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Author : Thomas S. Kuhn
Publisher : Chicago : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (312 download)
Download or read book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions written by Thomas S. Kuhn and published by Chicago : University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1969 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Author : Elof Axel Carlson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781621822974
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)
Download or read book How Scientific Progress Occurs written by Elof Axel Carlson and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- Scientific revolutions: paradigm shifts, incrementalism, or both? -- The cell : from empty boxes to coordinated organelles -- The theory of the gene : from abstract point to nucleotide sequence -- Mutation : from fluctuating variations to base alterations -- The life cycle : from spontaneous origin to simple and complex stages -- The molecular basis of life : from vitalism to organic molecules to macromolecules -- Sex determination : from wild guesses to reproductive biology -- Genotype and phenotype relations : from variations to genetic modifiers to epigenetics -- Microbial life : from invisible spores to germs and prokaryotic organisms -- Embryology : from philosophic forms to epigenetic organogenesis -- Cell organelles : from cell theory to cell biology -- Evolution : from guesswork to natural selection, to molecular phylogeny -- How does science usually work?
Author : Mansoor Niaz
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1402096267
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (2 download)
Download or read book Critical Appraisal of Physical Science as a Human Enterprise written by Mansoor Niaz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-02-07 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is generally believed that doing science means accumulating empirical data with no or little reference to the interpretation of the data based on the scientist’s th- retical framework or presuppositions. Holton (1969a) has deplored the widely accepted myth (experimenticism) according to which progress in science is presented as the inexorable result of the pursuit of logically sound conclusions from un- biguous experimental data. Surprisingly, some of the leading scientists themselves (Millikan is a good example) have contributed to perpetuate the myth with respect to modern science being essentially empirical, that is carefully tested experim- tal facts (free of a priori conceptions), leading to inductive generalizations. Based on the existing knowledge in a field of research a scientist formulates the guiding assumptions (Laudan et al. , 1988), presuppositions (Holton, 1978, 1998) and “hard core” (Lakatos, 1970) of the research program that constitutes the imperative of presuppositions, which is not abandoned in the face of anomalous data. Laudan and his group consider the following paraphrase of Kant by Lakatos as an important guideline: philosophy of science without history of science is empty. Starting in the 1960s, this “historical school” has attempted to redraw and replace the positivist or logical empiricist image of science that dominated for the first half of the twentieth century. Among other aspects, one that looms large in these studies is that of “guiding assumptions” and has considerable implications for the main thesis of this monograph (Chapter 2).
Author : Ludwik Fleck
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022619034X
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (261 download)
Download or read book Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact written by Ludwik Fleck and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in German in 1935, this monograph anticipated solutions to problems of scientific progress, the truth of scientific fact and the role of error in science now associated with the work of Thomas Kuhn and others. Arguing that every scientific concept and theory—including his own—is culturally conditioned, Fleck was appreciably ahead of his time. And as Kuhn observes in his foreword, "Though much has occurred since its publication, it remains a brilliant and largely unexploited resource." "To many scientists just as to many historians and philosophers of science facts are things that simply are the case: they are discovered through properly passive observation of natural reality. To such views Fleck replies that facts are invented, not discovered. Moreover, the appearance of scientific facts as discovered things is itself a social construction, a made thing. A work of transparent brilliance, one of the most significant contributions toward a thoroughly sociological account of scientific knowledge."—Steven Shapin, Science
Author : John Losee
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134360266
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (343 download)
Download or read book Theories of Scientific Progress written by John Losee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There seems little doubt that we have made progress in scientific theories, but how? Theories of Scientific Progress presents the arguments, covers interpretations of scientific progress and discusses the latest contemporary debates.
Author : Jerrold L. Aronson
Publisher : Open Court Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780812692884
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (928 download)
Download or read book Realism Rescued written by Jerrold L. Aronson and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 1995 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does science give us a progressively more accurate and objective account of the world? This book by three leading philosophers of science presents a new defense of scientific realism against skeptical and positivist attacks. While positivists view scientific theories as devices for predicting observable phenomena, realists maintain that theories describe hidden processes which account for observable phenomena. This problem raises the question: What are scientific theories about? Do they refer to an unobservable yet real realm of physical processes? It seems undeniable that the scientific endeavor has in some sense made progress. But is the increasing practical success of the physical sciences good grounds for believing that their theories and techniques lead us nearer to the truth? According to Aronson, Harre, and Way, past failures to answer these questions have been due in large part to the assumption that knowledge is expressed in propositions and organized by the canons of logic. On the assumption that science must meet the world in a correspondence between statements and states of affairs, realism turns out to be difficult to defend. Realism Rescued offers a new direction, relying on the importance of models in scientific work. Theories are not to be thought of as sets of propositions, though they can be expressed propositionally. Rather they are models, chunks of orderings of natural kinds. For the first time, the indispensability of models is turned into a powerful argument for realism, an argument that confronts the skeptic on his own ground. By drawing on a new technique of knowledge representation developed in Artificial Intelligence, the dynamic type-hierarchy, the authorsgive a convincing account of the central role of models. Such concepts as verisimilitude, natural kind, natural necessity, and natural law can then be presented far more clearly than ever before.
Author : Wolf Schäfer
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9400970803
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (9 download)
Download or read book Finalization in Science written by Wolf Schäfer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 which was the occasion of a lively and often bitter debate in Germany from 1976 to 1982. Their provocative thesis, briefly, is this: that modern science converges, historically, to the development of a number of 'closed theories', i. e. stable and relatively completed sciences, no longer to be improved by small changes but only by major changes in an entire theoretical structure. Further: that at such a stage of 'mature theory', the formerly viable norm of intra-scientific autonomy may appropriately be replaced by the social direction' of further scientific research (within such a 'mature' field) for socially relevant or, we may bluntly say, 'task-oriented' purposes. This is nothing less than a theory for the planning and social directing of science, under certain specific conditions. Understandably, it raised the sharp objections that such an approach would subordinate scientific inquiry as a free and untrammeled search for truth to the dictates of social relevance and dominant interests, even possibly to dictation and control for particularistic social and political interests.
Author : National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309486165
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (94 download)
Download or read book Reproducibility and Replicability in Science written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-10-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Author : Craig Dilworth
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1402063539
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (2 download)
Download or read book Scientific Progress written by Craig Dilworth and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-10-13 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kuhn and Feyerabend formulated the problem, Dilworth provides the solution. In the fourth edition of this highly original book, Craig Dilworth answers 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 covers both bases with a concept of scientific progress based on both rationalism and empiricism.
Author : Michael Strevens
Publisher : Liveright Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1631491385
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (314 download)
Download or read book The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science written by Michael Strevens and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Knowledge Machine is the most stunningly illuminating book of the last several decades regarding the all-important scientific enterprise.” —Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex A paradigm-shifting work, The Knowledge Machine revolutionizes our understanding of the origins and structure of science. • Why is science so powerful? • Why did it take so long—two thousand years after the invention of philosophy and mathematics—for the human race to start using science to learn the secrets of the universe? In a groundbreaking work that blends science, philosophy, and history, leading philosopher of science Michael Strevens answers these challenging questions, showing how science came about only once thinkers stumbled upon the astonishing idea that scientific breakthroughs could be accomplished by breaking the rules of logical argument. Like such classic works as Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The Knowledge Machine grapples with the meaning and origins of science, using a plethora of vivid historical examples to demonstrate that scientists willfully ignore religion, theoretical beauty, and even philosophy to embrace a constricted code of argument whose very narrowness channels unprecedented energy into empirical observation and experimentation. Strevens calls this scientific code the iron rule of explanation, and reveals the way in which the rule, precisely because it is unreasonably close-minded, overcomes individual prejudices to lead humanity inexorably toward the secrets of nature. “With a mixture of philosophical and historical argument, and written in an engrossing style” (Alan Ryan), The Knowledge Machine provides captivating portraits of some of the greatest luminaries in science’s history, including Isaac Newton, the chief architect of modern science and its foundational theories of motion and gravitation; William Whewell, perhaps the greatest philosopher-scientist of the early nineteenth century; and Murray Gell-Mann, discoverer of the quark. Today, Strevens argues, in the face of threats from a changing climate and global pandemics, the idiosyncratic but highly effective scientific knowledge machine must be protected from politicians, commercial interests, and even scientists themselves who seek to open it up, to make it less narrow and more rational—and thus to undermine its devotedly empirical search for truth. Rich with illuminating and often delightfully quirky illustrations, The Knowledge Machine, written in a winningly accessible style that belies the import of its revisionist and groundbreaking concepts, radically reframes much of what we thought we knew about the origins of the modern world.
Author : Larry Laudan
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520037212
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (372 download)
Download or read book Progress and Its Problems written by Larry Laudan and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1978-10-27 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A book that shakes philosophy of science to its roots. Laudan both destroys and creates. With detailed, scathing criticisms, he attacks the 'pregnant confusions' in extant philosophies of science. The progress they espouse derives from strictly empirical criteria, he complains, and this clashes with historical evidence. Accordingly, Laudan constructs a remedy from historical examples that involves nothing less than the redefinition of scientific rationality and progress . . . Surprisingly, after this reshuffling, science still looks like a noble-and progressive-enterprise ... The glory of Laudan's system is that it preserves scientific rationality and progress in the presence of social influence. We can admit extra-scientific influences without lapsing into complete relativism. . . a must for both observers and practitioners of science." --Physics Today "A critique and substantial revision of the historic theories of scientific rationality and progress (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, etc.). Laudan focuses on contextual problem solving effectiveness (carefully defined) as a criterion for progress, and expands the notion of 'paradigm' to a 'research tradition,' thus providing a meta-empirical basis for the commensurability of competing theories. From this perspective, Laudan suggests revised programs for history and philosophy of science, the history of ideas, and the sociology of science. A superb work, closely argued, clearly written, and extensively annotated, this book will become a widely required text in intermediate courses."--Choice
Author : Larry Laudan
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520037219
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (2 download)
Download or read book Progress and Its Problems written by Larry Laudan and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1978-10-27 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A book that shakes philosophy of science to its roots. Laudan both destroys and creates. With detailed, scathing criticisms, he attacks the 'pregnant confusions' in extant philosophies of science. The progress they espouse derives from strictly empirical criteria, he complains, and this clashes with historical evidence. Accordingly, Laudan constructs a remedy from historical examples that involves nothing less than the redefinition of scientific rationality and progress . . . Surprisingly, after this reshuffling, science still looks like a noble-and progressive-enterprise ... The glory of Laudan's system is that it preserves scientific rationality and progress in the presence of social influence. We can admit extra-scientific influences without lapsing into complete relativism. . . a must for both observers and practitioners of science." --Physics Today "A critique and substantial revision of the historic theories of scientific rationality and progress (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, etc.). Laudan focuses on contextual problem solving effectiveness (carefully defined) as a criterion for progress, and expands the notion of 'paradigm' to a 'research tradition,' thus providing a meta-empirical basis for the commensurability of competing theories. From this perspective, Laudan suggests revised programs for history and philosophy of science, the history of ideas, and the sociology of science. A superb work, closely argued, clearly written, and extensively annotated, this book will become a widely required text in intermediate courses."--Choice
Author : Paul K. Feyerabend
Publisher : Polity
ISBN 13 : 9780745651897
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (518 download)
Download or read book The Tyranny of Science written by Paul K. Feyerabend and published by Polity. This book was released on 2011-05-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Feyerabend is one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century and his book Against Method is an international bestseller. In this new book he masterfully weaves together the main elements of his mature philosophy into a gripping tale: the story of the rise of rationalism in Ancient Greece that eventually led to the entrenchment of a mythical ‘scientific worldview’. In this wide-ranging and accessible book Feyerabend challenges some modern myths about science, including the myth that ‘science is successful’. He argues that some very basic assumptions about science are simply false and that substantial parts of scientific ideology were created on the basis of superficial generalizations that led to absurd misconceptions about the nature of human life. Far from solving the pressing problems of our age, such as war and poverty, scientific theorizing glorifies ephemeral generalities, at the cost of confronting the real particulars that make life meaningful. Objectivity and generality are based on abstraction, and as such, they come at a high price. For abstraction drives a wedge between our thoughts and our experience, resulting in the degeneration of both. Theoreticians, as opposed to practitioners, tend to impose a tyranny on the concepts they use, abstracting away from the subjective experience that makes life meaningful. Feyerabend concludes by arguing that practical experience is a better guide to reality than any theory, by itself, ever could be, and he stresses that there is no tyranny that cannot be resisted, even if it is exerted with the best possible intentions. Provocative and iconoclastic, The Tyranny of Science is one of Feyerabend’s last books and one of his best. It will be widely read by everyone interested in the role that science has played, and continues to play, in the shaping of the modern world.
Author : John Losee
Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 9780415320665
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (26 download)
Download or read book Theories of Scientific Progress written by John Losee and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There seems little doubt that we have made progress in scientific theories, but how? Theories of Scientific Progress presents the arguments, covers interpretations of scientific progress and discusses the latest contemporary debates.
Author : United States. President's Science Advisory Committee
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 40 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (327 download)
Download or read book Scientific Progress, the Universities, and the Federal Government written by United States. President's Science Advisory Committee and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Author : James Jeans
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317699033
Total Pages : 171 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (176 download)
Download or read book Scientific Progress written by James Jeans and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-09 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1936, this volume contains six of the Halley Stewart Lectures – originally founded "For Research towards the Christian Ideal in All Social Life" – by some of the greatest of English scientists of the mid-20th century, each a leading authority in his respective field: cosmology, physics, meteorology, medicine and genetics. The final lecture considers the relationship between scientific knowledge and human ideals, commenting on the paradox that a century which produced such scientific advance also witnessed the most concentrated period of social, economic and political turmoil in world history.
Author : Hasok Chang
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199883696
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)
Download or read book Inventing Temperature written by Hasok Chang and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-08-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is temperature, and how can we measure it correctly? These may seem like simple questions, but the most renowned scientists struggled with them throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. In Inventing Temperature, Chang examines how scientists first created thermometers; how they measured temperature beyond the reach of standard thermometers; and how they managed to assess the reliability and accuracy of these instruments without a circular reliance on the instruments themselves. In a discussion that brings together the history of science with the philosophy of science, Chang presents the simple eet challenging epistemic and technical questions about these instruments, and the complex web of abstract philosophical issues surrounding them. Chang's book shows that many items of knowledge that we take for granted now are in fact spectacular achievements, obtained only after a great deal of innovative thinking, painstaking experiments, bold conjectures, and controversy. Lurking behind these achievements are some very important philosophical questions about how and when people accept the authority of science.
