Philosophy of science Books
Springer Galileo, Human Knowledge, and the Book of Nature: Method Replaces Metaphysics
Book SynopsisGalileo is revered as one of the founders of modern science primarily because of such discoveries as the law of falling bodies and the moons of Jupiter. In addition to his scientific achievements, Professor Pitt argues that Galileo deserves increased attention for his contributions to the methodology of the new science and that his method retains its value even today. In a detailed analysis of Galileo's mature works, Pitt reconstructs crucial features of Galileo's epistemology. He shows how Galileo's methodological insights grow out of an appreciation of the limits of human knowledge and he brings fresh insight to our concept of Galileo's methodology and its implications for contemporary debates. Working from Galileo's insistence on the contrast between the number of things that can be known and the limited abilities of human knowers, Pitt shows how Galileo's common sense approach to rationality permits the development of a robust scientific method. At the same time, Pitt argues that we should correct our picture of Galileo, the culture hero. Instead of seeing him as a martyr to the cause of truth, Galileo is best understood as a man of his times who was responding to a variety of social pressures during a period of intellectual and political turmoil. This book will be of interest to philosophers and to historians and sociologists of science as well as to a general readership interested in the scientific revolution. Table of ContentsPreface. I. Galileo as Scientist and as Philosopher and the Emergence of Mathematical Physics in the 17th Century. II. Galileo on God, Mathematics, Certainty, and the Nature and Possibility of Human Knowledge. III. The Limits of Knowledge; Mathematics and Methodological Principles. IV. The Content of Knowledge. V. Evidence; the Basis of Knowledge. VI. Galileo's Epistemology as the Basis for a Theory of the Growth of Knowledge. Works Consulted.
£42.74
Springer Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism
Book SynopsisTran Duc Thao, a brilliant student of philosophy at the Ecole Normale Super- ieure within the post-1935 decade of political disaster, born in Vietnam shortly after the F ir st World War, recipient of a scholarship in Paris in 1935 37, was early noted for his independent and originaI mind_ While the 1930s twisted down to the defeat of the Spanish Republic, the compromise with German Fascism at Munich, and the start of the Second World War, and while the 1940s began with hypocritical stability at the Western Front fol- lowed by the defeat of France, and the occupation of Paris by the German power together with French collaborators, and the n ended with liberation and a search for a new understanding of human situations, the young Thao was deeply immersed in the classical works of European philosophy. He was al so the attentive but critical student of a quite special generation of French metaphysicians and social philosophers: Gaston Berger, Maurice Merleau- Ponty, Emile Brehier, Henri Lefebvre, Rene le Senne, Jean-Paul Sartre, perhaps the young Louis Althusser. They, in their several modes of response, had been meditating for more than a decade on the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, which came to France in the thirties as a new metaphysical enlighten- ment - phenomenology.Trade Review`This work of Thao, in an elegant, laconic, and remarkably lucid prose, elaborates the rationale that motivated Husserl's philosophizing... Thao's knowledge of Husserl, as well as of the entire history of philosophy, is most impressive, and he has the ability to elucidate and bring to life some of the most abstruse epistemological writings of Kant, Husserl, and others. ...consider this one of the clearest introductions to phenomenology and would consider it a superb text to use in introducing my students to phenomenology.' Paul Ricoeur Table of ContentsOne: The Phenomenological Method and Its Actual Real Content.- One: The Intuition of Essences.- 1. The Technique of Variation.- 2. Pure Idealities and Empirical Idealities.- 3. The True Significance of the Notion of Essence.- 4. Difficulties with the Objectivism of Essences. The Return to the Subject.- Two: The Thematization of Concrete Consciousness.- 5. The Return to Lived Experience in the Logische Untersuchungen.- 6. The Discovery of the Reduction.- 7. The Exposition of the Ideen.- 8. The Critique of the Kantians.- 9. Fink’s Reply. The Necessity of a More Radical Explanation.- 10. The Notion of Constitution. The Signification of Transcendental Idealism.- 11. The Constitution of the World of the Spirit.- 12. The Notion of Object. Perception and Judgment.- Three: The Problems of Reason.- 13. Self-Evidence (Évidence) and Truth.- 14. The problem of Error.- 15. [Self-] Evidence as Intentional Performance (Intentionale Leistung).- 16. The Possibility of Error as Contemporaneous with Truth.- 17. A Digression — The Theory of Evidence According to Descartes and the Problem of the Cartesian Circle.- 18. Phenomenological Description as a Critique of Authenticity: Static and Genetic Constitution.- 19. The Constitution of the Formal Domain: Logic and Mathematics.- 20. The Genesis of Judgment.- Four: The Result of Phenomenology.- 21. The Genesis of Antepredicative Experience and Its Real Content.- Two: The Dialectic of Real Movement.- to Part Two.- 1. Consciousness and Matter.- One: The Dialectic of Animal Behavior as the Becoming of Sense Certainty.- 2. Phenomenological Givens and Real Givens.- 3. The Movement of the Internal Sense.- 4. The Movement of the External Sense.- 5. Remarks on the Preceding Development: The Passage to the Dialectic of Human Societies.- Two: The Dialectic of Human Societies as the Becoming of Reason.- 6. Use-Value and the Movement of Sacrifice.- 7. The Movement of Wealth and the Becoming of the Gods.- 8. Mercantile Economy and the Sacrifice of the Savior, God.- 9. Monetary Economy, the Transcendence of the Idea, and the Concept of Salvation.- 10. Capitalistic Economy, the Power of Abstraction and the Proletarian Revolution.- Notes.- Bibliography of Works Cited.- Index of Names.
£123.49
Springer Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology: The Case
Book SynopsisNew biotechnologies have propelled the question of what it means to be human – or posthuman – to the forefront of societal and scientific consideration. This volume provides an accessible, critical overview of the main approaches in the debate on posthumanism, and argues that they do not adequately address the question of what it means to be human in an age of biotechnology. Not because they belong to rival political camps, but because they are grounded in a humanist ontology that presupposes a radical separation between human subjects and technological objects.The volume offers a comprehensive mapping of posthumanist discourse divided into four broad approaches—two humanist-based approaches: dystopic and liberal posthumanism, and two non-humanist approaches: radical and methodological posthumanism. The author compares and contrasts these models via an exploration of key issues, from human enhancement, to eugenics, to new configurations of biopower, questioning what role technology plays in defining the boundaries of the human, the subject and nature for each. Building on the contributions and limitations of radical and methodological posthumanism, the author develops a novel perspective, mediated posthumanism, that brings together insights in the philosophy of technology, the sociology of biomedicine, and Michel Foucault’s work on ethical subject constitution. In this framework, technology is neither a neutral tool nor a force that alienates humanity from itself, but something that is always already part of the experience of being human, and subjectivity is viewed as an emergent property that is constantly being shaped and transformed by its engagements with biotechnologies. Mediated posthumanism becomes a tool for identifying novel ethical modes of human experience that are richer and more multifaceted than current posthumanist perspectives allow for.The book will be essential reading for students and scholars working on ethics and technology, philosophy of technology, poststructuralism, technology and the body, and medical ethics.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. A Cartography of the Posthuman.- Chapter 3. The Human Enhancement Debate: For, Against and from Human Nature.- Chapter 4. Towards a Non-Humanist Posthumanism: The Originary Prostheticity of Radical and Methodological Posthumanism.- Chapter 5. From Molar to Molecular Bodies: Posthumanist Frameworks in Contemporary Biology.- Chapter 6. Posthuman Subjectivity: Beyond Modern Metaphysics.- Chapter 7. Technologically Produced Nature: Nature Beyond Schizophrenia and Paranoia.- Chapter 8. New Modes of Ethical Selfhood: Geneticization and Genetically Responsible Subjectivity.- Chapter 9. Conclusion.
£42.74
Springer Swinging and Rolling: Unveiling Galileo's
Book SynopsisThis volume explores the reorganisation of knowledge taking place in the course of Galileo's research process extending over a period of more than thirty years, pursued within a network of exchanges with his contemporaries, and documented by a vast collection of research notes. It has revealed the challenging objects that motivated and shaped Galileo's thinking and closely followed the knowledge reorganization engendered by theses challenges. It has thus turned out, for example, that the problem of reducing the properties of pendulum motion to the laws governing naturally accelerated motion on inclined planes was the mainspring for the formation of Galileo's comprehensive theory of naturally accelerated motion.Table of Contents1. Introduction, Novel Insights about accelerated motion: the challenge of pendulums and planes.- 2. Speaking the investigation of naturally accelerated motion: The broken chord approach.- 3. Early experimentation: The Pendulum Plane Experiment.- 4. Prerequisite for, or challenged by the new theory: The 'ex mechanics' proof of the Law of Chords.- 5. Foundational issues before 1604: Fundamental propositions, the mechanical method and problems with the concept of velocity. Conclusion, Appendix.
£74.99
Springer Open Science: the Very Idea
Book SynopsisThis open access book provides a broad context for the understanding of current problems of science and of the different movements aiming to improve the societal impact of science and research. The author offers insights with regard to ideas, old and new, about science, and their historical origins in philosophy and sociology of science, which is of interest to a broad readership. The book shows that scientifically grounded knowledge is required and helpful in understanding intellectual and political positions in various discussions on the grand challenges of our time and how science makes impact on society. The book reveals why interventions that look good or even obvious, are often met with resistance and are hard to realize in practice. Based on a thorough analysis, as well as personal experiences in aids research, university administration and as a science observer, the author provides - while being totally open regarding science's limitations- a realistic narrative about how research is conducted, and how reliable ‘objective’ knowledge is produced. His idea of science, which draws heavily on American pragmatism, fits in with the global Open Science movement. It is argued that Open Science is a truly and historically unique movement in that it translates the analysis of the problems of science into major institutional actions of system change in order to improve academic culture and the impact of science, engaging all actors in the field of science and academia.Table of ContentsChapter 1: Science and Society – Chapter 2: Images of Science: A reality check.- Science in Transition: How science goes wrong and what to do about it.- Chapter 4: Science & Society: pragmatism by default.- Chapter 5: Science in Social Contexts.- Chapter 6: Science in Transition reduced to Practice.- chapter 7: Transition to Open Science.
£31.49
Aspekt B.V., Uitgeverij World of Our Grandchildren
Book SynopsisThe future looks brighter than most people think! That is the conclusion of this book after a thorough investigation of present facts, trends and promises of science and technology. The world population will soon stop growing. The consequences of climate change will be far-reaching, but surmountable. Science and technology will, in the 21st century, make enormous progress. They are the shaping forces of the future. This book clearly explains the potential benefits and dangers of innovations from many area of research. Special attention is paid to the question whether and how mankind will try to improve itself beyond its natural capacities. The author is by profession a physicist. He worked at CERN and other research institutes in Europe and North America. His present primary interest is in historical research.
£17.06
Springer Verlag, Singapore The Beauty and Fascination of Science
Book SynopsisIn this book, Professor Anatoly Buchachenko gives a brief and informative description of the most striking achievements and discoveries made in the major natural sciences at the turn of the century – in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The author has a rare ability to describe scientific discoveries so that these achievements and their significance are understandable not only by professionals and scientists of all specialities, but for any reader interested in modern science, its role in the existence of mankind, and its impact on human society. Originally published in Russian, Professor Buchachenko’s book describes the interaction of natural sciences with social ones—philosophy and history—as well as the part played by the human factor in the development of science, especially the role of the great scientists. Table of ContentsScience.- Physics.- Mathematics.- Evolution.- Chemistry.- Biology.- Intelligence.- History.- Philosophy.- Aesthetics of Science.
£24.74
World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd More And Different: Notes From A Thoughtful
Book SynopsisNamed a Top Five Book of 2012 by Physics Today, USA.“Anderson has put together an entertaining and instructive collection of highly readable reviews, columns, talks, and unpublished essays on science and the scientists he has known. He is rarely inappropriately provocative, and he is a pleasure to read.”Physics TodayPhilip Anderson was educated at University High School in Urbana, Illinois, at Harvard (BS 1943, PhD 1949), and further educated at Bell Laboratories, where his career (1949-1984) coincided with the greatest period of that remarkable institution. Starting in 1967, he shared his time with Cambridge University (until 1975) and then with Princeton, where he continued full time as Joseph Henry Professor until 1997. As an emeritus he remains active in research, and at press time he was involved in several scientific controversies about high profile subjects, in which his point of view, though unpopular at the moment, is likely to prevail eventually. His colleagues have made him one of the two physicists most often cited in the scientific literature, for several decades.His work is characterized by mathematical simplicity combined with conceptual depth, and by profound respect for experimental findings. He has explored areas outside his main discipline, the quantum theory of condensed matter (for which he won the 1977 Nobel Prize), on several occasions: his paper on what is now called the “Anderson-Higgs mechanism” was a main source for Peter Higgs' elucidation of the boson; a crucial insight led to work on the dynamics of neutron stars (pulsars); and his concept of the spin glass led far afield, to developments in practical computer algorithms and neural nets, and eventually to his involvement in the early years of the Santa Fe Institute and his co-leadership with Kenneth Arrow of two influential workshops on economics at that institution. His writing career started with a much-quoted article in Science titled “More is Different” in 1971; he was an occasional columnist for Physics Today in the 1980s and 1990s. He was more recently a reviewer of science and science-related books for the Times (London) Higher Education Supplement as well as an occasional contributor to Science, Nature, and other journals.Table of ContentsPersonal Reminiscences; History; Philosophy and Sociology; Science Tactics and Strategy; Genius; Science Wars; Politics and Sciences; Futurology; Complexity; Popularization Attempts.
£121.50
Nova Science Publishers Inc Conceptual Features of Einstein's Theory of
Book Synopsis
£67.99
