Philosophy of science Books

them in his cheat-preface to Copernicus De Revolutionibus, but the main change in their import has been that whereas Osiander defended Copernicus, Mach and Duhem defended science. The modem conception of hypothetico­ deductive...

These essays on Finalization in Science - The Social Orientation of Scientific Progress comprise a remarkable, problematic and controversial book. The authors propose a thesis about the social direction of scientific research...

The philosophical writings of Otto Neurath, and their central themes, have been described many times, by Carnap in his authobiographical essay, by Ayer and Morris and Kraft decades ago, by Haller and Hegselmann and Nemeth and...

These remarks preface two volumes consisting of the proceedings of the Third International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science. The conference was...

This prize monograph was a pioneering work among Marxist philosophers, East and West, twenty-five years ago. To our mind, the work would have been received with respect and pleasure by philosophers of many viewpoints if it had...

Tran Duc Thao, a wise and learned scientist and an eminent Marxist philoso­ pher, begins this treatise on the origins of language and consciousness with a question: "One of the principal difficulties of the problem of the...

Structural realism has rapidly gained in popularity in recent years, but it has splintered into many distinct denominations, often underpinned by diverse motivations. There is, no monolithic position known as 'structural realism,' but there is a general...

This Institute's Yearbook for the most part, documents its recent activities and provides a forum for the discussion of exact philosophy, logical and empirical investigations, and analysis of language. This volume holds a collection of papers on various...

Newton's classical physics and its underlying ontology are loaded with several metaphysical hypotheses that cannot be justified by rational reasoning nor by experimental evidence. Furthermore, it is well known that some of these hypotheses are not...

This book is the first to offer a systematic account of the role of language in the development and interpretation of physics. An historical-conceptual analysis of the co-evolution of mathematical and physical concepts leads to the classical/quatum...

The book identifies the specific ethical aspects of sustainability and develops ethical tools to analyze them. It also provides a methodological framework to integrate ethical and scientific analyses of sustainability issues, and explores the notion of a...

Mature sciences have been long been characterized in terms of the "successfulness", "reliability" or "trustworthiness" of their theoretical, experimental or technical accomplishments. Today many philosophers of science talk of "robustness", often without...

Offers an extremely bold, far-reaching, and unsuspected thesis in the history of philosophy: Aristotelianism was a dominant movement of the British philosophical landscape, especially in the field of logic, and it had a long survival. British...

This book discusses that imagination is as important to thinking and reasoning as it is to making and acting. By reexamining our philosophical and psychological heritage, it traces a framework, a conceptual topology, that underlies the most disparate...

Normativity has long been conceived as more properly pertaining to the domain of thought than to the domain of nature. This conception goes back to Kant and still figures prominently in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind and ethics. By...

The Berlin Group for scientific philosophy was active between 1928 and 1933 and was closely related to the Vienna Circle. In 1930, the leaders of the two Groups, Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap, launched the journal Erkenntnis. However, between the...

The texts of Boris Hessen and Henryk Grossmann assembled in this volume are important contributions to the historiography of the Scienti?c Revolution and to the methodology of the historiography of science. They are of course also historical documents,...

Foreword.- 1. Introduction: Technicians and humanists in the environmentalist debate on mobility and the city.- 2. Sustainable development: From fallacy to fraud.- 3. Technologies, problems, solutions.- 4. Mobility and the corporatist society.- 5...

This volume, the second in the Springer series Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, contains selected papers from the workshops organised by the ESF Research Networking Programme PSE (The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective) in...

Leonardo's Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals is an edited collection of twelve essays and one dialogue focusing on the profound affect the use of animals in biotechnology is having on both humans and other species...

Introduction.- Study of the Thermodynamic Works of J. Willard Gibbs (1887).- Part 1: An Examination of the two Principles of Thermodynamics.- Part 2: Historical Background and principal Applications of Gibbs' Theory.- Commentary on the Principles of...

While probabilistic logics in principle might be applied to solve a range of problems, in practice they are rarely applied - perhaps because they seem disparate, complicated, and computationally intractable. This programmatic book argues that several...

Presents a unique study of Integrative Problem-Solving (IPS). The consideration of 'Decadence' is essential in the scientific study of environmental and other problems and their rigorous solution, because the broad context...

As concerns about humankind's relationship with the environment move inexorably up the agenda, this volume tells the story of the history of the concept of ecology itself and adds much to the historical and philosophical debate over this multifaceted...

In 1986, the emergence of a novel brain disease in British cattle presented a unique challenge to scientists. How that challenge was addressed has been the subject of a public inquiry and numerous academic studies conducted to date. However, none of...

Belief revision theory and philosophy of science both aspire to shed light on the dynamics ofknowledge - on how our view of the world changes (typically) in the light of new evidence. Yet these two areas of research have long seemed strangely detached...

Recently there has been a revival of interest in structuralist approaches to science. Taking their lead from scientific structuralists such as Henri Poincaré, Ernst Cassirer, and Bertrand Russell, some contemporary philosophers and scientists have...

In a detailed reconstruction of the genesis of Feynman diagrams the author reveals that their development was constantly driven by the attempt to resolve fundamental problems concerning the uninterpretable infinities that arose in quantum as well as...

We increasingly view the world around us as a product of science and technology. Accordingly, we have begun to appreciate that science does not take its problems only from nature and then produces technological applications, but that the very problems of...

1. General Introduction.2. Preliminaries.3: The Causal Theory of Quantum Mechanics.4: Energy and the Wave Field.5: Energy-Momentum Transfer and the Quantum Potential.6: The Exclusion Principle.7: Conclusions.

Kant and Popper. The affmity between the philosophy of Kant and the philosophy of Karl Popper has often been noted, and most decisively in Popper's own reflections on his thought. But in this work before us, Sergio Fernandes...

In July 2006, a major international conference was held at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada, to celebrate the career and work of a remarkable man of letters. Abner Shimony, who is well known for his...

REFLECTIONS ON SPACETIME - FOUNDATIONS, PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY During the academic year 1992/93, an interdisciplinary research group constituted itself at the Zentrum fUr interdisziplinare Forschung (ZiF) in Bielefeld, Germany,...

2 But already he had done important work on thermal equilibrium which helped generalize Maxwell's distribution law. Indeed, there is part of a letter by James Clerk Maxwell to Loschmidt from this period which runs: "I am very...

The articles in this volume have been first presented during an international Conference organised by the Greek Society for the History of Science and Technology in June 1990 at Corfu. The Society was founded in 1989 and...

Scientific Philosophy: Origins and Development is the first Yearbook of the Vienna Circle Institute, which was founded in October 1991. The book contains original contributions to an international symposium which was ...

Representation is a concern crucial to the sciences and the arts alike. Scientists devote substantial time to devising and exploring representations of all kinds. From photographs and computer-generated images to diagrams, charts, and graphs; from scale...

twentieth-century literature about the distinction between explanation and und- standing)? Second, can we do justice to a particular writer's notion of that category by taking at face value what he writes about his own motivation for adopting it? In...

The study of medical history is interesting in itself and may help to modify the view sometimes expressed that medical students and doctors are lacking in culture of any sort. Moreover, some historical perspective is often...

IntroductionChapter 1: Lineages of LearningChapter 2: Ramus and the History of MathematicsChapter 3: From Plato to Pythagoras: The Scholae mathematicaeChapter 4: ''To Bring Alexandria to Oxford''- Henry Savile's1570 Lectures on PtolemyChapter 5: The...

Andler, D. Naturalism and the Scientific Status of the Social Sciences Bauman, C. Reconsidering Gilberts Account of Social NormsCarrier, M. Theories for Use: On the Bearing of Basic Science on Practical ProblemsCei, A. Structural Realism as a form...

Although recent works on Galileo's trial have reached new heights of erudition, documentation, and sophistication, they often exhibit inflated complexities, neglect 400 years of historiography, or make little effort to learn from Galileo. This book...

Approach your problems from the right end It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is and begin with the answers. Then one day, that they can't see the problem. perhaps you will tind the tinal question. G. K. Chesterton...

The institutionalization of History and Philosophy of Science as a distinct field of scholarly endeavour began comparatively earl- though not always under that name - in the Australasian region. An initial lecturing appointment...

The papers collected here are, with three exceptions, those presented at a conference on probability and causation held at the University of California at Irvine on July 15-19, 1985. The exceptions are that David Freedman and...

The papers collected here are, with three exceptions, those presented at a conference on probability and causation held at the University of California at Irvine on July 15-19, 1985. The exceptions are that David Freedman and...

The contributions to this special collection concern issues and problems discussed in or related to the work of Wesley C. Salmon. Salmon has long been noted for his important work in the philosophy of science, which has...