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For the first time in history, scholars working on language and culture from within an evolutionary epistemological framework, and thereby emphasizing complementary or deviating theories of the Modern Synthesis, were brought together. Of course there have been excellent conferences on Evolutionary Epistemology in the past, as well as numerous conferences on the topics of Language and Culture. However, until now these disciplines had not been brought together into one all-encompassing conference. Moreover, previously there never had been such stress on alternative and complementary theories of the Modern Synthesis. Today we know that natural selection and evolution are far from synonymous and...
Within the field of psychology there is a proliferation of paradigms, theories, models, and dimensions without an underlying conceptual framework or theory. This conclusion has been reached by representatives of many different psychological specialties. In response to this inconsistency this book presents a hierarchical framework about important theoretical issues that are present in psychological thinking. These issues concern definitions of three major theoretical concepts in theory and practice: (a) paradigms, (b) theories, and (c) models. It focuses on defining, comparing, and contrasting these three conceptual terms. This framework clarifies differences among paradigms, theories, and models, terms which have become increasingly confused in the psychological literature. Paradigms are usually confused with theories or with models while theories are confused with models. Examples of misuses of these terms suggest the need for a hierarchical structure that views paradigms as conceptual constructions overseeing a variety of psychological theories and verifiable models.
This book summarizes scholarly achievements of the author by confronting two descriptive models of linguistic research. Against the background of a language-centered view dealing with its external conditionings in the life of nations and nationalities the author puts forward a human-centered conception of grammar which focuses on the ecosystem of communicating individuals who aggregate into interpersonal and intersubjective groupings for the realization of common tasks. Such a grammar manifests itself in linguistic-communicational properties of people through changeable practices of meaning-creation and stabilizing patterns of meaning-interpretation: firstly, when they create observable relationships while transmitting and receiving the meaning-bearers, and, secondly, when they contribute to the formation of assumable associations while coding and decoding the meanings to the approximately similar extent.
Quantum Structures and the Nature of Reality is a collection of papers written for an interdisciplinary audience about the quantum structure research within the International Quantum Structures Association. The advent of quantum mechanics has changed our scientific worldview in a fundamental way. Many popular and semi-popular books have been published about the paradoxical aspects of quantum mechanics. Usually, however, these reflections find their origin in the standard views on quantum mechanics, most of all the wave-particle duality picture. Contrary to relativity theory, where the meaning of its revolutionary ideas was linked from the start with deep structural changes in the geometrical...
The roots of cognitivism lie deep in the history of Western thought, and to develop a genuinely post-cognitivist psychology, this investigation goes back to presuppositions descended from Platonic/Cartesian assumptions and beliefs about the nature of thought.
Hybrid neural systems are computational systems which are based mainly on artificial neural networks and allow for symbolic interpretation or interaction with symbolic components. This book is derived from a workshop held during the NIPS'98 in Denver, Colorado, USA, and competently reflects the state of the art of research and development in hybrid neural systems. The 26 revised full papers presented together with an introductory overview by the volume editors have been through a twofold process of careful reviewing and revision. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: structured connectionism and rule representation; distributed neural architectures and language processing; transformation and explanation; robotics, vision, and cognitive approaches.
This publication features an interdisciplinary group of contributors which questions aspects of today's worldviews and science that are often taken for granted and tacitly determine the boundaries of what is generally conceived of as the 'world' and 'science'. Some authors stress that existing demarcations are obsolete and often prevent new insights. Others show how they influence the way people perceive themselves and believe the world ontologically to be, determining people's actions and the social fabric. There are yet others who point out how a redemarcation may stimulate the development of knowledge acquisition and social well-being. Examples of how bridging knowledge between different fields leads to new crucial insights, while identifying the pattern of too strict a demarcation preventing such insights, are also analyzed in this volume.
In The Will to Predict, Eglė Rindzevičiūtė demonstrates how the logic of scientific expertise cannot be properly understood without knowing the conceptual and institutional history of scientific prediction. She notes that predictions of future population, economic growth, environmental change, and scientific and technological innovation have shaped much of twentieth and twenty-first-century politics and social life, as well as government policies. Today, such predictions are more necessary than ever as the world undergoes dramatic environmental, political, and technological change. But, she asks, what does it mean to predict scientifically? What are the limits of scientific prediction an...
This book shows that modernist literature creatively negotiated the same issues of data processing that cybernetics technologies would later tackle.
By outlining a social theory of the internet and the information society, this book demonstrates how the ecological, economic, political and cultural systems of contemporary society have been transformed by new information and communication technologies.