Rational Changes In Science

Download or read book Rational Changes in Science written by Joseph C. Pitt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science written by Stefano Gattei and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-10-16 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rectifying misrepresentations of Popperian thought with a historical approach to Popper’s philosophy, Gattei reconstructs the logic of Popper’s development to show how one problem and its tentative solution led to a new problem.

Download or read book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions written by Thomas S. Kuhn and published by Chicago : University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1969 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Rational Fog written by M. Susan Lindee and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking examination of the intersections of knowledge and violence, and the quandaries and costs of modern, technoscientific warfare. Science and violence converge in modern warfare. While the finest minds of the twentieth century have improved human life, they have also produced human injury. They engineered radar, developed electronic computers, and helped mass produce penicillin all in the context of military mobilization. Scientists also developed chemical weapons, atomic bombs, and psychological warfare strategies. Rational Fog explores the quandary of scientific and technological productivity in an era of perpetual war. Science is, at its foundation, an international endeavor oriented toward advancing human welfare. At the same time, it has been nationalistic and militaristic in times of crisis and conflict. As our weapons have become more powerful, scientists have struggled to reconcile these tensions, engaging in heated debates over the problems inherent in exploiting science for military purposes. M. Susan Lindee examines this interplay between science and state violence and takes stock of researchers’ efforts to respond. Many scientists who wanted to distance their work from killing have found it difficult and have succumbed to the exigencies of war. Indeed, Lindee notes that scientists who otherwise oppose violence have sometimes been swept up in the spirit of militarism when war breaks out. From the first uses of the gun to the mass production of DDT and the twenty-first-century battlefield of the mind, the science of war has achieved remarkable things at great human cost. Rational Fog reminds us that, for scientists and for us all, moral costs sometimes mount alongside technological and scientific advances.

Download or read book The Myth of the Framework written by Karl Popper and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a career spanning sixty years, Sir Karl Popper has made some of the most important contributions to the twentieth century discussion of science and rationality. The Myth of the Framework is a new collection of some of Popper's most important material on this subject. Sir Karl discusses such issues as the aims of science, the role that it plays in our civilization, the moral responsibility of the scientist, the structure of history, and the perennial choice between reason and revolution. In doing so, he attacks intellectual fashions (like positivism) that exagerrate what science and rationality have done, as well as intellectual fashions (like relativism) that denigrate what science and rationality can do. Scientific knowledge, according to Popper, is one of the most rational and creative of human achievements, but it is also inherently fallible and subject to revision. In place of intellectual fashions, Popper offers his own critical rationalism - a view that he regards both as a theory of knowlege and as an attitude towards human life, human morals and democracy. Published in cooperation with the Central European University.

Download or read book Evilicious written by Marc D. Hauser and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a fact that humans destroy the lives of other humans — strangers, friends, lovers, and kin — and have been doing so for a long time. These cases are unsurprising and easily explained: We harm others when it benefits us directly, fighting to win resources or wipe out the competition. In this sense we are no different from any other social animal. The mystery is why seemingly normal people torture, mutilate, and kill others for the fun of it — or for no apparent benefit at all. Why did we, alone among the social animals, develop an appetite for gratuitous cruelty? This is the core problem of evil. It is a problem that has engaged scholars for centuries and is the central topic of this book. Drawing on the latest scientific discoveries, Hauser provides a novel and elegant explanation for why some individuals engage in evil and why we uniquely evolved this capacity: Evildoers emerge when unsatisfied desires combine with the denial of reality, enabling individuals to engage in gratuitous cruelty toward innocent victims. This simple recipe is part of human nature, and part of our brain's uniquely evolved capacity to combine different thoughts and emotions. The implications of Hauser's theory of evil are unsettling: due to individual differences that begin with our biology, and can be enhanced by certain environments, seemingly normal people are capable of causing horrific harms, feeling rewarded and justified or nothing at all.PRAISE for "Evilicious"Noam Chomsky "an entertaining and compassionate essay.."Robert Trivers "Highly ambitious, relentless in its logic"Nicholas Wade "“What Steven Pinker has done for violence, Marc Hauser has achieved with evil - this book brings the light of science to illumine the heart of darkness.”Michael Shermer "Every Congressman, Senator, and journalist voting or writing on what to do about violence should read this book first."

Download or read book The Rationality of Science written by W.H. Newton-Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-02-07 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear, original and systematic introduction to philosophy of science which examines the theories of Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend before proposing a new, temperate rationalist perspective.