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Erhard Scheibe's Structuralism
This book offers the first systematic review of the structuralism of physical theories. Particular emphasis is placed on the inclusion of empirical imprecision into formal reconstructions of theories. The proposed measure of imprecision allows for a topological comparison of theories. Considering the ongoing debates on the nature of the thermodynamic limit in statistical mechanics, as well as on limit relations between classical and quantum mechanics, the author asserts that the Bourbaki-style structuralism, together with E. Scheibe's theory of reduction, is the best choice for reconstructing and analyzing the related questions of reduction and emergence. Readers will appreciate the critical overview of the main positions in philosophy of science, examined with particular attention to their applicability to current problems of fundamental theories of physics.
Between Rationalism and Empiricism
Scheibe is one of the most important philosophers of science in Germany. He has written extensively on all the problems that confront the philosophy of physics: rationalism vs. empiricism; reductionism; the foundations of quantum mechanics; space-time, and much more. Since little of his work has been translated into English, he is not yet well known internationally. However, this collection of some 40 of his papers will remedy this unfortunate situation.
The Reduction of Physical Theories
Using simple physical examples, this work by Erhard Scheibe presents an important and powerful approach to the reduction of physical theories. Novel to the approach is that it is not based, as usual, on a single reduction concept that is fixed once and for all, but on a series of recursively constructed reductions, with which all reductions appear as combinations of very specific elementary reductions. This leaves the general notion of theory reduction initially open and is beneficial for the treatment of the difficult cases of reduction from the fields of special and general relativity, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics,and quantum mechanics, which are treated in the second volume. The book is systematically organized and intended for readers interested in philosophy of science as well as physicists without deep philosophical knowledge.
The Reality of the Unobservable
Observability and Scientific Realism It is commonly thought that the birth of modern natural science was made possible by an intellectual shift from a mainly abstract and specuJative conception of the world to a carefully elaborated image based on observations. There is some grain of truth in this claim, but this grain depends very much on what one takes observation to be. In the philosophy of science of our century, observation has been practically equated with sense perception. This is understandable if we think of the attitude of radical empiricism that inspired Ernst Mach and the philosophers of the Vienna Circle, who powerfully influenced our century's philosophy of science. However, th...
The Adventure of Reason
Paolo Mancosu presents a series of innovative studies in the history and the philosophy of logic and mathematics in the first half of the twentieth century. The Adventure of Reason is divided into five main sections: history of logic (from Russell to Tarski); foundational issues (Hilbert's program, constructivity, Wittgenstein, Gödel); mathematics and phenomenology (Weyl, Becker, Mahnke); nominalism (Quine, Tarski); semantics (Tarski, Carnap, Neurath). Mancosu exploits extensive untapped archival sources to make available a wealth of new material that deepens in significant ways our understanding of these fascinating areas of modern intellectual history. At the same time, the book is a contribution to recent philosophical debates, in particular on the prospects for a successful nominalist reconstruction of mathematics, the nature of finitist intuition, the viability of alternative definitions of logical consequence, and the extent to which phenomenology can hope to account for the exact sciences.
Der Gesuchte Widerstreit
This series publishes outstanding monographs and edited volumes that investigate all aspects of Kant's philosophy, including its systematic relationship to other philosophical approaches, both past and present. Studies that appear in the series are distinguished by their innovative nature and ability to close lacunae in the research. In this way, the series is a venue for the latest findings in scholarship on Kant.
Thinking about Thinking
At the root of everything we do is the knowledge we possess. We begin to acquire knowledge in infancy and never stop for the rest of our lives. Without knowledge we would be helpless and vulnerable. But how do we acquire knowledge? Where does it come from, and how do we know if it is true or not? These questions have troubled philosophers since antiquity and gradually over millennia we have discovered the mechanisms necessary to acquire knowledge and to verify it. This book surveys these methods, starting with our most basic functions of common sense and intuition and moving on to more complex cognitive activity such as deductive and inductive inference and causality. Later, the scientific method, statistics, and probability are discussed. The book concludes with newer contributions to the field, including decision analysis, game theory, computers and artificial intelligence. Written for a lay audience, it surveys the field of epistemology in an approachable and engaging way.
Methodological Variance
For a philosopher with an abiding interest in the nature of objective knowledge systems in science, what could be more important than trying to think in terms of those very subjects of such knowledge to which men like Galileo, Newton, Max Planck, Einstein and others devoted their entire lifetimes? In certain respects, these systems and their structures may not be beyond the grasp of a linguistic conception of science, and scientific change, which men of science and philosophy have advocated in various forms in recent times. But certainly it is wrong-headed to think that one's conception of science can be based on an identification of its theories with languages in which they may be, my own a...
Much Ado about Nothing
Provides a description of the major ideas about void space within and beyond the world that were formulated between the fourteenth and early eighteenth centuries.
