This book presents adaptive logics as an intuitive and powerful framework for modeling defeasible reasoning. It examines various contexts in which defeasible reasoning is useful and offers a compact introduction into adaptive logics. The author first familiarizes readers with defeasible reasoning, the adaptive logics framework, combinations of adaptive logics, and a range of useful meta-theoretic properties. He then offers a systematic study of adaptive logics based on various applications. The book presents formal models for defeasible reasoning stemming from different contexts, such as default reasoning, argumentation, and normative reasoning. It highlights various meta-theoretic advantages of adaptive logics over other logics or logical frameworks that model defeasible reasoning. In this way the book substantiates the status of adaptive logics as a generic formal framework for defeasible reasoning.

This book restores the concept of topology to its rhetorical roots to assist scholars who wish not just to criticize power dynamics, but also to invent alternatives. Topology is a spatial rather than a causal method. It works inductively to model discourse without reducing it to the actions of a few or resolving its inherent contradictions. By putting topology back in tension with opportunity, as originally designed, the contributors to this volume open up new possibilities for post-critical practice in "wicked discourses" of medicine, technology, literacy, and the environment. Readers of the volume will discover exactly how the discipline of rhetoric underscores and interacts with current notions of topology in philosophy, design, psychoanalysis, and science studies.

The Grammar of Science, originally published in 1892, was considered an essential read by budding young scientists like Albert Einstein. Pearson's work contributed to Einstein's greatest discoveries by introducing him to the ideas of relativity of motion, equivalence between matter and energy, and the concept of antimatter. Pearson opens his book with a definition and discussion of science itself, detailing what is required for inquiries to be scientific in nature. He then moves on to discuss space and time, motion, matter, and the future of scientific progress. Professionals and students alike will be fascinated by Pearson's insight into the nature of reality. British professor KARL PEARSON (1857-1936) worked at University College in London. He invented mathematical statistics and formed the Department of Applied Statistics at the University of London. He wrote many books and papers, including a biography of Francis Galton, a proponent of eugenics, and studies on evolution.

In his most powerful book to date, award-winning author TimothyFerris makes a passionate case for scienceas the inspiration behind the rise of liberalismand democracy. Ferris showshow science was integral to the AmericanRevolution but misinterpreted inthe French Revolution; reflects on thehistory of liberalism, stressing its widelyunderestimated and mutually beneficialrelationship with science; and surveysthe forces that have opposed scienceand liberalism--from communism andfascism to postmodernism and Islamicfundamentalism. A sweeping intellectualhistory, The Science of Liberty is a stunninglyoriginal work that transcends theantiquated concepts of left and right.

In this book the main trends, concepts and directions in cartography and mapping in modernism and post-modernism are reviewed. Philosophical and epistemological issues are analysed in cartography from positivist-empiricist, neo-positivist and post-structuralist stances. In general, in cartography technological aspects have been considered as well as theoretical issues. The aim is to highlight the epistemological and philosophical viewpoint during the development of the discipline. Some main philosophers who have been influential for contemporary thinking such as Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper and Bertrand Russell, are considered. None of these philosophers wrote about cartography directly (excepting Kant), but their philosophies are related to cartography and mapping issues. The book also analyses the concept of paradigm or paradigm shift coined by Thomas Kuhn, who applied it to the history of science. Different cartographic trends that have arisen since the second half of the twentieth century are analysed according to this important concept which is implicit inside the scientific or disciplinary communities. Further, the authors analyse the position of cartography in the context of the sciences and other disciplines, adopting a positivistic point of view. Additionally, they review current trends in cartography and mapping in the context of information and communication technologies in a post-modernistic or post-structuralistic framework. Thus, since the 1980s and 1990s, new mapping concepts have arisen which challenge the discipline's traditional map conceptions.

This comprehensive volume gives a balanced and systematic treatment of both the interpretation and the mathematical-conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics. It is written in a pedagogical style and addresses many thorny problems of fundamental physics. The first aspect concerns Interpretation. The author raises the central problems: formalism, measurement, non-locality, and causality. The main positions on these subjects are presented and critically analysed. The aim is to show that the main schools can converge on a core interpretation. The second aspect concerns Foundations. Here it is shown that the whole theory can be grounded on information theory. The distinction between information and signal leads us to integrating quantum mechanics and relativity. Category theory is presented and its significance for quantum information shown; the logic and epistemological bases of the theory are assessed. Of relevance to all physicists and philosophers with an interest in quantum theory and its foundations, this book is destined to become a classic work.

This volume is a collection of original essays focusing on a wide range of topics in the History and Philosophy of Science. It is a festschrift for Peter Machamer, which includes contributions from scholars who, at one time or another, were his students. The essays bring together analyses of issues and debates spanning from early modern science and philosophy through the 21st century. Machamer's influence is reflected in the volume's broad range of topics. These include: underdetermination, scientific practice, scientific models, mechanistic explanation in contemporary and historical science, values in science, the relationship between philosophy and psychology, experimentation, supervenience and reductionism.

Markus Seidel provides a detailed critique of epistemic relativism in the sociology of scientific knowledge. In addition to scrutinising the main arguments for epistemic relativism he provides an absolutist account that nevertheless aims at integrating the relativist's intuition.

Newton's classical physics and its underlying ontology are loaded with several metaphysical hypotheses that cannot be justified by rational reasoning nor by experimental evidence. Furthermore, it is well known that some of these hypotheses are not contained in the great theories of Modern Physics, such as the theory of Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. This book shows that, on the basis of Newton's classical physics and by rational reconstruction, the theory of Special Relativity as well as Quantum Mechanics can be obtained by partly eliminating or attenuating the metaphysical hypotheses. Moreover, it is shown that these reconstructions do not require additional hypotheses or new experimental results. In the second edition the rational reconstructions are completed with respect to General Relativity and Cosmology. In addition, the statistics of quantum objects is elaborated in more detail with respect to the rational reconstruction of quantum mechanics. The new material completes the approach of the book as much as it is possible at the present state of knowledge. Presumably, the most important contribution that is added to the second edition refers to the problem of interpretation of the three great theories of Modern Physics. It is shown in detail that in the light of rational reconstructions even realistic interpretations of the three theories of Modern Physics are possible and can easily be achieved.

This original volume examines forms and limits of human inquiry from a largely sceptical point of view. Human beings are endowed with cognitive agency. Our grasp of the world, and of ourselves, are not merely responses to external stimuli; they are reflective products of human inquiry. At one point in human history it was thought that modern science, especially theoretical physics, is the paradigm of human inquiry. Where does this form of inquiry significantly apply? Are there limits on its claims of truth and objectivity? How much of the vast canvas of human experience does it cover? Where do other forms of inquiry, such as philosophy, religion, and the arts, attain their salience? With the emergence of the scientific study of the human mind itself, these critical questions have taken a more intriguing form in recent decades. Can human inquiry investigate its own nature? Can the scientific theory of language explain the richness of human expression? Can a science of the mind account for human experience? These probing questions on the scientific enterprise are usually addressed from the outside, as it were, by humanists and critical theorists. In these essays, they are examined from the inside by a philosopher whose primary academic work concerns the study of the human, linguistic mind. In that sense, the sceptical inquiry turns on itself.

This volume offers 11 papers that cover the wide spectrum of influences on Rudolf Carnap's seminal work, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World). Along the way, it covers a host of topics related to this important philosophical work, including logic, theories of order, science, hermeneutics, and mathematics in the Aufbau, as the work is commonly termed. The book uncovers the influences of such neglected figures as Gerhards, Driesch, Ziehen, and Ostwald. It also presents new evidence on influences of well-known figures in philosophy, including Husserl, Rickert, Schlick, and Neurath. In addition, the book offers comparisons of the Aufbau with the work of contemporary scientists such as Weyl and Wiener as well as features new archival findings on the early Carnap.This book will appeal to researchers and students with an interest in the history and philosophy of science, history of analytic philosophy, the philosophy of the Vienna Circle, and the philosophy in interwar Germany and Austria.

Scientific knowledge is widely considered to be the most certain kind of knowledge, free from social or cultural bias. This freedom from bias or values, the objectivity of science, is a key reason why scientific knowledge holds its privileged position in society. Karen Cordrick Haely argues that feminist critics of science present compelling reasons to eschew the idea that science is, or should be, purely objective in the sense commonly understood to mean 'value-free'. This book examines the most prominent feminist ideas regarding how to revise and enrich the concept of objectivity such that we can understand, though not necessarily eliminate, the role of cultural and social interests as they play a role in science. Haely argues that these views of objectivity ought to be treated as a network of ideas, rather than as stand-alone solutions to the complexities of forming a cohesive philosophical view of scientific objectivity. The book also presents a landscape of several issues that are crucial for understanding the intersection of feminism and science.

Here is a universal biology that draws upon the contributions of Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel to unravel the mystery of life and conceive what is essential to living things anywhere they may arise. The book develops a philosopher's guide to life in the universe, conceiving how nature becomes a biosphere in which life can emerge, what are the basic life processes common to any organism, how evolution can give rise to the different possible forms of life, and what distinguishes the essential life forms from one another.

This book discusses the ontological foundation for organizational analysis and organizational life from a phenomenological perspective. The objective of this book is to provide the reader with an understanding of organizations that adequately takes into account the current philosophical knowledge regarding human nature. A key result of this analysis is that organizations are existentially founded human experiences of emotions, ethics, culture and narrative. This understanding of organizations is furthermore complicated by the existence of concepts of power, relationship, interaction and identity, which all can be perceived as contradicting notions of objectivity, professionalism and rationalism. The question is not whether this is an easy description to navigate nor apply, but rather where we go from here. This book would be of interest to students and scholars working on the philosophy of business, and academics in critical organization studies and alternative philosophy of organization. The book would also be of interest to people in all organization trying to understand everyday of dilemmas and contradictions.

This is a collection of important lecture and original articles and commentaries by Martin Perl, discoverer of the tau lepton and the third generation of elementary particles, and this year's Nobel Prize winner. This book contains a fascinating and realistic picture of experimental science based on the high energy physics research work carried out by him. Using reprints of his articles with his commentaries, the author presents the various aspects of experimental research in science: the pleasures and risks of experimental work; the pain and frustration with experiments that are useless or fail; the dreaming about experiments that were not carried out; the constant search for innovation and creativity in the work; and the special joy of discovery. The articles and commentaries range from the early days of bubble chambers and spark chambers in the 1950's to the author's present research, experiments at an electron-positron collider and a search for free quarks. The book is for the general reader as well as the scientist.

The book has two parts: In the first, after a review of some seminal classical accounts of laws and explanations, a new account is proposed for distinguishing between laws and accidental generalizations (LAG). Among the new consequences of this proposal it is proved that any explanation of a contingent generalization shows that the generalization is not accidental. The second part involves physical theories, their modality, and their explanatory power. In particular, it is shown that (1) Each theory has a theoretical implication structure associated with it, such that there are new physical modal operators on these structures and also special modal entities that are in these structures. A special subset of the physical modals, the nomic modals are associated with the laws of theories. (2) The familiar idea that theories always explain laws by deduction of them has to be seriously modified in light of the fact that there are a host of physical theories (including for example, Newtonian Classical mechanics, Hamiltonian, and Lagrangian theory, and probability theory) that we believe are schematic (they do not have any truth value). Nevertheless, we think that there is a kind of non-deductive explanation and generality that they achieve by subsumtion under a schema.

People nowadays live in a human-made environment, or technotope. Their lives are entangled with technology. Because technology not only brings gifts but also costs and hazards, it is important to reflect on what good technology is and, indeed, whether a technology contributes to a good life.
The ethicists and social scientists united in this volume contribute to a novel approach to ethics and technology that initiates or enhances timely ethical reflection with scientists and engineers. Ethical reflection during research and development can help to anticipate how it can change human (social) like, and evaluate those changes. "Ethics on the Laboratory Floor" contributes to research decisions, for example with regard to what research goals to pursue, what research lines to prioritise, or how best to design user tests. By joining these deliberations "Ethics on the Laboratory Floor" helps to realise the best technological alternatives.

For evolutionary biologists, the concept of chance has always played a significant role in the formation of evolutionary theory. As far back as Greek antiquity, chance and "luck" were understood to be key factors in the evolution of the natural world. Emphasizing chance is an entire way of thinking about nature, and it is also one of the key ideas that separates Charles Darwin from other systematic biologists of his time. Studying the concept of chance in Darwin's writing reveals core ideas in his theory of evolution, as well as his reflections on design, purpose, and randomness in nature's progression over the course of history.
In Darwin's Dice: The Idea of Chance in the Thought of Charles Darwin, Curtis Johnson does exactly that. He examines the work of Darwin in terms of his views on randomness and chance, and how the views changed as his work progressed. Randomness was a focal point for Darwin, and pursuing it as a theme helped significantly transform his research. Darwin's Dice shows us how Darwin defined "chance," and explores Darwin's influential architect metaphor in relation to the idea. Through the lens of randomness, Johnson reveals how Darwin's treatment of free will becomes more complex. This approach can shed light on many other quirks and points of interest in Darwin's work, including the curiously shifting presence of giraffes in subsequent drafts of On the Origin of Species. Johnson also reexamines Darwin's "Metaphysical Notebooks," and discusses the role Darwin felt that chance plays in morality and religion.
Darwin's Dice presents a new way to look at Darwinist thought and the writings on Charles Darwin. Curtis Johnson reveals that chance and randomness play a large part in Darwinist thought, and that we can better understand Darwin's work by understanding that part.

The "New Atheist" movement of recent years has put the science-versus-religion controversy back on the popular cultural agenda. Anti-religious polemicists are convinced that the application of the new sciences of the mind to religious belief gives them the final weapons in their battle against irrationality and superstition. What used to be a trickle of research papers scattered in specialized scientific journals has now become a torrent of books, articles, and commentary in the popular media pressing the case that the cognitive science of religion can finally fulfill the enlightenment dream of shrinking religion into insignificance, if not eliminating it altogether. James Jones argues that these claims are demonstrably false. He notes that cognitive science research is religiously neutral; it can be deployed in many different ways in relation to the actual belief in and practice of religion: to undermine it, to simply study it, and to support it. These differences are differences in interpretation of the data and, Jones suggests, a reflection of the background assumptions and viewpoints brought to the data. The goal of this book is not to defend either a general religious outlook or a particular religious tradition but to make the case that while there is much to learn from the cognitive scientific study of religion, attempts to use it to "explain" religion are exaggerated and misguided. Drawing on scientific research and logical argument Can Science Explain Religion? directly confronts the claims of these debunkers of religion, providing an accessibly written, persuasive account of why they are not convincing.

The recovery of nature has been a unifying and enduring aim of the writings of Ralph McInerny, Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame, director of the Jacques Maritain Center, former director of the Medieval Institute, and author of numerous works in philosophy, literature, and journalism. While many of the fads that have plagued philosophy and theology during the last half-century have come and gone, recent developments suggest that McInerny's commitment to Aristotelian-Thomism was boldly, if quietly, prophetic. In his persistent, clear, and creative defenses of natural theology and natural law, McInerny has appealed to nature to establish a dialogue between theists and non-theists, to contribute to the moral and political renewal of American culture, and particularly to provide some of the philosophical foundations for Catholic theology.

This volume brings together essays by an impressive group of scholars, including William Wallace, O.P., Jude P. Dougherty, John Haldane, Thomas DeKoninck, Alasdair MacIntyre, David Solomon, Daniel McInerny, Janet E. Smith, Michael Novak, Stanley Hauerwas, Laura Garcia, Alvin Plantinga, Alfred J. Freddoso, and David B. Burrell, C.S.C.

This volume offers a selection of the best contributions by Russian scholars--historians and philosophers of science--to the Einstein Studies industry, broadly construed. Most of the papers included here were first published in Russian in the 'Einshteinovskiy Sbornik' series (Einstein Studies), the first of its kind, and initiated in 1966 by Nobel Prize winner Igor Tamm. From 1966-1990, fourteen volumes of the 'Sbornik' were published by Nauka, the chief academic publisher in the former Soviet Union. The book explores such topics as the historical and foundational issues in general relativity and relativistic cosmology, Einstein's contributions to quantum theory of radiation, and the rise of Dirac's quantum electrodynamics. The volume also includes a detailed description of the physics colloquium Einstein established and coordinated in 1912-1914 in Zurich. The contributors draw extensively on documentation previously unavailable to most scholars. Thus the materials from various Russian archives shed new light on the famous exchange (regarding the first evolutionary cosmological models) between Einstein and Aleksandr Friedmann in the early 1920s and on the role of Boris Podolsky and Vladimir Fock in the emergence of quantum electrodynamics. The little- known correspondence between Einstein and a famous German pilot Paul Ehrhardt suggests that, during World War I, Einstein was involved with aero- and hydrodynamics and thought about ways of improving airfoil design. Other articles discuss new approaches to important questions in the foundations of general relativity and cosmology. Historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science should be prepared to find much new and unexpected material in this engaging volume presenting the best of the recent Russian scholarship in the field. The book will be accessible to the general reader as well.

This edited collection of works by leading climate scientists and philosophers introduces readers to issues in the foundations, evaluation, confirmation, and application of climate models. It engages with important topics directly affecting public policy, including the role of doubt, the use of satellite data, and the robustness of models. Climate Modelling provides an early and significant contribution to the burgeoning Philosophy of Climate Science field that will help to shape our understanding of these topics in both philosophy and the wider scientific context. It offers insight into the reasons we should believe what climate models say about the world but addresses the issues that inform how reliable and well-confirmed these models are. This book will be of interest to students of climate science, philosophy of science, and of particular relevance to policy makers who depend on the models that forecast future states of the climate and ocean in order to make public policy decisions.

Green offers his own arguments with C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures.

This book explores the socio-political implications of human heredity from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present postgenomic moment. It addresses three main phases in the politicization of heredity: the peak of radical eugenics (1900-1945), characterized by an aggressive ethos of supporting the transformation of human society via biological knowledge; the repositioning, after 1945, of biological thinking into a liberal-democratic, human rights framework; and the present postgenomic crisis in which the genome can no longer be understood as insulated from environmental signals. In Political Biology, Maurizio Meloni argues that thanks to the ascendancy of epigenetics we may be witnessing a return to soft heredity - the idea that these signals can cause changes in biology that are themselves transferable to succeeding generations. This book will be of great interest to scholars across science and technology studies, the philosophy and history of science, and political and social theory.