Download or read book Is Science Progressive written by I. Niiniluoto and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together several essays which have been written between the years 197 5 and 1983. During that period I have been occupied with the attempt to find a satisfactory explicate for the notion of tnithlike ness or verisimilitude. The technical results of this search have partly appeared elsewhere, and I am also working on a systematic presentation of them in a companion volume to this book: Truthlikeness (forthcoming hopefully in 1985). The essays collected in this book are less formal and more philos ophical: they all explore various aspects of the idea that progress in science is associated with an increase in the truthlikeness of its results. Even though they do not exhaust the problem area of scientific change, together they constitute a step in the direction which I find most promising in the defence of critical scientific realism. * Chapter 1 appeared originally in Finnish as the opening article of a new journal Tiede 2000 (no. 1 I 1980) - a Finnish counterpart to journals such as Science and Scientific American. This explains its programmatic character. It tries to give a compact answer to the question 'What is science?', and serves therefore as an introduction to the problem area of the later chapters. Chapter 2 is a revised translation of my inaugural lecture for the chair of Theoretical Philosophy in the University of Helsinki on April 8, 1981. It appeared in Finnish inParnasso 31 (1981), pp.
Download or read book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions written by Thomas S. Kuhn and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Progress and Its Problems written by Larry Laudan and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1978-10-27 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A book that shakes philosophy of science to its roots. Laudan both destroys and creates. With detailed, scathing criticisms, he attacks the 'pregnant confusions' in extant philosophies of science. The progress they espouse derives from strictly empirical criteria, he complains, and this clashes with historical evidence. Accordingly, Laudan constructs a remedy from historical examples that involves nothing less than the redefinition of scientific rationality and progress . . . Surprisingly, after this reshuffling, science still looks like a noble-and progressive-enterprise ... The glory of Laudan's system is that it preserves scientific rationality and progress in the presence of social influence. We can admit extra-scientific influences without lapsing into complete relativism. . . a must for both observers and practitioners of science." --Physics Today "A critique and substantial revision of the historic theories of scientific rationality and progress (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, etc.). Laudan focuses on contextual problem solving effectiveness (carefully defined) as a criterion for progress, and expands the notion of 'paradigm' to a 'research tradition,' thus providing a meta-empirical basis for the commensurability of competing theories. From this perspective, Laudan suggests revised programs for history and philosophy of science, the history of ideas, and the sociology of science. A superb work, closely argued, clearly written, and extensively annotated, this book will become a widely required text in intermediate courses."--Choice
Download or read book Truthlikeness written by I. Niiniluoto and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern discussion on the concept of truthlikeness was started in 1960. In his influential Word and Object, W. V. O. Quine argued that Charles Peirce's definition of truth as the limit of inquiry is faulty for the reason that the notion 'nearer than' is only "defined for numbers and not for theories". In his contribution to the 1960 International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science at Stan ford, Karl Popper defended the opposite view by defining a compara tive notion of verisimilitude for theories. was originally introduced by the The concept of verisimilitude Ancient sceptics to moderate their radical thesis of the inaccessibility of truth. But soon verisimilitudo, indicating likeness to the truth, was confused with probabilitas, which expresses an opiniotative attitude weaker than full certainty. The idea of truthlikeness fell in disrepute also as a result of the careless, often confused and metaphysically loaded way in which many philosophers used - and still use - such concepts as 'degree of truth', 'approximate truth', 'partial truth', and 'approach to the truth'. Popper's great achievement was his insight that the criticism against truthlikeness - by those who urge that it is meaningless to speak about 'closeness to truth' - is more based on prejudice than argument.
Download or read book Another Science is Possible written by Isabelle Stengers and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like fast food, fast science is quickly prepared, not particularly good, and it clogs up the system. Efforts to tackle our most pressing issues have been stymied by conflict within the scientific community and mixed messages symptomatic of a rushed approach. What is more, scientific research is being shaped by the bubbles and crashes associated with economic speculation and the market. A focus on conformism, competitiveness, opportunism and flexibility has made it extremely difficult to present cases of failure to the public, for fear that it will lose confidence in science altogether. In this bold new book, distinguished philosopher Isabelle Stengers shows that research is deeply intertwined with broader social interests, which means that science cannot race ahead in isolation but must learn instead to slow down. Stengers offers a path to an alternative science, arguing that researchers should stop seeing themselves as the 'thinking, rational brain of humanity' and refuse to allow their expertise to be used to shut down the concerns of the public, or to spread the belief that scientific progress is inevitable and will resolve all of society's problems. Rather, science must engage openly and honestly with an intelligent public and be clear about the kind of knowledge it is capable of producing. This timely and accessible book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers in a wide range of fields, as well anyone concerned with the role of science and its future.
Download or read book Science Progress written by and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes book reviews.
Download or read book Theories of Scientific Progress written by John Losee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There seems little doubt that we have made progress in scientific theories, but how? Theories of Scientific Progress presents the arguments, covers interpretations of scientific progress and discusses the latest contemporary debates.
Download or read book Enlightenment Now written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Download or read book The Crisis of Progress written by John C. Caiazza and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the concept of progress, its separate varieties, its current rejection, and how it may be reconsidered from a philosophical and scientific basis. John C. Caiazza's main emphasis is on how science is understood as it has a direct impact on social values as expressed by prominent philosophers. He argues that progress is at a standstill, which presents a crisis for Western civilization.Caiazza presents historical examples, both of scientific inquiry and social and cultural themes, to examine the subject of progress. Beginning with the Whig model and progressive political values exemplified by Bacon and Dewey, he also examines other variations, the Enlightenment, cosmopolitanism, and totalitarianism. Technology, argues Caiazza, also has a stultifying effect on Western culture and to understand the idea of progress, we must take a philosophic rather than a scientific point of view. Modern cosmology has inevitable humanistic and theological implications, and major contemporary philosophers reject social science in favour of ancient concepts of virtue and ethics.In the end, Caiazza writes that time is an agent, not a neutral plain on which scientific and historical events occur. We can expect technology to keep us in stasis or become aware of the possibility of transcendence. This book will be of interest for students of scientific history and philosophy.
Download or read book The Great Stagnation written by Tyler Cowen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tyler Cowen’s controversial New York Times bestseller—the book heard round the world that ignited a firestorm of debate and redefined the nature of America’s economic malaise. America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, media wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess? One political party tries to increase government spending even when we have no good plan for paying for ballooning programs like Medicare and Social Security. The other party seems to think tax cuts will raise revenue and has a record of creating bigger fiscal disasters that the first. Where does this madness come from? As Cowen argues, our economy has enjoyed low-hanging fruit since the seventeenth century: free land, immigrant labor, and powerful new technologies. But during the last forty years, the low-hanging fruit started disappearing, and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau. The fruit trees are barer than we want to believe. That's it. That is what has gone wrong and that is why our politics is crazy. In The Great Stagnation, Cowen reveals the underlying causes of our past prosperity and how we will generate it again. This is a passionate call for a new respect of scientific innovations that benefit not only the powerful elites, but humanity as a whole.
Download or read book Infinite Universe Theory written by Glenn Borchardt and published by . This book was released on 2018-10-22 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infinite Universe Theory presents the ultimate alternative to the Big Bang Theory and the common assumption that the universe had an origin. Author Glenn Borchardt starts with photos of the "elderly" galaxies at the observational edge of the universe and restates the fundamental assumptions that must underlie the new paradigm. He shows in detail how misinterpretations of relativity have aided current flights of fancy more in tune with religion than science.He demonstrates why only Infinite Universe Theory can provide answers to questions untouched by currently regressive physics and cosmogony. His new modification of gravitation theory gets us closer to its physical cause without calling upon attraction or curved spacetime.This the book for you if you have doubts about the universe exploding out of nothing and expanding in all directions at once, that the universe has more than three dimensions, or that light is a massless wave-particle that defies the Second Law of Thermodynamics. "What a great read! Thanks so much for a book full of great ideas. I love the Q&A format; it's very satisfying to have good answers to clearly stated questions." -Rick Dutkiewicz"Truly brilliant." -Jesse Witwer"A radical, daring, and innovative demolition of regressive physics, from the creation of 'something out of nothing' to the 'God Particle.'"-William Westmiller"Glenn Borchardt's book uses the hammer of Infinity to explain and destroy the junk theories that plague 'Official' physics today. This is a book that should be used in college courses, to give students a basic understanding of how physics is done. Physics has 'gone off the rails' for a century and it is books like Borchardt's that will return physics from its current unscientific and anti-materialist base and back on to a scientific and materialist road." - Mike Gimbel"What a fascinating read!"-Juan Calsiano
Download or read book Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems written by Jerome R. Ravetz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science is continually confronted by new and difficult social and ethical problems. Some of these problems have arisen from the transformation of the academic science of the prewar period into the industrialized science of the present. Traditional theories of science are now widely recognized as obsolete. In Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (originally published in 1971), Jerome R. Ravetz analyzes the work of science as the creation and investigation of problems. He demonstrates the role of choice and value judgment, and the inevitability of error, in scientific research. Ravetz's new introductory essay is a masterful statement of how our understanding of science has evolved over the last two decades.
Download or read book The Idea of Progress written by John Bagnell Bury and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book How to Talk to a Science Denier written by Lee McIntyre and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can we change the minds of science deniers? Encounters with flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, coronavirus truthers, and others. "Climate change is a hoax--and so is coronavirus." "Vaccines are bad for you." These days, many of our fellow citizens reject scientific expertise and prefer ideology to facts. They are not merely uninformed--they are misinformed. They cite cherry-picked evidence, rely on fake experts, and believe conspiracy theories. How can we convince such people otherwise? How can we get them to change their minds and accept the facts when they don't believe in facts? In this book, Lee McIntyre shows that anyone can fight back against science deniers, and argues that it's important to do so. Science denial can kill. Drawing on his own experience--including a visit to a Flat Earth convention--as well as academic research, McIntyre outlines the common themes of science denialism, present in misinformation campaigns ranging from tobacco companies' denial in the 1950s that smoking causes lung cancer to today's anti-vaxxers. He describes attempts to use his persuasive powers as a philosopher to convert Flat Earthers; surprising discussions with coal miners; and conversations with a scientist friend about genetically modified organisms in food. McIntyre offers tools and techniques for communicating the truth and values of science, emphasizing that the most important way to reach science deniers is to talk to them calmly and respectfully--to put ourselves out there, and meet them face to face.
Download or read book Progressive Community Action written by Bharat Mehra and published by Library Juice Press. This book was released on 2015-12 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social justice in library and information science (LIS) seeks to achieve action-oriented, socially relevant impacts through information work. This edited volume includes papers that explore intersections between critical theory and social justice in LIS while focusing on social relevance and community involvement to promote progressive community-wide changes. Contributors include LIS researchers, practitioners, educators, social justice advocates, and community leaders who identify theories, methods, approaches, strategies, and case studies that apply these intersections in mobilizing community action to deliver tangible community building and development outcomes. The frame of study is inclusive of (though not limited to) academic, public, school, and special libraries, museums, archives, and other information-related settings. An international context of analysis is included along with a focus on social impact and community involvement in LIS practice and research, education, policy development, service design, and program implementation.
Download or read book Science And Human Behavior written by B.F Skinner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-18 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The psychology classic—a detailed study of scientific theories of human nature and the possible ways in which human behavior can be predicted and controlled—from one of the most influential behaviorists of the twentieth century and the author of Walden Two. “This is an important book, exceptionally well written, and logically consistent with the basic premise of the unitary nature of science. Many students of society and culture would take violent issue with most of the things that Skinner has to say, but even those who disagree most will find this a stimulating book.” —Samuel M. Strong, The American Journal of Sociology “This is a remarkable book—remarkable in that it presents a strong, consistent, and all but exhaustive case for a natural science of human behavior…It ought to be…valuable for those whose preferences lie with, as well as those whose preferences stand against, a behavioristic approach to human activity.” —Harry Prosch, Ethics
Download or read book The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science written by John Marini and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2005-06-30 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We cannot understand our current political situation and the scholarship used to comprehend our politics without taking full account of the Progressive revolution of a century ago. This fundamental shift in studying the political world relegated the theory and practice of the Founders to an antiquated historical phase. By contrast, our contributors see beyond the horizon of Progressivism to take account of the Founders' moral and political premises. By doing so they make clear the broader context of current political science disputes, a fitting subject as American professional political science enters its second century. The contributors to the volume specify the changes in the new world that Progressivism brought into being. Part I emphasizes the contrast between various Progressives and their doctrines, and the American Founding on political institutions including the presidency, political parties, and the courts; statesmen include Frederick Douglass, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and John Marshall. Part II emphasizes the radical nature of Progressivism in a variety of areas critical to the American constitutional government and self-understanding of the American mind. Subjects covered include social science, property rights, Darwinism, free speech, and political science as a liberal art. The essays provide intellectual guidance to political scientists and indicate to political practitioners the peculiar perspectives embedded in current political science. Published in cooperation with The Claremont Institute.
