Author : William Thomson Baron Kelvin
Publisher : MIT Press (MA)
Page : 570 pages
File Size : 27,90 MB
Release : 1987
Category : History
ISBN :
In 1884 Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) delivered a significant series of lectures on physics at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. This book presents the twenty lectures in their original form for the first time.
Author : Jutta Schickore
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 39,3 MB
Release : 2006-01-27
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781402042508
The distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification has had a turbulent career in philosophy of science. This book presents a debate about the nature, development, and significance of the context distinction, about its merits and flaws. It provides readings and analyses of the original textual sources for the context distinction.
Author : Mauricio Suárez
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 44,6 MB
Release : 2024-01-11
Category : Science
ISBN : 0226830039
The first comprehensive defense of an inferential conception of scientific representation with applications to art and epistemology. Mauricio Suárez develops a conception of representation that delivers a compelling account of modeling practice. He begins by discussing the history and methodology of model building, charting the emergence of what he calls the modeling attitude, a nineteenth-century and fin de siècle development. Prominent cases of models, both historical and contemporary, are used as benchmarks for the accounts of representation considered throughout the book. After arguing against reductive naturalist theories of scientific representation, Suárez sets out his own account: a case for pluralism regarding the means of representation and minimalism regarding its constituents. He shows that scientists employ a variety of modeling relations in their representational practice—which helps them to assess the accuracy of their representations—while demonstrating that there is nothing metaphysically deep about the constituent relation that encompasses all these diverse means. The book also probes the broad implications of Suárez’s inferential conception outside scientific modeling itself, covering analogies with debates about artistic representation and philosophical thought over the past several decades.
Author : J. S. Rowlinson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 343 pages
File Size : 11,87 MB
Release : 2005-06-30
Category : Science
ISBN : 1139435884
Why does matter stick together? Why do gases condense to liquids, and liquids to solids? This book provides a detailed historical account of how some of the leading scientists of the past three centuries have tried to answer these questions.
Author : Peter Rowlands
Publisher : World Scientific
Page : 738 pages
File Size : 23,87 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Science
ISBN : 9812709142
Rowlands offers researchers in quantum, theoretical and high energy physics immediate access to simple but powerful techniques.
Author : Henk W. de Regt
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
Page : 365 pages
File Size : 25,96 MB
Release : 2014-08-09
Category : Science
ISBN : 0822971240
To most scientists, and to those interested in the sciences, understanding is the ultimate aim of scientific endeavor. In spite of this, understanding, and how it is achieved, has received little attention in recent philosophy of science. Scientific Understanding seeks to reverse this trend by providing original and in-depth accounts of the concept of understanding and its essential role in the scientific process. To this end, the chapters in this volume explore and develop three key topics: understanding and explanation, understanding and models, and understanding in scientific practice. Earlier philosophers, such as Carl Hempel, dismissed understanding as subjective and pragmatic. They believed that the essence of science was to be found in scientific theories and explanations. In Scientific Understanding, the contributors maintain that we must also consider the relation between explanations and the scientists who construct and use them. They focus on understanding as the cognitive state that is a goal of explanation and on the understanding of theories and models as a means to this end. The chapters in this book highlight the multifaceted nature of the process of scientific research. The contributors examine current uses of theory, models, simulations, and experiments to evaluate the degree to which these elements contribute to understanding. Their analyses pay due attention to the roles of intelligibility, tacit knowledge, and feelings of understanding. Furthermore, they investigate how understanding is obtained within diverse scientific disciplines and examine how the acquisition of understanding depends on specific contexts, the objects of study, and the stated aims of research.
Author : Chris Bissell
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 27,40 MB
Release : 2012-02-03
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 3642252095
This fascinating book examines some of the characteristics of technological/engineering models that are likely to be unfamiliar to those who are interested primarily in the history and philosophy of science and mathematics, and which differentiate technological models from scientific and mathematical ones. Themes that are highlighted include: • the role of language: the models developed for engineering design have resulted in new ways of talking about technological systems • communities of practice: related to the previous point, particular engineering communities have particular ways of sharing and developing knowledge • graphical (re)presentation: engineers have developed many ways of reducing quite complex mathematical models to more simple representations • reification: highly abstract mathematical models are turned into ‘objects’ that can be manipulated almost like components of a physical system • machines: not only the currently ubiquitous digital computer, but also older analogue devices – slide rules, physical models, wind tunnels and other small-scale simulators, as well as mechanical, electrical and electronic analogue computers • mathematics and modelling as a bridging tool between disciplines This book studies primarily modelling in technological practice. It is worth noting that models of the type considered in the book are not always highly valued in formal engineering education at university level, which often takes an “applied science” approach close to that of the natural sciences (something that can result in disaffection on the part of students). Yet in an informal context, such as laboratories, industrial placements, and so on, a very different situation obtains. A number of chapters considers such epistemological aspects, as well as the status of different types of models within the engineering education community. The book will be of interest to practising engineers and technologists; sociologists of science and technology; and historians and philosophers of science and mathematics. It will also be written in a way that will be accessible to non-specialists.
Author : James Blachowicz
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 466 pages
File Size : 40,76 MB
Release : 1998-01-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780791436417
The logic of correction developed here directly opposes the claim made by evolutionary epistemologists such as Popper and Campbell that there is no such thing as a "logical method for having new ideas." The author argues that beyond scientific discovery, the same logic can be found in the more intimate form of inquiry we conduct as we attempt to articulate meanings for ourselves.
Author :
Publisher : Museum Tusculanum Press
Page : 156 pages
File Size : 15,56 MB
Release : 1975
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9788772895130
Author : Henk W. de Regt
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 17,52 MB
Release : 2017-07-24
Category : Science
ISBN : 0190652934
It is widely acknowledged that a central aim of science is to achieve understanding of the world around us, and that possessing such understanding is highly important in our present-day society. But what does it mean to achieve this understanding? What precisely is scientific understanding? These are philosophical questions that have not yet received satisfactory answers. While there has been an ongoing debate about the nature of scientific explanation since Carl Hempel advanced his covering-law model in 1948, the related notion of understanding has been largely neglected, because most philosophers regarded understanding as merely a subjective by-product of objective explanations. By contrast, this book puts scientific understanding center stage. It is primarily a philosophical study, but also contains detailed historical case studies of scientific practice. In contrast to most existing studies in this area, it takes into account scientists' views and analyzes their role in scientific debate and development. The aim of Understanding Scientific Understanding is to develop and defend a philosophical theory of scientific understanding that can describe and explain the historical variation of criteria for understanding actually employed by scientists. The theory does justice to the insights of such famous physicists as Werner Heisenberg and Richard Feynman, while bringing much-needed conceptual rigor to their intuitions. The scope of the proposed account of understanding is the natural sciences: while the detailed case studies derive from physics, examples from other sciences are presented to illustrate its wider validity.
