Read and Download eBook Full
Author: Henk W. de Regt
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2011-10-15
Total Pages: 451
ISBN-13: 9400724047
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis is a collection of high-quality research papers in the philosophy of science, deriving from papers presented at the second meeting of the European Philosophy of Science Association in Amsterdam, October 2009.
Author: Henk W. de Regt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2017-07-24
Total Pages: 256
ISBN-13: 0190652926
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIt is widely acknowledged that a central aim of science is to achieve understanding of the world around us, and that possessing such understanding is highly important in our present-day society. But what does it mean to achieve this understanding? What precisely is scientific understanding? These are philosophical questions that have not yet received satisfactory answers. While there has been an ongoing debate about the nature of scientific explanation since Carl Hempel advanced his covering-law model in 1948, the related notion of understanding has been largely neglected, because most philosophers regarded understanding as merely a subjective by-product of objective explanations. By contrast, this book puts scientific understanding center stage. It is primarily a philosophical study, but also contains detailed historical case studies of scientific practice. In contrast to most existing studies in this area, it takes into account scientists' views and analyzes their role in scientific debate and development. The aim of Understanding Scientific Understanding is to develop and defend a philosophical theory of scientific understanding that can describe and explain the historical variation of criteria for understanding actually employed by scientists. The theory does justice to the insights of such famous physicists as Werner Heisenberg and Richard Feynman, while bringing much-needed conceptual rigor to their intuitions. The scope of the proposed account of understanding is the natural sciences: while the detailed case studies derive from physics, examples from other sciences are presented to illustrate its wider validity.
Author: Steven French
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2020-02-20
Total Pages: 283
ISBN-13: 0198848153
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThere Are No Such Things as Theories considers the fundamental question: what is a scientific theory? It presents a range of options - from theories are sets of propositions, to theories are families of models, abstract artefacts, or fictions - and highlights the various problems they all face. In so doing it draws multiple comparisons between theories and artworks: on the one hand, theories are like certain kinds of paintings with regard to their representational capacity; on the other, they are like musical works in that they can be multiply presented. An alternative answer to the question is then offered, drawing on the metaphysics of musical works: there are no such things as theories. Nevertheless, we can still talk about them, since that talk is made true by the various practices that scientists engage in. The implications of this form of eliminativism for the realism debate is then discussed and it is concluded that this may offer a more flexible framework in which we can understand both the history and the philosophy of science in general.
Author: João L. Cordovil
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2024-01-13
Total Pages: 277
ISBN-13: 3031469178
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis open access book addresses the epistemological and ontological significance as well as the scope of new mechanism. In particular, this book addresses the issues of what is "new" about new mechanism, the epistemological and ontological reasons underlying the adoption of mechanistic instead of other modelling strategies as well as the possibility of mechanistic explanation to accommodate a non-trivial notion of emergence. Arguably, new mechanism has been particularly successful in making sense of scientific practice in the molecular life sciences. But what about other sciences? This book enlarges the context of analysis, addressing the issue of the putative compatibility between the current ways of conceiving new mechanism and actual scientific practices in quantum physics, chemistry, biochemistry, developmental biology and the cognitive sciences.
Author: Henrique Jales Ribeiro
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2012-04-25
Total Pages: 420
ISBN-13: 1443839310
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume includes a collection of eighteen essays that provide a decisive input to the study of logic and argumentation theory by some of the finest specialists in these areas, covering the main schools of thought and contemporary trends at the beginning of the 21st century. In these essays, the authors clarify the status of what we currently call, ambiguously and problematically, “logic” and “argumentation theory”, and discuss the no less controversial issue of the relationship between these two concepts when applied to the study of argumentation and its problems. At the same time, they take stock of the most recent developments of argumentation theory considered as an ongoing research subject. It is the first time in the last few decades that a work this comprehensive and up-to-date on such matters has been published. This volume is an essential tool for all of those interested in the study of the relations between logic and argumentation, particularly at the university level. It provides not only an introduction to these subjects, but also the necessary framework for further specialised research development in the future.
Author: Grant Ramsey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016-10-25
Total Pages: 368
ISBN-13: 022640191X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis illuminating volume explores the effects of chance on evolution, covering diverse perspectives from scientists, philosophers, and historians. The evolution of species, from single-celled organisms to multicellular animals and plants, is the result of a long and highly chancy history. But how profoundly has chance shaped life on earth? And what, precisely, do we mean by chance? Bringing together biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of science, Chance in Evolution is the first book to untangle the far-reaching effects of chance, contingency, and randomness on the evolution of life. The book begins by placing chance in historical context, starting with the ancients and moving through Darwin to contemporary biology. It documents the shifts in our understanding of chance as Darwin’s theory of evolution developed into the modern synthesis, and how the acceptance of chance in Darwinian theory affected theological resistance to it. Other chapters discuss how chance relates to the concepts of genetic drift, mutation, and parallel evolution—as well as recent work in paleobiology and the experimental evolution of microbes. By engaging in collaboration across biology, history, philosophy, and theology, this book offers a comprehensive overview both of the history of chance in evolution and of our current understanding of the impact of chance on life.
Author: J. Faye
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2016-10-15
Total Pages: 347
ISBN-13: 1137389834
DOWNLOAD EBOOKScientific thinking must be understood as an activity. The acts of interpretation, representation, and explanation are the cognitive processes by which scientific thinking leads to understanding. The book explores the nature of these processes and describes how scientific thinking can only be grasped from a pragmatic perspective.
Author: Lorenzo Magnani
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2017-05-22
Total Pages: 1179
ISBN-13: 3319305263
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis handbook offers the first comprehensive reference guide to the interdisciplinary field of model-based reasoning. It highlights the role of models as mediators between theory and experimentation, and as educational devices, as well as their relevance in testing hypotheses and explanatory functions. The Springer Handbook merges philosophical, cognitive and epistemological perspectives on models with the more practical needs related to the application of this tool across various disciplines and practices. The result is a unique, reliable source of information that guides readers toward an understanding of different aspects of model-based science, such as the theoretical and cognitive nature of models, as well as their practical and logical aspects. The inferential role of models in hypothetical reasoning, abduction and creativity once they are constructed, adopted, and manipulated for different scientific and technological purposes is also discussed. Written by a group of internationally renowned experts in philosophy, the history of science, general epistemology, mathematics, cognitive and computer science, physics and life sciences, as well as engineering, architecture, and economics, this Handbook uses numerous diagrams, schemes and other visual representations to promote a better understanding of the concepts. This also makes it highly accessible to an audience of scholars and students with different scientific backgrounds. All in all, the Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science represents the definitive application-oriented reference guide to the interdisciplinary field of model-based reasoning.
Author: M. Morganti
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2013-06-11
Total Pages: 367
ISBN-13: 1137002697
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOffering a new perspective on the debate concerning naturalism in philosophy, this book defends the autonomy of metaphysics while also making science centre stage. Three independent case studies provide a clear introduction to, and discussion of, key philosophical issues.
Author: Anjan Chakravartty
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2017-06-30
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 0190651466
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBoth science and philosophy are interested in questions of ontology - questions about what exists and what these things are like. Science and philosophy, however, seem like very different ways of investigating the world, so how should one proceed? Some defer to the sciences, conceived as something apart from philosophy, and others to metaphysics, conceived as something apart from science, for certain kinds of answers. This book contends that these sorts of deference are misconceived. A compelling account of ontology must appreciate the ways in which the sciences incorporate metaphysical assumptions and arguments. At the same time, it must pay careful attention to how observation, experience, and the empirical dimensions of science are related to what may be viewed as defensible philosophical theorizing about ontology. The promise of an effectively naturalized metaphysics is to encourage beliefs that are formed in ways that do justice to scientific theorizing, modeling, and experimentation. But even armed with such a view, there is no one, uniquely rational way to draw lines between domains of ontology that are suitable for belief, and ones in which it would be better to suspend belief instead. In crucial respects, ontology is in the eye of the beholder: it is informed by underlying commitments with implications for the limits of inquiry, which inevitably vary across rational inquirers. As result, the proper scope of ontology is subject to a striking form of voluntary choice, yielding a new and transformative conception of scientific ontology.
