Böcker i Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Science-serien

This volume concentrates on particular issues addressed or raised in light of recent scholarship and without the pressure of the immediate concerns scholars had at the time of the Structure¿s publication. There has been extensive research on all of the major issues concerning the development of science which are discussed in Structure, work in which the scholars contributing to this volume have all been actively involved. In recent years they have pursued novel research on a number of topics relevant to Structure¿s concerns, such as the nature and function of concepts, the complexity of logical positivism and its legacy, the relation of history to philosophy of science, the character of scientific progress and rationality, and scientific realism, all of which are brought together and given new light in this text. In this way, our book makes new connections and undertakes new approaches in an effort to understand the Structure¿s significance in the canon of philosophy of science.

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.

This collection of original essays offers a comprehensive examination of scientific progress, which has been a central topic in recent debates in philosophy of science.

This volume establishes the conceptual foundation for sustained investigation into tool development in neuroscience. Neuroscience relies on diverse and sophisticated experimental tools, and its ultimate explanatory target catapults the investigation of these research tools into a philosophical spotlight.

Despite these recent trends, few Aristotelian metaphysicians have engaged directly with the philosophy of the specialised sciences. This book aims to fill this gap in the literature by bringing together essays on the relationship between Aristotelianism and science that cut across interdisciplinary boundaries.

Conservative Reductionism sets out a new theory of the relationship between physics and the special sciences within the framework of functionalism. It argues that it is wrong-headed to conceive an opposition between functional and physical properties (or functional and physical descriptions, respectively) and to build an anti-reductionist argument on multiple realization. By contrast, (a) all properties that there are in the world, including the physical ones, are functional properties in the sense of being causal properties, and (b) all true descriptions (laws, theories) that the special sciences propose can in principle be reduced to physical descriptions (laws, theories) by means of functional reduction, despite multiple realization. The book develops arguments for (a) from the metaphysics of properties and the philosophy of physics. These arguments lead to a conservative ontological reductionism. It then develops functional reduction into a fully-fledged, conservative theory reduction by means of introducing functional sub-types that are coextensive with physical types, illustrating that conservative reductionism by means of case studies from biology (notably the relationship between classical and molecular genetics).

This volume has two primary aims: to trace the traditions and changes in methods, concepts, and ideas that brought forth the logical empiricists¿ philosophy of physics, and to analyze the logical empiricists¿ various and occasionally contrary ideas about the physical sciences and their philosophical relevance.

This book addresses the complex relationship between the values of liberal democracy and the values associated with scientific research. The contributors utilize various approaches to address this timely subject, including historical studies, philosophical analysis, and sociological case studies.

This book offers a novel defence of a highly contested philosophical position: biological natural kind essentialism. This theory is routinely and explicitly rejected for its purported inability to be explicated in the context of contemporary biological science, and its supposed incompatibility with the process and progress of evolution by natural selection. Christopher J. Austin challenges these objections, and in conjunction with contemporary scientific advancements within the field of evolutionary-developmental biology, the book utilises a contemporary neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of "dispositional properties", or causal powers, to provide a theory of essentialism centred on the developmental architecture of organisms and its role in the evolutionary process. By defending a novel theory of Aristotelian biological natural kind essentialism, Essence in the Age of Evolution represents the fresh and exciting union of cutting-edge philosophical insight and scientific knowledge.

In this book, Reiss argues in favor of a tight fit between evidence, concept and purpose in our causal investigations in the sciences. There is no doubt that the sciences employ a vast array of techniques to address causal questions such as controlled experiments, randomized trials, statistical and econometric tools, causal modeling and thought experiments. But how do these different methods relate to each other and to the causal inquiry at hand? Reiss argues that there is no "gold standard" in settling causal issues against which other methods can be measured. Rather, the various methods of inference tend to be good only relative to certain interpretations of the word "cause", and each interpretation, in turn, helps to address some salient purpose (prediction, explanation or policy analysis) but not others. The main objective of this book is to explore the metaphysical and methodological consequences of this view in the context of numerous cases studies from the natural and social sciences.

All properties that exist in the world are functional properties in the sense of causal properties. The authors base a conservative ontological reductionism on this claim and develop functional reduction into a fully-fledged theory reduction through functional sub-types that are coextensive with physical types, providing case studies from biology.

This collection is designed to bring together some of the best work on the nature of representation being done by both established senior philosophers of science and younger researchers.

Despite these recent trends, few Aristotelian metaphysicians have engaged directly with the philosophy of the specialised sciences. This book aims to fill this gap in the literature by bringing together essays on the relationship between Aristotelianism and science that cut across interdisciplinary boundaries.

One of the most pervasive and persistent questions in philosophy is the relationship between the natural sciences and traditional philosophical categories such as metaphysics, epistemology and the mind. This collection is a unique and valuable contribution to the literature on this issue.

This book features essays by scientists on topics related to common sense beliefs, including space, time, free will and identity, rationality, morality, and religious belief. Philosophers from the common sense tradition then explore the connection between common sense philosophy and debates in the empirical sciences.

From Lucretius throwing a spear beyond the boundary of the universe to Einstein racing against a beam of light, thought experiments stand as a fascinating challenge to the necessity of data in the empirical sciences. Are these experiments, conducted uniquely in our imagination, simply rhetorical devices or communication tools or are they an essential part of scientific practice? This volume surveys the current state of the debate and explores new avenues of research into the epistemology of thought experiments.

Although scientific models and simulations differ in numerous ways, they are similar in so far as they are posing essentially philosophical problems about the nature of representation. This collection is designed to bring together some of the best work on the nature of representation being done by both established senior philosophers of science and younger researchers. Most of the pices, while appealing to existing traditions of scientific representation, explore new types of questions, such as: how understanding can be developed within computational science; how the format of representations matters for their use, be it for the purpose of research or education; how the concepts of emergence and supervenience can be further analyzed by taking into account computational science; or how the emphasis upon tractability--a particularly important issue in computational science--sheds new light on the philosophical analysis of scientific reasoning.

The original essays in this volume help to clarify the concept of emrgence: inadequacies in some older formulations and arguments are exposed and new lines of argument on behalf the two visions are advanced.

Explores how new concepts enter into systems along with sufficient continuity with older ideas to ensure understanding. This text highlights aspects and disciplines that present an insightful view into various theories of concepts. It examines several historically influential theories of concepts and views the general theory of conceptual change.

Investigates the workings of the mind through a variety of disciplines including the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind, game theory, robotics and computational neuroanatomy. Topics covered range from general methodological issues to long-standing philosophical problems such as how rational human beings actually are.

The concept of emergence has seen a significant resurgence in philosophy and the sciences, yet debates regarding emergentist and reductionist visions of the natural world continue to be hampered by imprecision or ambiguity. This title explores inadequacies in some formulations and arguments.

Science is popularly understood as being an ideal of impartial algorithmic objectivity that provides a realistic description of the world. This book challenges this image, taking as their starting point that science trades not only in truth, but in fiction.

Nancy Cartwright is one of the distinguished and influential contemporary philosophers of science. This book is devoted to a critical assessment of Cartwright's philosophy of science and contains contributions from Cartwright's champions and critics. It is suitable for philosophers of science the world over.

Seeks to reconstruct the logic of Karl Popper's development, in order to show how one problem and its tentative solution led to a new problem.

Aims to illuminate and contribute to the contemporary debate about causality in philosophy and science at a level accessible to the non-specialist. This book treats methodological issues alongside the philosophical ones.

Presents Popper's views on science, knowledge, and inquiry, and examines the significance and tenability of these in light of various developments in philosophy of science, philosophy of probability, and epistemology.

In the 1980s, philosophical, historical and social studies of science underwent a change which later evolved into a turn to practice. This book offers a unique and diverse range of perspectives on the meanings, methods, lessons, and challenges associated with the practice turn.