Models of Discovery

Models of Discovery
Author: Herbert A. Simon
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9401095213

We respect Herbert A. Simon as an established leader of empirical and logical analysis in the human sciences while we happily think of him as also the loner; of course he works with many colleagues but none can match him. He has been writing fruitfully and steadily for four decades in many fields, among them psychology, logic, decision theory, economics, computer science, management, production engineering, information and control theory, operations research, confirmation theory, and we must have omitted several. With all of them, he is at once the technical scientist and the philosophical critic and analyst. When writing of decisions and actions, he is at the interface of philosophy of science, decision theory, philosophy of the specific social sciences, and inventory theory (itself, for him, at the interface of economic theory, production engineering and information theory). When writing on causality, he is at the interface of methodology, metaphysics, logic and philosophy of physics, systems theory, and so on. Not that the interdisciplinary is his orthodoxy; we are delighted that he has chosen to include in this book both his early and little-appreciated treatment of straightforward philosophy of physics - the axioms of Newtonian mechanics, and also his fine papers on pure confirmation theory.

Models of Discovery

Models of Discovery
Author: Herbert Alexander Simon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 456
Release: 1977
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9789027708588

In these essays, the author attacks the central problems in the philosophy of science from the viewpoint of a working scientist who relates the philosophical questions to methodological issues that have arisen in his own research. The essays deal with six main topics: the validation of hypotheses, the logic of causal ordering and its relation to the definability and identifiability of theoretical terms, the logic of imperatives and decisions, the structure of complex systems, the theory of scientific discovery, and the axiomization of scientific theories. He treats these topics in a unified way by employing the analytic tools of model theory and by putting the discovery of theories, rather than their testing, at the center of the stage. Questions surrounding the axiomization of theories are examined in the light of real examples (Newtonian mechanics and Ohm's law) rather than simplified, hypothetical ones. Formalisms are not avoided, but they are always used as a means and not as ends in themselves.--

Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery

Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery
Author: L. Magnani
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 366
Release: 1999-10-31
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780306462924

The volume is based on the papers that were presented at the Interna tional Conference Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery (MBR'98), held at the Collegio Ghislieri, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, in December 1998. The papers explore how scientific thinking uses models and explanatory reasoning to produce creative changes in theories and concepts. The study of diagnostic, visual, spatial, analogical, and temporal rea soning has demonstrated that there are many ways of performing intelligent and creative reasoning that cannot be described with the help only of tradi tional notions of reasoning such as classical logic. Traditional accounts of scientific reasoning have restricted the notion of reasoning primarily to de ductive and inductive arguments. Understanding the contribution of model ing practices to discovery and conceptual change in science requires ex panding scientific reasoning to include complex forms of creative reasoning that are not always successful and can lead to incorrect solutions. The study of these heuristic ways of reasoning is situated at the crossroads of philoso phy, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and logic; that is, at the heart of cognitive science. There are several key ingredients common to the various forms of model based reasoning to be considered in this book. The models are intended as in terpretations of target physical systems, processes, phenomena, or situations. The models are retrieved or constructed on the basis of potentially satisfying salient constraints of the target domain.

Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology

Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology
Author: Lorenzo Magnani
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 633
Release: 2013-08-31
Genre: Science
ISBN: 364237428X

This book contains contributions presented during the international conference on Model-Based Reasoning (MBR ́012), held on June 21-23 in Sestri Levante, Italy. Interdisciplinary researchers discuss in this volume how scientific cognition and other kinds of cognition make use of models, abduction, and explanatory reasoning in order to produce important or creative changes in theories and concepts. Some of the contributions analyzed the problem of model-based reasoning in technology and stressed the issues of scientific and technological innovation. The book is divided in three main parts: models, mental models, representations; abduction, problem solving and practical reasoning; historical, epistemological and technological issues. The volume is based on the papers that were presented at the international

Literature-based Discovery

Literature-based Discovery
Author: Peter Bruza
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2008-08-17
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3540686908

This is the first coherent book on literature-based discovery (LBD). LBD is an inherently multi-disciplinary enterprise. The aim of this volume is to plant a flag in the ground and inspire new researchers to the LBD challenge.

Scientific Discovery in the Social Sciences

Scientific Discovery in the Social Sciences
Author: Mark Addis
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2019-09-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030237699

This volume offers selected papers exploring issues arising from scientific discovery in the social sciences. It features a range of disciplines including behavioural sciences, computer science, finance, and statistics with an emphasis on philosophy. The first of the three parts examines methods of social scientific discovery. Chapters investigate the nature of causal analysis, philosophical issues around scale development in behavioural science research, imagination in social scientific practice, and relationships between paradigms of inquiry and scientific fraud. The next part considers the practice of social science discovery. Chapters discuss the lack of genuine scientific discovery in finance where hypotheses concern the cheapness of securities, the logic of scientific discovery in macroeconomics, and the nature of that what discovery with the Solidarity movement as a case study. The final part covers formalising theories in social science. Chapters analyse the abstract model theory of institutions as a way of representing the structure of scientific theories, the semi-automatic generation of cognitive science theories, and computational process models in the social sciences. The volume offers a unique perspective on scientific discovery in the social sciences. It will engage scholars and students with a multidisciplinary interest in the philosophy of science and social science.

Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science

Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science
Author: B.E. Babich
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2013-03-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9401724288

Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science, is the second volume of a collection on Nietzsche and the Sciences, featuring essays addressing truth, epistemology, and the philosophy of science, with a substantial representation of analytically schooled Nietzsche scholars. This collection offers a dynamic articulation of the differing strengths of Anglo-American analytic and contemporary European approaches to philosophy, with translations from European specialists, notably Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Paul Valadier, and Walther Ch. Zimmerli. This broad collection also features a preface by Alasdair MacIntyre. Contributions explore Nietzsche's contributions to the philosophy of language and epistemology, and include essays on the social history of truth and the historical and cultural analyses of Serres and Baudrillard, as well as new contributions to the philosophy of science, including theological and hermeneutical approaches, history of science, the philosophy of medicine, cognitive science, and technology.

History of Science, History of Text

History of Science, History of Text
Author: Karine Chemla
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2005-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1402023219

two main (interacting) ways. They constitute that with which exploration into problems or questions is carried out. But they also constitute that which is exchanged between scholars or, in other terms, that which is shaped by one (or by some) for use by others. In these various dimensions, texts obviously depend on the means and technologies available for producing, reproducing, using and organizing writings. In this regard, the contribution of a history of text is essential in helping us approach the various historical contexts from which our sources originate. However, there is more to it. While shaping texts as texts, the practitioners of the sciences may create new textual resources that intimately relate to the research carried on. One may think, for instance, of the process of introduction of formulas in mathematical texts. This aspect opens up a wholerangeofextremelyinterestingquestionstowhichwewillreturnatalaterpoint.But practitioners of the sciences also rely on texts produced by themselves or others, which they bring into play in various ways. More generally, they make use of textual resources of every kind that is available to them, reshaping them, restricting, or enlarging them. Among these, one can think of ways of naming, syntax of statements or grammatical analysis, literary techniques, modes of shaping texts or parts of text, genres of text and so on.Inthissense,thepractitionersdependon,anddrawon,the“textualcultures”available to the social and professional groups to which they belong.

Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution

Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution
Author: Walter Roy Laird
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1402059671

This volume deals with a variety of moments in the history of mechanics when conflicts arose within one textual tradition, between different traditions, or between textual traditions and the wider world of practice. Its purpose is to show how the accommodations sometimes made in the course of these conflicts ultimately contributed to the emergence of modern mechanics.

Scientific Knowledge

Scientific Knowledge
Author: J.H. Fetzer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400985584

With this defense of intensional realism as a philosophical foundation for understanding scientific procedures and grounding scientific knowledge, James Fetzer provides a systematic alternative to much of recent work on scientific theory. To Fetzer, the current state of understanding the 'laws' of nature, or the 'law-like' statements of scientific theories, appears to be one of philosophical defeat; and he is determined to overcome that defeat. Based upon his incisive advocacy of the single-case propensity interpretation of probability, Fetzer develops a coherent structure within which the central problems of the philosophy of science find their solutions. Whether the reader accepts the author's contentions may, in the end, depend upon ancient choices in the interpretation of experience and explanation, but there can be little doubt of Fetzer's spirited competence in arguing for setting ontology before epistemology, and within the analysis of language. To us, Fetzer's ambition is appealing, fusing, as he says, the substantive commitment of the Popperian with the conscientious sensitivity of the Hempelian to the technical precision required for justified explication. To Fetzer, science is the objective pursuit of fallible general knowledge. This innocent character ization, which we suppose most scientists would welcome, receives a most careful elaboration in this book; it will demand equally careful critical con sideration. Center for the Philosophy and ROBERT S. COHEN History of Science, MARX W. WARTOFSKY Boston University October 1981 v TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL PREFACE v FOREWORD xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xv PART I: CAUSATION 1.