Rational Changes in Science
Rational Changes in Science

Author: Joseph C. Pitt

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 9400937792

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THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY Fashion is a fickle mistress. Only yesterday scientific rationality enjoyed considerable attention, consideration, and even reverence among phi losophers; "but today's fashion leads us to despise it, and the matron, rejected and abandoned as Hecuba, complains; modo maxima rerum, tot generis natisque potens - nunc trahor exui, inops", to cite Kant for our purpose, who cited Ovid for his. Like every fashion, ours also has its paradoxical aspects, as John Watkins correctly reminds in an essay in this volume. Enthusiasm for science was high among philosophers when significant scientific results were mostly a promise, it declined when that promise became an undeniable reality. Nevertheless, as with the decline of any fashion, even the revolt against scientific rationality has some reasonable grounds. If the taste of the philosophical community has changed so much, it is not due to an incident or a whim. This volume is not about the history of and reasons for this change. Instead, it provides a view of the new emerging image of scientific rationality in both its philosophical and historical aspects. In particular, the aim of the contributions gathered here is to focus on the concept around which the discussions about rationality have mostly taken place: scientific change.

Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science
Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science

Author: Stefano Gattei

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-10-16

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 1134182953

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Rectifying misrepresentations of Popperian thought with a historical approach to Popper’s philosophy, Gattei reconstructs the logic of Popper’s development to show how one problem and its tentative solution led to a new problem.

Rational Fog
Rational Fog

Author: M. Susan Lindee

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2020-09-15

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0674919181

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A thought-provoking examination of the intersections of knowledge and violence, and the quandaries and costs of modern, technoscientific warfare. Science and violence converge in modern warfare. While the finest minds of the twentieth century have improved human life, they have also produced human injury. They engineered radar, developed electronic computers, and helped mass produce penicillin all in the context of military mobilization. Scientists also developed chemical weapons, atomic bombs, and psychological warfare strategies. Rational Fog explores the quandary of scientific and technological productivity in an era of perpetual war. Science is, at its foundation, an international endeavor oriented toward advancing human welfare. At the same time, it has been nationalistic and militaristic in times of crisis and conflict. As our weapons have become more powerful, scientists have struggled to reconcile these tensions, engaging in heated debates over the problems inherent in exploiting science for military purposes. M. Susan Lindee examines this interplay between science and state violence and takes stock of researchers’ efforts to respond. Many scientists who wanted to distance their work from killing have found it difficult and have succumbed to the exigencies of war. Indeed, Lindee notes that scientists who otherwise oppose violence have sometimes been swept up in the spirit of militarism when war breaks out. From the first uses of the gun to the mass production of DDT and the twenty-first-century battlefield of the mind, the science of war has achieved remarkable things at great human cost. Rational Fog reminds us that, for scientists and for us all, moral costs sometimes mount alongside technological and scientific advances.

The Myth of the Framework
The Myth of the Framework

Author: Karl Popper

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-23

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 113597473X

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In a career spanning sixty years, Sir Karl Popper has made some of the most important contributions to the twentieth century discussion of science and rationality. The Myth of the Framework is a new collection of some of Popper's most important material on this subject. Sir Karl discusses such issues as the aims of science, the role that it plays in our civilization, the moral responsibility of the scientist, the structure of history, and the perennial choice between reason and revolution. In doing so, he attacks intellectual fashions (like positivism) that exagerrate what science and rationality have done, as well as intellectual fashions (like relativism) that denigrate what science and rationality can do. Scientific knowledge, according to Popper, is one of the most rational and creative of human achievements, but it is also inherently fallible and subject to revision. In place of intellectual fashions, Popper offers his own critical rationalism - a view that he regards both as a theory of knowlege and as an attitude towards human life, human morals and democracy. Published in cooperation with the Central European University.

Evilicious
Evilicious

Author: Marc D. Hauser

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2013-10

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9781484015438

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It is a fact that humans destroy the lives of other humans — strangers, friends, lovers, and kin — and have been doing so for a long time. These cases are unsurprising and easily explained: We harm others when it benefits us directly, fighting to win resources or wipe out the competition. In this sense we are no different from any other social animal. The mystery is why seemingly normal people torture, mutilate, and kill others for the fun of it — or for no apparent benefit at all. Why did we, alone among the social animals, develop an appetite for gratuitous cruelty? This is the core problem of evil. It is a problem that has engaged scholars for centuries and is the central topic of this book. Drawing on the latest scientific discoveries, Hauser provides a novel and elegant explanation for why some individuals engage in evil and why we uniquely evolved this capacity: Evildoers emerge when unsatisfied desires combine with the denial of reality, enabling individuals to engage in gratuitous cruelty toward innocent victims. This simple recipe is part of human nature, and part of our brain's uniquely evolved capacity to combine different thoughts and emotions. The implications of Hauser's theory of evil are unsettling: due to individual differences that begin with our biology, and can be enhanced by certain environments, seemingly normal people are capable of causing horrific harms, feeling rewarded and justified or nothing at all.PRAISE for "Evilicious"Noam Chomsky "an entertaining and compassionate essay.."Robert Trivers "Highly ambitious, relentless in its logic"Nicholas Wade "“What Steven Pinker has done for violence, Marc Hauser has achieved with evil - this book brings the light of science to illumine the heart of darkness.”Michael Shermer "Every Congressman, Senator, and journalist voting or writing on what to do about violence should read this book first."

The Evolution of God
The Evolution of God

Author: Robert Wright

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2009-06-08

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 0316053279

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In this sweeping narrative that takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains why spirituality has a role today, and why science, contrary to conventional wisdom, affirms the validity of the religious quest. And this previously unrecognized evolutionary logic points not toward continued religious extremism, but future harmony. Nearly a decade in the making, The Evolution of God is a breathtaking re-examination of the past, and a visionary look forward.

The Rationality of Science
The Rationality of Science

Author: W.H. Newton-Smith

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-02-07

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 1134930968

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A clear, original and systematic introduction to philosophy of science which examines the theories of Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend before proposing a new, temperate rationalist perspective.

The Limits of Rationality
The Limits of Rationality

Author: Karen Schweers Cook

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-10-03

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 0226742415

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Prevailing economic theory presumes that agents act rationally when they make decisions, striving to maximize the efficient use of their resources. Psychology has repeatedly challenged the rational choice paradigm with persuasive evidence that people do not always make the optimal choice. Yet the paradigm has proven so successful a predictor that its use continues to flourish, fueled by debate across the social sciences over why it works so well. Intended to introduce novices to rational choice theory, this accessible, interdisciplinary book collects writings by leading researchers. The Limits of Rationality illuminates the rational choice paradigm of social and political behavior itself, identifies its limitations, clarifies the nature of current controversies, and offers suggestions for improving current models. In the first section of the book, contributors consider the theoretical foundations of rational choice. Models of rational choice play an important role in providing a standard of human action and the bases for constitutional design, but do they also succeed as explanatory models of behavior? Do empirical failures of these explanatory models constitute a telling condemnation of rational choice theory or do they open new avenues of investigation and theorizing? Emphasizing analyses of norms and institutions, the second and third sections of the book investigate areas in which rational choice theory might be extended in order to provide better models. The contributors evaluate the adequacy of analyses based on neoclassical economics, the potential contributions of game theory and cognitive science, and the consequences for the basic framework when unequal bargaining power and hierarchy are introduced.