Author: E. Agazzi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401593914
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
Observability and Scientific Realism It is commonly thought that the birth of modern natural science was made possible by an intellectual shift from a mainly abstract and specuJative conception of the world to a carefully elaborated image based on observations. There is some grain of truth in this claim, but this grain depends very much on what one takes observation to be. In the philosophy of science of our century, observation has been practically equated with sense perception. This is understandable if we think of the attitude of radical empiricism that inspired Ernst Mach and the philosophers of the Vienna Circle, who powerfully influenced our century's philosophy of science. However, this was not the atti tude of the f ounders of modern science: Galileo, f or example, expressed in a f amous passage of the Assayer the conviction that perceptual features of the world are merely subjective, and are produced in the 'anima!' by the motion and impacts of unobservable particles that are endowed uniquely with mathematically expressible properties, and which are therefore the real features of the world. Moreover, on other occasions, when defending the Copernican theory, he explicitly remarked that in admitting that the Sun is static and the Earth turns on its own axis, 'reason must do violence to the sense' , and that it is thanks to this violence that one can know the tme constitution of the universe.
Author: Scott M. Tyson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780983243809
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Embark on an incredible 2,500-year "magical mystery tour" to the frontiers of the universe and all its mysteries with visionary scientist and engineer Tyson, who deconstructs long-held scientific philosophies to systematically unravel the inconsistencies and builds a new paradigm to illuminate the underlying Theory of Everything with a simple, cohesive framework.
Author: Richard J. Connell
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761816645
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
From Observables to Unobservables in Science and Philosophy focuses on knowing unobservable real things or attributes by means of observing real things or attributes, a topic central to twentieth-century scientific philosophy. Engaging both current and perennial issues in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of nature and of science, Connell writes from a realist perspective. He adds a cogent, well written, and much needed voice to the current debate over foundationalism from the perspective of the undersubscribed quarter of empirical realism. Principal audiences for this volume will be scholars and graduate students in philosophy, working in the Aristotelian tradition.
Author: Anjan Chakravartty
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139468391
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
Scientific realism is the view that our best scientific theories give approximately true descriptions of both observable and unobservable aspects of a mind-independent world. Debates between realists and their critics are at the very heart of the philosophy of science. Anjan Chakravartty traces the contemporary evolution of realism by examining the most promising strategies adopted by its proponents in response to the forceful challenges of antirealist sceptics, resulting in a positive proposal for scientific realism today. He examines the core principles of the realist position, and sheds light on topics including the varieties of metaphysical commitment required, and the nature of the conflict between realism and its empiricist rivals. By illuminating the connections between realist interpretations of scientific knowledge and the metaphysical foundations supporting them, his book offers a compelling vision of how realism can provide an internally consistent and coherent account of scientific knowledge.
Author: Heidi A. Campbell
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 0801031508
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
The California missions are unique reminders of a largely ignored part of the history of the United States. Nowhere else in the United States can one view such complete remnants of an earlier rule. Lands Never Trodden brings to the general public the fullest examination to date of the institutions of the Franciscan missions in California and of the stories hidden in these monuments. Franciscan priests, Spanish officials, and Native Americans all have their stories faithfully reported in this volume. Each mission carries with it tales of unremitting labor, sacrifice, love, intrigue, passion, violence, and death. This volume treats the familiar stories of the missionaries as well as the previously untold stories of the Native Americans with equal candor. With more than sixty photographs, and based on exhaustive research and historical documents, Lands Never Trodden is an entertaining, educational, and readable presentation of the twenty-one California missions.
Author: Heather Dyke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135246904
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
Questions about truth and questions about reality are intimately connected. One can ask whether numbers exist by asking "Are there numbers?" But one can also ask what arguably amounts to the same question by asking "Is the sentence 'There are numbers' true?" Such semantic ascent implies that reality can be investigated by investigating our true sentences. This line of thought was dominant in twentieth century philosophy, but is now beginning to be called into question. In From Truth to Reality, Heather Dyke brings together some of the foremost metaphysicians to examine approaches to truth, reality, and the connections between the two. This collection features new and previously unpublished material by JC Beall, Mark Colyvan, Michael Devitt, John Heil, Frank Jackson, Fred Kroon, D. H. Mellor, Luca Moretti, Alan Musgrave, Robert Nola, J. J. C. Smart, Paul Snowdon, and Daniel Stoljar.
Author: Theodore Arabatzis
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226024202
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Both a history and a metahistory, Representing Electrons focuses on the development of various theoretical representations of electrons from the late 1890s to 1925 and the methodological problems associated with writing about unobservable scientific entities. Using the electron—or rather its representation—as a historical actor, Theodore Arabatzis illustrates the emergence and gradual consolidation of its representation in physics, its career throughout old quantum theory, and its appropriation and reinterpretation by chemists. As Arabatzis develops this novel biographical approach, he portrays scientific representations as partly autonomous agents with lives of their own. Furthermore, he argues that the considerable variance in the representation of the electron does not undermine its stable identity or existence. Raising philosophical issues of contentious debate in the history and philosophy of science—namely, scientific realism and meaning change—Arabatzis addresses the history of the electron across disciplines, integrating historical narrative with philosophical analysis in a book that will be a touchstone for historians and philosophers of science and scientists alike.
Author: K. Brad Wray
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108415210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
Provides a spirited defence of anti-realism in philosophy of science. Shows the historical evidence and logical challenges facing scientific realism.
Author: Tian Yu Cao
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139491601
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
The advent of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) in the early 1970s was one of the most important events in twentieth-century science. This book examines the conceptual steps that were crucial to the rise of QCD, placing them in historical context against the background of debates that were ongoing between the bootstrap approach and composite modeling, and between mathematical and realistic conceptions of quarks. It explains the origins of QCD in current algebra and its development through high-energy experiments, model-building, mathematical analysis and conceptual synthesis. Addressing a range of complex physical, philosophical and historiographical issues in detail, this book will interest graduate students and researchers in physics and in the history and philosophy of science.
Author: Travis Dumsday
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108569986
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
Dispositionalism is the view that causal powers are among the irreducible properties of nature. It has long been among the core competing positions in the metaphysics of laws, but its potential implications for other key debates within metaphysics and the philosophy of science have remained under-explored. Travis Dumsday fills this major gap in the literature by establishing new connections between dispositionalism and such topics as substance ontology, ontic structural realism, material composition, emergentism, natural-kind essentialism, perdurantism, time travel, and spacetime substantivalism. He also puts forward a novel view concerning the precise relationship between causal powers and the fundamental laws of nature. His rich and accessible study will appeal to readers interested in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophy of science.
