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In this important new work, Professor Trigg deals with the question of the rational foundations of science. In so doing, he explains and evaluates the views of Rorty, Wittgensteing, Quine, Putnam, and Hawking, amongst others. The limits of science and rationality are explored and the power of human reason is in the end upheld.
Science --- Sciences --- Philosophy --- Philosophie --- Philosophy. --- Normal science --- Philosophy of science --- Science - Philosophy
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Kuhn and Feyerabend formulated the problem. Dilworth provides the solution. In this highly original and insightful book, Craig Dilworth answers all the questions raised by the incommensurability thesis. Logical empiricism cannot account for theory conflict. Popperianism cannot account for how one theory is a progression beyond another. Dilworth’s Perspectivist conception of science does both. While remaining within the bounds of classical philosophy of science, Dilworth does away with the logicism of his competitors. On the Perspectivist view theory conflict is not contradiction, and theory superiority does not consist in deductive subsumption or set-theoretic inclusion. Here the relation between theories is analogous to the application of individual concepts, and the question of theory superiority becomes one of relative applicability. In this way Dilworth succeeds in providing a conception of science in which scientific progress is based on both rational and empirical considerations. "[Dilworth] convincingly works out how from his point of view it is possible to explain the conflict between two theories as an incompatibility of perspectives, and at the same time avoid sliding into relativism by giving criteria for scientific progress." Dialectica.
Science --- Philosophy. --- Methodology. --- Scientific method --- Logic, Symbolic and mathematical --- Normal science --- Philosophy of science
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This is an introductory survey to the philosophy of science suitable for beginners and nonspecialists. Its point of departure is the question: why should we believe what science tells us about the world? In this attempt to justify the claims of science the book treats such topics as observation data, confirmation of theories, and the explanation of phenomena. The writing is clear and concrete with detailed examples drawn from contemporary science: solar neutrinos, the gravitational bending of light, and the creation/evolution debate, for example. What emerges is a view of science in which observation relies on theory to give it meaning and credibility, while theory relies on observation for its motivation and validation.
Science --- Philosophy. --- Sciences --- Philosophy --- Philosophie --- Science - Philosophy. --- Normal science --- Philosophy of science --- Arts and Humanities
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Science --- Philosophy --- Sciences --- Philosophie --- Philosophy. --- Normal science --- Philosophy of science --- Science.
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Beginning in September of 1924, Alfred North Whitehead presented a regular course of 85 lectures which concluded in May of 1925. These represent the first ever philosophy lectures he gave and capture him working out the philosophical implications of the remarkable turns physics had taken in his lifetime. This volume finally recreates these lectures by transcribing notes by W. P. Bell, W. E. Hocking and Louise Heath taken at the time - many of which have only recently been discovered and including hundreds of sketches of Whitehead's blackboard diagrams. This is a unique insight into the evolution of Whitehead's thought during the months when he was drafting his seminal work, 'Science and the Modern World'.
Metaphysics --- Philosophy of science --- Science --- Sciences --- Philosophy. --- Philosophie --- Philosophy --- History --- Histoire --- Normal science
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Complexity (Philosophy) --- Science --- Philosophy. --- Complexity (Philosophy). --- Philosophy of science --- Normal science --- Philosophy --- Emergence (Philosophy) --- Science - Philosophy.
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Though Kant is best known for his strictly philosophical works in the 1780s, many of his early publications in particular were devoted to what we would call 'natural science'. Kant's Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755) made a significant advance in cosmology, and he was also instrumental in establishing the newly emerging discipline of physical geography, lecturing on it for almost his entire career. In this volume Eric Watkins brings together new English translations of Kant's first publication, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1746-9), the entirety of Physical Geography (1802), a series of shorter essays, along with many of Kant's most important publications in natural science. The volume is rich in material for the student and the scholar, with extensive linguistic and explanatory notes, editorial introductions and a glossary of key terms.
Science --- Philosophy --- Philosophy. --- General. --- Normal science --- Philosophy of science --- Sciences --- Philosophie --- Arts and Humanities
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Science --- Sciences --- Philosophy --- Philosophie --- Philosophy. --- Normal science --- Philosophy of science --- Science - Philosophy
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This volume sheds light on still unexplored issues and raises new questions in the main areas addressed by the philosophy of science. Bringing together selected papers from three main events, the book presents the most advanced scientific results in the field and suggests innovative lines for further investigation. It explores how discussions on several notions of the philosophy of science can help different scientific disciplines in learning from each other. Finally, it focuses on the relationship between Cambridge and Vienna in twentieth century philosophy of science. The areas examined in the book are: formal methods, the philosophy of the natural and life sciences, the cultural and social sciences, the physical sciences, and the history of the philosophy of science.
Science --- Philosophy. --- Normal science --- Philosophy of science --- Philosophy of Science. --- Philosophy and science. --- Science and philosophy
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The Metaphysics of Experience styles itself as "a Sherpa guide to Process and Reality, whose function is to assist the serious reader in grasping the meaning of the text and to prevent falls into misinterpretation." Although originally published in 1925, Process and Reality has perhaps even more relevance to the contemporary scene in physics, biology, psychology, and the social sciences than it had in the mid-twenties. Hence its internal difficulty, its quasi-inaccessibility, is all the more tragic, since, unlike most metaphysical endeavors, it is capable of interpreting and unifying theories in the above sciences in terms of an organic world view, instead of selecting one theory as the paradigm and reducing all others to it. Because Alfred North Whitehead is so crucial to modern philosophy, The Metaphysics of Experience plays an important role in making Process and Reality accessible to a wider readership.
Cosmology. --- Science --- Philosophy. --- Whitehead, Alfred North, --- Normal science --- Philosophy of science --- Astronomy --- Deism --- Metaphysics