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Mechanistic Explanations in Physics and Beyond
This volume offers a broad, philosophical discussion on mechanical explanations. Coverage ranges from historical approaches and general questions to physics and higher-level sciences . The contributors also consider the topics of complexity, emergence, and reduction. Mechanistic explanations detail how certain properties of a whole stem from the causal activities of its parts. This kind of explanation is in particular employed in explanatory models of the behavior of complex systems. Often used in biology and neuroscience, mechanistic explanation models have been often overlooked in the philosophy of physics. The authors correct this surprising neglect. They trace these models back to their ...
The Laboratory of the Mind
Newton's bucket, Einstein's elevator, Schrödinger's cat – these are some of the best-known examples of thought experiments in the natural sciences. But what function do these experiments perform? Are they really experiments at all? Can they help us gain a greater understanding of the natural world? How is it possible that we can learn new things just by thinking? In this revised and updated new edition of his classic text The Laboratory of the Mind, James Robert Brown continues to defend apriorism in the physical world. This edition features two new chapters, one on “counter thought experiments” and another on the development of inertial motion. With plenty of illustrations and updated coverage of the debate between Platonic rationalism and classic empiricism, this is a lively and engaging contribution to the field of philosophy of science.
Theoretical Principles of Relational Biology
This book proposes the foundation of the relational approach to biology, rejecting the deterministic and reductionist approach of molecular biology. Although biology has made enormous progress in the last seventy years, onto genesis is still conceived as a “revelation” of information (DNA). Recovering the geometric tradition, relational biology conceives scientific and epistemological tools (cause, probability, space etc.) of science in a new way. If probabilistic biology and organicism still proposes a biology based on physics, with a fundamental invariant, relational biology is based on variation: its fundamental invariant is variation, one of the most important elements of life. This is an indispensable book for academics who consider biology from a new theoretical approach, in particular for those working in the domains of cancer, ontogenesis and evolution.
The Thick Bog of Metaphor and the New-wave Hermeneutic Defense of Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis, in Freud’s day and our own, has met with and continues to meet with staunch opposition from critics—from philosophers of science, like Adolf Grünbaum, and psychoanalysts, like Robert Holt—who see empirical confirmation as a problem of scientific practice. If therapists cannot ground therapy in a theory that is scientifically verifiable and that has some degree of confirmation, what is the merit of psychoanalysis, or more generally, of any form of psychotherapy? A common answer today, an apologia, is that psychotherapy is best understood as a hermeneutic discipline and not as a science. Psychotherapy, the arguments goes, is a shared experience between therapist and pati...
Bezdnata na samostta i otblyasatsite na absolyutnoto
After the end of the era of "absolute idealism", philosophy is falling into a sort of "identity crisis," which requires the constant rethinking of its essence as a specific type of knowledge, and also of its subject and method. As a result of the attempts to "save" philosophy, meta-physics was replaced by ontology, the absolute - by the attempts of an "open system" and/or integral thinking, and the place of the identity of truth, good and beautiful were taken by axiology. Consequently, notions as world, horizon, life, life world, self, alterity, and values became of crucial importance. In this context, the author argues several interrelated theses: Firstly, that in post-Husserlian phenomenol...
Thought Experiments in Philosophy, Science, and the Arts
From Lucretius throwing a spear beyond the boundary of the universe to Einstein racing against a beam of light, thought experiments stand as a fascinating challenge to the necessity of data in the empirical sciences. Are these experiments, conducted uniquely in our imagination, simply rhetorical devices or communication tools or are they an essential part of scientific practice? This volume surveys the current state of the debate and explores new avenues of research into the epistemology of thought experiments.
Philosophy's Duty Towards Social Suffering
Social suffering commands increasing public attention in the wake of several historical processes that have changed the ways victims are perceived. In making suffering eloquent by rendering it in conceptual form, philosophy runs the risk of muting suffering, thereby neutralizing its ability to mobilize responses. In the experience of suffering philosophy finds a limit it must recognize as its own. Yet only by fulfilling its duty towards suffering - only by having the abolition of suffering as its ultimate goal - can philosophical thinking withstand a tacit complicity with injustice.
Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology
This book discusses how scientific and other types of cognition make use of models, abduction, and explanatory reasoning in order to produce important or creative changes in theories and concepts. It includes revised contributions presented during the international conference on Model-Based Reasoning (MBR’015), held on June 25-27 in Sestri Levante, Italy. The book is divided into three main parts, the first of which focuses on models, reasoning and representation. It highlights key theoretical concepts from an applied perspective, addressing issues concerning information visualization, experimental methods and design. The second part goes a step further, examining abduction, problem solvin...
Thought Experiments, Science, and Theology
Did Adam have a navel? Did Adam and Eve have sex? Is God merely a fictional character, like Superman? Without thought experiments like these, the field of science and religion would be severely impoverished. Thought experiments are exercises of the imagination. Like in many other disciplines, the imagination has not received the attention it deserves in theology. This book argues that the imagination must be taken seriously as an engine for progress. It offers a theology of the imagination that is consistent with, and goes beyond, existing discussions about pluralism at the intersection of science and religion.
Counterfactual Thinking - Counterfactual Writing
Counterfactuality is currently a hotly debated topic. While for some disciplines such as linguistics, cognitive science, or psychology counterfactual scenarios have been an important object of study for quite a while, counterfactual thinking has in recent years emerged as a method of study for other disciplines, most notably the social sciences. This volume provides an overview of the current definitions and uses of the concept of counterfactuality in philosophy, historiography, political sciences, psychology, linguistics, physics, and literary studies. The individual contributions not only engage the controversies that the deployment of counterfactual thinking as a method still generates, they also highlight the concept’s potential to promote interdisciplinary exchange without neglecting the limitations and pitfalls of such a project. Moreover, the essays from literary studies, which make up about half of the volume, provide both a historical and a systematic perspective on the manifold ways in which counterfactual scenarios can be incorporated into and deployed in literary texts.
