Download or read book Identifying inconsistent scientific theories written by Peter John Vickers and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Understanding Inconsistent Science written by Peter Vickers and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Vickers examines 'inconsistent theories' in the history of science—theories which, though contradictory, are held to be extremely useful. He argues that these 'theories' are actually significantly different entities, and warns that the traditional goal of philosophy to make substantial, general claims about how science works is misguided.
Download or read book Inconsistency in Science written by Joke Meheus and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, inconsistencies were seen as a hindrance to good reasoning, and their role in the sciences was ignored. In recent years, however, logicians as well as philosophers and historians have showed a growing interest in the matter. Central to this change were the advent of paraconsistent logics, the shift in attention from finished theories to construction processes, and the recognition that most scientific theories were at some point either internally inconsistent or incompatible with other accepted findings. The new interest gave rise to important questions. How is `logical anarchy' avoided? Is it ever rational to accept an inconsistent theory? In what sense, if any, can inconsistent theories be considered as true? The present collection of papers is the first to deal with this kind of questions. It contains case studies as well as philosophical analyses, and presents an excellent overview of the different approaches in the domain.
Download or read book Understanding Inconsistent Science written by Peter Vickers and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years philosophers of science have urged that many scientific theories are extremely useful and successful despite being internally inconsistent. Via an investigation of eight alleged 'inconsistent theories' in the history of science, Peter Vickers urges that this view is at best overly simplistic. Most of these cases can only be described as examples of 'inconsistent science' if we employ reconstructions of science which depart from the real (history of) science to an unacceptable degree. And where we do find genuine inconsistency he argues that the nature of—and correct response to—the inconsistency differs dramatically depending on the details of the science in question. Thus we are warned against making overly general claims about 'science': what are all called 'theories' in the history of science are actually significantly different entities, which work in different ways and react to inconsistency in different ways. Vickers argues that the traditional goal of philosophy to make substantial, fully general claims about 'how science works' is misguided, and can be significantly circumvented if we re-frame our debates such that reference to 'theories' is eliminated. In this way one is not tempted to think of the history of science as a history of instances of the same kind—theory—about which one could hope to say something substantial and general. And in addition eliminating theory means that we avoid fruitless debates about the 'real' nature and content of 'theories'. Vickers' account leads to a particularist philosophy of science, where the reader is urged to appreciate the often dramatic differences between the different 'inconsistencies in science' which have been identified.
Download or read book Inconsistency in Science written by Joke Meheus and published by . This book was released on 2014-01-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Inconsistency Asymmetry and Non Locality written by Mathias Frisch and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-31 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mathias Frisch provides the first sustained philosophical discussion of conceptual problems in classical particle-field theories. Part of the book focuses on the problem of a satisfactory equation of motion for charged particles interacting with electromagnetic fields. As Frisch shows, the standard equation of motion results in a mathematically inconsistent theory, yet there is no fully consistent and conceptually unproblematic alternative theory. Frisch describes in detail how the search for a fundamental equation of motion is partly driven by pragmatic considerations (like simplicity and mathematical tractability) that can override the aim for full consistency. The book also offers a comprehensive review and criticism of both the physical and philosophical literature on the temporal asymmetry exhibited by electromagnetic radiation fields, including Einstein's discussion of the asymmetry and Wheeler and Feynman's influential absorber theory of radiation. Frisch argues that attempts to derive the asymmetry from thermodynamic or cosmological considerations fail and proposes that we should understand the asymmetry as due to a fundamental causal constraint. The book's overarching philosophical thesis is that standard philosophical accounts that strictly identify scientific theories with a mathematical formalism and a mapping function specifying the theory's ontology are inadequate, since they permit neither inconsistent yet genuinely successful theories nor thick causal notions to be part of fundamental physics.
Download or read book Inconsistency Asymmetry and Non Locality written by Mathias Frisch and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-31 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mathias Frisch provides the first sustained philosophical discussion of conceptual problems in classical particle-field theories. Part of the book focuses on the problem of a satisfactory equation of motion for charged particles interacting with electromagnetic fields. As Frisch shows, the standard equation of motion results in a mathematically inconsistent theory, yet there is no fully consistent and conceptually unproblematic alternative theory. Frisch describes in detail how the search for a fundamental equation of motion is partly driven by pragmatic considerations (like simplicity and mathematical tractability) that can override the aim for full consistency. The book also offers a comprehensive review and criticism of both the physical and philosophical literature on the temporal asymmetry exhibited by electromagnetic radiation fields, including Einstein's discussion of the asymmetry and Wheeler and Feynman's influential absorber theory of radiation. Frisch argues that attempts to derive the asymmetry from thermodynamic or cosmological considerations fail and proposes that we should understand the asymmetry as due to a fundamental causal constraint. The book's overarching philosophical thesis is that standard philosophical accounts that strictly identify scientific theories with a mathematical formalism and a mapping function specifying the theory's ontology are inadequate, since they permit neither inconsistent yet genuinely successful theories nor thick causal notions to be part of fundamental physics.
Download or read book The Laws of Scientific Change written by Hakob Barseghyan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-08-17 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book systematically creates a general descriptive theory of scientific change that explains the mechanics of changes in both scientific theories and the methods of their assessment. It was once believed that, while scientific theories change through time, their change itself is governed by a fixed method of science. Nowadays we know that there is no such thing as an unchangeable method of science; the criteria employed by scientists in theory evaluation also change through time. But if that is so, how and why do theories and methods change? Are there any general laws that govern this process, or is the choice of theories and methods completely arbitrary and random? Contrary to the widespread opinion, the book argues that scientific change is indeed a law-governed process and that there can be a general descriptive theory of scientific change. It does so by first presenting meta-theoretical issues, divided into chapters on the scope, possibility and assessment of theory of scientific change. It then builds a theory about the general laws that govern the process of scientific change, and goes into detail about the axioms and theorems of the theory.
Download or read book Reproducibility and Replicability in Science written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-10-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the pathways by which the scientific community confirms the validity of a new scientific discovery is by repeating the research that produced it. When a scientific effort fails to independently confirm the computations or results of a previous study, some fear that it may be a symptom of a lack of rigor in science, while others argue that such an observed inconsistency can be an important precursor to new discovery. Concerns about reproducibility and replicability have been expressed in both scientific and popular media. As these concerns came to light, Congress requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conduct a study to assess the extent of issues related to reproducibility and replicability and to offer recommendations for improving rigor and transparency in scientific research. Reproducibility and Replicability in Science defines reproducibility and replicability and examines the factors that may lead to non-reproducibility and non-replicability in research. Unlike the typical expectation of reproducibility between two computations, expectations about replicability are more nuanced, and in some cases a lack of replicability can aid the process of scientific discovery. This report provides recommendations to researchers, academic institutions, journals, and funders on steps they can take to improve reproducibility and replicability in science.
Download or read book Inconsistency Tolerance written by Leopoldo Bertossi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-01-17 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inconsistency arises in many areas in advanced computing. Often inconsistency is unwanted, for example in the specification for a plan or in sensor fusion in robotics; however, sometimes inconsistency is useful. Whether inconsistency is unwanted or useful, there is a need to develop tolerance to inconsistency in application technologies such as databases, knowledge bases, and software systems. To address this situation, inconsistency tolerance is being built on foundational technologies for identifying and analyzing inconsistency in information, for representing and reasoning with inconsistent information, for resolving inconsistent information, and for merging inconsistent information. The idea for this book arose out of a Dagstuhl Seminar on the topic held in summer 2003. The nine chapters in this first book devoted to the subject of inconsistency tolerance were carefully invited and anonymously reviewed. The book provides an exciting introduction to this new field.
Download or read book Inconsistent Mathematics written by C.E. Mortensen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: without a properly developed inconsistent calculus based on infinitesimals, then in consistent claims from the history of the calculus might well simply be symptoms of confusion. This is addressed in Chapter 5. It is further argued that mathematics has a certain primacy over logic, in that paraconsistent or relevant logics have to be based on inconsistent mathematics. If the latter turns out to be reasonably rich then paraconsistentism is vindicated; while if inconsistent mathematics has seri ous restriytions then the case for being interested in inconsistency-tolerant logics is weakened. (On such restrictions, see this chapter, section 3. ) It must be conceded that fault-tolerant computer programming (e. g. Chapter 8) finds a substantial and important use for paraconsistent logics, albeit with an epistemological motivation (see this chapter, section 3). But even here it should be noted that if inconsistent mathematics turned out to be functionally impoverished then so would inconsistent databases. 2. Summary In Chapter 2, Meyer's results on relevant arithmetic are set out, and his view that they have a bearing on G8del's incompleteness theorems is discussed. Model theory for nonclassical logics is also set out so as to be able to show that the inconsistency of inconsistent theories can be controlled or limited, but in this book model theory is kept in the background as much as possible. This is then used to study the functional properties of various equational number theories.
Download or read book Contributions to Social Ontology written by Clive Lawson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen a dramatic re-emergence of interest in ontology. From philosophy and social sciences to artificial intelligence and computer science, ontology is gaining interdisciplinary influence as a popular tool for applied research. Contributions to Social Ontology focuses specifically on these developments within the social sciences. The contributions reveal that this revived interest in social ontology involves far more than an unquestioning acceptance or application of the concepts and methods of academic philosophers. Instead as ontology permeates so many new areas, social ontology itself is evolving in new and fascinating ways. This book engages with these new developments, pushing it forward with cutting-edge new material from leading authors in this area, from Roy Bhaskar to Margaret Archer. It also explicitly analyzes the relationship between the new ontological projects and the more traditional approaches. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers alike across the social sciences and particularly in philosophy, economics and sociology.
Download or read book Aspects of Rationality written by Raymond S. Nickerson and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2007-11-19 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be rational to reason well and effectively? How does rationality, broadly conceived, relate to the knowledge one acquires, the beliefs one forms, the explanations one constructs or appropriates, the judgments and decisions one makes, the values one adopts? What is the character of human reasoning and, in particular, does it t
Download or read book Contradictions from Consistency to Inconsistency written by Walter Carnielli and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-13 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume investigates what is beyond the Principle of Non-Contradiction. It features 14 papers on the foundations of reasoning, including logical systems and philosophical considerations. Coverage brings together a cluster of issues centered upon the variety of meanings of consistency, contradiction, and related notions. Most of the papers, but not all, are developed around the subtle distinctions between consistency and non-contradiction, as well as among contradiction, inconsistency, and triviality, and concern one of the above mentioned threads of the broadly understood non-contradiction principle and the related principle of explosion. Some others take a perspective that is not too far away from such themes, but with the freedom to tread new paths. Readers should understand the title of this book in a broad way,because it is not so obvious to deal with notions like contradictions, consistency, inconsistency, and triviality. The papers collected here present groundbreaking ideas related to consistency and inconsistency.
Download or read book The Handbook of Sex Differences Volume IV Identifying Universal Sex Differences written by Lee Ellis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 921 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Sex Differences is a four-volume reference work written to assess sex differences, with a primary focus on the human species. Based on the authors’ highly influential 2008 book Sex Differences, these volumes highlight important new research findings from the last decade and a half alongside earlier findings. In this, the work’s fourth and last volume, two related questions are addressed: Are there universal sex differences (i.e., sex differences found in all societies)? And if the answer is yes, what are they and how can each one be theoretically explained? To answer the first of these two questions, this volume condenses much of the research findings amassed in the book’s first three volumes into summary tables. Then, to help identify likely universal sex differences, three versions of social role theory and two versions of evolutionary theory are examined relative to each possible universal sex difference. Consideration is even given to religious scriptures as a sixth type of explanation. In the concluding analyses, 308 likely universal sex differences are identified. No single theory was able to explain all these differences. Nevertheless, the two evolutionary theories were better in this regard than any of the three social role theories, including the recently proposed biosocial version of social role theory. The Handbook of Sex Differences is of importance for any researcher, student, or professional who requires a comprehensive resource on sex differences.
Download or read book Handbook of Research on Computational Science and Engineering Theory and Practice written by Leng, J. and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2011-10-31 with total page 701 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By using computer simulations in research and development, computational science and engineering (CSE) allows empirical inquiry where traditional experimentation and methods of inquiry are difficult, inefficient, or prohibitively expensive. The Handbook of Research on Computational Science and Engineering: Theory and Practice is a reference for interested researchers and decision-makers who want a timely introduction to the possibilities in CSE to advance their ongoing research and applications or to discover new resources and cutting edge developments. Rather than reporting results obtained using CSE models, this comprehensive survey captures the architecture of the cross-disciplinary field, explores the long term implications of technology choices, alerts readers to the hurdles facing CSE, and identifies trends in future development.
Download or read book SOFSEM 2021 Theory and Practice of Computer Science written by Tomáš Bureš and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-20 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the invited and contributed papers selected for presentation at SOFSEM 2021, the 47th International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, which was held online during January 25–28, 2021, hosted by the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. The 33 full and 7 short papers included in the volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 100 submissions. They were organized in topical sections on: foundations of computer science; foundations of software engineering; foundations of data science and engineering; and foundations of algorithmic computational biology. The book also contains 5 invited papers.
