This open access book proposes a conceptual framework for understanding measurement across a broad range of scientific fields and areas of application, such as physics, engineering, education, and psychology. It addresses contemporary issues and controversies within measurement in light of the framework, including operationalism, definitional uncertainty, and the relations between measurement and computation, and describes how the framework, operating as a shared concept system, supports understanding measurement’s work in different domains, using examples in the physical and human sciences. This revised and expanded second edition features a new analysis of the analogies and the differences between the error/uncertainty-related approach adopted in physical measurement and the validity-related approach adopted in psychosocial measurement. In addition, it provides a better analysis and presentation of measurement scales, in particular about their relations with quantity units, and introduces the measurand identification/definition as a part of the "Hexagon Framework" along with new examples from the physical and psychosocial sciences. Researchers and academics across a wide range of disciplines including biological, physical, social, and behavioral scientists, as well as specialists in measurement and philosophy appreciate the work’s fresh and provocative approach to the field at a time when sound measurements of complex scientific systems are increasingly essential to solving critical global problems.

The Philosophy of Practical Affairs: An Introduction addresses the problems of everyday life, problems that from time to time fate drops on normal twenty-first-century western individuals. Addressing both students and philosophers, Joseph Agassi considers the usefulness of the treatment of daily problems within academic philosophy, including rationalism and fundamental issues of practical wisdom, the community, and the individual's relationship to community. Unlike most philosophy-of-life literatures from pop-philosophy-especially religious homilies or wisdom literature, including the (pseudo-)cabbalist or (pseudo-)Buddhist, and their like-the book acknowledges real, disturbing situations. Warning the reader against various kinds of intellectual dishonesty, and committed to their rational autonomy, the author thinks through philosophical concepts that are in the end practical issues of philosophy of life.

How should we proceed with advanced research of humanities and social sciences in collaboration? What are the pressing issues of this new trend in a cataclysmic time for civilization? This book, originated with a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Topic-Setting Program, addresses these challenging questions in four parts for innovating twenty-first-century humanities and social sciences. It broadens the horizon for reviewing multi-disciplinary landscapes of risks and regulation of new technologies by focusing on paradigmatic cases from the fields of life and environment. Here, genome editing for reproductive treatment and renewable energy under the constraint of climate change in Japanese and global contexts are involved. The volume comprises a combination of topics and aspects such as public policy and philosophy of science, medicine and law, climate ethics, and the economics of electricity. This edited collection will thus motivate forward-thinking readers across the diverse spectrum of social sciences and humanities to survey themes of their own interests in multi-disciplinary studies. In so doing, they can explore the evolving frontiers of those disciplines and the depths of individual contributions by experts in philosophy, ethics, law, economics, and science, technology, and society (STS), including bioscience.

Kurt Godel (1906 - 1978) was the most outstanding logician of the twentieth century, famous for his hallmark works on the completeness of logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency of the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis. He is also noted for his work on constructivity, the decision problem, and the foundations of computability theory, as well as for the strong individuality of his writings on the philosophy of mathematics. He is less well known for his discovery of unusual cosmological models for Einstein's equations, in theory permitting time travel into the past.
The Collected Works is a landmark resource that draws together a lifetime of creative thought and accomplishment. The first two volumes were devoted to Godel's publications in full (both in original and translation), and the third volume featured a wide selection of unpublished articles and lecture texts found in Godel's Nachlass. The final two volumes contain Godel's correspondence of logical, philosophical, and scientific interest. Volume IV, published for the first time in paperback, covers A to G, with H to Z in volume V; in addition, Volume V contains a full inventory of Godel's Nachlass. All volumes include introductory notes that provide extensive explanatory and historical commentary on each body of work, English translations of material originally written in German (some transcribed from the Gabelsberger shorthand), and a complete bibliography of all works cited.
Kurt Godel: Collected Works is designed to be useful and accessible to as wide an audience as possible without sacrificing scientific or historical accuracy. The only comprehensive edition of Godel's work available, it will be an essential part of the working library of professionals and students in logic, mathematics, philosophy, history of science, and computer science and all others who wish to be acquainted with one of the great minds of the twentieth century.

Kurt Godel (1906 - 1978) was the most outstanding logician of the twentieth century, famous for his hallmark works on the completeness of logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency of the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis. He is also noted for his work on constructivity, the decision problem, and the foundations of computability theory, as well as for the strong individuality of his writings on the philosophy of mathematics. He is less well known for his discovery of unusual cosmological models for Einstein's equations, in theory permitting time travel into the past.
The Collected Works is a landmark resource that draws together a lifetime of creative thought and accomplishment. The first two volumes were devoted to Godel's publications in full (both in original and translation), and the third volume featured a wide selection of unpublished articles and lecture texts found in Godel's Nachlass. These long-awaited final two volumes contain Godel's correspondence of logical, philosophical, and scientific interest. Volume V, published for the first time in paperback, includes H to Z as well as a full inventory of Godel's Nachlass, while Volume IV covers A to G. All volumes include introductory notes that provide extensive explanatory and historical commentary on each body of work, English translations of material originally written in German (some transcribed from the Gabelsberger shorthand), and a complete bibliography of all works cited.
Kurt Godel: Collected Works is designed to be useful and accessible to as wide an audience as possible without sacrificing scientific or historical accuracy. The only comprehensive edition of Godel's work available, it will be an essential part of the working library of professionals and students in logic, mathematics, philosophy, history of science, and computer science and all others who wish to be acquainted with one of the great minds of the twentieth century.

SCIENCE AND EMPIRES: FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM TO THE BOOK Patrick PETITJEAN, Catherine JAMI and Anne Marie MOULIN The International Colloquium "Science and Empires - Historical Studies about Scientific De velopment and European Expansion" is the product of an International Colloquium, "Sciences and Empires - A Comparative History of Scien tific Exchanges: European Expansion and Scientific Development in Asian, African, American and Oceanian Countries." Organized by the REHSEIS group (Research on Epistemology and History of Exact Sciences and Scientific Institutions) of CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), the colloquium was held from 3 to 6 April 1990 in the UNESCO building in Paris. This colloquium was an idea of Professor Roshdi Rashed who initiated this field of studies in France some years ago, and proposed "Sciences and Empires" as one of the main research programmes for the The project to organize such a colloquium was a bit REHSEIS group. of a gamble. Its subject, reflected in the title "Sciences and Empires," is not a currently-accepted sub-discipline of the history of science; rather, it refers to a set of questions which found autonomy only recently. The terminology was strongly debated by the participants and, as is frequently suggested in this book, awaits fuller clarification."

This book invokes the Tawhidi ontological foundation of the Qur'anic law and worldview, and is also a study of ta'wil, the esoteric meaning of Qur'anic verses. It presents a comparative analysis between the Tawhidi methodology and the contemporary subject of Shari'ah. Masudul Alam Choudhury brings about a serious criticism of the traditional understanding of Shari'ah as Islamic law contrary to the holistic socio-scientific worldview of the unity of knowledge arising from Tawhid as the law. A bold repudiation of the Islamic traditional understanding and the school of theocracy, Choudhury's critique is in full consonance with the Qur'an and Sunnah. It is critical of the sectarian (madhab) conception of relational independence of facts. Thus the non-creative outlook of Shari'ah contrasts with universality and uniqueness of Tawhid as the analytically established law explaining the monotheistic organic unity of being and becoming in 'everything'. This wide and strict methodological development of the Tawhidi worldview is articulated in this work. The only way that Tawhid and Shari'ah can converge as law is in terms of developing the Tawhidi methodology, purpose and objective of the universal and unique law in consonance with the ontology of Tawhid. Such a convergence in the primal ontological sense of Tawhid is termed as maqasid as-shari'ah al-Tawhid.

Modern philosophy has benefited immensely from the intelligence, and sensitivity, the creative and critical energies, and the lucidity of Polish scholars. Their investigations into the logical and methodological foundations of mathematics, the physical and biological sciences, ethics and esthetics, psychology, linguistics, economics and jurisprudence, and the social science- all are marked by profound and imaginative work. To the centers of empiricist philosophy of science in Vienna, Berlin and Cambridge during the first half of this century, one always added the great school of analytic and methodol ogical studies in Warsaw and Lwow. To the world centers of Marxist theoretical practice in Berlin, Moscow, Paris, Rome and elsewhere, one must add the Poland of the same era, from Ludwik Krzywicki (1859-1941) onward. American socialists and economists will remember the careful work of Oscar Lange, working among us for many years and then after 1945 in Warsaw, always humane, logical, objective. In this volume, our friend and colleague, Jerzy J. Wiatr, has assembled a representative set of recent essays by Polish social scientists and philosophers. Each of these might lead the reader far beyond this book, to look into the Polish Sociological Bulletin which has been publishing Polish sociological studies in English for several decades, to study other translations of books and papers by these authors, and to reflect upon the interplay of logical, phenomenological, Marxist, empiricist and historical learning in modern Polish social understanding."

Why did an atheist like Carl Sagan talk so much about God? Why does NASA climatologist James Hansen plead with us in his recent book not to waste "Our Last Chance to Save Humanity"? Because science advisors are our new prophets, Lynda Walsh argues in Scientists as Prophets: A Rhetorical Genealogy. She does not claim, as some scholars have, that these public scientists push scientism as a replacement for religion. Rather, she puts forth the provocative argument that prophetic ethos is a flexible type of charismatic authority whose function is to manufacture certainty. Scientists aren't our only prophets, Walsh contents, but science advisors predictably perform prophetic ethos whenever they need to persuade their publics to take action or fund basic research. Walsh first charts the genealogy of this hybrid scientific-prophetic ethos back to its roots in ancient oracles before exploring its flourishing in 17th century Europe. She then tracks its performances and mutations through several important late-modern events in America: Robert Oppenheimer's role in the opening of the atomic age; Rachel Carson's interventions in pesticide use; the mass-media polemics of science popularizers such as Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Stephen Jay Gould; and finally the UN's climate change panel and their role in Climategate. Along the way, Walsh highlights the special ethical and political defects embedded in the genealogy of the scientist-prophet, and she finishes by evaluating proposed remedies. She concludes that without a radical shift in our style of deliberative policy-making, there is little chance of remedying the dysfunctions in our current science-advising system. A cogent rhetorical analysis of over 1,000 archival documents from 10 historic cases, Scientists as Prophets engages scholars of scientific rhetoric, history, and literacy, but is also accessible to readers interested in the roots of current political debates about the environment, nuclear energy, and science education.

This book analyzes metaphysical consequences of the quantum theory of many particles with respect to the fundamental notions of identity, individuality and discernibility. The main focus is on the proper interpretation of the quantum formalism in relation to the role of permutation invariance and the adequate representation of the properties of individual subsystems. Two main approaches to the issue of the individuation of quantum particles are distinguished and thoroughly discussed. These approaches differ radically with respect to their metaphysical consequences - while one of them implies the complete indiscernibility of quantum particles of the same kind, the other one restores the possibility of discerning individual particles by their properties. We connect the problem of quantum individuation and discernibility with an analysis of the concept of quantum entanglement, and we also discuss identity over time and in counterfactual scenarios.

Metaphysics and Science brings together important new work within an emerging philosophical discipline: the metaphysics of science. In the opening chapter, a definition of the metaphysics of science is offered, one which explains why the topics of laws, causation, natural kinds, and emergence are at the discipline's heart. The book is then divided into four sections, which group together papers from leading academics on each of those four topics. Among the questions discussed are: How are laws and measurement methods related? Can a satisfactory reductive account of laws be given? How can Lorentz transformation laws be explained? How are dispositions triggered? What role should dispositional properties play in our understanding of causation? Are natural kinds and natural properties distinct? How is the Kripke-Putnam semantics for natural kind terms related to the natural kind essentialist thesis? What would have to be the case for natural kind terms to have determinate reference? What bearing, if any, does nonlinearity in science have on the issue of metaphysical emergence? This collection will be of interest to philosophers, scientists and post-graduates working on problems at the intersection of metaphysics and science.

The theory of relativity convinced many philosophers that space and time are fundamentally alike, and that they are mere aspects of a more fundamental space-time. In The Nature of Time, Ulrich Meyer argues against this consensus view. Instead of a 'spatial' account of time that treats instants like positions in space, he presents the first comprehensive defense of a 'modal' account that emphasizes the similarities between times and the possible worlds in modal logic. Modal accounts of time are naturally cast in terms of a tense logic that accounts for temporal distinctions in terms of primitive tense operators. Tense logic was originally developed to provide a linguistic theory of verb tense in natural languages, but here Meyer proposes that it can be treated as a metaphysical theory of the nature of time. Contrary to popular belief, such modal accounts of time do not commit us to the view that there is something metaphysically special about the present moment, and they are easily reconciled with the theory of relativity.

Probability is increasingly important for our understanding of the world. What is probability? How do we model it, and how do we use it? Timothy Childers presents a lively introduction to the foundations of probability and to philosophical issues it raises. He keeps technicalities to a minimum, and assumes no prior knowledge of the subject. He explains the main interpretations of probability-frequentist, propensity, classical, Bayesian, and objective Bayesian-and uses stimulating examples to bring the subject to life. All students of philosophy will benefit from an understanding of probability, and this is the book to provide it.

J. L. Schellenberg articulates and defends a simple but revolutionary idea: we are still at a very early stage in the possible history of intelligent life on our planet, and should frame our religious attitudes accordingly. Humans have begun to adapt to a deep past--one measured in billions of years, not thousands. But we have not really noticed how thin is the sliver of past time in which all of our religious life is contained. And the eons that may yet see intelligent life have hardly started to come into focus. When these things are internalized, our whole picture of religion may change. For then we will for the first time be in a position to ask: Might there be a form of religion appropriate to such an early stage of development as our own? Might such 'evolutionary religion' be rather different from the forms of religion we see all around us today? And might it be better fitted to meet the demands of reason?
Though most concerned simply to get a new discussion going, Evolutionary Religion maintains that the answer is in each case "yes." When the light of deep time has fully been switched on, a new form of skepticism but, at the same time, new possibilities of religious life will come into view. We will find ourselves drawn to religious attitudes that, while not foregoing the idea of a transcendent ultimate, manage to do without believing and without details. As Schellenberg reveals, pursuing evolutionary religion instead of embracing a scientific naturalism is something that can rationally be done, even if traditional religious belief is placed out of bounds by argument. And ironically it is science that should help us see this. Indeed, in a new cultural dispensation evolutionary religion may come to be a preferred option among those most concerned for our intellectual enrichment and for our survival into the deep future.

This Oxford Handbook provides an overview of many of the topics that currently engage philosophers of physics. It surveys new issues and the problems that have become a focus of attention in recent years. It also provides up-to-date discussions of the still very important problems that dominated the field in the past. In the late 20th Century, the philosophy of physics was largely focused on orthodox Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory. The measurement problem, the question of the possibility of hidden variables, and the nature of quantum locality dominated the literature on the quantum mechanics, whereas questions about relationalism vs. substantivalism, and issues about underdetermination of theories dominated the literature on spacetime. These issues still receive considerable attention from philosophers, but many have shifted their attentions to other questions related to quantum mechanics and to spacetime theories. Quantum field theory has become a major focus, particularly from the point of view of algebraic foundations. Concurrent with these trends, there has been a focus on understanding gauge invariance and symmetries. The philosophy of physics has evolved even further in recent years with attention being paid to theories that, for the most part, were largely ignored in the past. For example, the relationship between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics--once thought to be a paradigm instance of unproblematic theory reduction--is now a hotly debated topic. The implicit, and sometimes explicit, reductionist methodology of both philosophers and physicists has been severely criticized and attention has now turned to the explanatory and descriptive roles of "non-fundamental,'' phenomenological theories. This shift of attention includes "old'' theories such as classical mechanics, once deemed to be of little philosophical interest. Furthermore, some philosophers have become more interested in "less fundamental'' contemporary physics such as condensed matter theory. Questions abound with implications for the nature of models, idealizations, and explanation in physics. This Handbook showcases all these aspects of this complex and dynamic discipline.

Causation is at once familiar and mysterious. Many believe that the causal relation is not directly observable, but that we nevertheless can somehow detect its presence in the world. Common sense seems to have a firm grip on causation, and much work in the natural and social sciences relies on the idea. Yet neither common sense nor extensive philosophical debate has led us to anything like agreement on the correct analysis of the concept of causation, or an account of the metaphysical nature of the causal relation. Contemporary debates are driven by opposing motivations, conflicting intuitions, and unarticulated methodological assumptions. Causation: A User's Guide cuts a clear path through this confusing but vital landscape. L. A. Paul and Ned Hall guide the reader through the most important philosophical treatments of causation, negotiating the terrain by taking a set of examples as landmarks. Special attention is given to counterfactual and related analyses of causation. Using a methodological principle based on the close examination of potential counterexamples, they clarify the central themes of the debate about causation, and cover questions about causation involving omissions or absences, preemption and other species of redundant causation, and the possibility that causation is not transitive. Along the way, Paul and Hall examine several contemporary proposals for analyzing the nature of causation and assess their merits and overall methodological cogency. The book is designed to be of value both to trained specialists and those coming to the problem of causation for the first time. It provides the reader with a broad and sophisticated view of the metaphysics of the causal relation.

The 1977 lectures of the International School for the History of Science at Erice in Sicily were devoted to that vexing but inexorable problem, the nature of scientific discovery. With all that has been written, by scientists themselves, by historians and philosophers and social theorists, by psycholo gists and psychiatrists, by logicians and novelists, the problem remains elusive. Happily we are able to bring the penetrating lectures from Erice that summer to a wider audience in this volume of theoretical investigations and detailed case studies. The ancient and lovely town of Erice in Northwest Sicily, 750 m above the sea, was famous throughout the Mediterranean for its temple of the goddess of nature, Venus Erycina, said to have been built by Daedalus. As philosophers and historians of the natural sciences, we hope that the stimulating atmo sphere of Erice will to some extent be transmitted by these pages. We are especially grateful to that generous and humane physician and historian of science, Dr. Vincenzo Cappelletti, himself a creative scientist, for his collaboration in bringing this work to completion. We admire his intelligent devotion to fostering creative interaction between scientists and historians of science as Director of the School of History of Science within the great Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture at Erice, as well as for his imaginative leadership of the Istituto della Encic10pedia Italiana."

This is an international and interdisciplinary volume that provides a new look at the general background of the social sciences from a philosophical perspective and provides directions for methodology. It seeks to overcome the limitations of the traditional treatises of a philosophy of science rooted in the physical sciences, as well as extend the coverage of basic science to intentional and socially normative features of the social sciences. The discussions included in this book are divided into four thematic sections: Social and cognitive roots for reflexivity upon the research process Philosophies of explanation in the social sciences Social normativity in social sciences Social processes in particular sciences Social Philosophy of Science for the Social Sciences will find an interested audience in students of the philosophy of science and social sciences. It is also relevant for researchers and students in the fields of psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, education, and political science.

This book ties together the concerns of philosophers of science and AI researchers, showing for example the connections between scientific thinking and medical expert systems. It lays out a useful general framework for discussion of a variety of kinds of abduction. It develops important ideas about aspects of abductive reasoning that have been relatively neglected in cognitive science, including the use of visual and temporal representations and the role of abduction in the withdrawal of hypotheses.

Science and its philosophical companion, Naturalism, represent reality in wholly nonpersonal terms. How, if at all, can a nonpersonal scheme accommodate the first-person perspective that we all enjoy? In this volume, Lynne Rudder Baker explores that question by considering both reductive and eliminative approaches to the first-person perspective. After finding both approaches wanting, she mounts an original constructive argument to show that a nonCartesian first-person perspective belongs in the basic inventory of what exists. That is, the world that contains us persons is irreducibly personal. After arguing for the irreducibilty and ineliminability of the first-person perspective, Baker develops a theory of this perspective. The first-person perspective has two stages, rudimentary and robust. Human infants and nonhuman animals with consciousness and intentionality have rudimentary first-person perspectives. In learning a language, a person acquires a robust first-person perspective: the capacity to conceive of oneself as oneself, in the first person. By developing an account of personal identity, Baker argues that her theory is coherent, and she shows various ways in which first-person perspectives contribute to reality.

This book offers a systematized overview of Ian Hacking's work. It presents Hacking's oeuvre as a network made up of four interconnected key nodes: styles of scientific thinking & doing, probability, making up people, and experimentation and scientific realism. Its central claim is that Michel Foucault's influence is the underlying thread that runs across the Canadian philosopher's oeuvre. Foucault's imprint on Hacking's work is usually mentioned in relation to styles of scientific reasoning and the human sciences. This research shows that Foucault's influence can in fact be extended beyond these fields, insofar the underlying interest to the whole corpus of Hacking's works, namely the analysis of conditions of possibility, is stimulated by the work of the French philosopher. Displacing scientific realism as the central focus of Ian Hacking's oeuvre opens up a very different landscape, showing, behind the apparent dispersion of his works, the far-reaching interest that amalgamates them: to reveal the historical and situated conditions of possibility for the emergence of scientific objects and concepts. This book shows how Hacking's deployment concepts such as looping effect, making up people, and interactive kinds, can complement Foucauldian analyses, offering an overarching perspective that can provide a better explanation of the objects of the human sciences and their behaviors.

This is a new volume of original essays on the metaphysics of quantum mechanics. The essays address questions such as: What fundamental metaphysics is best motivated by quantum mechanics? What is the ontological status of the wave function? Does quantum mechanics support the existence of any other fundamental entities, e.g. particles? What is the nature of the fundamental space (or space-time manifold) of quantum mechanics? What is the relationship between the fundamental ontology of quantum mechanics and ordinary, macroscopic objects like tables, chairs, and persons? The volume includes a comprehensive introduction with a history of quantum mechanics and the debate over its metaphysical interpretation focusing especially on the main realist alternatives.

A History of Mathematics: From Mesopotamia to Modernity covers the evolution of mathematics through time and across the major Eastern and Western civilizations. It begins in Babylon, then describes the trials and tribulations of the Greek mathematicians. The important, and often neglected, influence of both Chinese and Islamic mathematics is covered in detail, placing the description of early Western mathematics in a global context. The book concludes with modern mathematics, covering recent developments such as the advent of the computer, chaos theory, topology, mathematical physics, and the solution of Fermat's Last Theorem. Containing more than 100 illustrations and figures, this text, aimed at advanced undergraduates and postgraduates, addresses the methods and challenges associated with studying the history of mathematics. The reader is introduced to the leading figures in the history of mathematics (including Archimedes, Ptolemy, Qin Jiushao, al-Kashi, al-Khwarizmi, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Helmholtz, Hilbert, Alan Turing, and Andrew Wiles) and their fields. An extensive bibliography with cross-references to key texts will provide invaluable resource to students and exercises (with solutions) will stretch the more advanced reader.