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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > Philosophy of science
Natural selection, as introduced by Charles Darwin in the Origin of
Species (1859), has always been a topic of great conceptual and
empirical interest. This book puts Darwin's theory of evolution in
historical context showing that, in important respects, his central
mechanism of natural selection gives the clue to understanding the
nature of organisms. Natural selection has important implications,
not just for the understanding of life's history - single-celled
organism to man - but also for our understanding of contemporary
social norms, as well as the nature of religious belief. The book
is written in clear, non-technical language, appealing not just to
philosophers, historians, and biologists, but also to general
readers who find thinking about important issues both challenging
and exciting.
This text re-examines and assesses the ethical systems in place and proposes new approaches to our scientific and engineering processes, our social contacts and our environmental responsibilities. This is a much-needed discussion of the scientific developments that have major effects on the way we live. It will be of interest to all students of science and technology and all professionals involved with administrating laws in these fields.
This book breaks new ground by drawing attention to certain kinds of biases that permeate many parts of science. Data are constrained not only by limitations of measurement instruments but also by the precondition that there is some suitably positioned observer there to 'have' the data (and to build the instruments). This simple truth turns out to have wide-ranging implications for fields as diverse as cosmology, evolution theory, imperfect recall problems in game theory, theology, traffic analysis, the foundations of thermodynamics and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Yet, disturbing paradoxes lie in ambush. The infamous Doomsday argument is one of these, but it is merely the tip of an iceberg. By means of thought experiments and careful philosophical investigation, the book develops a precise theory, cast in a Bayesian framework, of how to reason when our evidence has an indexical component or we suspect that observation selection effects have biased our data, the theory caters to legitimate scientific needs while showing how to resolve the philosophical paradoxes. It offers new conceptual and methodological tools for thinking about the large-scale structure of the world and the place of observers within it.
For many years essentialism - the view that some objects have
essentially or necessarily certain properties without which they
could not exist or be the things they are - was considered to be
beyond the pale in philosophy, a relic of discredited
Aristotelianism. This is no longer so. Kripke and Putnam have made
belief in essential natures once more respectable. Harre and Madden
have boldly argued against Hume's theory of causation, and
developed an alternative theory based on the assumption that there
are genuine causal powers in nature. Dretske, Tooley, Armstrong,
Swoyer and Carroll have all developed strong alternatives to Hume's
theory of the laws of nature. Shoemaker has developed a thoroughly
non-Humean theory of properties. The new essentialism has evolved
from these beginnings and can now reasonably claim to be a
metaphysic for a modern scientific understanding of the world - one
that challenges the conception of the world as comprising passive
entities whose interactions are to be explained by appeal to
contingent laws of nature externally imposed.
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Mnemosyne
(Paperback)
Mingyuan, Hu
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"A scientific opinion is one which there is some reason to believe
is true; an unscientific opinion is one which is held for some
reason other than its probable truth". One of Russell's most
important books, this early classic on science illuminates his
thinking on the promise and threat of scientific progress. Russell
considers three questions fundamental to an understanding of
science: the nature and scope of scientific knowledge, the
increased power over nature that science affords, and the changes
in the lives of human beings that result from new forms of science.
With customary wit and clarity, Russell offers brilliant
discussions of many major scientific figures, including Aristotle,
Galileo, Newton and Darwin. Unavailable for many years, this book
should prove interesting reading for Russell followers and anyone
interested in popular science and philosophy.
Drawing from physics and philosophical debates, Ismael combines a
set of essays on the time worn debate of symmetry from both fields.
Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning investigates
the metaphysical position of dual-aspect monism, with particular
emphasis on the concept of meaning as a fundamental feature of the
fabric of reality. As an alternative to other positions - mainly
dualism, physicalism, idealism - that have been proposed to
understand consciousness and its place in nature, the
decompositional version of dual-aspect monism considers the mental
and the physical as two aspects of one underlying undivided reality
that is psychophysically neutral. Inspired by analogies with modern
physics and driven by its conceptual problems, Wolfgang Pauli, Carl
Gustav Jung, Arthur Eddington, John Wheeler, David Bohm, and Basil
Hiley are the originators of the approaches studied. A radically
novel common theme in their approaches is the constitutive role of
meaning and its deep structure, relating the mental and the
physical to a psychophysically neutral base.The authors reconstruct
the formal structure of these approaches, and compare their
conceptual emphases as well as their relative strengths and
weaknesses. They also address a number of challenging themes for
current and future interdisciplinary research, both theoretical and
empirical, that arise from the presented frameworks of thinking.
Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning will be of
interest to researchers and advanced students working in
consciousness studies, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science,
philosophy of physics, metaphysics, and the history of 20th-century
philosophy and physics.
First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
First published in 2000. This is Volume VI of six in the Library of
Philosophy series on the Philosophy of Science. Written in 1929,
using the initial ideas of A.N. Whitehead, this book on Biological
Principles includes the concept of abstraction methodology in
biology. This expands into an investigation into the general
problems of the theory of knowledge, difficulties in biological
knowledge and finally suggestions towards a resolution of certain
traditional biological conflicts.
In Science, Order and Creativity, David Bohm and F. David Peat argue that science has lost its way in recent years and needs to go beyond a narrow and fragmented view of nature and embrace a wider holistic view that restores the importance of creativity and communication for all humanity - not just scientists. The result of a close collaboration by one of the 20th century's greatest physicists and thinkers, David Bohm, with leading science writer F. David Peat, provides a rare combination of profound reflection and clear exposition that can be appreciated by anyone concerned with science and its importance in our lives. This new edition includes a new preface and an extended additional chapter by Peat which draws upon further discussions with David Bohm before the latter's death in 1992. A fascinating diagnosis and considered proposal for a cure for science's ills, it is also very accessible entry point to the work of David Bohm. Bohm and Peat contend that science has lost its bearings in the last century in favour of a narrow, abstracted, fragmented approach to nature and reality. Tracing the history of science, Bohm and Peat offer intriguing new insights into how scientific theories come into being, how to eliminate blocks of creativity and how science can lead to a deeper understanding of society, the human condition and the human mind itself.
Philosophers and psychologists are increasingly investigating the
conditions under which multiple explanations are better in
conjunction than they are individually. This book brings together
leading scholars to provide an interdisciplinary and unified
discussion of such “conjunctive explanations.”
Science can be difficult and costly to conduct. Many aspects are
explored from an economic viewpoint and the scientist is often
treated as an economically rational individual. This study seeks to
create an economics of science. It begins with economic models of
misconduct in science and the legitimate practices of science. It
moves on to market failure, the market place of ideas,
self-correctiveness and the organizational and institutional
structures of science and ends with and exploration of broader
methodological themes raised by an economics of science.
This volume contends that Evidential Pluralism—an account of the
epistemology of causation, which maintains that in order to
establish a causal claim one needs to establish the existence of a
correlation and the existence of a mechanism—can be fruitfully
applied to the social sciences. Through case studies in sociology,
economics, political science and law, it advances new philosophical
foundations for causal enquiry in the social sciences. The book
provides an account of how to establish and evaluate causal claims
and it offers a new way of thinking about evidence-based policy,
basic social science research and mixed methods research. As such,
it will appeal to scholars with interests in social science
research and methodology, the philosophy of science and
evidence-based policy.
The 67 chapters of this book describe and analyse the development of Western science from 1500 to the present day. Divided into two major sections - 'The Study of the History of Science' and 'Selected Writings in the History of Science' - the volume describes the methods and problems of research in the field and then applies these techniques to a wide range of fields. Areas covered include: * the Copernican Revolution * Genetics * Science and Imperialism * the History of Anthropology * Science and Religion * Magic and Science. The companion is an indispensable resource for students and professionals in History, Philosophy, Sociology and the Sciences as well as the History of Science. It will also appeal to the general reader interested in an introduction to the subject.
* Written by an interdisciplinary group of specialists from the
arts, humanities and sciences at Oxford University * Suitable for a
wide non-academic readership, and will appeal to anyone with an
interest in mathematics, science and philosophy.
The book is an attempt to bring together what are often seen as
incommensurable scientific and philosophical positions. Its core
argument is that a main reason for the divisions about what
constitutes scientific knowledge relates to disagreements on
philosophical issues. The book explores what these disagreements
are about, and to discuss whether they can be overcome. Taking a
historical perspective, the book traces the divides in science back
to three main philosophical traditions: realism, idealism, and
scepticism. It maps how these have inspired three main current
positions in science: logical empiricism, phenomenology, and
sociology of scientific knowledge. The book is intended for a
general audience concerned with today's debates on scientific
knowledge and society. It will be useful for students and
researchers studying philosophy of science, sociology of scientific
knowledge, realism, phenomenology, positivism, logical empiricism,
analytical philosophy, and sustainable scientific knowledge.
The philosophy of science emerged out of a combination of three
traditional concerns: the classification of the sciences,
methodology, and the Philosophy of Nature. This collection of
important works of 19th-century philosophy of science contains
contributions in all three of these interrelated areas.
It includes: Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural
Philosophy (1830, John Herschel), Philosophy of the Inductive
Sciences (1840, William Whewell), Comte's Philosophy of the
Sciences (1853, (George Henry Lewes), Popular Scientific Lectures
(1873, Hermann Helmholtz), Matter and Motion (1876, James Clerk
Maxwell), Principles of Science (1874, William Stanley Jeavons),
Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1886, William Clifford
William), Analysis of Sensations (1886, Ernst Mach), Science and
Method (1908, Henri Poincare).
Combining postmodernism with technoscience, this work considers the
viability of public works such as the superconducting supercollider
in a postmodern age. Contending that technoscientific projects are
contingent upon economic and political support, and not simply upon
their scientific feasibility, Sassower illuminates the cultural
context of postmodernism vis-a-vis an examination of postmodernism
and the philosophy of late 20th-century technoscience. Drawing upon
conflicts between Popperians, postmodernists and feminists,
Sassower claims that "translation" between competing discourses
about technoscience is necessary to avoid cultural collisions and
foster fruitful exchange between divergent discourses; also that a
discussion of reality, both natural and social, is the common
ground for this debate. He emphasizes also the material, political
and economic conditions which underlie technoscientific projects,
and stresses the indespensible role imagination and art play in
teaching the responsible development of technology in the next
century.
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