Idealization XIV: Models in Science

Idealization XIV: Models in Science
Author: Giacomo Borbone
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2016-05-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004318844

Idealization XIV: Models in Science offers a detailed ontological, epistemological and historical account of the role of models in scientific practice. The volume contains contributions of different international scholars who developed many aspects of the use of idealizations and models both in the natural and the social sciences. This volume is particularly relevant because it offers original contributions concerning one of the main topic in philosophy of science: the role of models in such branches of the sciences and the humanities like comparative historical sociology, economics, history, linguistics and political philosophy. Contributors are: Giacomo Borbone, Krzysztof Brzechczyn, Mieszko Ciesielski, Adam Czerniak, Xavier de Donato Rodríguez, José L. Falguera, Adolfo García de la Sienra, Lidia Godek, Igor Hanzel, Łukasz Hardt, Krzysztof Kiedrowski, Barbara Konat, Zenonas Norkus, Piotr Przybysz, Piotr Szwochert

Models and Idealizations in Science

Models and Idealizations in Science
Author: Alejandro Cassini
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2021-05-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030658023

This book provides both an introduction to the philosophy of scientific modeling and a contribution to the discussion and clarification of two recent philosophical conceptions of models: artifactualism and fictionalism. These can be viewed as different stances concerning the standard representationalist account of scientific models. By better understanding these two alternative views, readers will gain a deeper insight into what a model is as well as how models function in different sciences. Fictionalism has been a traditional epistemological stance related to antirealist construals of laws and theories, such as instrumentalism and inferentialism. By contrast, the more recent fictional view of models holds that scientific models must be conceived of as the same kind of entities as literary characters and places. This approach is essentially an answer to the ontological question concerning the nature of models, which in principle is not incompatible with a representationalist account of the function of models. The artifactual view of models is an approach according to which scientific models are epistemic artifacts, whose main function is not to represent the phenomena but rather to provide epistemic access to them. It can be conceived of as a non-representationalist and pragmatic account of modeling, which does not intend to focus on the ontology of models but rather on the ways they are built and used for different purposes. The different essays address questions such as the artifactual view of idealization, the use of information theory to elucidate the concepts of abstraction and idealization, the deidealization of models, the nature of scientific fictions, the structural account of representation and the ontological status of structures, the role of surrogative reasoning with models, and the use of models for explaining and predicting physical phenomena.

The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Economics

The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Economics
Author: Conrad Heilmann
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 533
Release: 2021-11-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317578066

The most fundamental questions of economics are often philosophical in nature, and philosophers have, since the very beginning of Western philosophy, asked many questions that current observers would identify as economic. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Economics is an outstanding reference source for the key topics, problems, and debates at the intersection of philosophical and economic inquiry. It captures this field of countless exciting interconnections, affinities, and opportunities for cross-fertilization. Comprising 35 chapters by a diverse team of contributors from all over the globe, the Handbook is divided into eight sections: I. Rationality II. Cooperation and Interaction III. Methodology IV. Values V. Causality and Explanation VI. Experimentation and Simulation VII. Evidence VIII. Policy The volume is essential reading for students and researchers in economics and philosophy who are interested in exploring the interconnections between the two disciplines. It is also a valuable resource for those in related fields like political science, sociology, and the humanities.

Science, Freedom, Democracy

Science, Freedom, Democracy
Author: Péter Hartl
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2021-03-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1000345408

This book addresses the complex relationship between the values of liberal democracy and the values associated with scientific research. The chapters explore how these values mutually reinforce or conflict with one another, in both historical and contemporary contexts. The contributors utilize various approaches to address this timely subject, including historical studies, philosophical analysis, and sociological case studies. The chapters cover a range of topics including academic freedom and autonomy, public control of science, the relationship between scientific pluralism and deliberative democracy, lay-expert relations in a democracy, and the threat of populism and autocracy to scientific inquiry. Taken together the essays demonstrate how democratic values and the epistemic and non-epistemic values associated with science are interconnected. Science, Freedom, Democracy will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in philosophy of science, history of philosophy, sociology of science, political philosophy, and epistemology.

Non-Marxian Historical Materialism: Reconstructions and Comparisons

Non-Marxian Historical Materialism: Reconstructions and Comparisons
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2022-04-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004507299

The authors of this book reconstruct the philosophical, methodological and theoretical assumptions of non-Marxian historical materialism, a theory of historical process authored by Leszek Nowak (1943-2009), a co-founder of the Poznań School of Methodology. This book compares this theory with the concepts of Robert Michels, Vilfredo Pareto and Karl August Wittfogel.

Towards a Revival of Analytical Philosophy of History

Towards a Revival of Analytical Philosophy of History
Author: Krzysztof Brzechczyn
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2017-11-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004356908

Towards a Revival of Analytical Philosophy of History: Around Paul A. Roth's Vision of Historical Sciences presents the state of the art in the philosophy of history. The purpose of this book is to discuss the revival of analytical philosophy of history proposed by Paul A. Roth, a world-known analytical philosopher of the social sciences and the humanities. The first four papers outline the reasons for the decline of philosophy of history, its present phase of development, and its possible future. The other authors discuss important questions of this field of research including: the ontological status of the past, the epistemological assumptions of historical research, the explanatory dimensions of the narrative. In the last group of papers, the authors apply some of Roth's theoretical ideas within their own fields of research. Contributors are: Krzysztof Brzechczyn, Nancy D. Campbell, Serge Grigoriev, Géza Kállay, Piotr Kowalewski, Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, Chris Lorenz, Herman Paul, Dawid Rogacz, Paul A. Roth, Laura Stark, Stephen Turner, Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski, and Eugen Zeleňák.

Post-Communist Transformations in Baltic Countries

Post-Communist Transformations in Baltic Countries
Author: Zenonas Norkus
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2023-12-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031394968

This Open access book provides a survey of the economic, health, and somatic progress of Baltic countries during the period 1918–2018, framed by the outline of the historical-sociological theory of modern social restorations, as originally conceived by the Austrian-American comparative historian Robert A. Kann. The author reworks Kann's theory to analyse post-communist transformations in the Baltic region. The book argues that the purpose of modern social restorations is to make restoration societies safe against a recurrence of revolution. There were two waves of modern social restorations: post-Napoleonic and post-communist. Most post-Napoleonic restorations were brief, because they failed to economically and socially outperform the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary systems. It considers Baltic restorations as laboratory cases of second-wave modern social restorations, because they encompass a triple restoration of the nation-state, capitalism, and democracy. The book assesses the performance success of Baltic restorations by comparing economic and social progress of Baltic countries during the periods of original independence (1918–1940), foreign-imposed state socialism (1940–1990), and restored independence (since 1990). It then elaborates the criteria to assess the ultimate performance success of these restorations by 2040, when restored Baltic states may endure longer than their ancestors in 1918–1940 and the complete foreign occupations era (1940–1990). The author, an expert in historical sociology, uses extensive historical-statistical data in cross-time comparisons to develop his analysis and create future projections. This book is of wide interest to sociologists, social demographers, political scientists, and economists studying the Baltic region. This is an open access book.

A Structuralist Theory of Economics

A Structuralist Theory of Economics
Author: Adolfo García de la Sienra
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351586599

Economists have long grappled with the problem of how economic theories relate to empirical evidence: how can abstract mathematized theories be used to produce empirical claims? How are such theories applied to economic phenomena? What does it mean to “test” economic theories? This book introduces, explains, and develops a structural philosophy of economics which addresses these questions and provides a unifying philosophical/logical basis for a general methodology of economics. The book begins by introducing a rigorous view of the logical foundations and structure of scientific theories based upon the work of Alfred Tarski, Patrick Suppes, Karl Marx, and others. Using and combining their methods, the book then goes on to reconstruct important economic theories – including utility theory, game theory, Marxian economics, Sraffian economic theory, and econometrics – proving all the main theorems and discussing the key claims and the empirical applicability of each theory. Through these discussions, this book presents, in a systematic fashion, a general philosophy of economics grounded in the structural view. Offering rigorous formulations of important economic theories, A Structuralist Theory of Economics will be invaluable to all readers interested in the logic, philosophy, and methodology of economics. It will also appeal particularly to those interested in economic theory.

Epistemology and Probability

Epistemology and Probability
Author: Arkady Plotnitsky
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2009-10-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0387853340

This book offers an exploration of the relationships between epistemology and probability in the work of Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schro- ̈ dinger, and in quantum mechanics and in modern physics as a whole. It also considers the implications of these relationships and of quantum theory itself for our understanding of the nature of human thinking and knowledge in general, or the ‘‘epistemological lesson of quantum mechanics,’’ as Bohr liked 1 to say. These implications are radical and controversial. While they have been seen as scientifically productive and intellectually liberating to some, Bohr and Heisenberg among them, they have been troublesome to many others, such as Schro ̈ dinger and, most prominently, Albert Einstein. Einstein famously refused to believe that God would resort to playing dice or rather to playing with nature in the way quantum mechanics appeared to suggest, which is indeed quite different from playing dice. According to his later (sometime around 1953) remark, a lesser known or commented upon but arguably more important one: ‘‘That the Lord should play [dice], all right; but that He should gamble according to definite rules [i. e. , according to the rules of quantum mechanics, rather than 2 by merely throwing dice], that is beyond me. ’’ Although Einstein’s invocation of God is taken literally sometimes, he was not talking about God but about the way nature works. Bohr’s reply on an earlier occasion to Einstein’s question 1 Cf.

A Clearing in the Forest

A Clearing in the Forest
Author: Steven L. Winter
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2003-09
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0226902226

Cognitive science is transforming our understanding of the mind. New discoveries are changing how we comprehend not just language, but thought itself. Yet, surprisingly little of the new learning has penetrated discussions and analysis of the most important social institution affecting our lives-the law. Drawing on work in philosophy, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and literary theory, Steven L. Winter has created nothing less than a tour de force of interdisciplinary analysis. A Clearing in the Forest rests on the simple notion that the better we understand the workings of the mind, the better we will understand all its products-especially law. Legal studies today focus on analytic skills and grand normative theories. But, to understand how real-world, legal actors reason and decide, we need a different set of tools. Cognitive science provides those tools, opening a window on the imaginative, yet orderly mental processes that animate thinking and decisionmaking among lawyers, judges, and lay persons alike. Recent findings about how humans actually categorize and reason make it possible to explain legal reasoning in new, more cogent, more productive ways. A Clearing in the Forest is a compelling meditation on both how the law works and what it all means. In uncovering the irrepressibly imaginative, creative quality of human reason, Winter shows how what we are learning about the mind changes not only our understanding of law, but ultimately of ourselves. He charts a unique course to understanding the world we inhabit, showing us the way to the clearing in the forest.