Scientific Understanding

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Scientific Understanding

Author : Henk W. de Regt,Sabina Leonelli,Kai Eigner
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780822971245

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Scientific Understanding by Henk W. de Regt,Sabina Leonelli,Kai Eigner Pdf

To most scientists, and to those interested in the sciences, understanding is the ultimate aim of scientific endeavor. In spite of this, understanding, and how it is achieved, has received little attention in recent philosophy of science. Scientific Understanding seeks to reverse this trend by providing original and in-depth accounts of the concept of understanding and its essential role in the scientific process. To this end, the chapters in this volume explore and develop three key topics: understanding and explanation, understanding and models, and understanding in scientific practice. Earlier philosophers, such as Carl Hempel, dismissed understanding as subjective and pragmatic. They believed that the essence of science was to be found in scientific theories and explanations. In Scientific Understanding, the contributors maintain that we must also consider the relation between explanations and the scientists who construct and use them. They focus on understanding as the cognitive state that is a goal of explanation and on the understanding of theories and models as a means to this end. The chapters in this book highlight the multifaceted nature of the process of scientific research. The contributors examine current uses of theory, models, simulations, and experiments to evaluate the degree to which these elements contribute to understanding. Their analyses pay due attention to the roles of intelligibility, tacit knowledge, and feelings of understanding. Furthermore, they investigate how understanding is obtained within diverse scientific disciplines and examine how the acquisition of understanding depends on specific contexts, the objects of study, and the stated aims of research.

Understanding Scientific Understanding

Author : Henk W. de Regt
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780190652913

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Understanding Scientific Understanding by Henk W. de Regt Pdf

Putting scientific understanding center-stage within the study of scientific explanations, Understanding Scientific Understanding develops and defends a philosophical theory of scientific understanding that can describe and explain the historical variation of criteria for understanding actually employed by scientists. Book jacket.

Understanding, Explanation, and Scientific Knowledge

Author : Kareem Khalifa
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2017-10-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781107195639

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Understanding, Explanation, and Scientific Knowledge by Kareem Khalifa Pdf

The first comprehensive exploration of the nature and value of understanding, addressing burgeoning debates in epistemology and philosophy of science.

Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding

Author : Bernard J. Nebel
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2007-11
Category : Education
ISBN : 1432706101

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Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding by Bernard J. Nebel Pdf

This is The most comprehensive science curriculum for beginning learners that you will find anywhere * Here are 41 lesson plans that cover all major areas of science. * Lessons are laid out as stepping stones that build knowledge and understanding logically and systematically. * Child-centered, hands-on activities at the core of all lessons bring children to observe, think, and reason. * Interest is maintained and learning is solidified by constantly connecting lessons with children's real-world experience * Skills of inquiry become habits of mind as they are used throughout. * Lessons integrate reading, writing, geography, and other subjects. * Standards, including developing a broader, supportive community of science learners come about as natural by-products of learning science in an organized way. Particular background or experience is not required. Instructions include guiding students to question, observe, think, interpret, and draw rational conclusions in addition to performing the activity. Teachers can learn along with their students and be exceptional role models in doing so. Need for special materials is minimized. Personal, on line, support is available free of charge (see front matter).

Is Science Value Free?

Author : Hugh Lacey
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2005-06-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781134619757

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Is Science Value Free? by Hugh Lacey Pdf

Exploring the role of values in scientific inquiry, Hugh Lacey examines the nature and meaning of values, and looks at challenges to the view, posed by postmodernists, feminists, radical ecologists, Third-World advocates and religious fundamentalists, that science is value free. He also focuses on discussions of 'development', especially in Third World countries. This paperback edition includes a new preface.

Predict, Observe, Explain

Author : John Haysom,Michael Bowen
Publisher : NSTA Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Education
ISBN : 9781936137596

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Predict, Observe, Explain by John Haysom,Michael Bowen Pdf

John Haysom and Michael Bowen provide middle and high school science teachers with more than 100 student activities to help the students develop their understanding of scientific concepts. The powerful Predict, Observe, Explain (POE) strategy, field-tested by hundreds of teachers, is designed to foster student inquiry and challenge existing conceptions that students bring to the classroom.

Reproducibility and Replicability in Science

Author : National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,Policy and Global Affairs,Committee on Science, Engineering, Medicine, and Public Policy,Board on Research Data and Information,Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences,Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics,Board on Mathematical Sciences and Analytics,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board,Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education,Committee on National Statistics,Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences,Committee on Reproducibility and Replicability in Science
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2019-10-20
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780309486163

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Reproducibility and Replicability in Science by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,Policy and Global Affairs,Committee on Science, Engineering, Medicine, and Public Policy,Board on Research Data and Information,Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences,Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics,Board on Mathematical Sciences and Analytics,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board,Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education,Committee on National Statistics,Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences,Committee on Reproducibility and Replicability in Science Pdf

One of the pathways by which the scientific community confirms the validity of a new scientific discovery is by repeating the research that produced it. When a scientific effort fails to independently confirm the computations or results of a previous study, some fear that it may be a symptom of a lack of rigor in science, while others argue that such an observed inconsistency can be an important precursor to new discovery. Concerns about reproducibility and replicability have been expressed in both scientific and popular media. As these concerns came to light, Congress requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conduct a study to assess the extent of issues related to reproducibility and replicability and to offer recommendations for improving rigor and transparency in scientific research. Reproducibility and Replicability in Science defines reproducibility and replicability and examines the factors that may lead to non-reproducibility and non-replicability in research. Unlike the typical expectation of reproducibility between two computations, expectations about replicability are more nuanced, and in some cases a lack of replicability can aid the process of scientific discovery. This report provides recommendations to researchers, academic institutions, journals, and funders on steps they can take to improve reproducibility and replicability in science.

Models

Author : Marx W. Wartofsky
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Science
ISBN : 9789400993570

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Models by Marx W. Wartofsky Pdf

Marx Wartofsky has been working for many years within an unusual confluence of philosophical problems. He brings to these intersecting problems his comprehensive intelligence, at once imaginative and rigorous, analytic and historical. He is a philosopher's philosopher, but also Everyman's. Wartofsky is philosopher of the natural and the social sciences, of perception, esthetics and the creative arts, of the 18th century French and the 19th century Germans, of politics and morality, ofthe methods and morals of medicine, and it is plain, of all human existence. To a colleague, he seems Jack-of-all-philosophical-trades, and master of them too. The reader soon will learn that Wartofsky is a genial, lucid and relaxed philosophical companion, deeply serious but without noticeable anxiety. I need not highlight these selected epistemological papers gathered as, and about, Models, since Wartofsky's own introductory remarks are helpful and stimulating in that respect. I need only, after 21 years of friendship and collaboration with him, warn the reader to beware of how profound and provocative these papers will show themselves to be beneath their good-humored and swiftly-flowing surface. And I must publicly note the pleasure with which I welcome Marx Wartofsky's volume to our Boston Studies. Boston University R.S.C. Center for the Philosophy and History of Science September 1979 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL PREFACE VII xi AC K NOWLEDGEMENTS xiii INTRODUCTION The Model Muddle: Proposals for an Immodest Realism 1.

Depth

Author : Michael Strevens
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 537 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2011-09-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780674062573

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Depth by Michael Strevens Pdf

What does it mean for scientists to truly understand, rather than to merely describe, how the world works? Michael Strevens proposes a novel theory of scientific explanation and understanding that overhauls and augments the familiar causal approach to explanation. What is replaced is the test for explanatorily relevant causal information: Strevens discards the usual criterion of counterfactual dependence in favor of a criterion that turns on a process of progressive abstraction away from a fully detailed, physical causal story. The augmentations include the introduction of a new, non-causal explanatory relevance relation—entanglement—and an independent theory of the role of black-boxing and functional specification in explanation. The abstraction-centered notion of difference-making leads to a rich causal treatment of many aspects of explanation that have been either ignored or handled inadequately by earlier causal approaches, including the explanation of laws and other regularities, with particular attention to the explanation of physically contingent high-level laws, idealization in explanation, and probabilistic explanation in deterministic systems, as in statistical physics, evolutionary biology, and medicine. The result is an account of explanation that has especially significant consequences for the higher-level sciences: biology, psychology, economics, and other social sciences.

Scientific Understanding

Author : Anna Elisabeth Höhl
Publisher : transcript Verlag
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2024-04-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783839472620

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Scientific Understanding by Anna Elisabeth Höhl Pdf

Understanding is an ability manifested by grasping relations of a phenomenon and articulating new explanations. Hence, scientific understanding is inextricably intertwined with and not possible without explanation, and understanding is not a type of propositional knowledge. Anna Elisabeth Höhl provides a novel philosophical account of scientific understanding by developing and defending necessary and sufficient conditions for the understanding that scientists achieve of the phenomena they are researching. This account of scientific understanding is based on and supported by a detailed investigation of an episode from scientific practice in biology.

Four Decades of Scientific Explanation

Author : Wesley C. Salmon
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2006-06-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780822973027

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Four Decades of Scientific Explanation by Wesley C. Salmon Pdf

As Aristotle stated, scientific explanation is based on deductive argument--yet, Wesley C. Salmon points out, not all deductive arguments are qualified explanations. The validity of the explanation must itself be examined. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation provides a comprehensive account of the developments in scientific explanation that transpired in the last four decades of the twentieth century. It continues to stand as the most comprehensive treatment of the writings on the subject during these years. Building on the historic 1948 essay by Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, "Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” which introduced the deductive-nomological (D-N) model on which most work on scientific explanation was based for the following four decades, Salmon goes beyond this model's inherent basis of describing empirical knowledge to tells us “not only what, but also why.” Salmon examines the predominant models in chronological order and describes their development, refinement, and criticism or rejection. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation underscores the need for a consensus of approach and ongoing evaluations of methodology in scientific explanation, with the goal of providing a better understanding of natural phenomena.

Understanding Scientific Understanding

Author : Henk W. de Regt
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2017-07-24
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780190652937

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Understanding Scientific Understanding by Henk W. de Regt Pdf

It 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.

Scientific Understanding and Representation

Author : Insa Lawler,Kareem Khalifa,Elay Shech
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 429 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2022-12-13
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781000782035

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Scientific Understanding and Representation by Insa Lawler,Kareem Khalifa,Elay Shech Pdf

This volume assembles cutting-edge scholarship on scientific understanding, scientific representation, and their delicate interplay. Featuring several articles in an engaging ‘critical conversation’ format, the volume integrates discussions about understanding and representation with perennial issues in the philosophy of science, including the nature of scientific knowledge, idealizations, scientific realism, scientific inference, and scientific progress. In the philosophy of science, questions of scientific understanding and scientific representation have only recently been put in dialogue with each other. The chapters advance these discussions from a variety of fresh perspectives. They range from case studies in physics, chemistry, and neuroscience to the representational challenges of machine learning models; from special forms of representation such as maps and topological models to the relation between understanding and explanation; and from the role of idealized representations to the role of representation and understanding in scientific progress. Scientific Understanding and Representation will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, philosophy of mathematics, and epistemology.

Understanding Marijuana

Author : Mitch Earleywine
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2002-08-15
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 019988143X

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Understanding Marijuana by Mitch Earleywine Pdf

Marijuana is the world's most popular illicit drug, with hundreds of millions of regular users worldwide. One in three Americans has smoked pot at least once. The Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that Americans smoke five million pounds of marijuana each year. And yet marijuana remains largely misunderstood by both its advocates and its detractors. To some, marijuana is an insidious "stepping-stone" drug, enticing the inexperienced and paving the way to the inevitable abuse of harder drugs. To others, medical marijuana is an organic means of easing the discomfort or stimulating the appetite of the gravely ill. Others still view marijuana, like alcohol, as a largely harmless indulgence, dangerous only when used immoderately. All sides of the debate have appropriated the scientific evidence on marijuana to satisfy their claims. What then are we to make of these conflicting portrayals of a drug with historical origins dating back to 8,000 B.C.? Understanding Marijuana examines the biological, psychological, and societal impact of this controversial substance. What are the effects, for mind and body, of long-term use? Are smokers of marijuana more likely than non-users to abuse cocaine and heroine? What effect has the increasing potency of marijuana in recent years had on users and on use? Does our current legal policy toward marijuana make sense? Earleywine separates science from opinion to show how marijuana defies easy dichotomies. Tracing the medical and political debates surrounding marijuana in a balanced, objective fashion, this book will be the definitive primer on our most controversial and widely used illicit substance.

Understanding Climate Change

Author : Sarah Burch,Sara E. Harris
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2021-06-01
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781487518394

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Understanding Climate Change by Sarah Burch,Sara E. Harris Pdf

Conversations about climate change are filled with challenges involving complex data, deeply held values, and political issues. Understanding Climate Change examines climate change as both a scientific and a public policy issue. Sarah L. Burch and Sara E. Harris explain the basics of the climate system, climate models and prediction, and human and biophysical impacts, as well as strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The second edition has been fully updated throughout, including coverage of new advances in climate modelling and of the shifting landscape of renewable energy production and distribution. A brand new chapter discusses global governance, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, as well as mitigation efforts at the national and subnational levels. This new chapter makes the book even more relevant to climate change courses housed in social sciences departments such as political science and geography. An effective and integrated introduction to an urgent and controversial issue, this book is well-suited to adoption in a variety of introductory climate change courses found in a number of science and social science departments. Its ultimate goal is to equip readers with the tools needed to become constructive participants in the human response to climate change.