Pictures, Images, and Conceptual Change

Pictures, Images, and Conceptual Change
Author: Joseph C. Pitt
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400984820

In this essay I am concerned with the problem of conceptual change. There are, needless to say, many ways to approach the issue. But, as I see it, the problem reduces to showing how present and future systems of thought are the rational extensions of prior ones. This goal may not be attainable. Kuhn, for example, suggests that change is mainly a function of socio-economic pressures (taken broadly). But there are some who believe that a case can be made for the rationality of change, especially in science. Wilfrid Sellars is one of those. While Sellars has developed a full account of the issues involved in solving the problem of conceptual change, he is also a very difficult philosopher to discuss. The difficulty stems from the fact that he is a philosopher in the very best sense of the word. First, he performs the tasks of analyzing alternative views with both finesse and insight, dialectically laying bare the essentials of problems and the inadequacies of previous proposals. Secondly, he is a systematic philosopher. That is, he is concerned to elaborate a system of philosophical thought in the grand tradition stretching from Plato to White head. Now with all of this to his credit, it would appear that there is no difficulty at all, one should simply treat him like all the others, if he indeed follows in the footsteps of past builders of philosophic systems.

Reconsidering Conceptual Change: Issues in Theory and Practice

Reconsidering Conceptual Change: Issues in Theory and Practice
Author: Margarita Limón
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2007-05-08
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0306476371

This book is an important account of the state of the art of both theoretical and practical issues in the present-day research on conceptual change. Unique in its complete treatment of the questions that should be considered to further current understanding of knowledge construction and change, this book is useful for psychologists, cognitive scientists, educational researchers, curriculum developers, teachers and educators at all levels and in all disciplines.

Converging Perspectives on Conceptual Change

Converging Perspectives on Conceptual Change
Author: Tamer G. Amin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2017-11-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1315467119

Conceptual change, how conceptual understanding is transformed, has been investigated extensively since the 1970s. The field has now grown into a multifaceted, interdisciplinary effort with strands of research in cognitive and developmental psychology, education, educational psychology, and the learning sciences. Converging Perspectives on Conceptual Change brings together an extensive team of expert contributors from around the world, and offers a unique examination of how distinct lines of inquiry can complement each other and have converged over time. Amin and Levrini adopt a new approach to assembling the diverse research on conceptual change: the combination of short position pieces with extended synthesis chapters within each section, as well as an overall synthesis chapter at the end of the volume, provide a coherent and comprehensive perspective on conceptual change research. Arranged over five parts, the book covers a number of topics including: the nature of concepts and conceptual change representation, language, and discourse in conceptual change modeling, explanation, and argumentation in conceptual change metacognition and epistemology in conceptual change identity and conceptual change. Throughout this wide-ranging volume, the editors present researchers and practitioners with a more internally consistent picture of conceptual change by exploring convergence and complementarity across perspectives. By mapping features of an emerging paradigm, they challenge newcomers and established scholars alike to embrace a more programmatic orientation towards conceptual change.

Attitudes and Changing Contexts

Attitudes and Changing Contexts
Author: Robert van Rooij
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2006-03-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1402041772

In this book, the author defends a unified externalists account of propositional attitudes and reference, and formalizes this view within possible world semantics. He establishes a link between philosophical analyses of intentionality and reference, and formal semantic theories of discourse representation and context change. The relation between belief change and the semantic analyses of conditional sentences and evidential (knowledge) and buletic (desire) propositional attitudes is discussed extensively.

International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change

International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change
Author: Stella Vosniadou
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 907
Release: 2013-07-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 113657820X

Conceptual change research investigates the processes through which learners substantially revise prior knowledge and acquire new concepts. Tracing its heritage to paradigms and paradigm shifts made famous by Thomas Kuhn, conceptual change research focuses on understanding and explaining learning of the most the most difficult and counter-intuitive concepts. Now in its second edition, the International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change provides a comprehensive review of the conceptual change movement and of the impressive research it has spawned on students’ difficulties in learning. In thirty-one new and updated chapters, organized thematically and introduced by Stella Vosniadou, this volume brings together detailed discussions of key theoretical and methodological issues, the roots of conceptual change research, and mechanisms of conceptual change and learner characteristics. Combined with chapters that describe conceptual change research in the fields of physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and health, and history, this handbook presents writings on interdisciplinary topics written for researchers and students across fields.

The Philosophy of Science

The Philosophy of Science
Author: Richard Boyd
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 820
Release: 1991
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780262521567

The more than forty readings in this anthology cover the most important developments of the past six decades, charting the rise and decline of logical positivism and the gradual emergence of a new consensus concerning the major issues and theoretical options in the field. As an introduction to the philosophy of science, it stands out for its scope, its coverage of both historical and contemporary developments, and its detailed introductions to each area discussed.

The Species Problem

The Species Problem
Author: Richard A. Richards
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2010-07-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1139488295

There is long-standing disagreement among systematists about how to divide biodiversity into species. Over twenty different species concepts are used to group organisms, according to criteria as diverse as morphological or molecular similarity, interbreeding and genealogical relationships. This, combined with the implications of evolutionary biology, raises the worry that either there is no single kind of species, or that species are not real. This book surveys the history of thinking about species from Aristotle to modern systematics in order to understand the origin of the problem, and advocates a solution based on the idea of the division of conceptual labor, whereby species concepts function in different ways - theoretically and operationally. It also considers related topics such as individuality and the metaphysics of evolution, and how scientific terms get their meaning. This important addition to the current debate will be essential for philosophers and historians of science, and for biologists.

Explanatory Translation

Explanatory Translation
Author: V. Rantala
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2002-08-31
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9781402008276

The notion of translation investigated here is called explanatory, but it is not a translation in the standard sense of the word since it admits of conceptual change. Such translations can take various degrees of precision, and therefore they can occur in contexts of different kinds: from everyday discourse to literary texts to scientific change. The book generalizes some earlier approaches to translation, especially the one presented in David Pearce's monograph "Roads to Commensurability".

Feedback Loops

Feedback Loops
Author: Andrew Wells Garnar
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2020-11-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1498597637

In a world of information technologies, genetic engineering, controversies about established science, and the mysteries of quantum physics, it is at once seemingly impossible and absolutely vital to find ways to make sense of how science, technology, and society connect. In Feedback Loops: Pragmatism about Science & Technology, editors Andrew Wells Garnar and Ashley Shew bring together original writing from philosophers and science and technology studies scholars to provide novel ways of rethinking the relationships among science, technology, education, and society. Through critiquing and exploring the work of philosopher of science and technology Joseph C. Pitt, the authors featured in this volume investigate the complexities of contemporary technoscience, writing on topics ranging from super-computing to pedagogy, engineering to biotechnology patents, and scientific instruments to disability studies. Taken together, these chapters develop an argument about the necessity of using pragmatism to foster a more productive relationship among science, technology and society.

Rational Changes in Science

Rational Changes in Science
Author: Joseph C. Pitt
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400937792

THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY Fashion is a fickle mistress. Only yesterday scientific rationality enjoyed considerable attention, consideration, and even reverence among phi losophers; "but today's fashion leads us to despise it, and the matron, rejected and abandoned as Hecuba, complains; modo maxima rerum, tot generis natisque potens - nunc trahor exui, inops", to cite Kant for our purpose, who cited Ovid for his. Like every fashion, ours also has its paradoxical aspects, as John Watkins correctly reminds in an essay in this volume. Enthusiasm for science was high among philosophers when significant scientific results were mostly a promise, it declined when that promise became an undeniable reality. Nevertheless, as with the decline of any fashion, even the revolt against scientific rationality has some reasonable grounds. If the taste of the philosophical community has changed so much, it is not due to an incident or a whim. This volume is not about the history of and reasons for this change. Instead, it provides a view of the new emerging image of scientific rationality in both its philosophical and historical aspects. In particular, the aim of the contributions gathered here is to focus on the concept around which the discussions about rationality have mostly taken place: scientific change.