Download or read book Emergence in Context written by Robert C. Bishop and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Science, philosophy of science, and metaphysics have long been concerned with the question of how novel things emerge. How can order come out of disorder? This book introduces a new account, contextual emergence, seeking to answer such questions."--Back cover.

Download or read book Empirical Philosophy of Science written by Susann Wagenknecht and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-06-12 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines the emerging approach of using qualitative methods, such as interviews and field observations, in the philosophy of science. Qualitative methods are gaining popularity among philosophers of science as more and more scholars are resorting to empirical work in their study of scientific practices. At the same time, the results produced through empirical work are quite different from those gained through the kind of introspective conceptual analysis more typical of philosophy. This volume explores the benefits and challenges of an empirical philosophy of science and addresses questions such as: What do philosophers gain from empirical work? How can empirical research help to develop philosophical concepts? How do we integrate philosophical frameworks and empirical research? What constraints do we accept when choosing an empirical approach? What constraints does a pronounced theoretical focus impose on empirical work? Nine experts discuss their thoughts and empirical results in the chapters of this book with the aim of providing readers with an answer to these questions.

Download or read book The Philosophy of Science written by Anouk Barberousse and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy of science studies the methods, theories and concepts used by scientists. This book addresses both general philosophy of science and specific questions raised by logic, mathematics, physics, biology, medicine, cognitive science, linguistics, social sciences, and economics.

Download or read book Hierarchical Emergent Ontology and the Universal Principle of Emergence written by Vladimír Havlík and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new look at emergence in terms of a hierarchical emergent ontology. Emergence is recognised as a universal principle, as universal as the principle of evolution. This is achieved by setting out the ontological criteria of emergence and such criteria’s various roles. The traditional dichotomies are overcome, e.g., the synchronic and diachronic perspectives are unified, allowing a single, universal principle of emergence to be applied across various fields of science. As exemplars of its practical utility in both explanation and prediction, this new approach is applied to three different scientific areas: cellular automata, quantum Hall effects, and the neural network of the mind. It proves that the resulting metaphysics of hierarchical emergent ontology plays a fundamental role in unifying science, an impossible task under classical reductionism.

Download or read book The Philosophy of Science written by Anouk Barberousse and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy of science studies the methods, theories, and concepts used by scientists. It mainly developed as a field in its own right during the twentieth century and is now a diversified and lively research area. This book surveys the current state of the discipline by focusing on central themes like confirmation of scientific hypotheses, scientific explanation, causality, the relationship between science and metaphysics, scientific change, the relationship between philosophy of science and science studies, the role of theories and models, unity of science. These themes define general philosophy of science. The book also presents sub-disciplines in the philosophy of science dealing with the main sciences: logic, mathematics, physics, biology, medicine, cognitive science, linguistics, social sciences, and economics. While it is common to address the specific philosophical problems raised by physics and biology in such a book, the place assigned to the philosophy of special sciences is much more unusual. Most authors collaborate on a regular basis in their research or teaching and share a common vision of philosophy of science and its place within philosophy and academia in general. The chapters have been written in close accordance with the three editors, thus achieving strong unity of style and tone.

Download or read book Time and Space written by Barry Dainton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition (2001) of this title quickly established itself on courses on the philosophy of time and space. This fully revised and expanded new edition sees the addition of chapters on Zeno's paradoxes, speculative contemporary developments in physics, and dynamic time, making the second edition, once again, unrivalled in its breadth of coverage. Surveying both historical debates and the ideas of modern physics, Barry Dainton evaluates the central arguments in a clear and unintimidating way and is careful to keep the conceptual issues throughout comprehensible to students with little scientific or mathematical training. The book makes the philosophy of space and time accessible for anyone trying to come to grips with the complexities of this challenging subject. With over 100 original line illustrations and a full glossary of terms, the book has the requirements of students firmly in sight and will continue to serve as an essential textbook for philosophy of time and space courses.

Download or read book Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Volume 11 written by Dean W. Zimmerman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford Studies in Metaphysics is the forum for the best new work in this flourishing field. Much of the most interesting work in philosophy today is metaphysical in character: this series is a much-needed focus for it.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination written by Amy Kind and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-22 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagination occupies a central place in philosophy, going back to Aristotle. However, following a period of relative neglect there has been an explosion of interest in imagination in the past two decades as philosophers examine the role of imagination in debates about the mind and cognition, aesthetics and ethics, as well as epistemology, science and mathematics. This outstanding Handbook contains over thirty specially commissioned chapters by leading philosophers organised into six clear sections examining the most important aspects of the philosophy of imagination, including: Imagination in historical context: Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Husserl, and Sartre What is imagination? The relation between imagination and mental imagery; imagination contrasted with perception, memory, and dreaming Imagination in aesthetics: imagination and our engagement with music, art, and fiction; the problems of fictional emotions and ‘imaginative resistance’ Imagination in philosophy of mind and cognitive science: imagination and creativity, the self, action, child development, and animal cognition Imagination in ethics and political philosophy, including the concept of 'moral imagination' and empathy Imagination in epistemology and philosophy of science, including learning, thought experiments, scientific modelling, and mathematics. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, aesthetics, and ethics. It will also be a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as psychology and art.

Download or read book Collapse of the Wave Function written by Shan Gao and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-26 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of the collapse theories of quantum mechanics. Written by distinguished physicists and philosophers of physics, it discusses the origin and implications of wave-function collapse, the controversies around collapse models and their ontologies, and new arguments for the reality of wave function collapse.

Download or read book Models and Modeling in the Sciences written by Stephen M. Downes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biologists, climate scientists, and economists all rely on models to move their work forward. In this book, Stephen M. Downes explores the use of models in these and other fields to introduce readers to the various philosophical issues that arise in scientific modeling. Readers learn that paying attention to models plays a crucial role in appraising scientific work. This book first presents a wide range of models from a number of different scientific disciplines. After assembling some illustrative examples, Downes demonstrates how models shed light on many perennial issues in philosophy of science and in philosophy in general. Reviewing the range of views on how models represent their targets introduces readers to the key issues in debates on representation, not only in science but in the arts as well. Also, standard epistemological questions are cast in new and interesting ways when readers confront the question, "What makes for a good (or bad) model?" All examples from the sciences and positions in the philosophy of science are presented in an accessible manner. The book is suitable for undergraduates with minimal experience in philosophy and an introductory undergraduate experience in science. Key features: The book serves as a highly accessible philosophical introduction to models and modeling in the sciences, presenting all philosophical and scientific issues in a nontechnical manner. Students and other readers learn to practice philosophy of science by starting with clear examples taken directly from the sciences. While not comprehensive, this book introduces the reader to a wide range of views on key issues in the philosophy of science.

Download or read book The Dome of Eden written by Stephen H. Webb and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What would biology look like if it took the problem of natural evil seriously? This book argues that biological descriptions of evolution are inherently moral, just as the biblical story of creation has biological implications. A complete account of evolution will therefore require theological input. The Dome of Eden does not try to harmonize evolution and creation. Harmonizers typically begin with Darwinism and then try to add just enough religion to make evolution more palatable, or they begin with Genesis and pry open the creation account just wide enough to let in a little bit of evolution. By contrast, Stephen Webb provides a theory of how evolution and theology fit together, and he argues that this kind of theory is required by the internal demands of both theology and biology. The Dome of Eden also develops a theological account of evolution that is distinct from the intelligent design movement. Webb shows how intelligent design properly discerns the inescapable dimension of purpose in nature but, like Darwinism itself, fails to make sense of the problem of natural evil. Finally, this book draws on the work of Karl Barth to advance a new reading of the Genesis narrative and the theology of Duns Scotus to provide the necessary metaphysical foundation for evolutionary thought.

Download or read book Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy written by Alessandro Capone and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the pragmatics of language and it illustrates how pragmatics transcends the boundaries of linguistics. This volume covers Gricean pragmatics as well as topics including: conversation and collective belief, the norm of assertion, speech acts, what a context is, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics and implicature and explicature, pragmatics and epistemology, the pragmatics of belief, quotation, negation, implicature and argumentation theory, Habermas’ Universal Pragmatics, Dascal’s theory of the dialectical self, theories and theoretical discussions on the nature of pragmatics from a philosophical point of view. Conversational implicatures are generally meaning augmentations on top of explicatures, whilst explicatures figure prominently in what is said. Discussions in this work reveal their characteristics and tensions within current theories relating to explicatures and implicatures. Authors show that explicatures and implicatures are calculable and not (directly) tied to conventional meaning. Pragmatics has a role to play in dealing with philosophical problems and this volume presents research that defines boundaries and gives a stable picture of pragmatics and philosophy. World renowned academic experts in philosophy and pragmalinguistics ask important theoretical questions and interact in a way that can be easily grasped by those from disciplines other than philosophy, such as anthropology, literary theory and law. A second volume in this series is also available, which covers the perspective of linguists who have been influenced by philosophy.

Download or read book Conservative Reductionism written by Michael Esfeld and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conservative Reductionism sets out a new theory of the relationship between physics and the special sciences within the framework of functionalism. It argues that it is wrong-headed to conceive an opposition between functional and physical properties (or functional and physical descriptions, respectively) and to build an anti-reductionist argument on multiple realization. By contrast, (a) all properties that there are in the world, including the physical ones, are functional properties in the sense of being causal properties, and (b) all true descriptions (laws, theories) that the.

Download or read book Beyond the Meme written by Alan C. Love and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution that reject meme theory in favor of a complex understanding of dynamic change over time How do cultures change? In recent decades, the concept of the meme, posited as a basic unit of culture analogous to the gene, has been central to debates about cultural transformation. Despite the appeal of meme theory, its simplification of complex interactions and other inadequacies as an explanatory framework raise more questions about cultural evolution than it answers. In Beyond the Meme, William C. Wimsatt and Alan C. Love assemble interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution, providing a nuanced understanding of it as a process in which dynamic structures interact on different scales of size and time. By focusing on the full range of evolutionary processes across distinct contexts, from rice farming to scientific reasoning, this volume demonstrates how a thick understanding of change in culture emerges from multiple disciplinary vantage points, each of which is required to understand cultural evolution in all its complexity. The editors provide an extensive introductory essay to contextualize the volume, and Wimsatt contributes a separate chapter that systematically organizes the conceptual geography of cultural processes and phenomena. Any adequate account of the transmission, elaboration, and evolution of culture must, this volume argues, recognize the central roles that cognitive and social development play in cultural change and the complex interplay of technological, organizational, and institutional structures needed to enable and coordinate these processes. Contributors: Marshall Abrams, U of Alabama at Birmingham; Claes Andersson, Chalmers U of Technology; Mark A. Bedau, Reed College; James A. Evans, U of Chicago; Jacob G. Foster, U of California, Los Angeles; Michel Janssen, U of Minnesota; Sabina Leonelli, U of Exeter; Massimo Maiocchi, U of Chicago; Joseph D. Martin, U of Cambridge; Salikoko S. Mufwene, U of Chicago; Nancy J. Nersessian, Georgia Institute of Technology and Harvard U; Paul E. Smaldino, U of California, Merced; Anton Törnberg, U of Gothenburg; Petter Törnberg, U of Amsterdam; Gilbert B. Tostevin, U of Minnesota.

Download or read book Global Perspectives on Design Science Research written by Robert Winter and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-05-14 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Global Perspectives on Design Science Research, DERIST 2010, held in St. Gallen, Switzerland, in June 2010. The 35 revised full papers presented together with 10 revised short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 80 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on organising design research, reflecting design science research, design research techniques, design and context, design and organisation, design and information, design research exemplars, design and behaviour, designing collaboration, as well as design and requirements engineering.

Download or read book The Past Present and Future of Integrated History and Philosophy of Science written by Emily Herring and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Integrated History and Philosophy of Science (iHPS) is commonly understood as the study of science from a combined historical and philosophical perspective. Yet, since its gradual formation as a research field, the question of how to suitably integrate both perspectives remains open. This volume presents cutting edge research from junior iHPS scholars, and in doing so provides a snapshot of current developments within the field, explores the connection between iHPS and other academic disciplines, and demonstrates some of the topics that are attracting the attention of scholars who will help define the future of iHPS.

Download or read book Towards a Theory of Development written by Alessandro Minelli and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible to explain and predict the development of living things? What is development? Articulate answers to these seemingly innocuous questions are far from straightforward. To date, no systematic, targeted effort has been made to construct a unifying theory of development. This novel work offers a unique exploration of the foundations of ontogeny by asking how the development of living things should be understood. It explores the key concepts of developmental biology, asks whether general principles of development can be discovered, and examines the role of models and theories. The two editors (one a biologist with long interest in the theoretical aspects of his discipline, the other a philosopher of science who has mainly worked on biological systems) have assembled a team of leading contributors who are representative of the scientific and philosophical community within which a diversity of thoughts are growing, and out of which a theory of development may eventually emerge. They analyse a wealth of approaches to concepts, models and theories of development, such as gene regulatory networks, accounts based on systems biology and on physics of soft matter, the different articulations of evolution and development, symbiont-induced development, as well as the widely discussed concepts of positional information and morphogenetic field, the idea of a 'programme' of development and its critiques, and the long-standing opposition between preformationist and epigenetic conceptions of development. Towards a Theory of Development is primarily aimed at students and researchers in the fields of 'evo-devo', developmental biology, theoretical biology, systems biology, biophysics, and the philosophy of science.