Conceptual Change And The Philosophy Of Science

Download or read book Conceptual Change and the Philosophy of Science written by David J. Stump and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, David Stump traces alternative conceptions of the a priori in the philosophy of science and defends a unique position in the current debates over conceptual change and the constitutive elements in science. Stump emphasizes the unique epistemological status of the constitutive elements of scientific theories, constitutive elements being the necessary preconditions that must be assumed in order to conduct a particular scientific inquiry. These constitutive elements, such as logic, mathematics, and even some fundamental laws of nature, were once taken to be a priori knowledge but can change, thus leading to a dynamic or relative a priori. Stump critically examines developments in thinking about constitutive elements in science as a priori knowledge, from Kant’s fixed and absolute a priori to Quine’s holistic empiricism. By examining the relationship between conceptual change and the epistemological status of constitutive elements in science, Stump puts forward an argument that scientific revolutions can be explained and relativism can be avoided without resorting to universals or absolutes.

Download or read book Conceptual Change in Biology written by Alan C. Love and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-11-07 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores questions about conceptual change from both scientific and philosophical viewpoints by analyzing the recent history of evolutionary developmental biology. It features revised papers that originated from the workshop "Conceptual Change in Biological Science: Evolutionary Developmental Biology, 1981-2011" held at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin in July 2010. The Preface has been written by Ron Amundson. In these papers, philosophers and biologists compare and contrast key concepts in evolutionary developmental biology and their development since the original, seminal Dahlem conference on evolution and development held in Berlin in 1981. Many of the original scientific participants from the 1981 conference are also contributors to this new volume and, in conjunction with other expert biologists and philosophers specializing on these topics, provide an authoritative, comprehensive view on the subject. Taken together, the papers supply novel perspectives on how and why the conceptual landscape has shifted and stabilized in particular ways, yielding insights into the dynamic epistemic changes that have occurred over the past three decades. This volume will appeal to philosophers of biology studying conceptual change, evolutionary developmental biologists focused on comprehending the genesis of their field and evaluating its future directions, and historians of biology examining this period when the intersection of ev olution and development rose again to prominence in biological science.

Download or read book The Cognitive Science of Science written by Paul Thagard and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thagard examines scientific development from the interdisciplinary perspective of cognitive science. Cognitive science combines insights from: philosophers analyze historical cases, psychologists carry out behavioral experiments, neuroscientists perform brain scans, and computer modelers write programs that simulate thought processes.

Download or read book Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change written by Joseph LaPorte and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-12-08 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the received tradition, the language used to to refer to natural kinds in scientific discourse remains stable even as theories about these kinds are refined. In this illuminating book, Joseph LaPorte argues that scientists do not discover that sentences about natural kinds, like 'Whales are mammals, not fish', are true rather than false. Instead, scientists find that these sentences were vague in the language of earlier speakers and they refine the meanings of the relevant natural-kind terms to make the sentences true. Hence, scientists change the meaning of these terms, This conclusions prompts LaPorte to examine the consequences of this change in meaning for the issue of incommensurability and for the progress of science. This book will appeal to students and professional in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of language.

Download or read book Creating Scientific Concepts written by Nancy J Nersessian and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-08-13 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account that analyzes the dynamic reasoning processes implicated in a fundamental problem of creativity in science: how does genuine novelty emerge from existing representations? How do novel scientific concepts arise? In Creating Scientific Concepts, Nancy Nersessian seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question in the problem of conceptual change. She argues that the popular image of novel concepts and profound insight bursting forth in a blinding flash of inspiration is mistaken. Instead, novel concepts are shown to arise out of the interplay of three factors: an attempt to solve specific problems; the use of conceptual, analytical, and material resources provided by the cognitive-social-cultural context of the problem; and dynamic processes of reasoning that extend ordinary cognition. Focusing on the third factor, Nersessian draws on cognitive science research and historical accounts of scientific practices to show how scientific and ordinary cognition lie on a continuum, and how problem-solving practices in one illuminate practices in the other. Her investigations of scientific practices show conceptual change as deriving from the use of analogies, imagistic representations, and thought experiments, integrated with experimental investigations and mathematical analyses. She presents a view of constructed models as hybrid objects, serving as intermediaries between targets and analogical sources in bootstrapping processes. Extending these results, she argues that these complex cognitive operations and structures are not mere aids to discovery, but that together they constitute a powerful form of reasoning—model-based reasoning—that generates novelty. This new approach to mental modeling and analogy, together with Nersessian's cognitive-historical approach, make Creating Scientific Concepts equally valuable to cognitive science and philosophy of science.

Download or read book International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change written by Stella Vosniadou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Reconsidering Conceptual Change: Issues in Theory and Practice written by Margarita Limón and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-05-08 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.