Thomas S. Kuhn: Scientific knowledge as historical product -- Abstract for "The Presence of Past Science (The Shearman Memorial Lectures)" -- Thomas S. Kuhn: The presence of past science (The Shearman Memorial Lectures). Lecture I: Regaining the past ; Lecture II: Portraying the past ; Lecture III: Embodying the past -- Abstract for The Plurality of Worlds: An Evolutionary Theory of Scientific Development -- Thomas S. Kuhn: The Plurality of Worlds: An Evolutionary Theory of Scientific Development. The problem ; Scientific knowledge as historical product ; Breaking into the past ; Taxonomy and incommensurability -- A world of kinds. Biological prerequisites to linguistic description: track and situations ; Natural kinds: how their names mean ; Practices, theories, and artefactual kinds.
Thomas Kuhn is perhaps the most widely known and influential philosopher of science of our time. Inspired by his contributions, these twelve original essays address central aspects of Kuhn's thought
For scientist and layman alike this book provides vivid evidence that the Copernican Revolution has by no means lost its significance today. Few episodes in the development of scientific theory show so clearly how the solution to a highly technical problem can alter our basic thought processes and attitudes. Understanding the processes which underlay the Revolution gives us a perspective, in this scientific age, from which to evaluate our own beliefs more intelligently. With a constant keen awareness of the inseparable mixture of its technical, philosophical, and humanistic elements, Thomas S. Kuhn displays the full scope of the Copernican Revolution as simultaneously an episode in the internal development of astronomy, a critical turning point in the evolution of scientific thought, and a crisis in Western man’s concept of his relation to the universe and to God. The book begins with a description of the first scientific cosmology developed by the Greeks. Mr. Kuhn thus prepares the way for a continuing analysis of the relation between theory and observation and belief. He describes the many functions—astronomical, scientific, and nonscientific—of the Greek concept of the universe, concentrating especially on the religious implications. He then treats the intellectual, social, and economic developments which nurtured Copernicus’ break with traditional astronomy. Although many of these developments, including scholastic criticism of Aristotle’s theory of motion and the Renaissance revival of Neoplatonism, lie entirely outside of astronomy, they increased the flexibility of the astronomer’s imagination. That new flexibility is apparent in the work of Copernicus, whose De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is discussed in detail both for its own significance and as a representative scientific innovation. With a final analysis of Copernicus’ life work—its reception and its contribution to a new scientific concept of the universe—Mr. Kuhn illuminates both the researches that finally made the heliocentric arrangement work, and the achievements in physics and metaphysics that made the planetary earth an integral part of Newtonian science. These are the developments that once again provided man with a coherent and self-consistent conception of the universe and of his own place in it. This is a book for any reader interested in the evolution of ideas and, in particular, in the curious interplay of hypothesis and experiment which is the essence of modern science. Says James Bryant Conant in his Foreword: “Professor Kuhn’s handling of the subject merits attention, for...he points the way to the road which must be followed if science is to be assimilated into the culture of our times.”
A must-read follow-up to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, one of the most important books of the twentieth century. This book contains the text of Thomas S. Kuhn’s unfinished book, The Plurality of Worlds: An Evolutionary Theory of Scientific Development, which Kuhn himself described as a return to the central claims of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the problems that it raised but did not resolve. The Plurality of Worlds is preceded by two related texts that Kuhn publicly delivered but never published in English: his paper “Scientific Knowledge as Historical Product” and his Shearman Memorial Lectures, “The Presence of Past Science.” An introduction by the editor describes the origins and structure of The Plurality of Worlds and sheds light on its central philosophical problems. Kuhn’s aims in his last writings are bold. He sets out to develop an empirically grounded theory of meaning that would allow him to make sense of both the possibility of historical understanding and the inevitability of incommensurability between past and present science. In his view, incommensurability is fully compatible with a robust notion of the real world that science investigates, the rationality of scientific change, and the idea that scientific development is progressive.
Kuhn has the unmistakable address of a man, who, so far from wanting to score points, is anxious above all else to get at the truth of matters."-Sir Peter Medawar, Nature
Kuhns Monographie ›Die Struktur wissenschaftlicher Revolutionen‹ von 1962 ist ein Klassiker der Wissenschaftstheorie. Der dort erstmals von Kuhn definierte Begriff des "Paradigmenwechsels" hat weit über die Philosophie hinaus Karriere gemacht und wurde kontrovers diskutiert. In scharfer Abgrenzung zu Popper beschreibt Kuhn in seinem Aufsatz ›Logic of Discovery‹ die Geschichte der Wissenschaft nicht als stetigen Fortschritt, sondern als geprägt von Umbrüchen: Auf eine Phase der "Normalwissenschaft" folgt eine Krise. Das gemeinsam vereinbarte Paradigma wird angezweifelt und schließlich in einer wissenschaftlichen Revolution durch ein neues ersetzt. Der Band bietet den Originaltext, eine neue Übersetzung sowie einen Kommentar, der den Argumentationsgang und seine Weiterentwicklung rekonstruiert und die Rolle verdeutlicht, die Kuhns Text bis heute spielt. E-Book mit Seitenzählung der gedruckten Ausgabe: Buch und E-Book können parallel benutzt werden.
Divided into three parts, this work is a record of the direction Kuhn was taking during the last two decades of his life. It consists of essays in which he refines the basic concepts set forth in "Structure"--Paradigm shifts, incommensurability, and the nature of scientific progress.
A leading expert on the 20th-century history of Berlin, employing new and little-known German sources to track Hitler's attitudes and plans for the city, presents a fascinating new account of Hitler's relationship with Berlin, a place filled with grandiose architecture and imperial ideals, which he used as a platform for his political agenda.
Hahn on Methodology: The Quest for Understanding addresses two fundamental questions: (i) what is distinctive about economic theorising?; (ii) what is the cognitive value of the outcome of this activity of economic theorising, i.e. economic theory. We will argue that for Hahn, economic theorising is distinctive with respect to four dimensions. Firstly, the aim of economic theory is neither to describe nor explain the real economic world, as in the physical sciences. Rather the aim is to achieve objective, but non-scientific, understanding. Secondly, the central question for economic theory remains for Hahn how to understand, but not to predict as in physics for instance, how decentralised choices interact and perhaps get co-ordinated. Thirdly, Hahn identifies ‘three commitments’ without which, he argues, economic theorising for him is not possible. Finally, economic theorising has a distinctive approach, which Hahn calls its ‘grammar of argumentation’ .
History of twentieth-century philosophy of science opens with an introduction to contemporary philosophy of science as of the beginning of the twenty-first century, and describes the new specialty of computational philosophy of science. Seven chapters describing the philosophies of several major philosophers of science follow this introductory chapter. These major philosophers include Ernst Mach and Pierre Duhem, Rudolf Carnap and Willard Van Quine, Werner Heisenberg, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, Norwood Russell Hanson, and Paul Thagard and Herbert Simon. The book concludes with a large bibliography.
This 1979 text addresses the ways in which the dominant theories in large areas of Western social science have been subject to strong criticisms, particularly of their supposed philosophical deficiencies. In the philosophy of science, this resulted in empiricist views being replaced by an emphasis on the potential obstinacy of theory in the face of the empirical world. After introducing this contemporary philosophy of science, Dr Thomas uses it to argue that social study can both retain the natural scientific commitment to the constraint of the external world and assimilate the sorts of philosophical criticisms that were made of the old social scientific theories. In particular, he shows that social study understood in terms of the new philosophy of science can give an account of the former's distinctive concerns with issues of the meaning and value of social life. Dr Thomas supports his abstract arguments by detailed case studies.
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson is a projected 60-volume series containing not only the 18,000 letters written by Jefferson but also, in full or in summary, the more than 25,000 letters written to him. Including documents of historical significance as well as private notes not closely examined until their publication in the Papers, this series is an unmatched source of scholarship on the nation's third president."--Publisher description.
Aristotelian naturalism and its discontents -- Losing touch with nature -- Spenser and the new science -- Shakespeare: New forms of nothing -- Matter and power -- Epilogue: What about Bacon?
This book explores the complex social assumptions and values that underlie research programmes about schools. The analysis of educational research draws upon American and European scholarships in the sociology of knowledge, social philosophy and the history and sociology of science. The discussion considers first the communal, crafts and social characteristics of educational research. Three research models empirical-analytic, symbolic or linguistic and critical sciences are given attention. The discussion of the three research models is to illuminate how the constellation of commitments, assumptions and practices inter-relate to perform a paradigm giving different and conflicting definitions to the meaning of educational theory and to the use of the particular techniques of enquiry. The social role of educational research and the researcher is also considered.
Two principal issues interact and overlap in this penetrating analysis: the relationship between Hobbes' natural philosophy and his civil philosophy, and the relationship between Hobbes' thought and the Aristotelian world view that constituted the philosophical orthodoxy he rejected. On the first point Thomas A. Spragens Jr. argues that Hobbes' political ideas were in fact significantly influenced by his cosmological perceptions, although they were not, and could not have been, completely derived from that source. On the second, the author demonstrates that Hobbes undertook a highly systematic transformation of Aristotelian cosmology: he borrowed the form of the Aristotelian cosmology, but radically refashioned its substance to accommodate the discoveries of contemporaries such as Galileo.
Providing a vivid intellectual history of Marxist and socialist thought, this book explores the development of the idea of scientific socialism through the nineteenth and twentieth century from its origins in Engels to its last manifestation in the work of Althusser.
Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future: Collected Essays Thomas Lombardo, Ph. D. Center for Future Consciousness Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future is a profound, deeply important, and timely book that concerned people and change agents everywhere will want to read. Copthorne Macdonald The Wisdom Page As a college professor and teacher of psychology, philosophy, and the future, Tom Lombardos mind has been drawn toward such questions as: How will the human mind evolve in the future? In fact, how should the human mind evolve and improve itself? What might be the standards and ideals that guide this evolution? And what role does ethical development (or evolution) play in this process? The twenty previously published articles collected together in Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future chronicle the development of Dr. Lombardos ideas on these related questions and topics, and together constitute a theoretical perspective on the nature of the human mind, on how to best educate and evolve the human mind in the future, and how to integrate into this vision the central importance of both future consciousness (as a key dimension of human consciousness) and ethical character virtues. True to its title, three key themes emerge in this collection: wisdom, consciousness, and the future, and all three concepts tie into the authors main contribution to the field of futures studies, future consciousness. Numerous essays (for example, Evolving Future Consciousness through the Pursuit of Virtue and The Evolution and Psychology of Future Consciousness) address the nature of future consciousness, a term Dr. Lombardo defines as the complex set of mental capacities all humans possess for imagining, conceptualizing, and approaching the future. Aside from describing the psychological make-up of future consciousness, which includes emotional, motivational, cognitive, and personal dimensions, the author also explains in numerous essays (such as Developing Constructive and Creative Attitudes about the Future) how to proactively enhance ones future consciousness. Other essays deal directly with consciousness and the human mind in the broadest sense (as in The Future Evolution of the Ecology of Mind) and connect this general area of inquiry with the futurist question of how consciousness and mind might evolve in the future. Dr. Lombardo proposes that the progressive emergence of cosmic consciousness is the central evolutionary trajectory of the human mind. Hence, this book contains essays on both consciousness of the future and consciousness in the future. While the discussion of consciousness and the future fascinates in its own right, Dr. Lombardo is a holistic and deep thinker who searches for connections among myriad philosophical topics. A number of essays address the question of ethics and virtue and how such concepts connect with both future consciousness and the evolution of consciousness in the future. He then expands on this theme to explore how virtue applies to the goals of higher education in essays such as Ethical Character Development and Personal and Academic Excellence. In thinking through the concept of virtue and how it applies to consciousness, education, and the future, Dr. Lombardo emphasizes the one key virtuewisdomthat provides the center of gravity around which all other character virtues revolve. Indeed, if any one concept unites the majority of essays in this collection, it is wisdom. In The Wisdom of Future Consciousness, the author argues that wisdom is the highest expression of future consciousness, and systematically describes the numerous connections between wisdom and heightened future consciousness. Further, according to the author, wisdom is the key ideal that we should model and teach within education, now and in the future. This argume
Deception in the Digital Age: Exploiting and Defending Human Targets Through Computer-Mediated Communication guides readers through the fascinating history and principles of deception—and how these techniques and stratagems are now being effectively used by cyber attackers. Users will find an in-depth guide that provides valuable insights into the cognitive, sensory and narrative bases of misdirection, used to shape the targeted audience's perceptions and beliefs. The text provides a detailed analysis of the psychological, sensory, sociological, and technical precepts that reveal predictors of attacks—and conversely postmortem insight about attackers—presenting a unique resource that empowers readers to observe, understand and protect against cyber deception tactics. Written by information security experts with real-world investigative experience, the text is the most instructional book available on the subject, providing practical guidance to readers with rich literature references, diagrams and examples that enhance the learning process. - Deeply examines the psychology of deception through the lens of misdirection and other techniques used by master magicians - Explores cognitive vulnerabilities that cyber attackers use to exploit human targets - Dissects the underpinnings and elements of deception narratives - Examines group dynamics and deception factors in cyber attacker underground markets - Provides deep coverage on how cyber attackers leverage psychological influence techniques in the trajectory of deception strategies - Explores the deception strategies used in today's threat landscape—phishing, watering hole, scareware and ransomware attacks - Gives unprecedented insight into deceptive Internet video communications - Delves into the history and deception pathways of nation-state and cyber terrorism attackers - Provides unique insight into honeypot technologies and strategies - Explores the future of cyber deception
The Chemical Components of Tobacco and Tobacco Smoke chronicles the extraordinary progress made by scientists in the field of tobacco science, from its beginnings in the early 1800s to the present. This comprehensive text provides over 6000 references on more than 8400 components identified in tobacco and tobacco smoke.Authored by two longtime rese
Confessing that he may be acting "with more boldness than wisdom," Jefferson in November 1803 drafts a bill to create Orleans Territory, which he entrusts to John Breckinridge for introduction in the Senate. The administration sends stock certificates to France in payment for Louisiana. Relieved that affairs in the Mediterranean have improved with the evaporation of a threat of war with Morocco, the president does not know yet that Tripoli has captured the frigate Philadelphia with its officers and crew. He deals with never-ending issues of appointment to office and quarreling in his own party, while hearing that some Federalists are "as Bitter as wormwood." He shares seeds of the Venus flytrap with Elizabeth Leathes Merry, the British minister's wife. She and her husband, however, create a diplomatic storm over seating arrangements at dinner parties. Having reached St. Louis, Meriwether Lewis reports on the progress of the western expedition. Congress passes the Twelfth Amendment, which will provide for the separate election of president and vice president. In detailed notes made after Aaron Burr calls on him in January, Jefferson records his long-standing distrust of the New Yorker. Less than a month later, a congressional caucus nominates Jefferson for a second term, with George Clinton to replace Burr as vice president. Jefferson makes his first trials of the "double penned writing box" called the polygraph.
Are you doing a research project? Do you need advice on how to carry out research? Does writer's block get in the way of your dissertation? Nearly all students need to do a research project at some point during their degree. How to do your Research Project guides you through the different phases of doing so. With practical examples, Thomas explains what should happen at each project phase, detailing the main design frames and methods used in social science research, and providing down to earth and practical advice on weaving these elements together into a coherent whole.
Guarino argues in this book that the doctrinal form of the Christian faith, in its essential characteristics, calls for certain theoretical exigencies. This is to say that the proportion and beauty of the form is not served or illuminated by simply any presuppositions. Rather, a determinate understanding of first philosophy, of the nature of truth, of hermeneutical theory, of the predication of language and mutual correlation is required if Christian faith and doctrine are to maintain a recognizable and suitably mediative form. Failing to adduce specific principles will lead either to a simple assertion of Christian truth, in which case the form of Christianity becomes less intelligible and attractive-or one will substitute a radically changed form, which is itself inappropriate for displaying the fundamental revelatory narrative of faith. The house of Christian faith possesses a certain proportion of structure; the form will sag badly if one removes an undergirding item, or if one beam is replaced with another of variable shape or size. The form's beauty will either be obscured, no longer clearly visible, or the form will become something quite different, no longer architectonically related to what was originally the case. The intention of this book is to discuss those doctrinal characteristics considered fundamental to the Christian faith, as protective of its revelatory form and, concomitantly, to examine the theoretical principles required if such form is to remain both intelligible and beautiful.
A History of Psychology places social, economic, and political forces of change alongside psychology’s internal theoretical and empirical arguments, illuminating how the external world has shaped psychology’s development, and, in turn, how the late twentieth century’s psychology has shaped society. Featuring extended treatment of important movements such as the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, the textbook approaches the material from an integrative rather than wholly linear perspective. The text carefully examines how issues in psychology reflect and affect concepts that lie outside the field of psychology’s technical concerns as a science and profession. This new edition features expanded attention on psychoanalysis after its founding as well as new developments in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and behavioral economics. Throughout, the book strengthens its exploration of psychological ideas and the cultures in which they developed and reinforces the connections between psychology, modernism, and postmodernism. The textbook covers scientific, applied, and professional psychology, and is appropriate for higher-level undergraduate and graduate students.
This comprehensive and accessible student workbook accompanies the fifth edition of Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable's History of the English Language. Each chapter in the workbook corresponds directly to a chapter in the textbook and offers exercises, review questions, extensive supplementary examples, additional explanations and a range of sample extracts taken from texts of different periods. An additional 'pre-chapter' on the sounds of English also provides phonetic information and exercises that will prove useful throughout the book. This third edition has been revised alongside the textbook and includes new exercises to accompany the sections on Gender Issues and Linguistic Change, and African American Vernacular English. This workbook is an invaluable companion for all History of English Language courses.
Bringing together authorities on the history, historiography and methodology of recent and contemporary science, this book reviews the problems facing historians of technology, contemporary science and medicine and explores new ways forward.
Based on extensive archival research in six countries and intensive fieldwork, the book analyzes the history of the village of Nkholongue on the eastern (Mozambican) shores of Lake Malawi from the time of its formation in the 19th century to the present day. The study uses Nkholongue as a microhistorical lens to examine such diverse topics as the slave trade, the spread of Islam, colonization, subsistence production, counter-insurgency, decolonization, civil war, ecotourism, and matriliny. Thereby, the book attempts to reflect as much as possible on the generalizability and (global) comparability of local findings by framing analyses in historiographical discussions that aim to go beyond the regional or national level. Although the chapters of the book deal with very different topics, they are united by a common interest in the social history of rural Africa in the longue durée. Contrary to persistent clichés of rural inertia in Africa, the book as a whole underscores the profound changeability of social conditions and relations in Nkholongue over the years and highlights how people’s room for maneuver kept changing as a result of the Winds of History, the frequent and often violent ruptures brought to the village from outside.
The riveting history of tuberculosis, the world’s most lethal disease, the two men whose lives it tragically intertwined, and the birth of medical science. In 1875, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accountable for a third of all deaths. A diagnosis of TB—often called consumption—was a death sentence. Then, in a triumph of medical science, a German doctor named Robert Koch deployed an unprecedented scientific rigor to discover the bacteria that caused TB. Koch soon embarked on a remedy—a remedy that would be his undoing. When Koch announced his cure for consumption, Arthur Conan Doyle, then a small-town doctor in England and sometime writer, went to Berlin to cover the event. Touring the ward of reportedly cured patients, he was horrified. Koch’s “remedy” was either sloppy science or outright fraud. But to a world desperate for relief, Koch’s remedy wasn’t so easily dismissed. As Europe’s consumptives descended upon Berlin, Koch urgently tried to prove his case. Conan Doyle, meanwhile, returned to England determined to abandon medicine in favor of writing. In particular, he turned to a character inspired by the very scientific methods that Koch had formulated: Sherlock Holmes. Capturing the moment when mystery and magic began to yield to science, The Remedy chronicles the stunning story of how the germ theory of disease became a true fact, how two men of ambition were emboldened to reach for something more, and how scientific discoveries evolve into social truths.
McWhinney's Textbook of Family Medicine' is one of the seminal texts in the field, defining the principles and practices of family medicine as a distinct field of practice. The fourth edition presents six new clinical chapters of common problems in family medicine.
Thomas A. Russman argues forcefully that it is now possible to return in a new way to the once familiar ground of epistemological realism-the pre-Cartesian view that things themselves are knowable through perception and that such knowledge is foundational. This view has been rejected by most contemporary philosophers, who follow the path outlined convincingly by the likes of Wilfrid Sellers, Willard Quine, Thomas Kuhn, and Richard Rorty. Recognizing that any return to philosophical realism must deal with the criticisms raised by these prominent philosophers, Professor Russmanoffers his own incisive critique of a contemporary myth-what Karl Popper called "the myth of the framework," which replaced the earlier "myth of the given," as Wilfrid Sellars named it in his attack on realism. The battle between theses two myths is, according to Professor Russman, "a battle to the death." he believes that the observation framework is the abode of permanent truths about the world. He proceeds to explain why the current assumption to the contrary arose and why it is wrong. Then he shows how the "informal foundationalism" that he proposes can avoid the philosophical pitfalls of the earlier formal foundationalism in allowing for political toleration and artistic freedom: it works better than pragmatism as a general epistemology: and it supports a dynamic, nonreductive view of human nature. Thomas Russman earned an M.A. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton University. He teaches philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.
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