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Author : Ronald N. Giere
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1999-06
Category : Science
ISBN : 0226292088
"Science without Laws thus stakes out a middle ground in these debates by demonstrating a more powerful way of seeing science."--BOOK JACKET.
Author : Angela N. H. Creager,Elizabeth Lunbeck,M. Norton Wise
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2007-09-03
Category : Science
ISBN : 0822340682
A comparison of the use of model systems and exemplary cases across fields in the natural and social sciences.
Author : Hakob Barseghyan
Publisher : Springer
Page : 275 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2015-08-17
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783319175966
This book systematically creates a general descriptive theory of scientific change that explains the mechanics of changes in both scientific theories and the methods of their assessment. It was once believed that, while scientific theories change through time, their change itself is governed by a fixed method of science. Nowadays we know that there is no such thing as an unchangeable method of science; the criteria employed by scientists in theory evaluation also change through time. But if that is so, how and why do theories and methods change? Are there any general laws that govern this process, or is the choice of theories and methods completely arbitrary and random? Contrary to the widespread opinion, the book argues that scientific change is indeed a law-governed process and that there can be a general descriptive theory of scientific change. It does so by first presenting meta-theoretical issues, divided into chapters on the scope, possibility and assessment of theory of scientific change. It then builds a theory about the general laws that govern the process of scientific change, and goes into detail about the axioms and theorems of the theory.
Author : Marc Lange
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2009-07-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199745036
What distinguishes laws of nature from ordinary facts? What are the "lawmakers": the facts in virtue of which the laws are laws? How can laws be necessary, yet contingent? Lange provocatively argues that laws are distinguished by their necessity, which is grounded in primitive subjunctive facts, while also providing a non-technical and accessible survey of the field.
Author : Angela N. H. Creager,Elizabeth Lunbeck,M. Norton Wise
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 297 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2007-09-03
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780822390244
Physicists regularly invoke universal laws, such as those of motion and electromagnetism, to explain events. Biological and medical scientists have no such laws. How then do they acquire a reliable body of knowledge about biological organisms and human disease? One way is by repeatedly returning to, manipulating, observing, interpreting, and reinterpreting certain subjects—such as flies, mice, worms, or microbes—or, as they are known in biology, “model systems.” Across the natural and social sciences, other disciplinary fields have developed canonical examples that have played a role comparable to that of biology’s model systems, serving not only as points of reference and illustrations of general principles or values but also as sites of continued investigation and reinterpretation. The essays in this collection assess the scope and function of model objects in domains as diverse as biology, geology, and history, attending to differences between fields as well as to epistemological commonalities. Contributors examine the role of the fruit fly Drosophila and nematode worms in biology, troops of baboons in primatology, box and digital simulations of the movement of the earth’s crust in geology, and meteorological models in climatology. They analyze the intensive study of the prisoner’s dilemma in game theory, ritual in anthropology, the individual case in psychoanalytic research, and Athenian democracy in political theory. The contributors illuminate the processes through which particular organisms, cases, materials, or narratives become foundational to their fields, and they examine how these foundational exemplars—from the fruit fly to Freud’s Dora—shape the knowledge produced within their disciplines. Contributors Rachel A. Ankeny Angela N. H. Creager Amy Dahan Dalmedico John Forrester Clifford Geertz Carlo Ginzburg E. Jane Albert Hubbard Elizabeth Lunbeck Mary S. Morgan Josiah Ober Naomi Oreskes Susan Sperling Marcel Weber M. Norton Wise
Author : Ronald N. Giere
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 171 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2010-05-05
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226292144
Many people assume that the claims of scientists are objective truths. But historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science have long argued that scientific claims reflect the particular historical, cultural, and social context in which those claims were made. The nature of scientific knowledge is not absolute because it is influenced by the practice and perspective of human agents. Scientific Perspectivism argues that the acts of observing and theorizing are both perspectival, and this nature makes scientific knowledge contingent, as Thomas Kuhn theorized forty years ago. Using the example of color vision in humans to illustrate how his theory of “perspectivism” works, Ronald N. Giere argues that colors do not actually exist in objects; rather, color is the result of an interaction between aspects of the world and the human visual system. Giere extends this argument into a general interpretation of human perception and, more controversially, to scientific observation, conjecturing that the output of scientific instruments is perspectival. Furthermore, complex scientific principles—such as Maxwell’s equations describing the behavior of both the electric and magnetic fields—make no claims about the world, but models based on those principles can be used to make claims about specific aspects of the world. Offering a solution to the most contentious debate in the philosophy of science over the past thirty years, Scientific Perspectivism will be of interest to anyone involved in the study of science.
Author : Bas C. van Fraassen
Publisher : Clarendon Press
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 1989-11-02
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780191519994
Metaphysicians speak of laws of nature in terms of necessity and universality; scientists do so in terms of symmetry and invariance. This book argues that no metaphysical account of laws can succeed. The author analyses and rejects the arguments that there are laws of nature, or that we must believe that there are. He argues that we should discard the idea of law as an inadequate clue to science. After exploring what this means for general epistemology, the book develops the empiricist view of science as a construction of models to represent the phenomena. Concepts of symmetry, transformation, and invariance illuminate the structure of such models. A central role is played in science by symmetry arguments, and it is shown how these function also in the philosophical analysis of probability. The advocated approach presupposes no realism about laws or necessities in nature.
Author : Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 96 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2015-10-13
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9781476784854
Essential, required reading for doctors and patients alike: A Pulitzer Prize-winning author and one of the world’s premiere cancer researchers reveals an urgent philosophy on the little-known principles that govern medicine—and how understanding these principles can empower us all. Over a decade ago, when Siddhartha Mukherjee was a young, exhausted, and isolated medical resident, he discovered a book that would forever change the way he understood the medical profession. The book, The Youngest Science, forced Dr. Mukherjee to ask himself an urgent, fundamental question: Is medicine a “science”? Sciences must have laws—statements of truth based on repeated experiments that describe some universal attribute of nature. But does medicine have laws like other sciences? Dr. Mukherjee has spent his career pondering this question—a question that would ultimately produce some of most serious thinking he would do around the tenets of his discipline—culminating in The Laws of Medicine. In this important treatise, he investigates the most perplexing and illuminating cases of his career that ultimately led him to identify the three key principles that govern medicine. Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders, this important book is a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and Eureka! moments that people outside of the medical profession rarely see. Written with Dr. Mukherjee’s signature eloquence and passionate prose, The Laws of Medicine is a critical read, not just for those in the medical profession, but for everyone who is moved to better understand how their health and well-being is being treated. Ultimately, this book lays the groundwork for a new way of understanding medicine, now and into the future.
Author : Peter Atkins
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 142 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2007-09-06
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780191647635
The laws of thermodynamics drive everything that happens in the universe. From the sudden expansion of a cloud of gas to the cooling of hot metal, and from the unfurling of a leaf to the course of life itself - everything is directed and constrained by four simple laws. They establish fundamental concepts such as temperature and heat, and reveal the arrow of time and even the nature of energy itself. Peter Atkins' powerful and compelling introduction explains what the laws are and how they work, using accessible language and virtually no mathematics. Guiding the reader from the Zeroth Law to the Third Law, he introduces the fascinating concept of entropy, and how it not only explains why your desk tends to get messier, but also how its unstoppable rise constitutes the engine of the universe.
Author : Friedel Weinert
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2011-05-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783110869859
Author : Łukasz Hardt
Publisher : Springer
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2017-09-22
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9783319548616
This book offers a vision of economics in which there is no place for universal laws of nature, and even for laws of a more probabilistic character. The author avoids interpreting the practice of economics as something that leads to the formulation of universal laws or laws of nature. Instead, chapters in the book follow the method of contemporary philosophy of science: rather than formulating suggestions for practicing scientists of how they should do research, the text describes and interprets the very practice of scientific research. This approach demonstrates how economists can explain economic phenomena not by subsuming them under general laws, but rather by building models of these phenomena, by referring to causes, or even by investigating what is in the nature of given factors, events, or circumstances to produce.
Author : Nancy Cartwright
Publisher : Open Court Publishing
Page : 177 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2019-05-07
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780812694727
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.
Author : Alan Levinovitz
Publisher : Beacon Press
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2020-04-07
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780807010884
Illuminates the far-reaching harms of believing that natural means “good,” from misinformation about health choices to justifications for sexism, racism, and flawed economic policies. People love what’s natural: it’s the best way to eat, the best way to parent, even the best way to act—naturally, just as nature intended. Appeals to the wisdom of nature are among the most powerful arguments in the history of human thought. Yet Nature (with a capital N) and natural goodness are not objective or scientific. In this groundbreaking book, scholar of religion Alan Levinovitz demonstrates that these beliefs are actually religious and highlights the many dangers of substituting simple myths for complicated realities. It may not seem like a problem when it comes to paying a premium for organic food. But what about condemnations of “unnatural” sexual activity? The guilt that attends not having a “natural” birth? Economic deregulation justified by the inherent goodness of “natural” markets? In Natural, readers embark on an epic journey, from Peruvian rainforests to the backcountry in Yellowstone Park, from a “natural” bodybuilding competition to a “natural” cancer-curing clinic. The result is an essential new perspective that shatters faith in Nature’s goodness and points to a better alternative. We can love nature without worshipping it, and we can work toward a better world with humility and dialogue rather than taboos and zealotry.
Author : Albert-László Barabási
Publisher : Little, Brown
Page : 237 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2018-11-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780316505475
In the bestselling tradition of Malcom Gladwell, James Gleick, and Nate Silver, prominent professor László Barabási gives us a trailblazing book that promises to transform the very foundations of how our success-obsessed society approaches their professional careers, life pursuits and long-term goals. Too often, accomplishment does not equal success. We did the work but didn't get the promotion; we played hard but weren't recognized; we had the idea but didn't get the credit. We convince ourselves that talent combined with a strong work ethic is the key to getting ahead, but also realize that combination often fails to yield results, without any deeper understanding as to why. Recognizing this striking disconnect, the author, along with a team of renowned researchers and some of the most advanced data-crunching systems on the planet, dedicated themselves to one goal: uncovering that ever-elusive link between performance and success. Now, based on years of academic research, The Formula finally unveils the groundbreaking discoveries of their pioneering study, not only highlighting the scientific and mathematic principles that underpin success, but also revolutionizing our understanding of: Why performance is necessary but not adequate Why "Experts" are often wrong How to assemble a creative team primed for success How to most effectively engage our networks "This is not just an important but an imperative project: to approach the problem of randomness and success using the state of the art scientific arsenal we have. Barabasi is the person."-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the New York Times bestselling The Black Swan and Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at NYU
Author : Nancy Cartwright
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 1983-06-09
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780191519901
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. Yet she is not `anti-realist'. Rather, she draws a novel distinction, arguing that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but that the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.