Idealization And The Aims Of Science

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Idealization and the Aims of Science

Author : Angela Potochnik
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022675944X
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis Idealization and the Aims of Science by : Angela Potochnik

Download or read book Idealization and the Aims of Science written by Angela Potochnik and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-09-23 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science is the study of our world, as it is in its messy reality. Nonetheless, science requires idealization to function—if we are to attempt to understand the world, we have to find ways to reduce its complexity. Idealization and the Aims of Science shows just how crucial idealization is to science and why it matters. Beginning with the acknowledgment of our status as limited human agents trying to make sense of an exceedingly complex world, Angela Potochnik moves on to explain how science aims to depict and make use of causal patterns—a project that makes essential use of idealization. She offers case studies from a number of branches of science to demonstrate the ubiquity of idealization, shows how causal patterns are used to develop scientific explanations, and describes how the necessarily imperfect connection between science and truth leads to researchers’ values influencing their findings. The resulting book is a tour de force, a synthesis of the study of idealization that also offers countless new insights and avenues for future exploration.

Idealization and the Aims of Science

Author : Angela Potochnik
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022650705X
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis Idealization and the Aims of Science by : Angela Potochnik

Download or read book Idealization and the Aims of Science written by Angela Potochnik and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-11-17 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the centrality of idealization to science and reconsiders the aims of science in light of it. Idealizations are assumptions made without regard for whether they are true--that a plane is frictionless, for example, or that humans are perfectly rational agents. Idealizations of all kinds pervade science and are often made with full knowledge that they are false. Moreover, it is uncommon for scientists to try to replace them with more accurate assumptions. Why do scientists deliberately maintain idealizations in their theories and models? What do they contribute to science? Angela Potochnik shows how a science practiced by human beings in a complex world results in rampant and unchecked idealization and argues that the full scope of the use of idealizations has significant implications for our best theories of what science shows us about the world, and of scientific explanations specifically. Her clear analysis will be welcomed by anyone curious about the nature of science.

The Limits Of Science

Author : Nicholas Rescher
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN 13 : 0822972069
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis The Limits Of Science by : Nicholas Rescher

Download or read book The Limits Of Science written by Nicholas Rescher and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 1999-12-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perfected science is but an idealization that provides a useful contrast to highlight the limited character of what we do and can attain. This lies at the core of various debates in the philosophy of science and Rescher’s discussion focuses on the question: how far could science go in principle—what are the theoretical limits on science? He concentrates on what science can discover, not what it should discover. He explores in detail the existence of limits or limitations on scientific inquiry, especially those that, in principle, preclude the full realization of the aims of science, as opposed to those that relate to economic obstacles to scientific progress. Rescher also places his argument within the politics of the day, where "strident calls of ideological extremes surround us," ranging from the exaggeration that "science can do anything"—to the antiscientism that views science as a costly diversion we would be well advised to abandon. Rescher offers a middle path between these two extremes and provides an appreciation of the actual powers and limitations of science, not only to philosophers of science but also to a larger, less specialized audience.

As If

Author : Kwame Anthony Appiah
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674982193
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

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Book Synopsis As If by : Kwame Anthony Appiah

Download or read book As If written by Kwame Anthony Appiah and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Idealization is a basic feature of human thought. We proceed “as if” our representations were true, while knowing they are not. Kwame Anthony Appiah defends the centrality of the imagination in science, morality, and everyday life and shows that our best chance for accessing reality is to open our minds to a plurality of idealized depictions.

True Enough

Author : Catherine Z. Elgin
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262341387
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis True Enough by : Catherine Z. Elgin

Download or read book True Enough written by Catherine Z. Elgin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-10-20 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The development of an epistemology that explains how science and art embody and convey understanding. Philosophy valorizes truth, holding that there can never be epistemically good reasons to accept a known falsehood, or to accept modes of justification that are not truth conducive. How can this stance account for the epistemic standing of science, which unabashedly relies on models, idealizations, and thought experiments that are known not to be true? In True Enough, Catherine Elgin argues that we should not assume that the inaccuracy of models and idealizations constitutes an inadequacy. To the contrary, their divergence from truth or representational accuracy fosters their epistemic functioning. When effective, models and idealizations are, Elgin contends, felicitous falsehoods that exemplify features of the phenomena they bear on. Because works of art deploy the same sorts of felicitous falsehoods, she argues, they also advance understanding. Elgin develops a holistic epistemology that focuses on the understanding of broad ranges of phenomena rather than knowledge of individual facts. Epistemic acceptability, she maintains, is a matter not of truth-conduciveness, but of what would be reflectively endorsed by the members of an idealized epistemic community—a quasi-Kantian realm of epistemic ends.

Science Unlimited?

Author : Maarten Boudry
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022649828X
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (264 download)

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Book Synopsis Science Unlimited? by : Maarten Boudry

Download or read book Science Unlimited? written by Maarten Boudry and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-01-12 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All too often in contemporary discourse, we hear about science overstepping its proper limits—about its brazenness, arrogance, and intellectual imperialism. The problem, critics say, is scientism: the privileging of science over all other ways of knowing. Science, they warn, cannot do or explain everything, no matter what some enthusiasts believe. In Science Unlimited?, noted philosophers of science Maarten Boudry and Massimo Pigliucci gather a diverse group of scientists, science communicators, and philosophers of science to explore the limits of science and this alleged threat of scientism. In this wide-ranging collection, contributors ask whether the term scientism in fact (or in belief) captures an interesting and important intellectual stance, and whether it is something that should alarm us. Is scientism a well-developed position about the superiority of science over all other modes of human inquiry? Or is it more a form of excessive confidence, an uncritical attitude of glowing admiration? What, if any, are its dangers? Are fears that science will marginalize the humanities and eradicate the human subject—that it will explain away emotion, free will, consciousness, and the mystery of existence—justified? Does science need to be reined in before it drives out all other disciplines and ways of knowing? Both rigorous and balanced, Science Unlimited? interrogates our use of a term that is now all but ubiquitous in a wide variety of contexts and debates. Bringing together scientists and philosophers, both friends and foes of scientism, it is a conversation long overdue.

The Instrument of Science

Author : Darrell P. Rowbottom
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429666292
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (296 download)

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Book Synopsis The Instrument of Science by : Darrell P. Rowbottom

Download or read book The Instrument of Science written by Darrell P. Rowbottom and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-25 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roughly, instrumentalism is the view that science is primarily, and should primarily be, an instrument for furthering our practical ends. It has fallen out of favour because historically influential variants of the view, such as logical positivism, suffered from serious defects. In this book, however, Darrell P. Rowbottom develops a new form of instrumentalism, which is more sophisticated and resilient than its predecessors. This position—‘cognitive instrumentalism’—involves three core theses. First, science makes theoretical progress primarily when it furnishes us with more predictive power or understanding concerning observable things. Second, scientific discourse concerning unobservable things should only be taken literally in so far as it involves observable properties or analogies with observable things. Third, scientific claims about unobservable things are probably neither approximately true nor liable to change in such a way as to increase in truthlikeness. There are examples from science throughout the book, and Rowbottom demonstrates at length how cognitive instrumentalism fits with the development of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century chemistry and physics, and especially atomic theory. Drawing upon this history, Rowbottom also argues that there is a kind of understanding, empirical understanding, which we can achieve without having true, or even approximately true, representations of unobservable things. In closing the book, he sets forth his view on how the distinction between the observable and unobservable may be drawn, and compares cognitive instrumentalism with key contemporary alternatives such as structural realism, constructive empiricism, and semirealism. Overall, this book offers a strong defence of instrumentalism that will be of interest to scholars and students working on the debate about realism in philosophy of science.

Fictions in Science

Author : Mauricio Suárez
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135854718
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (358 download)

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Book Synopsis Fictions in Science by : Mauricio Suárez

Download or read book Fictions in Science written by Mauricio Suárez and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-10-26 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science is popularly understood as being an ideal of impartial algorithmic objectivity that provides us with a realistic description of the world down to the last detail. The essays collected in this book—written by some of the leading experts in the field—challenge this popular image right at its heart, taking as their starting point that science trades not only in truth, but in fiction, too. With case studies that range from physics to economics and to biology, Fictions in Science reveals that fictions are as ubiquitous in scientific narratives and practice as they are in any other human endeavor, including literature and art. Of course scientific activity, most prominently in the formal sciences, employs logically precise algorithmic thinking. However, the key to the predictive and technological success of the empirical sciences might well lie elsewhere—perhaps even in scientists’ extraordinary creative imagination instead. As these essays demonstrate, within the bounds of what is empirically possible, a scientist’s capacity for invention and creative thinking matches that of any writer or artist.

The Nature of Selection

Author : Elliott Sober
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022630888X
Total Pages : 397 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis The Nature of Selection by : Elliott Sober

Download or read book The Nature of Selection written by Elliott Sober and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nature of Selection is a straightforward, self-contained introduction to philosophical and biological problems in evolutionary theory. It presents a powerful analysis of the evolutionary concepts of natural selection, fitness, and adaptation and clarifies controversial issues concerning altruism, group selection, and the idea that organisms are survival machines built for the good of the genes that inhabit them. "Sober's is the answering philosophical voice, the voice of a first-rate philosopher and a knowledgeable student of contemporary evolutionary theory. His book merits broad attention among both communities. It should also inspire others to continue the conversation."-Philip Kitcher, Nature "Elliott Sober has made extraordinarily important contributions to our understanding of biological problems in evolutionary biology and causality. The Nature of Selection is a major contribution to understanding epistemological problems in evolutionary theory. I predict that it will have a long lasting place in the literature."-Richard C. Lewontin

Nature’s Suit

Author : Lee Hardy
Publisher : Ohio University Press
ISBN 13 : 0821444700
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Nature’s Suit by : Lee Hardy

Download or read book Nature’s Suit written by Lee Hardy and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-15 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edmund Husserl, founder of the phenomenological movement, is usually read as an idealist in his metaphysics and an instrumentalist in his philosophy of science. In Nature’s Suit, Lee Hardy argues that both views represent a serious misreading of Husserl’s texts. Drawing upon the full range of Husserl’s major published works together with material from Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts, Hardy develops a consistent interpretation of Husserl’s conception of logic as a theory of science, his phenomenological account of truth and rationality, his ontology of the physical thing and mathematical objectivity, his account of the process of idealization in the physical sciences, and his approach to the phenomenological clarification and critique of scientific knowledge. Offering a jargon-free explanation of the basic principles of Husserl’s phenomenology, Nature’s Suit provides an excellent introduction to the philosophy of Edmund Husserl as well as a focused examination of his potential contributions to the philosophy of science. While the majority of research on Husserl’s philosophy of the sciences focuses on the critique of science in his late work, The Crisis of European Sciences, Lee Hardy covers the entire breadth of Husserl’s reflections on science in a systematic fashion, contextualizing Husserl’s phenomenological critique to demonstrate that it is entirely compatible with the theoretical dimensions of contemporary science.

Inconsistency in Science

Author : Joke Meheus
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9401700850
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Inconsistency in Science by : Joke Meheus

Download or read book Inconsistency in Science written by Joke Meheus and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, inconsistencies were seen as a hindrance to good reasoning, and their role in the sciences was ignored. In recent years, however, logicians as well as philosophers and historians have showed a growing interest in the matter. Central to this change were the advent of paraconsistent logics, the shift in attention from finished theories to construction processes, and the recognition that most scientific theories were at some point either internally inconsistent or incompatible with other accepted findings. The new interest gave rise to important questions. How is `logical anarchy' avoided? Is it ever rational to accept an inconsistent theory? In what sense, if any, can inconsistent theories be considered as true? The present collection of papers is the first to deal with this kind of questions. It contains case studies as well as philosophical analyses, and presents an excellent overview of the different approaches in the domain.

Leveraging Distortions

Author : Collin Rice
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262542617
Total Pages : 367 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Leveraging Distortions by : Collin Rice

Download or read book Leveraging Distortions written by Collin Rice and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of how scientists deliberately and justifiably use pervasive distortions of relevant features to explain and understand natural phenomena. A fundamental rule of logic is that in order for an argument to provide good reasons for its conclusion, the premises of the argument must be true. In this book, Collin Rice shows how the practice of science repeatedly, pervasively, and deliberately violates this principle. Rice argues that scientists strategically use distortions that misrepresent relevant features of natural phenomena in order to explain and understand--and that they use these distortions deliberately and justifiably in order to discover truths that would be otherwise inaccessible. Countering the standard emphasis on causation, accurate representation, and decomposition of science into its accurate and inaccurate parts, Rice shows that science's epistemic achievements can still be factive despite their being produced through the use of holistically distorted scientific representations. Indeed, he argues, this distortion is one of the most widely employed and fruitful tools used in scientific theorizing. Marshalling a range of case studies, Rice contends that many explanations in science are noncausal, and he presents an alternate view of explanation that captures the variety of noncausal explanations found across the sciences. He proposes an alternative holistic distortion view of idealized models, connecting it to physicists' concept of a universality class; shows how universality classes can overcome some of the challenges of multiscale modeling; and offers accounts of explanation, idealization, modeling, and understanding.

The Sciences of the Artificial, reissue of the third edition with a new introduction by John Laird

Author : Herbert A. Simon
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262537532
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis The Sciences of the Artificial, reissue of the third edition with a new introduction by John Laird by : Herbert A. Simon

Download or read book The Sciences of the Artificial, reissue of the third edition with a new introduction by John Laird written by Herbert A. Simon and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Herbert Simon's classic work on artificial intelligence in the expanded and updated third edition from 1996, with a new introduction by John E. Laird. Herbert Simon's classic and influential The Sciences of the Artificial declares definitively that there can be a science not only of natural phenomena but also of what is artificial. Exploring the commonalities of artificial systems, including economic systems, the business firm, artificial intelligence, complex engineering projects, and social plans, Simon argues that designed systems are a valid field of study, and he proposes a science of design. For this third edition, originally published in 1996, Simon added new material that takes into account advances in cognitive psychology and the science of design while confirming and extending the book's basic thesis: that a physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for intelligent action. Simon won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1978 for his research into the decision-making process within economic organizations and the Turing Award (considered by some the computer science equivalent to the Nobel) with Allen Newell in 1975 for contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing. The Sciences of the Artificial distills the essence of Simon's thought accessibly and coherently. This reissue of the third edition makes a pioneering work available to a new audience.

Philosophy of Science for Biologists

Author : Kostas Kampourakis
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108491839
Total Pages : 341 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Philosophy of Science for Biologists by : Kostas Kampourakis

Download or read book Philosophy of Science for Biologists written by Kostas Kampourakis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A short and accessible introduction to philosophy of science for students and researchers across the life sciences.

The Scientific Revolution

Author : Steven Shapin
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022639848X
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis The Scientific Revolution by : Steven Shapin

Download or read book The Scientific Revolution written by Steven Shapin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This scholarly and accessible study presents “a provocative new reading” of the late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century advances in scientific inquiry (Kirkus Reviews). In The Scientific Revolution, historian Steven Shapin challenges the very idea that any such a “revolution” ever took place. Rejecting the narrative that a new and unifying paradigm suddenly took hold, he demonstrates how the conduct of science emerged from a wide array of early modern philosophical agendas, political commitments, and religious beliefs. In this analysis, early modern science is shown not as a set of disembodied ideas, but as historically situated ways of knowing and doing. Shapin shows that every principle identified as the modernizing essence of science—whether it’s experimentalism, mathematical methodology, or a mechanical conception of nature—was in fact contested by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century practitioners with equal claims to modernity. Shapin argues that this contested legacy is nevertheless rightly understood as the origin of modern science, its problems as well as its acknowledged achievements. This updated edition includes a new bibliographic essay featuring the latest scholarship. “An excellent book.” —Anthony Gottlieb, New York Times Book Review

Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems

Author : Jerome R. Ravetz
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000159841
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems by : Jerome R. Ravetz

Download or read book Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems written by Jerome R. Ravetz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science is continually confronted by new and difficult social and ethical problems. Some of these problems have arisen from the transformation of the academic science of the prewar period into the industrialized science of the present. Traditional theories of science are now widely recognized as obsolete. In Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (originally published in 1971), Jerome R. Ravetz analyzes the work of science as the creation and investigation of problems. He demonstrates the role of choice and value judgment, and the inevitability of error, in scientific research. Ravetz's new introductory essay is a masterful statement of how our understanding of science has evolved over the last two decades.

The Ashtray

Author : Errol Morris
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226922707
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (269 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ashtray by : Errol Morris

Download or read book The Ashtray written by Errol Morris and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-05-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filmmaker Errol Morris offers his perspective on the world and his powerful belief in the necessity of truth. In 1972, philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn threw an ashtray at Errol Morris. This book is the result. At the time, Morris was a graduate student. Now we know him as one of the most celebrated and restlessly probing filmmakers of our time, the creator of such classics of documentary investigation as The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War. Kuhn, meanwhile, was—and, posthumously, remains—a star in his field, the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a landmark book that has sold well over a million copies and introduced the concept of “paradigm shifts” to the larger culture. And Morris thought the idea was bunk. The Ashtray tells why—and in doing so, it makes a powerful case for Morris’s way of viewing the world, and the centrality to that view of a fundamental conception of the necessity of truth. “For me,” Morris writes, “truth is about the relationship between language and the world: a correspondence idea of truth.” He has no patience for philosophical systems that aim for internal coherence and disdain the world itself. Morris is after bigger game: he wants to establish as clearly as possible what we know and can say about the world, reality, history, our actions and interactions. It’s the fundamental desire that animates his filmmaking, whether he’s probing Robert McNamara about Vietnam or the oddball owner of a pet cemetery. Truth may be slippery, but that doesn’t mean we have to grease its path of escape through philosophical evasions. Rather, Morris argues powerfully, it is our duty to do everything we can to establish and support it. In a time when truth feels ever more embattled, under siege from political lies and virtual lives alike, The Ashtray is a bracing reminder of its value, delivered by a figure who has, over decades, uniquely earned our trust through his commitment to truth. No Morris fan should miss it.