In this, the first book devoted to Peter Achinstein's influential work in philosophy of science, twenty distinguished philosophers, including four Lakatos award winners, address various aspects of Achinstein's influential views on the nature of scientific evidence, scientific explanation, and scientific realism. It includes short essays by Steve Gimbel and Jeff Maynes, Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Victor DiFate, Jerry Doppelt, Adam Goldstein, Philip Kitcher, Fred Kronz, Deborah Mayo, Greg Morgan, Helen Longino, John Norton, Michael Ruse, Bas van Fraassen, Stathis Psillos, Larry Laudan, Richard Richards, Kent Staley, and Jim Woodward with replies to each contributor from Peter Achinstein. Readers will come away with an understanding of the current debate in multiple areas of philosophy of science and how various contemporary issues are connected.

"The Scientific Worldview" presents a balanced theoretical perspective that has profound implications for the social and physical sciences. Author Glenn Borchardt outlines the philosophical alternatives and those necessary for consistent scientific thinking.

The balanced outlook requires beginning assumptions alien to classical mechanism and modern systems philosophy. The central concept of the resulting philosophical system is univironmental determinism-a new universal mechanism of evolution founded on the simple proposition that whatever happens to a thing is a result of the infinite variety of matter in motion within and without.

Borchardt argues that the biased outlook of the twentieth century "scientific worldview," systems philosophy, which overemphasizes systems and neglects environments, taints our most fundamental theories about the universe. But with the philosophy of univironmental determinism, we can gain the feeling of control in our lives and achieve a newfound level of consciousness through which we "will" change the world for the betterment of all.

Frank Arntzenius presents a series of radical new ideas about the structure of space and time. Space, Time, and Stuff is an attempt to show that physics is geometry: that the fundamental structure of the physical world is purely geometrical structure. Along the way, he examines some non-standard views about the structure of spacetime and its inhabitants, including the idea that space and time are pointless, the idea that quantum mechanics is a completely local theory, the idea that antiparticles are just particles travelling back in time, and the idea that time has no structure whatsoever. The main thrust of the book, however, is that there are good reasons to believe that spaces other than spacetime exist, and that it is the existence of these additional spaces that allows one to reduce all of physics to geometry. Philosophy, and metaphysics in particular, plays an important role here: the assumption that the fundamental laws of physics are simple in terms of the fundamental physical properties and relations is pivotal. Without this assumption one gets nowhere. That is to say, when trying to extract the fundamental structure of the world from theories of physics one ignores philosophy at one's peril!

This book explores the work of Thomas Seebohm (1934-2014), a leading phenomenologist and hermeneuticist. It features papers that offer a critical and constructive dialogue about Seebohm's analyses and their implications for the sciences. The net result is an in-depth study and a helpful overview of Seebohm's general approach and his specific views on various areas of modern science. The contributors focus especially upon his final text, History as a Science and the System of the Sciences. They view this as the culmination and summary of his historical and phenomenological investigations into the foundations, nature, and limits of modern sciences. This includes not just history but the Geisteswissenschaften more generally, along with the social and natural sciences as well. The essays in this volume reflect that range. This volume presents insightful discussions about the nature and legitimacy of the human sciences as sciences and the unique character of the social sciences. It will be of interest not just as a matter of historical scholarship, but also and above all as an important contribution to phenomenology and to the philosophy of science and the sciences as such. It deserves attention by scholars from any philosophical tradition interested in thinking about the foundations of their disciplines and a philosophy of science that includes, but is not limited to, the natural sciences.

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge's science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge's contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation (3 chapters) Section II. Philosophy (12 chapters) Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics (4 chapters) Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind (2 chapters) Section V. Sociology and Social Theory (4 chapters) Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy (3 chapters) Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology (3 chapters) Section VIII. Mathematics (3 chapters) Section IX. Education (2 chapters) Section X. Varia (3 chapters) Section XI. Bibliography

David Lindberg presents the first critical edition of the text of Roger Bacon's classic work Perspectiva, prepared from Latin manuscripts, accompanied by a facing-page English translation, critical notes, and a full study of the text. Also included is an analysis of Bacon's sources, influence, and role in the emergence of the discipline of perspectiva. About Roger Bacon: Roger Bacon (c.1220-c.1292) is one of the most renowned thinkers of the Middle Ages, a philosopher-scientist praised and mythologized for his attack on authority and his promotion of what he called experimental science. He was a leading figure in the intellectual life of the thirteenth century, a campaigner for educational reform, and a major disseminator of Greek and Arabic natural philosophy and mathematical science. About Perspectiva: The science that Roger Bacon most fully mastered was perspectiva, the study of light and vision (what would later become the science of optics). His great treatment of the subject, the Perspectiva, written in about 1260, was the first book by a European to display a full mastery of Greek and Arabic treatises on the subject, and through it Bacon was instrumental in defining this scientific discipline for the next 350 years.

A collection of essays by experts in the field, exploring how nature works at every level to produce more complex and highly organized objects, systems, and organisms from much simpler components, and how our increasing understanding of this universal phenomenon of emergence can lead us to a deeper and richer appreciation of who we are as human beings and of our relationship to God. Several chapters introduce the key philosophical ideas about reductionism and emergence, while others explore the fascinating world of emergent phenomena in physics, biology, and the neurosciences. Finally there are contributions probing the meaning and significance of these findings for our general description of the world and ourselves in relation to God, from philosophy and theology. The collection as a whole will extend the mutual creative interaction among the sciences, philosophy, and theology.

This book is a specialized monograph on interpolation and definability, a notion central in pure logic and with significant meaning and applicability in all areas where logic is applied, especially computer science, artificial intelligence, logic programming, philosophy of science and natural language. Suitable for researchers and graduate students in mathematics, computer science and philosophy, this is the latest in the prestigous world-renowned Oxford Logic Guides, which contains Michael Dummet's Elements of intuitionism (second edition), J. M. Dunn and G. Hardegree's Algebraic Methods in Philosophical Logic, H. Rott's Change, Choice and Inference: A Study of Belief Revision and Nonmonotonic Reasoning, P. T. Johnstone's Sketches of an Elephant: A Topos Theory Compendium: Volumes 1 and 2, and David J. Pym and Eike Ritter's Reductive Logic and Proof Search: Proof theory, semantics and control.

Against a backcloth of philosophical debates on science and technology, and in particular the viewpoints of Karl Marx, this three-volume set proposes to reconsider science and technology and explores how the philosophy of science and technology responds to scientific and technological evolutions and an ever-changing world. The first volume analyses Marx's reconsideration of science and technology in five parts: its positioning, its historical practice, alienation of science and technology, and its relationship with productivity and human liberty. In the second volume, viewpoints and problems of scientism and anti-scientism are discussed, covering topics such as instrumental reason, scientific optimism and pessimism, irrationalism and the deconstruction of scientism. The final volume discusses complementary value choices, the loss and awakening of scientific culture and reveals a vison for a liberal and open world of science and technology. The volumes will appeal to scholars and students interested in Marxist philosophy, the philosophy of science and technology and topics related to scientific culture.

This book provides an accessible and up-to-date discussion of contemporary theories of perceptual justification that each highlight different factors related to perception, i.e., conscious experience, higher-order beliefs, and reliable processes. The book's discussion starts from the viewpoint that perception is not only one of our fundamental sources of knowledge and justification, but also plays this role for many less sophisticated animals. It proposes a scientifically informed reliabilist theory which can accommodate this fact without denying that some of our epistemic abilities as human perceivers are special. This allows it to combine many of our intuitions about the importance of conscious experience and higher-order belief with the controversial thesis that perceptual justification is fundamentally non-evidential in character.

Balancing readability with intellectual rigor, this is an essential guide to understanding the complex relationship between psychology, science, and pseudoscience. At a time when unempirical data and evidence is increasingly purported as justification for scientific claims in the public consciousness, Hughes considers its impact upon the very philosophy behind the scientific principles behind the methods that produce research findings. Further, he examines the controversial research practices and biases in the psychological field that threaten the integrity of its claims. This book undertakes a fascinating contemplation and sagacious analysis of the historical and contemporary debates regarding psychological methods and research. Written to suit 3rd year undergraduate students and MA/MSc students in psychology as well as academics and the more general reader interested in these subject issues.

This challenging and innovative book examines the processes involved in the birth and development of new scientific ideas. The author has searched for strategies used by scientists for producing new theories, both those that yield a range of plausible hypotheses and ones that aid in narrowing that range. She goes on to focus on the development of the theory of the gene as a case study in scientific creativity. Her discussion of modern genetics greatly demystifies the philosophy of science, and establishes a realistic framework for understanding how scientists actually go about their work. This compelling work will interest a broad range of readers, including biologists and geneticists, along with historians and philosophers of science.

This volume inaugurates a new critical edition of the writings of the great English philosopher and sage Francis Bacon (1561-1626) - the first such complete edition for more than a hundred years. It contains six of Bacon's Latin scientific works, each accompanied by entirely new facing-page translations which, together with the extensive introduction and commentaries, offer fresh insights into one of the great minds of the early seventeenth century.

This unique volume introduces and discusses the methods of validating computer simulations in scientific research. The core concepts, strategies, and techniques of validation are explained by an international team of pre-eminent authorities, drawing on expertise from various fields ranging from engineering and the physical sciences to the social sciences and history. The work also offers new and original philosophical perspectives on the validation of simulations. Topics and features: introduces the fundamental concepts and principles related to the validation of computer simulations, and examines philosophical frameworks for thinking about validation; provides an overview of the various strategies and techniques available for validating simulations, as well as the preparatory steps that have to be taken prior to validation; describes commonly used reference points and mathematical frameworks applicable to simulation validation; reviews the legal prescriptions, and the administrative and procedural activities related to simulation validation; presents examples of best practice that demonstrate how methods of validation are applied in various disciplines and with different types of simulation models; covers important practical challenges faced by simulation scientists when applying validation methods and techniques; offers a selection of general philosophical reflections that explore the significance of validation from a broader perspective. This truly interdisciplinary handbook will appeal to a broad audience, from professional scientists spanning all natural and social sciences, to young scholars new to research with computer simulations. Philosophers of science, and methodologists seeking to increase their understanding of simulation validation, will also find much to benefit from in the text.

Daniel Garber presents an illuminating study of Leibniz's conception of the physical world. Leibniz's commentators usually begin with monads, mind-like simple substances, the ultimate building-blocks of the Monadology. But Leibniz's apparently idealist metaphysics is very puzzling: how can any sensible person think that the world is made up of tiny minds? In this book, Garber tries to make Leibniz's thought intelligible by focusing instead on his notion of body. Beginning with Leibniz's earliest writings, he shows how Leibniz starts as a Hobbesian with a robust sense of the physical world, and how, step by step, he advances to the monadological metaphysics of his later years. Much of the book's focus is on Leibniz's middle years, where the fundamental constituents of the world are corporeal substances, unities of matter and form understood on the model of animals. For Garber monads only enter fairly late in Leibniz's career, and when they enter, he argues, they do not displace bodies but complement them. In the end, though, Garber argues that Leibniz never works out the relation between the world of monads and the world of bodies to his own satisfaction: at the time of his death, his philosophy is still a work in progress.

There have long been controversies about how it is that minds can fit into a physical universe. Emergence in Mind presents new essays by a distinguished group of philosophers investigating whether mental properties can be said to 'emerge' from the physical processes in the universe. Such emergence requires mental properties to be different from physical properties, and much of the discussion relates to what the consequences of such a difference might be in areas such as freedom of the will, and the possibility of scientific explanations of non-physical (for example, social) phenomena. The volume also extends the debate about emergence by considering the independence of chemical properties from physical properties, and investigating what would need to be the case for there to be groups that could be said to exercise rationality.

Quantum gravity is the name given to a theory that unites general relativity - Einstein's theory of gravitation and spacetime - with quantum field theory, our framework for describing non-gravitational forces. The Structural Foundations of Quantum Gravity brings together philosophers and physicists to discuss a range of conceptual issues that surface in the effort to unite these theories, focusing in particular on the ontological nature of the spacetime that results. Although there has been a great deal written about quantum gravity from the perspective of physicists and mathematicians, very little attention has been paid to the philosophical aspects. This volume closes that gap, with essays written by some of the leading researchers in the field. Individual papers defend or attack a structuralist perspective on the fundamental ontologies of our physical theories, which offers the possibility of shedding new light on a number of foundational problems. It is a book that will be of interest not only to physicists and philosophers of physics but to anyone concerned with foundational issues and curious to explore new directions in our understanding of spacetime and quantum physics.

Probabilistic models have much to offer to philosophy. We continually receive information from a variety of sources: from our senses, from witnesses, from scientific instruments. When considering whether we should believe this information, we assess whether the sources are independent, how reliable they are, and how plausible and coherent the information is. Bovens and Hartmann provide a systematic Bayesian account of these features of reasoning. Simple Bayesian networks allow us to model alternative assumptions about the nature of the information sources. Measurement of the coherence of information is a controversial matter: arguably, the more coherent a set of information is, the more confident we may be that its content is true, other things being equal. The authors offer a new treatment of coherence which respects this claim and shows its relevance to scientific theory choice. Bovens and Hartmann apply this methodology to a wide range of much-discussed issues regarding evidence, testimony, scientific theories and voting. "Bayesian Epistemology" is for anyone working on probabilistic methods in philosophy, and has broad implications for many other disciplines.

With contributions by sixteen scholars from such diverse fields as communication, linguistics, literary studies, rhetoric, and sociology of sciences, Essays in the Study of Scientific Discourse continues the contemporary discussion about the origin and nature of scientific discourse and its function in today's society. Essays document the increasing importance of rhetorical expertise in scientific discourse, shed new light into the history and language of science, and offer pedagogical guidance for teachers of scientific writing. Readers may also discover new topics for scholarly research in scientific discourse. Gay and Ted Gragson, for instance, show how technological advances may increase the rhetorical complexity of the grant proposal process, while J. Harrison Carpenter reveals the rhetorical power of the scientific report. In a related study, Cynthia Haller shows how scientific claims change as they mover from the scientific to the public arena. Dwight Atkinson gives empiricists a new methodology by integrating rhetorical analysis with sociolinguistic methodology. Richard Johnson-Sheehan and Dan Ding describe the evolution of scientific metaphor and passive voice, respectively. Ramon Plo Alastrue, Carmen Ramon Plo Alastrue-Llantada, and Rosemary Horowitz offer advice for teachers of scientific writing, while Steven Darian explores the intricacies and argumentative power of scientific classification schemas. In turn, Philippa Benson gives editorial advice to writers of scientific texts. Gender issues in scientific writing are addressed by Christine Skolnik and Mary Rosner. Trevor Pinch and Charles Alan Taylor put the cold fusion controversy of 1989 in critical perspective.

The philosophically most challenging science today, arguably, is no longer physics but biology. It is hardly an exaggeration to state that Charles Darwin has shaped modern evolutionary biology more significantly than anyone else. Moreover, since Darwin's day, philosophers and scientists have realized the enormous philosophical potential of Darwinism and have tried to expand his insights well beyond the limits of biology. However, no consensus has been achieved. The aim of this collection of essays is to revive a comprehensive discussion of the meaning and the philosophical implications of "Darwinism." The contributors to Darwinism and Philosophy are international scholars from the fields of philosophy, science, and history of ideas. A strength of this collection is that it brings together sustained reflection from American and Continental philosophical traditions. The conclusions of the contributors vary, but taken together their essays successfully map the problems of interpreting "Darwinism."

As society struggles to cope with the many repercussions of assisted life and death, the evening news is filled with stories of legal battles over frozen embryos and the possible prosecution of doctors for their patients' suicide. Using an "institutional" approach as an alternative to the prevailing "rights" based analysis of problems in law and medicine, this study explains why society should resist the tendency to look to science and law for a resolution of intimate matters, such as how our children are born and how we die. Palmer's institutional approach demonstrates that legislative analysis is often more important than judicial analysis when it comes to issues raised by new reproductive technologies and physician-assisted suicide. A reliance on individual rights alone for answers to the complex ethical questions that result from society's faith in scientific progress and science's close alliance with medicine will be insufficient and ill-advised. Palmer predicts that the key role of the family as a societal institution will mean that questions of assisted reproduction will be resolved more in response to market forces than through legal intervention. However, he does support a strong role for legislatures in decisions involving the physicians' role in our deaths. These findings are based on the differing views of the Supreme Court justices in these matters: a tendency to protect family formation from state interference (as in abortion decisions), but support of a legislative obligation to control medicine (assisted suicide). According to Palmer, recent Supreme Court decisions on physician assisted suicide usher in a new era in how legal institutions will resolve biomedical dilemmas.

Over the last two decades the distinguished philosopher Philip Kitcher has started to make a serious case for pragmatism as the source of a new life in contemporary philosophy. There are some, like Kitcher, who view today's analytic philosophy as mired in narrowly focused, technical disputes of little interest to the wider world. What is the future of philosophy, and what would it look like? While Classical Pragmatism - the American philosophy developed by John Dewey, Charles Peirce, and William James in the 19th century- has a mixed reputation today, Kitcher admires the way its core ideas provide a way to prioritize avenues of inquiry. As he points out, both James and Dewey shared a wish to eliminate 'insignificant questions' from philosophy, and both harbored suspicion of 'timeless' philosophical problems handed down generation after generation. Rather, they saw philosophy as inherently embedded in its time, grappling with pressing issues in religion, social life, art, politics, and education. Kitcher has become increasingly moved by this reformist approach to philosophy, and the published essays included here, alongside a detailed introduction setting out Kitcher's views, provide motivation for his view of the "reconstruction of philosophy." These essays try to install the pragmatic spirit into contemporary philosophy, renewing James and Dewey for our own times.

This book enriches our views on representation and deepens our understanding of its different aspects. It arises out of several years of dialog between the editors and the authors, an interdisciplinary team of highly experienced researchers, and it reflects the best contemporary view of representation and reality in humans, other living beings, and intelligent machines. Structured into parts on the cognitive, computational, natural sciences, philosophical, logical, and machine perspectives, a theme of the field and the book is building and presenting networks, and the editors hope that the contributed chapters will spur understanding and collaboration between researchers in domains such as computer science, philosophy, logic, systems theory, engineering, psychology, sociology, anthropology, neuroscience, linguistics, and synthetic biology.