Impact of science and technology on society Books

This volume offers 11 papers that cover the wide spectrum of influences on Rudolf Carnap's seminal work, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World). Along the way, it covers a host of topics related to this important philosophical...

This book offers the most complete and up-to-date overview of the philosophical work of Evandro Agazzi, presently the most important Italian philosopher of science and one of the most influential in the world. Scholars from seven countries explore his...

This volume contains the English translation of Felix Kaufmann's (1895-1945) main work Methodenlehre der Sozialwissenschaften (1936). In this book, Kaufmann develops a general theory of knowledge of the social sciences in his role as a cross-border...

This volume features a collection of essays on consciousness, which has become one of the hot topics at the crossroads between neuroscience, philosophy, and religious studies. Is consciousness something the brain produces? How can we study it? Is there...

This volume combines the theoretical and historical perspective focusing on the specific features of a European philosophy of science. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Institute Vienna Circle the Viennese roots and influences will be...

This book presents adaptive logics as an intuitive and powerful framework for modeling defeasible reasoning. It examines various contexts in which defeasible reasoning is useful and offers a compact introduction into adaptive logics. The author first...

​The motivation for this volume is simple. For a variety of reasons, clinical psychologists have long shown considerable interest in the philosophy of science. When logical positivism gained currency in the 1930s, psychologists were among the most avid...

Because of continuing debates about foundational issues as well as the recent consensus about non-locality, it is time to resolve the long-standing quantum enigmas.  These include wave-particle duality, the double-slit experiment, quantum...

This text describes the process that led to knowledge becoming the most important modern good and a complex phenomenon beginning at the end of the 19th century. It was a change in the way of understanding the world proposed by mathematics and geometry...

This collection responds to widespread, complex, and current environmental challenges by presenting eleven original essays on a new elemental-embodied approach in environmental humanities. This approach has a special focus on elemental and indigenous...

This book builds on the path-breaking work of George E. Smith and further explores the notions of evidence and confirmation in the exact sciences from two perspectives: conceptual and historical.  Contributions in this volume investigate the...

Traditionally, philosophers have argued that epistemology is a normative discipline and therefore occupied with an a priori analysis of the necessary and sufficient conditions that a belief must fulfill to be acceptable as knowledge. But such an approach...

This book provides a philosophical framework to understand computer simulations as scientific instruments. This is in sharp contrast to existing philosophical approaches on the subject, which have historically understood computer simulations as either...

This book is an empirically informed investigation of the philosophical problem of mental causation, and a philosophical investigation of the status of cognitive scientific generalisations. If there are mental causes which can be classified in a way...

This book provides an English translation of the work Principles of the Probability Calculus published in 1886 by Johannes von Kries, which discusses the range theory of probability. It offers a novel account of the foundations of probability, an account...

This book argues that conscious experience is sometimes extended outside the brain and body into certain kinds of environmental interaction and tool use. It shows that if one accepts that cognitive states can extend, one must also accept that...

This addresses the transformations of metaphysics as a discipline, the emergence of analytical mechanics, the diverging avenues of 18th-century Newtonianism, the body-mind problem, and philosophical principles of classification in the life sciences. An...

This book provides a comprehensive investigation into the concept of typicality and its significance for physics and the philosophy of science. It identifies typicality as a fundamental way of reasoning, central to how natural laws explain and are tested...

This volume aims to clarify the epistemic potential of applying evolutionary thinking outside biology, and provides a survey of the current state of the art in research on relevant topics in the life sciences, the philosophy of science, and the various...

This volume collects previously unpublished contributions to the philosophy of science. What brings them together is a twofold goal: first and foremost, celebrating the name of Roberto Torretti, whose works in this and other areas have had -and continue...

This book is an argument for moving beyond culturally/historically/ethnically/biologically-grounded identity as the necessary foundation of an authentic self. It highlights examples of people who are attempting to inhabit identities they feel are more...

Chemistry shapes and creates the disposition of the world's resources and provides novel substances for the welfare and hazard of our civilisation at an exponential rate. Can we model the evolution of chemical knowledge? This book not only provides...

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of the major key concepts common to economics and evolutionary biology. Written by a group of philosophers of science, biologists and economists, it proposes analyses of the meaning of twenty-five concepts...

Cellular-molecular approach to evolution has led to radical changes in our understanding of biologic principles ranging from the Cell, to the Life Cycle, Development, Homeostasis, Senescence/Aging, Heterochrony, Pleiotropy, Phenotype, and perhaps the...

This book provides a new all-round perspective on the life and work of Edgar Zilsel (1891-1944) as a philosopher, historian, and sociologist. He was close to the Vienna Circle and has been hitherto almost exclusively referred to in terms of the so-called...

In this highly-interdisciplinary volume, we systematically study the role of metaphors and analogies in (mis)shaping our understanding of the world. Metaphors and Analogies occupy a prominent place in scientific discourses, as they do in literature,...

This book discusses fundamental topics on contemporary Ockhamism. The collected essays show how contemporary Ockhamism can impact areas of research such as semantics, metaphysics and also the philosophy of science. In addition, the volume hosts one...

Quantum theory is at the foundation of the physical description of our world. One of the people who contributed significantly to our conceptual understanding of this theory was Heinz-Dieter Zeh (1932-2018).  He was the pioneer of the process of...

This book provides philosophers of science with new theoretical resources for making their own contributions to the scientific realism debate. Readers will encounter old and new arguments for and against scientific realism. They will also be given useful...

Metaphysics has often held that laws of nature, if legitimate, must be time-independent. Yet mounting evidence from the foundations of science suggests that this constraint may be obsolete. This book provides arguments against this atemporality...

This book offers a thorough technical elaboration and philosophical defense of an objectivist informational interpretation of quantum mechanics according to which its novel content is located in its kinematical framework, that is, in how the theory...

This book is the first systematic and historical account of the Vienna Circle that deals with the relation of logical empiricists with religion as well as theology. Given the standard image of the Vienna Circle as a strong anti-metaphysical group and...

This book analyzes metaphysical consequences of the quantum theory of many particles with respect to the fundamental notions of identity, individuality and discernibility. The main focus is on the proper interpretation of the quantum formalism in...

This book provides a well-grounded account of the methodology of physics, the structure of physical knowledge and theories, and in particular of the relations between theory and experience. An important feature of the book is that all its essential...

This book presents the latest research, conducted by leading philosophers and scientists from various fields, on the topic of top-down causation. The chapters combine to form a unique, interdisciplinary perspective, drawing upon George Ellis's extensive...

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to Nature of Science (NOS), one of the most important aspects of science teaching and learning, and includes tested strategies for teaching aspects of the NOS in a variety of instructional settings. In line...

This book highlights the existence of a diversity of methods in science, in general, in groups of sciences (natural, social or the artificial), and in individual sciences. This methodological variety is open to a number of consequences,...

This book provides a comprehensive account of Kant's development from the 1755/56 metaphysics to the cosmological antinomy of 1781. With the Theory of the Heavens (1755) and the Physical Monadology (1756), the young Kant had presented an ambitious...

This undergraduate textbook introduces some fundamental issues in philosophy of science for students of philosophy and science students. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 deals with knowledge and values. Chap. 1 presents the classical conception...

This book argues that the traditional image of Feyerabend is erroneous and that, contrary to common belief, he was a great admirer of science. It shows how Feyerabend presented a vision of science that represented how science really works. Besides giving...

These chapters analyze texts from Isaac Newton's work to shed new light on scientific understanding at his time. Newton used the concept of "sensorium" in writings intended for a public audience, in relation to both humans and God, but even today there...

Websites and apps are places where critical parts of our lives happen. We shop, bank, learn, gossip, and select our leaders there. But many of these places weren't intended to support these activities. Instead, they're designed to capture your...