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Representing and Intervening

Representing and Intervening PDF Author: Ian Hacking
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110726815X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
This 1983 book is a lively and clearly written introduction to the philosophy of natural science, organized around the central theme of scientific realism. It has two parts. 'Representing' deals with the different philosophical accounts of scientific objectivity and the reality of scientific entities. The views of Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Putnam, van Fraassen, and others, are all considered. 'Intervening' presents the first sustained treatment of experimental science for many years and uses it to give a new direction to debates about realism. Hacking illustrates how experimentation often has a life independent of theory. He argues that although the philosophical problems of scientific realism can not be resolved when put in terms of theory alone, a sound philosophy of experiment provides compelling grounds for a realistic attitude. A great many scientific examples are described in both parts of the book, which also includes lucid expositions of recent high energy physics and a remarkable chapter on the microscope in cell biology.

Representing and Intervening

Representing and Intervening PDF Author: Ian Hacking
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110726815X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
This 1983 book is a lively and clearly written introduction to the philosophy of natural science, organized around the central theme of scientific realism. It has two parts. 'Representing' deals with the different philosophical accounts of scientific objectivity and the reality of scientific entities. The views of Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Putnam, van Fraassen, and others, are all considered. 'Intervening' presents the first sustained treatment of experimental science for many years and uses it to give a new direction to debates about realism. Hacking illustrates how experimentation often has a life independent of theory. He argues that although the philosophical problems of scientific realism can not be resolved when put in terms of theory alone, a sound philosophy of experiment provides compelling grounds for a realistic attitude. A great many scientific examples are described in both parts of the book, which also includes lucid expositions of recent high energy physics and a remarkable chapter on the microscope in cell biology.

Representing and Intervening

Representing and Intervening PDF Author: Ian Hacking
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521282468
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
A lively and clearly written introduction to the philosophy of natural science, organized around the central theme of scientific realism.

Rewriting the Soul

Rewriting the Soul PDF Author: Ian Hacking
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400821681
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Book Description
Twenty-five years ago one could list by name the tiny number of multiple personalities recorded in the history of Western medicine, but today hundreds of people receive treatment for dissociative disorders in every sizable town in North America. Clinicians, backed by a grassroots movement of patients and therapists, find child sexual abuse to be the primary cause of the illness, while critics accuse the "MPD" community of fostering false memories of childhood trauma. Here the distinguished philosopher Ian Hacking uses the MPD epidemic and its links with the contemporary concept of child abuse to scrutinize today's moral and political climate, especially our power struggles about memory and our efforts to cope with psychological injuries. What is it like to suffer from multiple personality? Most diagnosed patients are women: why does gender matter? How does defining an illness affect the behavior of those who suffer from it? And, more generally, how do systems of knowledge about kinds of people interact with the people who are known about? Answering these and similar questions, Hacking explores the development of the modern multiple personality movement. He then turns to a fascinating series of historical vignettes about an earlier wave of multiples, people who were diagnosed as new ways of thinking about memory emerged, particularly in France, toward the end of the nineteenth century. Fervently occupied with the study of hypnotism, hysteria, sleepwalking, and fugue, scientists of this period aimed to take the soul away from the religious sphere. What better way to do this than to make memory a surrogate for the soul and then subject it to empirical investigation? Made possible by these nineteenth-century developments, the current outbreak of dissociative disorders is embedded in new political settings. Rewriting the Soul concludes with a powerful analysis linking historical and contemporary material in a fresh contribution to the archaeology of knowledge. As Foucault once identified a politics that centers on the body and another that classifies and organizes the human population, Hacking has now provided a masterful description of the politics of memory : the scientizing of the soul and the wounds it can receive.

An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic

An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic PDF Author: Ian Hacking
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521775014
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
An introductory 2001 textbook on probability and induction written by a foremost philosopher of science.

Scientific Realism

Scientific Realism PDF Author: N. Rescher
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400939051
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Book Description
The increasingly lively controversy over scientific realism has become one of the principal themes of recent philosophy. 1 In watching this controversy unfold in the rather technical way currently in vogue, it has seemed to me that it would be useful to view these contemporary disputes against the background of such older epistemological issues as fallibilism, scepticism, relativism, and the traditional realism/idealism debate. This, then, is the object of the present book, which will recon sider the newer concerns about scientific realism in the context of these older philosophical themes. Historically, realism concerns itself with the real existence of things that do not "meet the eye" - with suprasensible entities that lie beyond the reach of human perception. In medieval times, discussions about realism focused upon universals. Recognizing that there are physical objects such as cats and triangular objects and red tomatoes, the medievels debated whether such "abstract objects" as cathood and triangularity and redness also exist by way of having a reality indepen dent of the concretely real things that exhibit them. Three fundamen tally different positions were defended: (1) Nominalism. Abstracta have no independent existence as such: they only "exist" in and through the objects that exhibit them. Only particulars (individual substances) exist. Abstract "objects" are existents in name only, mere thought fictions by whose means we address concrete particular things. (2) Realism. Abstracta have an independent existence as such.

Science after the Practice Turn in the Philosophy, History, and Social Studies of Science

Science after the Practice Turn in the Philosophy, History, and Social Studies of Science PDF Author: Léna Soler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317935365
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 355

Book Description
In the 1980s, philosophical, historical and social studies of science underwent a change which later evolved into a turn to practice. Analysts of science were asked to pay attention to scientific practices in meticulous detail and along multiple dimensions, including the material, social and psychological. Following this turn, the interest in scientific practices continued to increase and had an indelible influence in the various fields of science studies. No doubt, the practice turn changed our conceptions and approaches of science, but what did it really teach us? What does it mean to study scientific practices? What are the general lessons, implications, and new challenges? This volume explores questions about the practice turn using both case studies and theoretical analysis. The case studies examine empirical and mathematical sciences, including the engineering sciences. The volume promotes interactions between acknowledged experts from different, often thought of as conflicting, orientations. It presents contributions in conjunction with critical commentaries that put the theses and assumptions of the former in perspective. Overall, the book offers a unique and diverse range of perspectives on the meanings, methods, lessons, and challenges associated with the practice turn.

Probability and Evidence

Probability and Evidence PDF Author: Paul Horwich
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107142105
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 149

Book Description
This influential book offers a probabilistic approach to scientific reasoning to resolve central issues in the philosophy of science.

Stem Cell Engineering

Stem Cell Engineering PDF Author: David Schaffer
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 143987204X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
While the potential of stem cells is recognized, their proliferation and differentiation must be more precisely controlled to maximize the production of therapeutically relevant cells and for cell replacement therapies to minimize contamination with residual cells that can give rise to side effects. How can engineers make contributions to address these challenges? With contributions from pioneers and experts, Stem Cell Engineering: Principles and Practices highlights recent advances in the understanding of the cellular and molecular composition of the stem cell niche, as well as approaches to build upon this basic information to direct stem cell differentiation into therapeutically valuable lineages. The growing recognition of stem cells as an important and exciting field will continue to draw investigators with diverse backgrounds—from biology, engineering, and the physical sciences—and thereby enable further progress in these and other new directions. This book discusses advances made during the last decade that have led to increasingly defined culture systems for growing stem cells, starting from co-culture with feeder cells in the presence of serum to growth on synthetic substrates in defined medium. In addition to highlighting many recent advances, it underscores the need for future work.

The Scientific Image

The Scientific Image PDF Author: Bas C. Van Fraassen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198244271
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
In this book van Fraassen develops an alternative to scientific realism by constructing and evaluating three mutually reinforcing theories.

Conceptual Revolutions

Conceptual Revolutions PDF Author: Paul Thagard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691186677
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
In this path-breaking work, Paul Thagard draws on the history and philosophy of science, cognitive psychology, and the field of artificial intelligence to develop a theory of conceptual change capable of accounting for all major scientific revolutions. The history of science contains dramatic episodes of revolutionary change in which whole systems of concepts have been replaced by new systems. Thagard provides a new and comprehensive perspective on the transformation of scientific conceptual systems. Thagard examines the Copernican and the Darwinian revolutions and the emergence of Newton's mechanics, Lavoisier's oxygen theory, Einstein's theory of relativity, quantum theory, and the geological theory of plate tectonics. He discusses the psychological mechanisms by which new concepts and links between them are formed, and advances a computational theory of explanatory coherence to show how new theories can be judged to be superior to previous ones.