Selected Papers, with Commentary, of Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme

Selected Papers, with Commentary, of Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme
Author: Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 456
Release: 1994
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9810216467

The most important papers of Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme are collected in this volume which also includes commentaries by G Brown and other articles relating to the life and work of Tony Skryme, R Dalitz, E Witten and others. Skyrme's work was brilliant, profound and surprisingly useful. He provided an original solution to the problem of constructing fermions from bosons, formulating the topological soliton model of the nucleon. His two-parameter model of effective interactions in nuclei has yielded a remarkably accurate description of nuclear structure. His à-particle model of nuclei gave deep insights into the structure of important and complicated excited states.This volume is a unique collection of Tony Skyrme's work. It is a must for all physicists in the high energy, nuclear and mathematical physics community.

Modelling and Simulation in the Social Sciences from the Philosophy of Science Point of View

Modelling and Simulation in the Social Sciences from the Philosophy of Science Point of View
Author: R. Hegselmann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2013-03-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9401586861

Model building in the social sciences can increasingly rely on well elaborated formal theories. At the same time inexpensive large computational capacities are now available. Both make computer-based model building and simulation possible in social science, whose central aim is in particular an understanding of social dynamics. Such social dynamics refer to public opinion formation, partner choice, strategy decisions in social dilemma situations and much more. In the context of such modelling approaches, novel problems in philosophy of science arise which must be analysed - the main aim of this book. Interest in social simulation has recently been growing rapidly world- wide, mainly as a result of the increasing availability of powerful personal computers. The field has also been greatly influenced by developments in cellular automata theory (from mathematics) and in distributed artificial intelligence which provided tools readily applicable to social simulation. This book presents a number of modelling and simulation approaches and their relations to problems in philosophy of science. It addresses sociologists and other social scientists interested in formal modelling, mathematical sociology, and computer simulation as well as computer scientists interested in social science applications, and philosophers of social science.

The Science of Energy

The Science of Energy
Author: Crosbie Smith
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 1998
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780226764207

Although we take it for granted today, the concept of "energy" transformed nineteenth-century physics. In The Science of Energy, Crosbie Smith shows how a North British group of scientists and engineers, including James Joule, James Clerk Maxwell, William and James Thomson, Fleeming Jenkin, and P. G. Tait, developed energy physics to solve practical problems encountered by Scottish shipbuilders and marine engineers; to counter biblical revivalism and evolutionary materialism; and to rapidly enhance their own scientific credibility. Replacing the language and concepts of classical mechanics with terms such as "actual" and "potential" energy, the North British group conducted their revolution in physics so astutely and vigorously that the concept of "energy"—a valuable commodity in the early days of industrialization—became their intellectual property. Smith skillfully places this revolution in its scientific and cultural context, exploring the actual creation of scientific knowledge during one of the most significant episodes in the history of physics.

Reflections on Naturalism

Reflections on Naturalism
Author: José Ignacio Galparsoro
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2013-09-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9462092966

To naturalists, there is no such thing as complete justification for any claim, and so requiring complete warrant for naturalist proposals is an unreasonable request. The proper guideline for naturalist proposals seems thus clear: develop it using the methods of science; if this leads to a fruitful stance, then explicate and reassess. The resulting offer will exhibit virtuous circularity if its explanatory feedback loop involves critical reassessment as the explanations it encompasses play out. So viewed, naturalism is a philosophical perspective that seeks to unite in a virtuous circle the natural sciences and non-foundationalist, broadly-based empiricism. Other common lines of antinaturalist complaint are that naturalization efforts seem fruitful only in some areas, also that several endeavors outside the sciences serve as sources of knowledge into human life and the human condition, especially in areas where science does not reach terribly far as yet. It seems hard not to grant some truth to many allegories from literature, art and some religions. Naturalism has room for knowledge gathered outside science, provided the imported claims satisfy also by naturalistic methods. Naturalism and the debate about its scope and limits thrive on discrepancy. We hope that, collectively, the selected essays that follow will give a fair view of the vitality and tribulations of naturalism as a variegated contemporary philosophical perspective.

Symbols and Things

Symbols and Things
Author: Kevin Lambert
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2021-10-12
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0822988410

In the steam-powered mechanical age of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the work of late Georgian and early Victorian mathematicians depended on far more than the properties of number. British mathematicians came to rely on industrialized paper and pen manufacture, railways and mail, and the print industries of the book, disciplinary journal, magazine, and newspaper. Though not always physically present with one another, the characters central to this book—from George Green to William Rowan Hamilton—relied heavily on communication technologies as they developed their theories in consort with colleagues. The letters they exchanged, together with the equations, diagrams, tables, or pictures that filled their manuscripts and publications, were all tangible traces of abstract ideas that extended mathematicians into their social and material environment. Each chapter of this book explores a thing, or assembling of things, mathematicians needed to do their work—whether a textbook, museum, journal, library, diagram, notebook, or letter—all characteristic of the mid-nineteenth-century British taskscape, but also representative of great change to a discipline brought about by an industrialized world in motion.

Kelvin: Life, Labours and Legacy

Kelvin: Life, Labours and Legacy
Author: Raymond Flood
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2008-04-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0191528242

Lord Kelvin was one of the greatest physicists of the Victorian era. Widely known for the development of the Kelvin scale of temperature measurement, Kelvin's interests ranged across thermodynamics, the age of the Earth, the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable, not to mention inventions such as an improved maritime compass and a sounding device which allowed depths to be taken both quickly and while the ship was moving. He was an academic engaged in fundamental research, while also working with industry and technological advances. He corresponded and collaborated with other eminent men of science such as Stokes, Joule, Maxwell and Helmholtz, was raised to the peerage as a result of his contributions to science, and finally buried in Westminster Abbey next to Newton. This book contains a collection of chapters, authored by leading experts, covering the life and wide-ranging scientific contributions made by William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907).