greatness as scientist.
