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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > Philosophy of science
This book explores the nature of factual inference in adjudication. The book should be useful to students of law in Continental Europe as well as to students of Anglo-American law. While a good many countries do not use the sorts of rules of evidence found in the Anglo-American legal tradition, their procedural systems nevertheless frequently use a variety of rules and principles to regulate and structure the acquisition, presentation, and evalu ation of evidence. In this sense, almost all legal systems have a law of proof. This book should also be useful to scholars in fields other than law. While the papers focus on inference in adjudication, they deal with a wide variety of issues that are important in disciplines such as the philosophy of science, statistics, and psychology. For example, there is extensive discussion of the role of generalizations and hypotheses in inference and of the significance of the fact that the actors who evaluate data also in some sense constitute the data that they evaluate. Furthermore, explanations of the manner in which some legal systems structure fact-finding processes may highlight features of inferential processes that have yet to be adequately tackled by scholars in fields other than law."
This book had its genesis in Dr. Davis' remarkable editorial in the "New England Journal of Medicine" that sharply criticized medical schools for lowering their standards of admission to fill minority quotas and ultimately risking the lives of patients. Davis' position (widely held, but seldom articulated) is that the standard of medical care is an even higher ideal than the redress of past racial injustice. A passionate battle is now being fought in our universities over the freedom to pursue ideals of objectivity and intellectual freedom that are incompatible with the mandates of a pragmatic social policy."Storm Over Biology" examines many of the areas where scientific and social interests intersect and often conflict, such as genetic engineering and sociobiology. The essays are grouped under six headings: genetics, racism and affirmative action; objectivity and science; evolution - sociobiology, ethics, and molecular genetics; medical education and affirmative action; public concern over science; and genetic engineering.
This prize monograph was a pioneering work among Marxist philosophers, East and West, twenty-five years ago. To our mind, the work would have been received with respect and pleasure by philosophers of many viewpoints if it had been known abroad then. Now, revised for this English-language editiJn by our dear and honored colleague Mihailo Markovic, it is still admirable, still the insightful and stimulating accomplishment of a pioneering philosophical and scientific mind, still resonating to the three themes of technical mastery, humane purpose, political critique. Markovic has always worked with the scientific and the humanist disci plines inseparably, a faithful as well as a creative man oflate twentieth century thOUght. Reasoning is to be studied as any other object of investigation would be: empirically, theoretically, psychologically, historically, imaginatively. But the entry is often through the study of meaning, in language and in life. In his splendid guide into the work before us, his Introduction, Markovic shows his remarkable ability as the teacher, motivating, clarifying, sketching the whole, illuminating the detail, Critically situating the problem within a practical understanding of the tool oflanguage."
This book on the structure and role of time in physical theories addresses itself to scientists and philosophers intereste: 'i in the 'no man's lard' between science and philosophy, in particular between physics and philoso phy. The p: lint of departure is physical time, Le. time as usErl 1: Y physicists in their theories; but the analysis is not oonfined to a purely physical level but caries the problem into the domain of philosophical in quiry. Altoough the book presupp: lses some knowledge of physics, I have avoided, wherever p: lssible, the use of advanced mathematics and technical details. Of all the people woo have been of help in writing this book, I w: >uld first of all like to mention Paul Scheurer and Guy Debrock who were my primary mentors in science and philosophy. This sttrly is a revision of my dissertation Kroes 1982a] which I wrote under the stimulating guidance of Scheurer; many of the ideas ex posed here have their origin in his w: >rk and were developErl in frequent discussions with him. Guy Debrock not only stimulated my interest in philosophy but also made valuable suggestions. Witoout any overstatement, I dare say that without their assistence, this book w: >uld never have been written. Furthernore, I w: >uld like to thank D. Dieks, J.J.C."
In a ground-breaking series of articles, one of them written by a Nobel Laureate, this volume demonstrates the evolutionary dynamic and the transformation of today's democratic societies into scientific-democratic societies. It highlights the progress of modeling individual and societal evaluation by neo-Bayesian utility theory. It shows how social learning and collective opinion formation work, and how democracies cope with randomness caused by randomizers. Nonlinear evolution equations' and serial stochastic matrices of evolutionary game theory allow us to optimally compute possible serial evolutionary solutions of societal conflicts. But in democracies progress can be defined as any positive, gradual, innovative and creative change of culturally used, transmitted and stored mentifacts (models, theories), sociofacts (customs, opinions), artifacts and technifacts, within and across generations. The most important changes are caused, besides randomness, by conflict solutions and their realizations by citizens who follow democratic laws. These laws correspond to the extended Pareto principle, a supreme, socioethical democratic rule. According to this principle, progress is any increase in the individual and collective welfare which is achieved during any evolutionary progress. Central to evolutionary modeling is the criterion of the empirical realization of computed solutions. Applied to serial conflict solutions (decisions), evolutionary trajectories are formed; they become the most influential causal attractors of the channeling of societal evolution. Democratic constitutions, legal systems etc., store all advantageous, present and past, adaptive, competitive, cooperative and collective solutions and their rules; they have been accepted by majority votes. Societal laws are codes of statutes (default or statistical rules), and they serve to optimally solve societal conflicts, in analogy to game theoretical models or to statistical decision theory. Such solutions become necessary when we face harmful or advantageous random events always lurking at the edge of societal and external chaos. The evolutionary theory of societal evolution in democracies presents a new type of stochastic theory; it is based on default rules and stresses realization. The rules represent the change of our democracies into information, science and technology-based societies; they will revolutionize social sciences, especially economics. Their methods have already found their way into neural brain physiology and research into intelligence. In this book, neural activity and the creativity of human thinking are no longer regarded as linear-deductive. Only evolutive nonlinear thinking can include multiple causal choices by many individuals and the risks of internal and external randomness; this serves the increasing welfare of all individuals and society as a whole. Evolution and Progress in Democracies is relevant for social scientists, economists, evolution theorists, statisticians, philosophers, philosophers of science, and interdisciplinary researchers.
The publication of W. Pauli's Scientific Correspondence by Springer-Verlag has motivated a vast research activity on Pauli's role in modern science. This excellent treatise sheds light on the ongoing dialogue between physics and psychology.
Since the Niels Bohr centenary of 1985 there has been an astonishing international surge of scholarly analyses of Bohr's philosophy. Now for the first time in Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy Jan Faye and Henry Folse have brought together sixteen of today's leading authors who have helped mould this new round of discussions on Bohr's philosophy. In fifteen entirely new, previously unpublished essays we discover a surprising variety of the different facets of Bohr as the natural philosopher whose framework of complementarity' shaped the final phase of the quantum revolution and influenced two generations of the century's leading physicists. There is much on which the authors included here agree; but there are also polar disagreements, which assure us that the philosophical questions revolving around Bohr's new viewpoint' will continue to be a subject of scholarly interest and discussion for years to come. This collection will interest all serious students of history and philosophy of science, and foundations of physics.
Social thinkers in all fields are faced with one unavoidable
question: what does it mean to be 'human' in the 21st century? As
definitions between what is "animal" and what is "human" break
down, and as emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence
and nano- and bio- technologies develop, accepted notions of
humanity are rapidly evolving.
Have you ever been confused by the fact that the words 'though' and 'bough' are pronounced differently, or frustrated by the realisation that 'hint' and 'pint' don't rhyme? It is well known that the spelling system of English is notoriously unhelpful as an indicator of how to pronounce English words. Spoken and written representations of English are mutually inconsistent, making it difficult to interpret the 'logic' of the language. Learning to transcribe English phonetically, however, provides an accurate visual interpretation of pronunciation: it helps you to realise what you actually say, rather than what you think you say. English Transcription Course is the ideal workbook for anyone wishing to practice their transcription skills. It provides a series of eight lessons, each dealing with a particular aspect of pronunciation, and introduces and explains the most important features of connected speech in modern British English - such as assimilation, elision and weak forms, concentrating on achieving a relaxed, informal style of speech. Each lesson is followed by a set of exercises which allow for extensive practise of the skills learnt in both current and previous chapters. Students can check their progress with the 'model' answers provided in the appendix.
First published in 1983, this book explores a number of avenues of critical thinking about Joseph Conrad, showing him as an author deeply concerned with humankind's ethical motivation and its relationship with the ideas of evolution current in his day. Allan Hunter establishes Conrad's detailed knowledge of the leading evolutionary arguments of the period and the main questions posed: were ethics God-given or were morals merely an evolved attribute? His novels are shown as debates with, and extensions of, the theories of Huxley, Darwin, Carlyle, Spencer, Lombroso and others on the nature of humanity and altruism.
Monte Johnson examines one of the most controversial aspects of Aristiotle's natural philosophy: his teleology. Is teleology about causation or explanation? Does it exclude or obviate mechanism, determinism, or materialism? Is it focused on the good of individual organisms, or is god or man the ultimate end of all processes and entities? Is teleology restricted to living things, or does it apply to the cosmos as a whole? Does it identify objectively existent causes in the world, or is it merely a heuristic for our understanding of other causal processes? Johnson argues that Aristotle's aporetic approach drives a middle course between these traditional oppositions, and avoids the dilemma, frequently urged against teleology, between backwards causation and anthropomorphism. Although these issues have been debated with extraordinary depth by Aristotle scholars, and touched upon by many in the wider philosophical and scientific community as well, there has been no comprehensive historical treatment of the issue. Aristotle is commonly considered the inventor of teleology, although the precise term originated in the eighteenth century. But if teleology means the use of ends and goals in natural science, then Aristotle was rather a critical innovator of teleological explanation. Teleological notions were widespread among his predecessors, but Aristotle rejected their conception of extrinsic causes such as mind or god as the primary causes for natural things. Aristotle's radical alternative was to assert nature itself as an internal principle of change and an end, and his teleological explanations focus on the intrinsic ends of natural substances - those ends that benefit the natural thing itself. Aristotle's use of ends was subsequently conflated with incompatible 'teleological' notions, including proofs for the existence of a providential or designer god, vitalism and animism, opposition to mechanism and non-teleological causation, and anthropocentrism. Johnson addresses these misconceptions through an elaboration of Aristotle's methodological statements, as well as an examination of the explanations actually offered in the scientific works.
Stover and Erdmann deal with the crises confronting today's world and argue that solutions will come not from new technology nor in retreating to an idealized agrarian past, but by overhauling the beliefs that structure society. They link the dilemmas facing civilization to a fundamental rift running through society--one between religion and the humanities, rooted in subjective experience, and science, which emphasizes objective knowledge. They suggest a promising way of closing this rift found in the work of Nobel Laureate and neuroscientist Roger W. Sperry. They examine Sperry's lifework, including his famous split- brain research and show how it led him to propose a theory of consciousness that challenged science's dismissal of subjective experience as irrelevant. By seeing consciousness as an emergent, causal property of brain function, Sperry reinstated subjective experience into the scientific worldview, laid the foundation for the cognitive revolution that has since swept through psychology, and created a means by which science can help create ethical systems better able to deal with today's challenges. Stover and Erdmann conclude by looking at ways in which others have built upon Sperry's ideas, and they hold out the hope that, with the creation of belief systems more compatible with science, a way out of humanity's current troubles may indeed be found. The result is an excursion through a world of exciting ideas, and a book sure to absorb anyone interested in the fate of our species--and how that fate might be influenced for the better. Students, researchers, scholars, and concerned citizens particularly interested in cognitive psychology, science and society, and futures studies will find the book intriguing.
This volume critically reexamines Otto Neurath s conception of the unity of science. Some of the leading scholars of Neurath s work, along with many prominent philosophers of science critically examine his place in the history of philosophy of science and evaluate the relevance of his work for contemporary debates concerning the unity of science."
genetics. " It is simply the appropriation of that term, very likely with insufficient knowledge and respect for its past usage. For that, the Editor alone is responsible and requests tolerance. He has, as far as he can tell, no intention or desire to use it for any historiographical purposes other than that just mentioned. Even more important, the decision to consider Muller together with Fisher, Haldane and Wright is also not original. Crow (1984) has already done so, arguing persua sively that Muller was "keenly interested in evolution and made sub stantial contributions to the development of the neo-Darwinian view. " Crow's reasons for considering these four figures together and the reasons discussed above are complementary. This book continues a historiographical choice he initiated; others will have to judge whether it is appropriate. The foregoing considerations were intended to show why Fisher, Haldane, Muller and Wright should be considered together in the history of theoretical evolutionary genetics. I By a welcome stroke of luck, from the point of view of the Editor, all four of these figures were born almost together, between 1889 and 1892, and almost exactly a century ago. It therefore seemed appropriate to use their birth cente naries to consider their work together. A conference was held at Boston University, on March 6, 1990, under the auspices of the Boston Center for the Philosophy and History of Science, to discuss their work. This book has emerged mainly from that conference."
Hard as it is to believe, what is possibly Galileo's most important Latin manuscript was not transcribed for the National Edition of his works and so has remained hidden from scholars for centuries. In this volume William A. Wallace translates the logical treatises contained in that manuscript and makes them intelligible to the modern reader. He prefaces his translation with a lengthy introduction describing the contents of the manuscript, the sources from which it derives, its dating, and how it relates to Galileo's other Pisan writings. The translation is accompanied by extensive notes and commentary; these explain the text and tie it to the fuller exposition of Galileo's logical methodology in the author's companion volume, Galileo's Logic of Discovery and Proof. The result is a research tool that is indispensable for anyone intent on understanding Galileo's logic as described in that volume and the documentary evidence on which it is based.
The Completeness of Scientific Theories deals with the role of theories in measurement. Theories are employed in measurements in order to account for the operation of the instruments and to correct the raw data obtained. These observation theories thus guarantee the reliability of measurement procedures. In special cases a theory can be used as its own observation theory. In such cases it is possible, relying on the theory itself, to analyze the measuring procedures associated with theoretical states specified within its framework. This feature is called completeness. The book addresses the assets and liabilities of theories exhibiting this feature. Chief among the prima-facie liabilities is a testability problem. If a theory that is supposed to explain certain measurement results at the same time provides the theoretical means necessary for obtaining these results, the threat of circularity arises. Closer investigation reveals that various circularity problems do indeed emerge in complete theories, but that these problems can generally be solved. Some methods for testing and confirming theories are developed and discussed. The particulars of complete theories are addressed using a variety of theories from the physical sciences and psychology as examples. The example developed in greatest detail is general relativity theory, which exhibits an outstanding degree of completeness. In this context a new approach to the issue of the conventionality of physical geometry is pursued. The book contains the first systematic analysis of completeness; it thus opens up new paths of research. For philosophers of science working on problems of confirmation, theory-ladenness of evidence, empiricaltestability, and space--time philosophy (or students in these areas).
Written before the impressive collapse of the socialist system in Eastern Europe, this book offers a quite objective and serious systematic analysis of the Marxian labor theory of value, Marx's main scientific legacy. After reconstructing the prototype' of this theory -- which is the theory as it was left by Marx himself in Capital -- the author proceeds to a careful and detailed analysis of its foundational problems, taking into account BAhm-Bawerk's important criticisms. After introducing advanced contemporary formal tools, the author proceeds to a thorough discussion of the dialectical method, just in order to tackle the foundational problems of the theory. He provides a formally precise and well motivated definition of abstract labor, and then proceeds to prove the existence of a measurement of abstract labor -- i.e. the existence of numerical labor-values. Using this result, the author provides rigorous axiomatic foundations for the theory of value and then proves the existence of a Marxian competitive equilibrium, which is tantamount to the proof of the possibility of reproduction for a capitalist economy. The author finishes the book by showing in detail how the problems of the prototype are solved, by reconstructing the Leontief model of the labor theory of value on the new logical bases. Written in a very clear style, in the language of contemporary philosophy of science, the book is of interest to philosophers of science and economists, applied logicians and all those interested in the scientific legacy of Karl Marx.
This volume is presented as a companion study to my translation of Galileo's MS 27, Galileo's Logical Treatises, which contains Galileo's appropriated questions on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics - a work only recently transcribed from the Latin autograph. Its purpose is to acquaint an English-reading audience with the teaching in those treatises. This is basically a sixteenth-century logic of discovery and of proof about which little is known in the present day, yet one that arguably guided the most significant research program of the seventeenth century. Despite its historical and systematic importance, the teaching is difficult to explain to the modern reader. Part of the problem stems from the fragmentary nature of the manuscript in which it is preserved, part from the contents of the teaching itself, which requires a considerable propadeutic for its comprehension. A word of explanation is thus required to set out the structure of the volume and to detail the editorial decisions that underlie its organization. Two major manuscript studies have advanced the cause of scholarship on Galileo within the past two decades. The first relates to Galileo's experimental activity at Padua prior to his discoveries with the telescope that led to the publication of his Sidereus nuncius in 1610. Much of this activity has been uncovered by Stillman Drake in analyses of manuscript fragments associated with the composition of Galileo's Two New Sciences, fragments now bound in a codex identified as MS 72 in the collection of Galileiana at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence.
This work addresses scientism and relativism, two false philosophies that divorce science from culture in general and from tradition in particular. It helps break the isolation of science from the rest of culture by promoting popular science and reasonable history of science. It provides examples of the value of science to culture, discussions of items of the general culture, practical strategies and tools, and case studies. It is for practising professionals, political scientists and science policy students and administrators.
The essays in this volume address three fundamental questions in the philosophy of science: What is required for some fact to be evidence for a scientific hypothesis? What does it mean to say that a scientist or a theory explains a phenomenon? Should scientific theories that postulate "unobservable " entities such as electrons be construed realistically as aiming to correctly describe a world underlying what is directly observable, or should such theories be understood as aiming to correctly describe only the observable world? Distinguished philosopher of science Peter Achinstein provides answers to each of these questions in essays written over a period of more than 40 years. The present volume brings together his important previously published essays, allowing the reader to confront some of the most basic and challenging issues in the philosophy of science, and to consider Achinstein's many influential contributions to the solution of these issues. He presents a theory of evidence that relates this concept to probability and explanation; a theory of explanation that relates this concept to an explaining act as well as to the different ways in which explanations are to be evaluated; and an empirical defense of scientific realism that invokes both the concept of evidence and that of explanation.
From the very beginning it was realised that quantum physics involves radically new interpretative and epistemological consequences. While hitherto there has been no satisfactory philosophical analysis of these consequences, recent years have witnessed the accomplishment of many experiments to test the foundations of quantum physics, opening up vistas to a completely novel technology: quantum technology. The contributions in the present volume review the interpretative situation, analyze recent fundamental experiments, and discuss the implications of possible future technological applications. Readership: Analytic philosophers (logical empiricists), scientists (especially physicists), historians of logic, mathematics and physics, philosophers of science, and advanced students and researchers in these fields. Can be used for seminars on theoretical and experimental physics and philosophy of science, and as supplementary reading at advanced undergraduate and graduate levels.
a priori, and what is more, to a rejection based ultimately on a posteriori findings; in other words, the "pure" science of nature in Kant's sense of the term had proved to be, not only not pure, but even false. As for logic and mathematics, the decisive works of Frege, Russell, and White head suggested two conclusions: first, that it was possible to construct mathematics on the basis of logic (logicism), and secondly, that logical propositions had an irrevocably analytic status. But within the frame work of logicism, the status of logical propositions is passed on to mathematical ones, and mathematical propositions are therefore also conceived of as analytic. All this creates a situation where the existential presupposition contained in the Kantian question about the possibility of judgements that are both synthetic and a priori must, it seems, be rejected as false. But to drop this presupposition is, at the same time, to strike at the very core of Kant's programme of putting the natural sciences on a philosophical foundation. The failure of the modern attempt to do so suggests at the same time a reversal of the relationship between philosophy and the individual sciences: it is not the task of philosophy to meddle with the foundations of the individual sciences; being the less successful discipline, its task is rather to seek guidance from the principles of rationality operative in the individual sciences."
The study of medical history is interesting in itself and may help to modify the view sometimes expressed that medical students and doctors are lacking in culture of any sort. Moreover, some historical perspective is often advantageous when one is considering the multitude of advances that are now taking place in the theory and practice of medicine. This book, containing a series of collected papers concerning immunology and pathology and vascular biology and angiogenesis, drives us through scientific milestones in the history of medicine in the course of the past two centuries and highlights the contribution of pioneering scientists whose discoveries have paved the way to many researchers working in the fields of cell biology, developmental biology, immunology, pathology, and oncology. This book will serve as a resource for scientists, historians of medicine and philosophers of science and medicine.
George Berkeley was considered "the most engaging and useful man in Ireland in the eighteenth century." This hyperbolic statement refers both to Berkeley's life and thought; in fact, he always considered himself a pioneer called to think and do new things. He was an empiricist well versed in the sciences, an amateur of the mechanical arts, as well as a metaphysician; he was the author of many completely different discoveries, as well as a very active Christian, a zealous bishop and the apostle of the Bermuda project. The essays collected in this volume, written by some leading scholars, aim to reconstruct the complexity of Berkeley's figure, without selecting "major" works, nor searching for "coherence" at any cost. They will focus on different aspects of Berkeley's thought, showing their intersections; they will explore the important contributions he gave to various scientific disciplines, as well as to the eighteenth-century philosophical and theological debate. They will highlight the wide influence that his presently most neglected or puzzling books had at the time; they will refuse any anachronistical trial of Berkeley's thought, judged from a contemporary point of view. |
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