Download or read book Physical Theory as Logico Operational Structure written by C.A. Hooker and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In two earlier volumes, entitled The Logico-Algebraic Approach to Quan tum Mechanics (hereafter LAA I, II), I have presented collections of research papers which trace out the historical development and contem porary flowering of a particular approach to physical theory. One might characterise this approach as the extraction of an abstract logico-algebraic skeleton from each physical theory and the reconstruction of the physical theory as construction of mathematical and interpretive 'flesh' (e. g. , measures, operators, mappings etc. ) on this skeleton. The idea is to show how the specific features of a theory that are easily seen in application (e. g. , 'interference' among observables in quantum mechanics) arise out of the character of its core abstract structure. In this fashion both the deeper nature of a theory (e. g. , in what precise sense quantum mechanics is strongly statistical) and the deeper differences between theories (e. g. clas sical mechanics, though also a 'mechanics', is not strongly statistical) are penetratingly illuminated. What I would describe as the 'mainstream' logico-algebraic tradition is captured in these two collections of papers (LAA I, II). The abstract, structural approach to the characterisation of physical theory has been the basis of a striking transformation, in this century, in the understanding of theories in mathematical physics. There has emerged clearly the idea that physical theories are most significantly characterised by their abstract structural components.
Download or read book Physical Theory as Logico operational Structure written by Clifford Alan Hooker and published by . This book was released on 1978-12-31 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Logico Algebraic Approach to Quantum Mechanics written by C.A. Hooker and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1979-05-31 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twentieth century has witnessed a striking transformation in the understanding of the theories of mathematical physics. There has emerged clearly the idea that physical theories are significantly characterized by their abstract mathematical structure. This is in opposition to the tradi tional opinion that one should look to the specific applications of a theory in orrter to understand it. One might with reason now espouse the view that to understand the deeper character of a theory one must know its abstract structure and understand the significance of that structure, while to understand how a theory might be modified in light of its experimental inadequacies one must be intimately acquainted with how it is applied. Quantum theory itself has gone through a development this century which illustrates strikingly the shifting perspective. From a collection of intuitive physical manoeuvers under Bohr, through a formative stage in which the mathematical framework was bifurcated (between Schrodinger and Heisenberg) to an elegant culmination in von Neumann's Hilbert space formulation, the elementary theory moved, flanked even at this later stage by the ill-understood formalisms for the relativistic version and for the field-theoretic alternative; after that we have a gradual, but constant, elaboration of all these quantal theories as abstract mathematical structures (their point of departure being von Neumann's formalism) until at the present time theoretical work is heavily preoccupied with the manipulation of purely abstract structures.
Download or read book Experiencing Nature written by P. Theerman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1997-04-30 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, honoring the renowned historian of science, Allen G Debus, explores ideas of science - `experiences of nature' - from within a historiographical tradition that Debus has done much to define. As his work shows, the sciences do not develop exclusively as a result of a progressive and inexorable logic of discovery. A wide variety of extra-scientific factors, deriving from changing intellectual contexts and differing social millieus, play crucial roles in the overall development of scientific thought. These essays represent case studies in a broad range of scientific settings - from sixteenth-century astronomy and medicine, through nineteenth-century biology and mathematics, to the social sciences in the twentieth-century - that show the impact of both social settings and the cross-fertilization of ideas on the formation of science. Aimed at a general audience interested in the history of science, this book closes with Debus's personal perspective on the development of the field. Audience: This book will appeal especially to historians of science, of chemistry, and of medicine.
Download or read book Knowledge and Reality written by P. Parrini and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: XIV The stability of a philosophical construction will depend not only upon the solidity of the blocks, of the pillars and architraves that make it up, but also upon the way in which all these parts are connected. Of course, it will not be possible to argue for every single part of a philosophical building: to do so would mean to embark in a virtually endless enterprise. Accordingly, some of the parts of a philosophical building will have to be taken from the literature on the subject as 'ready made' or 'semi-finished' elements, while others will be argued for in the course of building. This is what happened in my work too. In some cases (for in stance, in the case of epistemic relativism), my concern was to illustrate theses which I believed to be sufficiently consolidated, rather than to ar gue for them. In other cases - where I was directly engaged in building the theory that I want to fonnulate - I did exactly the opposite. This is what I have tried to achieve, for example, for those proper architraves of my construction, viz. the connection between scepticism and metaphysi cal realism. and the thesis of the nonnative value of the fundamental epistemological notions (truth, objectivity, and rationality).
Download or read book Existence and Explanation written by W. Spohn and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays is dedicated to 'Joe' Karel Lambert. The contributors are all personally affected to Joe in some way or other, but they are definitely not the only ones. Whatever excuses there are - there are some -, the editors apologize to whomever they have neglected. But even so the collection displays how influential Karel Lambert has been, personally and through his teaching and his writings. The display is in alphabetical order - with one exception: Bas van Fraassen, being about the earliest student of Karel Lambert, opens the collection with some reminiscences. Naturally, one of the focal points of this volume is Lambert's logical thinking and (or: freed of) ontological thinking. Free logic is intimately connected with description theory. Bas van Fraassen gives a survey of the development of the area, and Charles Daniels points to difficulties with definite descriptions in modal contexts and stories. Peter Woodruff addresses the relation between free logic and supervaluation semantics, presenting a novel condition which recovers desirable metatheoretic properties for free logic under that semantics. Terence Parsons shows how free logic can be utilized in interpreting sentences as purporting to denote events (true ones succeed and false ones fail) and how this helps to understand natural language.
Download or read book The Art of the Intelligible written by J. Bell and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compact survey, at the elementary level, of some of the most important concepts of mathematics. Attention is paid to their technical features, historical development and broader philosophical significance. Each of the various branches of mathematics is discussed separately, but their interdependence is emphasised throughout. Certain topics - such as Greek mathematics, abstract algebra, set theory, geometry and the philosophy of mathematics - are discussed in detail. Appendices outline from scratch the proofs of two of the most celebrated limitative results of mathematics: the insolubility of the problem of doubling the cube and trisecting an arbitrary angle, and the Gödel incompleteness theorems. Additional appendices contain brief accounts of smooth infinitesimal analysis - a new approach to the use of infinitesimals in the calculus - and of the philosophical thought of the great 20th century mathematician Hermann Weyl. Readership: Students and teachers of mathematics, science and philosophy. The greater part of the book can be read and enjoyed by anyone possessing a good high school mathematics background.
Download or read book Music and Science in the Age of Galileo written by V. Coelho and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music and Science in the Age of Galileo features twelve new essays by leading specialists in the fields of musicology, history of science, astronomy, philosophy, and instrument building that explore the relations between music and the scientific culture of Galileo's time. The essays take a broad historical approach towards understanding such topics as the role of music in Galileo's experiments and in the scientific revolution, the musical formation of scientists, Galileo's impact on the art and music of his time, the scientific knowledge of instrument builders, and the scientific experiments and cultural context of Galileo's father, Vincenzo Galilei. This volume opens up new areas in both musicology and the history of science, and twists together various strands of parallel work by musicians and scientists on Galileo and his time. This book will be of interest to musicologists, historians of science and those interested in interdisciplinary perspectives of the late Renaissance -- early Baroque. For its variety of approaches, it will be a valuable collection of readings for graduate students, and those seeking a more integrated approach to historical problems. The book will be of interest to historians of science, philosophers, musicologists, astronomers, and mathematicians.
Download or read book Consciousness and Intentionality Models and Modalities of Attribution written by D. Fisette and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy of mind has been one of the most active fields in philosophy for the past three decades. One of the most significant factors in the development of this discipline has been the emergence of cognitive science and the interest philosophers have taken in the empirical study of mind. Another equally important factor has been the "naturalistic tum" brought about by W. V. Quine. His proposal that normative epistemology be replaced by empirical psychology marked a radical departure from the Fregean "anti psychologism" and "apriorism" that had characterized much of the analytic tradition in philosophy. But while Quine's program of naturalization called the attention of philosophers to empirical psychology, his conception of psychology was inspired by an austere behaviorism which shunned the mentalism of intentional psychology in the Brentanian and phenomenological tradition. Thus, while agreeing with Brentano that the "intentional idiom" could not be reduced to that of the natural sciences, Quine argued that it is of a piece with the indeterminacy of translation. Most contributors of this col lection share the cognitivist stance and believe that the mind needs to be explained rather than eliminated. Three main questions are actually confronting current philosophers of mind, each addressed by one or another of the contributors to the present collection.
Download or read book Kant and Contemporary Epistemology written by P. Parrini and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the mid-1960s, after the important works by J. Hintikka, S. Körner, W. Sellars and P.F. Strawson, there has been a marked revival of Kantian epistemological thought. Against this background, featuring fruitful exchange between historical research and theoretical prospects, the main point of the book is the discussion of Kantian theory of scientific knowledge from the perspective of present-day analytical philosophy and philosophy of empirical and mathematical sciences. The main topics are the problem of a priori knowledge in logic, mathematics and physics, the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, the constitution of physical objectivity and the questions of realism and truth, the Kantian conception of time, causal laws and induction, the relations between Kantian epistemological thought, relativity theory, quantum theory and some recent developments of philosophy of science. The book is addressed to research workers, specialists and scholars in the fields of epistemology, philosophy of science and history of philosophy.
Download or read book Knowledge Cause and Abstract Objects written by C. Cheyne and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to platonists, entities such as numbers, sets, propositions and properties are abstract objects. But abstract objects lack causal powers and a location in space and time, so how could we ever come to know of the existence of such impotent and remote objects? In Knowledge, Cause, and Abstract Objects, Colin Cheyne presents the first systematic and detailed account of this epistemological objection to the platonist doctrine that abstract objects exist and can be known. Since mathematics has such a central role in the acquisition of scientific knowledge, he concentrates on mathematical platonism. He also concentrates on our knowledge of what exists, and argues for a causal constraint on such existential knowledge. Finally, he exposes the weaknesses of recent attempts by platonists to account for our supposed platonic knowledge. This book will be of particular interest to researchers and advanced students of epistemology and of the philosophy of mathematics and science. It will also be of interest to all philosophers with a general interest in metaphysics and ontology.
Download or read book Euclid s Heritage Is Space Three Dimensional written by P. Janich and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1992-11-30 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The three spatial characteristics of length, height and depth are used in the same unreflective way by laymen, technicians and scientists alike to describe the forms, positions and measure of bodies and hollow bodies. But how do we know that the space we live in has just these three dimensions? The question has occupied philosophers and scientists since antiquity. The answers proposed have become ever more presumptuous and have increasingly lost sight of everyday intuitions and have sacrificed explanatory power. In Euclid's Heritage Janich shows that all explanations of three-dimensionality hinge on an unreflective geometrical language which seems to accept the lack of an alternative for the three sorts of entities -- points, lines and planes -- that bound the three extended entities -- lines, planes and solids. This is a Euclidean heritage in a dual sense: Euclid himself adopted a geometrical language from the art of figure drawing, and left a tradition of doing geometry as planimetry and of doing stereometry by rotating plane figures. The systematic approach offered here starts out from operational definitions of the spatial forms -- plane, straight edge and perpendicularity -- and proofs that only three planes can intersect pairwise orthogonally. This is the constructive solution in the frame theory of action, providing an unequivocal characterisation of spatial relations in the physical world. The traditional order of geometric concepts turns out to be the most important obstacle to the methodical ordering of everyday scientific concepts.
Download or read book Experience Reality and Scientific Explanation written by Maria Carla Galavotti and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers collected here comprise the proceedings of a Workshop in honor ofMerrilee and Wes Salmon, held in Florence on May 17-18, 1996. The aim of the meeting was to pay homage to these two American scholars, whose contact with Italian and European Universities and Institutes had a major influence on "Continental" thought in the field of epistemology and probability. In fact, Merrilee and Wes spent various periods lecturing at the Universities of Bologna, Florence, Rome, Trieste, Catania and Pisa, as well as in the University of Constance, where they helped to build a strong cultural "bridge" with the Pittsburgh Center for the Philosophy of Science. The Florence Center for the History and Philosophy of Science is particularly thankful to the Salmons for their ongoing cooperation and frequent visits. We must not forget that Wes Salmon was in the Florence Center and at the Philosophy Department of Florence, as visiting scholar, on many occasions, and that he made important contributions which have later appeared in Italian journals, such as Iride and Rivista di jilosojia. Merrilee was a speaker at the Conference on "Genetics, Linguistics, and Archaeology" (May 20-24,1991), organized by the Florence Center. Both Wes and Merrilee often enlivened the arguments of the initiatives they took part in.
Download or read book The Modal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics written by Dennis Dieks and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1998-10-31 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the modal interpretation, the standard mathematical framework of quantum mechanics specifies the physical magnitudes of a system, which have definite values. Probabilities are assigned to the possible values that these magnitudes may adopt. The interpretation is thus concerned with physical properties rather than with measurement results: it is a realistic interpretation (in the sense of scientific realism). One of the notable achievements of this interpretation is that it dissolves the notorious measurement problem. The papers collected here, together with the introduction and concluding critical appraisal, explain the various forms of the modal interpretation, survey its achievements, and discuss those problems that have yet to be solved. Audience: Philosophers of science, theoretical physicists, and graduate students in these disciplines.
Download or read book Measures And Hilbert Lattices written by Gudrun Kalmbach and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 1986-10-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents: IntroductionOrthomodular MeasuresGleason's TheoremJordan-Hahn DecompositionOrthofacial Sets of StatesEquational Classes Related to StatesDecomposition of Complete Orthomodular LatticesCharacterization of Dimension LatticesBirkhoff-Von Neumann TheoremCoordinatizationsKakutani-Mackey TheoremKeller's Non-Classical Hilbert Spaces Readership: Mathematician and Physicist who are interested in Hilbert Lattices.
Download or read book World Views and the Problem of Synthesis written by Diederik Aerts and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers philosophy to be more than mere reflection. Through philosophy, humankind can give meaning to the world. In part, this book re-evaluates the philosophy of Leo Apostel, who dedicated his life to the investigation of the use of philosophy in everyday life. But it is also a presentation of international research carried out along the lines of the worldviews project. The contributions address not only professional philosophers, but also students, teachers, academics and everyone interested in the relationship between philosophy and the world.
Download or read book Current Issues in Quantum Logic written by Enrico G. Beltrametti and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These are the proceedings of the Workshop on Quantum Logic held in Erice (Sicily), December 2 - 9, 1979, at the Ettore Hajorana Centre for Scientific Culture. A conference of this sort was originally proposed by Giuliano Toraldo di Francia, who suggested the idea to Antonino Zichichi, and thus laid the foundation for the Workshop. To both of them we express our appreciation and thanks, also on behalf of the other participants, for having made this conference possible. There were approximately fifty participants; their names and institutions are listed in the text. Quantum logic, which has now a history of some forty or more years, has seen remarkable growth during the sixties and seventies. The papers in the present volume presuppose, by and large, some acquaintance with the elements of the subject. These may be found in the well-known books by J.H. Jauch (Foundations of Quantum Hechanics; Reading, 1968), V.S. Varadarajan (Geometry of Quantum Theory: Princeton, 1968), and C. Piron (Foundations of Quantum Theory; New York, 1976). The initial program for the conference listed about twenty-five invited papers. But in the context of a very active and qualified attendance, other contributions were offered. This volume contains all of them. The program listed six main topics: I. Classification or different areas of quantum logic, and open problems. II. Comparison and unification of different approaches to quantum theories; problems of interpretation. III. Formal quantum logic; axiomatics. IV. Hodal interpretations of quantum logic. v vi FOREWORD V. Quantum set theory.
