On the Method of Zadig


Book Description

It is an usual and a commendable practice to preface the discussion of the views of a philosophic thinker by some account of the man and of the circumstances which shaped his life and coloured his way of looking at things; but, though Zadig is cited in one of the most important chapters of Cuvier's greatest work, little is known about him, and that little might perhaps be better authenticated than it is.




Zadig


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Predicting the Weather


Book Description

Victorian Britain, with its maritime economy and strong links between government and scientific enterprises, founded an office to collect meteorological statistics in 1854 in an effort to foster a modern science of the weather. But as the office turned to prediction rather than data collection, the fragile science became a public spectacle, with its forecasts open to daily scrutiny in the newspapers. And meteorology came to assume a pivotal role in debates about the responsibility of scientists and the authority of science. Studying meteorology as a means to examine the historical identity of prediction, Katharine Anderson offers here an engrossing account of forecasting that analyzes scientific practice and ideas about evidence, the organization of science in public life, and the articulation of scientific values in Victorian culture. In Predicting the Weather, Anderson grapples with fundamental questions about the function, intelligibility, and boundaries of scientific work while exposing the public expectations that shaped the practice of science during this period. A cogent analysis of the remarkable history of weather forecasting in Victorian Britain, Predicting the Weather will be essential reading for scholars interested in the public dimensions of science.




Collected Essays


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A nine-volume collection of essays and lectures published in 1893-4 by one of Victorian England's most influential biologists.




Show Me the Bone


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Nineteenth-century paleontologists, such as Georges Cuvier and Richard Owen, were heralded as scientific virtuosos, sometimes even veritable wizards, capable of resurrecting the denizens of an ancient past from a mere glance at a fragmentary bone. Such extraordinary feats of predictive reasoning relied on the law of correlation, which proposed that each element of an animal corresponds mutually with each of the others, so that a carnivorous tooth must be accompanied by a certain kind of jawbone, neck, stomach, limbs and feet. 'Show Me the Bone' tells the story of the rise and fall of this famous claim.




Conceptual Issues in Psychological Medicine


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Conceptual Issues in Psychological Medicine is a collection of papers written by the celebrated psychiatrist, Michael Shepherd, who was one of the originators of psychiatric epidemiology in the UK and a leading social psychiatrist of his generation. He designed and implemented some of the first systematic studies into what are now widely recognised clinical syndromes. His extensive research experience and his advocacy of a scientific approach to social psychiatry form the basis of the essays contained in this book. Covering such issues as the development of research strategy and the difficulties involved in completing psychiatric studies, Shepherd's papers address many of the issues currently facing professionals in this field. He writes authoritatively and engagingly on clinical syndromes, the history of ideas and the use of the epidemiological approach in psychiatry. Conceptual Issues in Psychological Medicine stimulates and informs the reader in equal measure; it will be a welcome addition to the bookshelf of any practitioner of medicine.




On the Method of Zadig


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"On the Method of Zadig" by Thomas Henry Huxley. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.




Intuition in Medicine


Book Description

Intuition is central to discussions about the nature of scientific and philosophical reasoning and what it means to be human. In this bold and timely book, Hillel D. Braude marshals his dual training as a physician and philosopher to examine the place of intuition in medicine. Rather than defining and using a single concept of intuition—philosophical, practical, or neuroscientific—Braude here examines intuition as it occurs at different levels and in different contexts of clinical reasoning. He argues that not only does intuition provide the bridge between medical reasoning and moral reasoning, but that it also links the epistemological, ontological, and ethical foundations of clinical decision making. In presenting his case, Braude takes readers on a journey through Aristotle’s Ethics—highlighting the significance of practical reasoning in relation to theoretical reasoning and the potential bridge between them—then through current debates between regulators and clinicians on evidence-based medicine, and finally applies the philosophical perspectives of Reichenbach, Popper, and Peirce to analyze the intuitive support for clinical equipoise, a key concept in research ethics. Through his phenomenological study of intuition Braude aims to demonstrate that ethical responsibility for the other lies at the heart of clinical judgment. Braude’s original approach advances medical ethics by using philosophical rigor and history to analyze the tacit underpinnings of clinical reasoning and to introduce clear conceptual distinctions that simultaneously affirm and exacerbate the tension between ethical theory and practice. His study will be welcomed not only by philosophers but also by clinicians eager to justify how they use moral intuitions, and anyone interested in medical decision making.




Hitler and Abductive Logic


Book Description

Adolf Hitler is the greatest mystery of the 20th century, and the mystery surrounding him consists of two unanswered questions that have baffled biographers and historians. First, how did he ever rise to power? Second, who was he really? Hitler had the power to mesmerize crowds as the most dynamic orator of the modern age. Yet, his power was not in his ideas, which he collected from the gutter sheets of Vienna, nor was it in his personality; his biographers describe him as an "unperson" and his character as a "void" and a "black hole." What, then, was the source of his power? Was he a medium or a magician with paranormal powers, as many contemporaries thought? Or did he have a secret or method that has not yet been revealed? Ben Novak spent fourteen years searching for the secret of Hitler's political success and his power as a speaker. Hitler's most astute contemporary observer, Konrad Heiden, who wrote the first objective books on Hitler warning that this man was "the greatest massdisturber in world history," suggested that Hitler's secret lay in his use of "eine eigentiimliche art von Logik,"or a "peculiar form of logic." Beginning with this clue, Novak finds that there is a new form of logic in accordance with Heiden's description and examples that can explain Hitler's phenomenal political success. This new form of logic, called "abduction," was discovered by an American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who is rapidly becoming America's most well-known philosopher and logician. Abduction is a third form of logic, in addition to deduction and induction. Unlike the other forms of logic, abduction is based on instinct and has a power over emotions. Novak argues that Hitler was the first politician to apply the logic of abduction to politics. This book provides the first coherent account of Hitler's youth that ties together all the known facts, clearly showing the genesis of the strangest and most terrible man of the twentieth century while identifying the power he discovered that allowed him to break out into the world in such a terrifying way.