› › Mechanisms In Science

Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics

Author : Hsiang-Ke Chao

Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media

Page : 256 pages

File Size : 29,19 MB

Release : 2013-07-31

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 9400724543

Get eBook

Book Description

This volume addresses fundamental issues in the philosophy of science in the context of two most intriguing fields: biology and economics. Written by authorities and experts in the philosophy of biology and economics, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics provides a structured study of the concepts of mechanism and causality in these disciplines and draws careful juxtapositions between philosophical apparatus and scientific practice. By exploring the issues that are most salient to the contemporary philosophies of biology and economics and by presenting comparative analyses, the book serves as a platform not only for gaining mutual understanding between scientists and philosophers of the life sciences and those of the social sciences, but also for sharing interdisciplinary research that combines both philosophical concepts in both fields. The book begins by defining the concepts of mechanism and causality in biology and economics, respectively. The second and third parts investigate philosophical perspectives of various causal and mechanistic issues in scientific practice in the two fields. These two sections include chapters on causal issues in the theory of evolution; experiments and scientific discovery; representation of causal relations and mechanism by models in economics. The concluding section presents interdisciplinary studies of various topics concerning extrapolation of life sciences and social sciences, including chapters on the philosophical investigation of conjoining biological and economic analyses with, respectively, demography, medicine and sociology.



In Search of Mechanisms

Author : Carl F. Craver

Publisher : University of Chicago Press

Page : 251 pages

File Size : 23,95 MB

Release : 2013-10-03

Category : Science

ISBN : 022603982X

Get eBook

Book Description

Neuroscientists investigate the mechanisms of spatial memory. Molecular biologists study the mechanisms of protein synthesis and the myriad mechanisms of gene regulation. Ecologists study nutrient cycling mechanisms and their devastating imbalances in estuaries such as the Chesapeake Bay. In fact, much of biology and its history involves biologists constructing, evaluating, and revising their understanding of mechanisms. With In Search of Mechanisms, Carl F. Craver and Lindley Darden offer both a descriptive and an instructional account of how biologists discover mechanisms. Drawing on examples from across the life sciences and through the centuries, Craver and Darden compile an impressive toolbox of strategies that biologists have used and will use again to reveal the mechanisms that produce, underlie, or maintain the phenomena characteristic of living things. They discuss the questions that figure in the search for mechanisms, characterizing the experimental, observational, and conceptual considerations used to answer them, all the while providing examples from the history of biology to highlight the kinds of evidence and reasoning strategies employed to assess mechanisms. At a deeper level, Craver and Darden pose a systematic view of what biology is, of how biology makes progress, of how biological discoveries are and might be made, and of why knowledge of biological mechanisms is important for the future of the human species.



Discovering Cell Mechanisms

Author : William Bechtel

Publisher : Cambridge University Press

Page : 346 pages

File Size : 16,75 MB

Release : 2006

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 9780521812474

Get eBook

Book Description

Bechtel emphasises how mechanisms were discovered by cell biologists and the instruments that made these inquiries possible.



Mechanisms in Science

Author : Stavros Ioannidis

Publisher : Cambridge University Press

Page : 291 pages

File Size : 47,3 MB

Release : 2022-06-23

Category : Science

ISBN : 1009022431

Get eBook

Book Description

In recent years what has come to be called the 'New Mechanism' has emerged as a framework for thinking about the philosophical assumptions underlying many areas of science, especially in sciences such as biology, neuroscience, and psychology. This book offers a fresh look at the role of mechanisms, by situating novel analyses of central philosophical issues related to mechanisms within a rich historical perspective of the concept of mechanism as well as detailed case studies of biological mechanisms (such as apoptosis). It develops a new position, Methodological Mechanism, according to which mechanisms are to be viewed as causal pathways that are theoretically described and are underpinned by networks of difference-making relations. In contrast to metaphysically inflated accounts, this study characterises mechanism as a concept-in-use in science that is deflationary and metaphysically neutral, but still methodologically useful and central to scientific practice.



The Construction of Modern Science

Author : Richard S. Westfall

Publisher :

Page : 171 pages

File Size : 32,74 MB

Release : 1971

Category : Science

ISBN : 9780521218634

Get eBook

Book Description

The interplay between the Platonic-Pythagorean tradition and the mechanical philosophy during the 'scientific revolution'.



Evaluating Evidence of Mechanisms in Medicine

Author : Veli-Pekka Parkkinen

Publisher : Springer

Page : 131 pages

File Size : 29,93 MB

Release : 2018-07-13

Category : Medical

ISBN : 3319946102

Get eBook

Book Description

This book is open access under a CC BY license. This book is the first to develop explicit methods for evaluating evidence of mechanisms in the field of medicine. It explains why it can be important to make this evidence explicit, and describes how to take such evidence into account in the evidence appraisal process. In addition, it develops procedures for seeking evidence of mechanisms, for evaluating evidence of mechanisms, and for combining this evaluation with evidence of association in order to yield an overall assessment of effectiveness. Evidence-based medicine seeks to achieve improved health outcomes by making evidence explicit and by developing explicit methods for evaluating it. To date, evidence-based medicine has largely focused on evidence of association produced by clinical studies. As such, it has tended to overlook evidence of pathophysiological mechanisms and evidence of the mechanisms of action of interventions. The book offers a useful guide for all those whose work involves evaluating evidence in the health sciences, including those who need to determine the effectiveness of health interventions and those who need to ascertain the effects of environmental exposures.



The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy

Author : Stuart Glennan

Publisher : Taylor & Francis

Page : 495 pages

File Size : 47,43 MB

Release : 2017-07-06

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 131755230X

Get eBook

Book Description

Scientists studying the burning of stars, the evolution of species, DNA, the brain, the economy, and social change, all frequently describe their work as searching for mechanisms. Despite this fact, for much of the twentieth century philosophical discussions of the nature of mechanisms remained outside philosophy of science. The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into four Parts: Historical perspectives on mechanisms The nature of mechanisms Mechanisms and the philosophy of science Disciplinary perspectives on mechanisms. Within these Parts central topics and problems are examined, including the rise of mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century; what mechanisms are made of and how they are organized; mechanisms and laws and regularities; how mechanisms are discovered and explained; dynamical systems theory; and disciplinary perspectives from physics, chemistry, biology, biomedicine, ecology, neuroscience, and the social sciences. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science, the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as metaphysics, philosophy of psychology, and history of science.



What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter

Author : Justin Garson

Publisher : Cambridge University Press

Page : 249 pages

File Size : 50,5 MB

Release : 2019-01-10

Category : History

ISBN : 1108472591

Get eBook

Book Description

This accessible book presents a new theory of biological functions and connects it to contemporary problems in philosophy and science.



Mechanisms and Consciousness

Author : Marek Pokropski

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 232 pages

File Size : 43,45 MB

Release : 2021-11-29

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 1000480739

Get eBook

Book Description

This book develops a new approach to naturalizing phenomenology. The author proposes to integrate phenomenology with the mechanistic framework that offers new methodological perspectives for studying complex mental phenomena such as consciousness. While mechanistic explanatory models are widely applied in cognitive science, their approach to describing subjective phenomena is limited. The author argues that phenomenology can fill this gap. He proposes two novel ways of integrating phenomenology and mechanism. First, he presents a new reading of phenomenological analyses as functional analyses. Such functional phenomenology delivers a functional sketch of a target system and provides constraints on the space of possible mechanisms. Second, he develops the neurophenomenological approach in the direction of dynamic modeling of experience. He shows that neurophenomenology can deliver dynamical constraints on mechanistic models and thus inform the search for an underlying mechanism. Mechanisms and Consciousness will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and the cognitive sciences.



The New Mechanical Philosophy

Author : Stuart Glennan

Publisher : Oxford University Press

Page : 279 pages

File Size : 22,69 MB

Release : 2017

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 0198779712

Get eBook

Book Description

This volume argues for a new image of science that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, casting the work of science as an effort to understand those mechanisms. Glennan offers an account of the nature of mechanisms and of the models used to represent them in physical, life, and social sciences.