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A collection of six terrifying tales from the Nicktoons channel,
featuring favourite characters such as SpongeBob Squarepants, the
Rugrats, the Rocket Power gang, and the Wild Thornberrys.
Science is remarkably reliable. It puts people on the moon,
performs laser eye surgery, tells us about ancient civilizations
and species, and predicts the future of our climate. What
underwrites this reliability? This book argues that the standard
answers-the scientific method, rigour, and objectivity-are
insufficient for the job. Here we propose a new model of science
which places its products front and centre. In The Tangle of
Science we show how any reliable piece of science is underpinned by
a vast, diverse, and thick network of other scientific products. In
doing so we bring back into focus areas of science that have been
long neglected, emphasizing how every product, from the screws that
hold the space shuttle together, to ways of measuring the consumer
price index, to Einstein's theory of general relativity, work
together to support results we can trust.
What is science and what can it do? Nancy Cartwright here takes
issue with three common images of science: that it amounts to the
combination of theory and experiment; that all science is basically
reducible to physics; and that science and the natural world which
it pictures are deterministic. The author's innovative and
thoughtful book draws on examples from the physical, life, and
social sciences alike, and focuses on all the products of science -
not just experiments or theories - and how they work together. She
reveals just what it is that makes science ultimately reliable, and
how this reliability is nevertheless still compatible with a view
of nature as more responsive to human change than we might think.
Her book is a call for greater intellectual humility by and within
scientific institutions. It will have strong appeal to anyone who
thinks about science and how it is practised in society.
This book presents a radical new picture of natural order. The
Newtonian idea of a cosmos ruled by universal and exceptionless
laws has been superseded; replaced by a conception of nature as a
realm of diverse powers, potencies, and dispositions, a 'dappled
world'. There is order in nature, but it is more local, diverse,
piecemeal, open, and emergent than Newton imagined. In each chapter
expert authors expound the historical context of the idea of laws
of nature, and explore the diverse sorts of order actually
presupposed by work in physics, biology, and the social sciences.
They consider how human freedom might be understood, and explore
how Newton's idea of a 'universal designer' might be revised, in
this new context. They argue that there is not one unified
totalizing program of science, aiming at the completion of one
closed causal system. We live in an ordered universe, but we need
to rethink the classical idea of the 'laws of nature' in a more
dynamic and creatively diverse way.
This book presents a radical new picture of natural order. The
Newtonian idea of a cosmos ruled by universal and exceptionless
laws has been superseded; replaced by a conception of nature as a
realm of diverse powers, potencies, and dispositions, a 'dappled
world'. There is order in nature, but it is more local, diverse,
piecemeal, open, and emergent than Newton imagined. In each chapter
expert authors expound the historical context of the idea of laws
of nature, and explore the diverse sorts of order actually
presupposed by work in physics, biology, and the social sciences.
They consider how human freedom might be understood, and explore
how Newton's idea of a 'universal designer' might be revised, in
this new context. They argue that there is not one unified
totalizing program of science, aiming at the completion of one
closed causal system. We live in an ordered universe, but we need
to rethink the classical idea of the 'laws of nature' in a more
dynamic and creatively diverse way.
The official biography of the voice of Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound
and all things Hanna-Barbera. This first book on master voice actor
Daws Butler has been assembled through personal scrapbooks, letters
and intimate interviews with family and co-workers. Foreword by
Daws' most famous student, Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart
Simpson).
How fixed are the happenings in Nature and how are they fixed?
These lectures address what our scientific successes at predicting
and manipulating the world around us suggest in answer. One-very
orthodox-account teaches that the sciences offer general truths
that we combine with local facts to derive our expectations about
what will happen, either naturally or when we build a device to
design, be it a laser, a washing machine, an anti-malarial bed net,
or an auction for the airwaves. In these three 2017 Carus Lectures
Nancy Cartwright offers a different picture, one in which neither
we, nor Nature, have such nice rules to go by. Getting real
predictions about real happenings is an engineering enterprise that
makes clever use of a great variety of different kinds of
knowledge, with few real derivations in sight anywhere. It takes
artful modeling. Orthodoxy would have it that how we do it is not
reflective of how Nature does it. It is, rather, a consequence of
human epistemic limitations. That, Cartwright argues, is to put our
reasoning just back to front. We should read our image of what
Nature is like from the way our sciences work when they work best
in getting us around in it, non plump for a pre-set image of how
Nature must work to derive what an ideal science, freed of human
failings, would be like. Putting the order of inference right way
around implies that like us, Nature too is an artful modeler.
Lecture 1 is an exercise in description. It is a study of the
practices of science when the sciences intersect with the world
and, then, of what that world is most likely like given the
successes of these practices. Millikan's famous oil drop
experiment, and the range of knowledge pieced together to make it
work, are used to illustrate that events in the world do not occur
in patterns that can be properly described in so-called "laws of
nature." Nevertheless, they yield to artful modeling. Without a
huge leap of faith, that, it seems, is the most we can assume about
the happenings in Nature. Lecture 2 is an exercise in metaphysics.
How could the arrangements of happenings come to be that way? In
answer, Cartwright urges an ontology in which powers act together
in different ways depending on the arrangements they find
themselves in to produce what happens. It is a metaphysics in which
possibilia are real because powers and arrangement are
permissive-they constrain but often do not dictate outcomes (as we
see in contemporary quantum theory). Lecture 3, based on
Cartwright's work on evidence-based policy and randomized
controlled trials, is an exercise in the philosophy of social
technology: How we can put our knowledge of powers and our skills
at artful modeling to work to build more decent societies and how
we can use our knowledge and skills to evaluate when our attempts
are working. The lectures are important because: They offer an
original view on the age-old question of scientific realism in
which our knowledge is genuine, yet our scientific principles are
neither true nor false but are, rather, templates for building good
models. Powers are center-stage in metaphysics right now.
Back-reading them from the successes of scientific practice, as
Lecture 2 does, provides a new perspective on what they are and how
they function. There is a loud call nowadays to make philosophy
relevant to "real life." That's just what happens in Lecture 3,
where Cartwright applies the lesson of Lectures 1 and 2 to argue
for a serious rethink of the way that we are urged-and in some
places mandated-to use evidence to predict the outcomes of our
social policies.
This is a much-needed new introduction to a field that has been
transformed in recent years by exciting new subjects, ideas, and
methods. It is designed both for students with central interests in
philosophy and those planning to concentrate on the social
sciences, and it presupposes no particular background in either
domain. From the wide range of topics at the forefront of debate in
philosophy of social science, the editors have chosen those which
are representative of the most important and interesting
contemporary work. A team of distinguished experts explore key
aspects of the field such as social ontology (what are the things
that social science studies?), objectivity, formal methods,
measurement, and causal inference. Also included are chapters
focused on notable subjects of social science research, such as
well-being and climate change. Philosophy of Social Science
provides a clear, accessible, and up-to-date guide to this
fascinating field.
Roger Penrose's views on the large-scale physics of the Universe, the small-scale world of quantum physics and the physics of the mind are controversial and widely discussed. This book is a fascinating and accessible summary of Roger Penrose's current thinking on those areas of physics in which he feels there are major unresolved problems. It is also a stimulating introduction to the radically new concepts that he believes will be fruitful in understanding the workings of the brain and the nature of the human mind.
Causal Inferences in Capital Markets Research is an attempt to
promote a broad interdisciplinary debate about the notion of
causality and the role of causal inference in the social sciences.
At the risk of oversimplifying, the issue of causality divides the
accounting research community in two polar views: the view that
causality is an unattainable ideal for the social sciences and must
be given up as a standard, and the view that, on one hand,
causality should be the ultimate goal of all scientific endeavors
and, on the other hand, theory and causal inference are
inextricable. Reflecting and discussing these views was the main
motivation for this volume. This volume contains eight articles on
three topics: I) Econometrics; III) Accounting, and III) Finance.
First, Nancy Cartwright addresses the problem of external validity
and the reliability of scientific claims that generalize individual
cases. Then, John Rust discusses the role of assumptions in
empirical research and the possibility of assumption-free
inference. Peter Reiss considers the question how sensitive are
instrumental variables to functional form transformations. Finally,
Charles Manski studies the logical issues that affect the
interpretation of point predictions. Second, Jeremy Bertomeu, Anne
Beyer and Daniel Taylor provide a critical overview of empirical
accounting research focusing on the benefits of theory-based
estimation, while Qi Chen and Katherine Schipper consider the
question whether all research should be causal and assess the
existing gap between theory and empirical research in accounting.
Third, R. Jay Kahn and Toni Whited clarifies and contrasts the
notions of identification and causality, whereas Ivo Welch adopts a
sociology of science approach to understand the consequences of the
researchers' race for discovering novel and surprising results.
This volume allows researchers and Ph.D students in accounting, and
the social sciences in general, to acquire a deeper understanding
of the notion of causality and the nature, limits, and scope of
empirical research in the social sciences.
An international team of four authors, led by distinguished
philosopher of science, Nancy Cartwright, and leading scholar of
the Vienna Circle, Thomas E. Uebel, have produced this lucid and
elegant study of a much-neglected figure. The book, which depicts
Neurath's science in the political, economic and intellectual
milieu in which it was practised, is divided into three sections:
Neurath's biographical background and the socio-political context
of his economic ideas; the development of his theory of science;
and his legacy as illustrated by his contemporaneous involvement in
academic and political debates. Coinciding with the renewal of
interest in logical positivism, this is a timely publication which
will redress a current imbalance in the history and philosophy of
science, as well as making a major contribution to our
understanding of the intellectual life of Austro-Germany in the
inter-war years.
Hunting Causes and Using Them argues that causation is not one
thing, as commonly assumed, but many. There is a huge variety of
causal relations, each with different characterizing features,
different methods for discovery and different uses to which it can
be put. In this collection of new and previously published essays,
Nancy Cartwright provides a critical survey of philosophical and
economic literature on causality, with a special focus on the
currently fashionable Bayes-nets and invariance methods ??? and it
exposes a huge gap in that literature. Almost every account treats
either exclusively how to hunt causes or how to use them. But where
is the bridge between? It??'s no good knowing how to warrant a
causal claim if we don???t know what we can do with that claim once
we have it. This book will interest philosophers, economists and
social scientists.
An international team of four authors, led by distinguished
philosopher of science, Nancy Cartwright, and leading scholar of
the Vienna Circle, Thomas E. Uebel, have produced this lucid and
elegant study of a much-neglected figure. The book, which depicts
Neurath's science in the political, economic and intellectual
milieu in which it was practised, is divided into three sections:
Neurath's biographical background and the socio-political context
of his economic ideas; the development of his theory of science;
and his legacy as illustrated by his contemporaneous involvement in
academic and political debates. Coinciding with the renewal of
interest in logical positivism, this is a timely publication which
will redress a current imbalance in the history and philosophy of
science, as well as making a major contribution to our
understanding of the intellectual life of Austro-Germany in the
inter-war years.
`...an interesting and original contribution to the realist argument' The Times Higher Education Supplement.
Hunting Causes and Using Them argues that causation is not one
thing, as commonly assumed, but many. There is a huge variety of
causal relations, each with different characterizing features,
different methods for discovery and different uses to which it can
be put. In this collection of new and previously published essays,
Nancy Cartwright provides a critical survey of philosophical and
economic literature on causality, with a special focus on the
currently fashionable Bayes-nets and invariance methods ??? and it
exposes a huge gap in that literature. Almost every account treats
either exclusively how to hunt causes or how to use them. But where
is the bridge between? It??'s no good knowing how to warrant a
causal claim if we don???t know what we can do with that claim once
we have it. This book will interest philosophers, economists and
social scientists.
In this book Nancy Cartwright argues against a vision of a uniform world completely ordered under a single elegant theory, and proposes instead a patchwork of laws of nature. Combining classic and newly written essays, The Dappled World offers important methodological lessons for both the natural and the social sciences, and will interest anyone who wants to understand how modern science works.
In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, Nancy Cartwright argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe the regularities that exist in nature.
It is often supposed that the spectacular successes of our modern
mathematical sciences support a lofty vision of a world completely
ordered by one single elegant theory. In this book Nancy Cartwright
argues to the contrary. When we draw our image of the world from
the way modern science works - as empiricism teaches us we should -
we end up with a world where some features are precisely ordered,
others are given to rough regularity and still others behave in
their own diverse ways. This patchwork makes sense when we realise
that laws are very special productions of nature, requiring very
special arrangements for their generation. Combining classic and
newly written essays on physics and economics, The Dappled World
carries important philosophical consequences and offers serious
lessons for both the natural and the social sciences.
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