The Special Theory of Relativity: Based on a short course of lectures delivered in the late 1930s, this short book presents the theory of Special Relativity by formulating a redefinition of the measurement of length, and thus will appeal to students of physics who wish to think through Einstein's thought without the encumbrance of quasi-scientific concepts and language. Relativity: A Very Elementary Exposition: This brief lecture, delivered in October 1921 and published for the first time in 1925, offers an explanation of Einstein's theory of Special Relativity for the non-scientist, giving a general overview that does justice both to the actual physics involved, and the wider implications of this revolutionary discovery of the 20th century.

This volume situates itself within the context of the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field that is dedicated to the study of the complex interactions between science and religion. It presents an innovative approach insofar as it addresses the Eurocentrism that is still prevalent in this field. At the same time it reveals how science develops in the space that emerges between the 'local' and the 'global'. The volume examines a range of themes central to the interaction between science and religion: 'Eastern' thought within 'Western' science and religion and vice versa, and revisits thinkers who sought to integrate 'Eastern' and 'Western' thinking. It studies Zen Buddhism and its relation to psychotherapy, Islamic science, Vedantic science, atheism in India, and Darwinism, offering in turn new perspectives on a variety of approaches to nature. Part of the Science and Technology Studies series, this volume brings together original perspectives from major scholars from across disciplines and will be of great interest to scholars and students of science and technology studies, history of science, philosophy of science, religious studies, and sociology.

In this book one of Britain's leading philosophers tackles a question at the root of our civilisation: What is knowledge for? Midgley rejects the fragmentary and specialized way in which information is conveyed in the high-tech world, and criticizes conceptions of philosophy that support this mode of thinking.

Assessment of error and uncertainty is a vital component of both natural and social science. This edited volume presents case studies of research practices across a wide spectrum of scientific fields. It compares methodologies and presents the ingredients needed for an overarching framework applicable to all.

Paracelsus has been called the father of modern chemistry and is legendary for his treatment of syphilis. This work argues that Paracelsus developed an understanding of the body as composed of two distinct sexes, revolutionizing early modern conceptions of the female body as an inversion of or flawed approximation of the male body.

Renowned philosopher Mary Midgley explores the nature of our moral constitution to challenge the view that reduces human motivation to self-interest. Midgley argues cogently and convincingly that simple, one-sided accounts of human motives, such as the 'selfish gene' tendency in recent neo-Darwinian thought, may be illuminating but are always unrealistic. Such neatness, she shows, cannot be imposed on human psychology. She returns to Darwin's original writings to show how the reductive individualism which is now presented as Darwinism does not derive from Darwin but from a wider, Hobbesian tradition in Enlightenment thinking. She reveals the selfish gene hypothesis as a cultural accretion that is just not seen in nature. Heroic independence is not a realistic aim for Homo sapiens. We are, as Darwin saw, earthly organisms, framed to interact constantly with one another and with the complex ecosystems of which we are a tiny part. For us, bonds are not just restraints but also lifelines.

Foundationalism is a view about the structure of knowledge and justification. The heart of the thesis is the claim that if there is any knowledge or justified belief at all, then there is a kind of knowledge and justified belief that does not require inference from something else known or justifiably believed. This Element begins by exploring abstract arguments for foundationalism and against proposed alternatives. It then explores disagreements among foundationalists about how to understand foundational knowledge and justified belief, what is plausibly included in the foundations, and what is required for legitimate inference from foundations to the rest of what we believe. The author argues for the conclusion that one can combine insights captured by different versions of foundationalism by making a distinction between ideal justification and justification that falls short of that ideal.

Normativity and Naturalism in the Social Sciences engages with a central debate within the philosophy of social science: whether social scientific explanation necessitates an appeal to norms, and if so, whether appeals to normativity can be rendered "scientific." This collection brings together contributions from a diverse group of philosophers who explore a broad but thematically unified set of questions, many of which stem from an ongoing debate between Stephen Turner and Joseph Rouse (both contributors to this volume) on the role of naturalism in the philosophy of the social sciences. Informed by recent developments in both philosophy and the social sciences, this volume will set the benchmark for contemporary discussions about normativity and naturalism. This collection will be relevant to philosophers of social science, philosophers in interested in the rule following and metaphysics of normativity, and theoretically oriented social scientists.

In this book, Esposito presents a historiography of organicist and holistic thought through an examination of the work of leading biologists from Britain and America. He shows how this work relates to earlier Romantic tradition and sets it within the wider context of the history and philosophy of the life sciences.

New concepts are constantly being introduced into our thinking. Conceptual Systems explores how these new concepts are entered into our systems along with sufficient continuity with older ideas to ensure understanding. The encyclopedic breadth of this text highlights the many different aspects and disciplines that together present an insightful view into the various theories of concepts. Harold Brown, a reputable author in the philosophy of science examines several historically influential theories of concepts as well as presenting a clear view on the general theory of conceptual change. Case studies discuss examples of conceptual change in the history of physics including the move in seventeenth century physics from Galileo to Descates to Newton; and the conceptual framework of the 'standard model' in the late twentieth century high-energy physics. The key central themes in the philosophy of science that are explored in detail in this enormous book make it an essential read for academics in this field.

This book is a result from a collective study on philosophy of scientific practice (PSP), which began around 2002 and still ongoing. There is an apparently increasing interest in scientific practice, influenced by the historicistic philosophy of science and the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). Prof. WU Tong and his research group believe that it is necessary for PSP to turn from the theory-dominant position to the practice dominance. PSP has also put forward the possibility of reinterpreting the epistemic status of local knowledge in Chinese tradition, which provides the most significant motivation to participate this study. In this book, we have selected three main cases - namely, Chinese medicine, Fengshui, and Ethnobotany - to examine the effect of PSP. The aim of our collective study is not merely on theoretical construction of PSP, but also to consider the various applications of PSP, especially for re-interpreting and demonstrating the variety of local knowledge from traditional China, which seems to be a genuine contribution to the international enterprise of philosophy of science, particularly made by Chinese scholars.

This book proposes a new way of reading modern Western philosophers in the Indian context. It questions the colonial methodology, or the practice of importing theories of Western philosophy, and shows how its unmediated applications are often incongruent, irrelevant, and unproductive in local frameworks. The author shows an alternative route to approaching philosophers from the West - Rousseau, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, and Bergson - by bending and reassembling aspects of their ideas and theories to relate with the diversity and complexity of Indian society. He also offers insights on the politics of non-being and negation from a neglected modern Indian philosopher, Vaddera Chandidas, as a step forward from the Western philosophers presented here. An intervention in philosophical research methodology, this volume will interest scholars and researchers of philosophy, Western philosophy, Indian philosophy, comparative studies, postcolonial studies, literature, cultural studies, and political philosophy.

This book presents an interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as a priori psychologism. It groups Kant's philosophy together with those of the British empiricists-Locke, Berkeley, and Hume-in a single line of psychologistic succession and offers a clear explanation of how Kant's psychologism differs from psychology and idealism. The book reconciles Kant's philosophy with subsequent developments in science and mathematics, including post-Fregean mathematical logic, non-Euclidean geometry, and both relativity and quantum theory. It also relates Kant's psychologism to Wittgenstein's later conception of language. Finally, the author reveals the ways in which Kant's philosophy dovetails with contemporary scientific theorizing about the natural phenomenon of consciousness and its place in nature. This book will be of interest to Kant scholars and historians of philosophy working on the British empiricists.

The nature of reality has been a long-debated issue among scientists and philosophers. In 1930, Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein had a long conversation on the nature of reality. This conversation has been widely quoted and discussed by scientists, philosophers and scholars from the literary world. The important question that Tagore and Einstein discussed was whether the world is a unity dependent on humanity, or the world is a reality independent on the human factor. Einstein took the stand adopted by Western philosophers and mathematicians, namely that reality is something independent of the mind and the human factor. Tagore, on the other hand, adopted the opposite view. Nevertheless, both Einstein and Tagore claimed to be realists despite the fundamental differences between their conceptions of reality. Where does the difference lie? Can it be harmonized at some deeper level? Can Wittgenstein, for example, be a bridge between the two views? This collection of essays explores these two fundamentally different conceptions of the nature of reality from the perspectives of theories of space-time, quantum theory, general philosophy of science, cognitive science and mathematics.

Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics is one of the three volumes of Karl Popper's Postscript to the Logic of scientific Discovery. The Postscript is the culmination of Popper's work in the philosophy of physics and a new famous attack on subjectivist approaches to philosophy of science. Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics is the third volume of the Postscript. It may be read independently, but it also forms part of Popper's interconnected argument in the Postscript. It presents Popper's classic statement on quantum physics and offers important insights into his thinking on problems of method within science and physics as a whole.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This edited volume of 13 new essays aims to turn past discussions of natural kinds on their head. Instead of presenting a metaphysical view of kinds based largely on an unempirical vantage point, it pursues questions of kindedness which take the use of kinds and activities of kinding in practice as significant in the articulation of them as kinds. The book brings philosophical study of current and historical episodes and case studies from various scientific disciplines to bear on natural kinds as traditionally conceived of within metaphysics. Focusing on these practices reveals the different knowledge-producing activities of kinding and processes involved in natural kind use, generation, and discovery. Specialists in their field, the esteemed group of contributors use diverse empirically responsive approaches to explore the nature of kindhood. This groundbreaking volume presents detailed case studies that exemplify kinding in use. Newly written for this volume, each chapter engages with the activities of kinding across a variety of disciplines. Chapter topics include the nature of kinds, kindhood, kinding, and kind-making in linguistics, chemical classification, neuroscience, gene and protein classification, colour theory in applied mathematics, homology in comparative biology, sex and gender identity theory, memory research, race, extended cognition, symbolic algebra, cartography, and geographic information science. The volume seeks to open up an as-yet unexplored area within the emerging field of philosophy of science in practice, and constitutes a valuable addition to the disciplines of philosophy and history of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Sir John Eccles, a distinguished scientist and Nobel Prize winner who has devoted his scientific life to the study of the mammalian brain, tells the story of how we came to be, not only as animals at the end of the hominid evolutionary line, but also as human persons possessed of reflective consciousness.

Hume is traditionally credited with inventing the 'regularity theory' of causation, according to which the causal relation between two events consists merely in the fact that events of the first kind are always followed by events of the second kind. Hume is also traditionally credited with two other, hugely influential positions: the view that the world appears to us as a world of unconnected events, and inductive scepticism: the view that the 'problem of induction', the problem of providing a justification for inference from observed to unobserved regularities, is insoluble. Hume on Causation is the first major work dedicated to Hume's views on causation in over fifteen years, and it argues that Hume does not subscribe to any of these three views. It places Hume's interest in causation within the context of his theory of the mind and his theory of causal reasoning, arguing that Hume's conception of causation derives from his conception of the nature of the inference from causes to effects.

Well-being, happiness and quality of life are now established objects of social and medical research. Does this science produce knowledge that is properly about well-being? What sort of well-being? The definition and measurement of these objects rest on assumptions that are partly normative, partly empirical and partly pragmatic, producing a great diversity of definitions depending on the project and the discipline. This book, written from the perspective of philosophy of science, formulates principles for the responsible production and interpretation of this diverse knowledge. Traditionally, philosophers' goal has been a single concept of well-being and a single theory about what it consists in. But for science this goal is both unlikely and unnecessary. Instead the promise and authority of the science depends on it focusing on the well-being of specific kinds of people in specific contexts. Skeptical arguments notwithstanding, this contextual well-being can be measured in a valid and credible way - but only if scientists broaden their methods to make room for normative considerations and address publicly and inclusively the value-based conflicts that inevitably arise when a measure of well-being is adopted. The science of well-being can be normative, empirical and objective all at once, provided that we line up values to science and science to values.

This unique introduction fully engages and clearly explains pragmatism, an approach to knowledge and philosophy that rejects outmoded conceptions of objectivity while avoiding relativism and subjectivism. It follows pragmatism's focus on the process of inquiry rather than on abstract justifications meant to appease the skeptic. According to pragmatists, getting to know the world is a creative human enterprise, wherein we fashion our concepts in terms of how they affect us practically, including in future inquiry. This book fully illuminates that enterprise and the resulting radical rethinking of basic philosophical conceptions like truth, reality, and reason. Author Cornelis de Waal helps the reader recognize, understand, and assess classical and current pragmatist contributions-from Charles S. Peirce to Cornel West-evaluate existing views from a pragmatist angle, formulate pragmatist critiques, and develop a pragmatist viewpoint on a specific issue. The book discusses: Classical pragmatists, including Peirce, James, Dewey, and Addams; Contemporary figures, including Rorty, Putnam, Haack, and West; Connections with other twentieth-century approaches, including phenomenology, critical theory, and logical positivism; Peirce's pragmatic maxim and its relation to James's Will to Believe; Applications to philosophy of law, feminism, and issues of race and racism.

The application of standard measurement is a cornerstone of modern science. In this collection of essays, standardization of procedure, units of measurement and the epistemology of standardization are addressed by specialists from sociology, history and the philosophy of science.

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this new kind of entree to contemporary epistemology, Kevin McCain presents fifty of the field's most important puzzles, paradoxes, and thought experiments. Assuming no familiarity with epistemology from the reader, McCain titles each case with a memorable name, describes the details of the case, explains the issue(s) to which the case is relevant, and assesses its significance. McCain also briefly reviews the key responses to the case that have been put forward, and provides a helpful list of suggested readings on the topic. Each entry is accessible, succinct, and self-contained. Epistemology: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments is a fantastic learning tool as well as a handy resource for anyone interested in epistemological issues. Key Features: Though concise overall, offers broad coverage of the key areas of epistemology. Describes each imaginative case directly and in a memorable way, making the cases accessible and easy to remember. Provides a list of Suggested Readings for each case, divided into General Overviews, Seminal Presentations, and Other Important Discussions.

Contrastivism can be applied to a variety of problems within philosophy, and as such, it can be coherently seen as a unified movement. This volume brings together state-of-the-art research on the contrastive treatment of philosophical concepts and questions, including knowledge, belief, free will, moral luck, Bayesian confirmation theory, causation, and explanation.