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JOHANN GOTSCHL Over the last decades, social philosophers,
economists. sociologists, utility and game theorists, biologists,
mathematicians, moral philosophers and philosophers have created
totally new concepts and methods of understanding the function and
role of humans in their modern societies. The years between 1953
and 1990 brought drastic changes in the scientific foundations and
dynamic of today's society. A burst of entirely new, revolutionary
ideas, similar to those which heralded the beginning of the
twentieth century in physics, dominates the picture. This book also
discusses the ongoing refutation of old concepts in the social
sciences. Some of them are: the traditional concepts ofrationality,
for example, based on maximization of interests, the linearity of
axiomatic methods, methodological individualism, and the concept of
a static society. Today the revolutionary change from a static view
of our society to an evolutionary one reverberates through all
social sciences and will dominate the twenty-first century. In an
uncertain and risky world where cooperation and teamwork is getting
more and more important, one cannot any longer call the
maximization of one's own expectations of utility or interests
"rational" .
Erwin Schroedinger is one of the greatest figures of theoretical
physics, but there is another side to the man: not only did his
work revolutionize physics, it also radiacally changed the
foundations of our modern worldview, modern biology, philosophy of
science, philosophy of the mind, and epistemology. This book
explores the lesser-known aspects of Schroedinger's thought,
revealing the physicist as a philosopher and polymath whose highly
original ideas anticipated the current merging of the natural and
the social sciences and the humanities. Thirteen renowned
scientists and philosophers have contributed to the volume. Part I
reveals the philosophical importance of Schroedinger's work as a
physicist. Part II examines his theory of life and of the
self-organization of matter. Part III shows how Schroedinger's
ideas have influenced contemporary philosophy of nature and our
modern view of the world, drawing a fascinating picture of the
ongoing synthesis of nature and culture: one of the most
interesting developments of modern thought. The volume also
contains the most comprehensive bibliography of Schroedinger's
scientific work, making it at the same time a book of acute
contemporary relevance and a major work of reference.
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.
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.
Grundlagenfragen wissenschaftlicher Theorien zahlen zu den nicht
leicht beantwortbaren Problemen, bietet doch bereits ihre
Formulierung ein Feld des Disputes, und gelangen erst recht die
Loesungsvorschlage nur selten in den Rang generell akzeptierter
Annahmen. Naturlich gibt es verschiedene Grunde und Grunde
verschiedenen Gewichtes, warum Philosophen und Physiker gemeinsam
versuchen, bestimmte Fragen zu behandeln. Und es ist nur zu
bekannt, dass einige solcher Fragen eher von Physikern und einige
eher von Philosophen gestellt werden, ohne dass man sich auf diesem
Gebiet uber klare Grenzen des wissenschaftlichen Kosmos einig ware.
Aber sicherlich werden einige Probleme von beiden Seiten
aufgeworfen und dies nicht zuletzt und bisweilen in der Hoffnung,
sie auch vereint am ehesten einer Loesung naher bringen zu koennen.
Ob solche Hoffnung rational berechtigt ist, mag hier nicht
untersucht werden. Obiichermassen wird die Meinung akzeptiert, dass
theoretische Probleme selbst auf metatheoretischer Ebene analysiert
werden. Aber seit gewisse Elemente der kanoni- schen Auffassung
empirisch-wissenschaftlicher Theorien in zunehmendem Masse be-
zweifelt werden und entsprechend dem Prinzip 'ab esse ad posse
valet iIIatio' auch be- zweifelt werden 'koennen', fragt es sich,
ob eine Charakterisierung des Verhaltnisses von Theorie und
Metatheorie angemessen ist, die den Objektbereich durch das
Zweisprachen- modell empirisch-theoretischer Begriffe abbildbar
annimmt. Durch dieses Modell - ganz unabhangig von seinen
verschiedenen Ausformungen und Deutungen - sollte ja der seman-
tische Bezug des Geltungsanspruches erfahrungswissenschaftlicher
Theorien gesichert und transparent gemacht werden, der fur die
erklarten Hauptziele der Theorienbildun- namlich Voraussage und
Erklarung von Ereignissen - bedeutsam ist.
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