Books

Provides a Fresh Perspective on What Science Is and How and Why It Changes

The Philosophy of Scientific Experimentation is a collection of essays that focuses on the identification and clarification of philosophical issues in experimental science, such as the link between science and technology, the role of theory in experimentation involving material and causal intervention, and the impact of modeling and computer simulation on experimentation.

The first anthology to offer a contemporary overview of the problem of laws—an area of study that has become increasingly central to the philosophy of science. The book covers a broad range of views, and consists exclusively of articles that have proven to be influential.

Using a wide variety of examples of rejected scientific theories, Losee provides an unusually clear analysis of the way scientific method works.

Winner of an Outstanding Academic Title Award from Choice Magazine (2006).

First published in 1989, this book presents and analyzes the dramatic changes in philosophical conceptions of scientific explanation after the landmark 1948 essayStudies in the Logic of Explanation by Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim.

Offers an accurate picture of science through the examination of nontechnical case studies which illustrate the various roles that experiment plays in science. Examines both sucessful and unsucessful experiments to show how scientists use experimental evidence and critical discussion to expand our knowlege of the natural world.

Gregor Mendel’s “Experiments in Plant-Hybridization,” presented in 1865, became the foundation of modern genetics. Did his research follow the rigors of real scientific inquiry, or was Mendel’s data too good to be true-the product of doctored statistics? In this book, leading experts present their conclusions on the legendary controversy surrounding the challenge to Mendel’s findings by British statistician and biologist R. A. Fisher. In 1936, Fisher suggested that Mendel’s data could have been falsified in order to support his expectations.This volume includes an overview of the controversy; the original papers of Mendel and Fisher; four of the most important papers on the debate; and new updates, by the authors, of the latter four papers, making this book the definitive last word on the subject.

Douglas challenges the traditional value-free ideal, and proposes a new ideal for values in science. She argues that the distinction between junk science and sound science lies in the roles values play at key points throughout science, and that constraining those roles is central to protecting the integrity and objectivity of science.

Nicholas Rescher outlines a general theory for the cost-effective use of intellectual resources, and discusses the requirements of cooperation, communication, cognitive importance, cognitive economy, and then applies his model to several case studies.

Prominent philosophers analyze the work of Thomas Kuhn, including his monumental study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, from a broad perspective, comparing earlier logical empiricism and logical positivism with the new philosophy inspired by Kuhn in the early 1960s.

This collection of essays reexamines the origins of logical empiricism and offers fresh insights into its relationship to contemporary philosophy of science.

Better known as a poet and dramatist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was also a learned philosopher and natural scientist. Astrida Orle Tantillo offers the first comprehensive analysis of his natural philosophy, which she contends is rooted in creativity.

Advancements in computing, instrumentation, robotics, digital imaging, and simulation modeling have changed science into a technology-driven institution. Government, industry, and society increasingly exert their influence over science, raising questions of values and objectivity. These and other profound changes have led many to speculate that we are in the midst of an epochal break in scientific history. This edited volume presents an in-depth examination of these issues from philosophical, historical, social, and cultural perspectives. It offers arguments both for and against the epochal break thesis.

More than 250 years separate the publication of Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In Peeling Potatoes or Grinding Lenses, Aristides Baltas contends that these works bear a striking similarity based on the idea of “radical immanence.” He analyzes the structure and content of each treatise, the authors’ intentions, the limitations and possibilities afforded by scientific discovery in their respective eras, their radical opposition to prevailing philosophical views, and draws out the particulars, as well as the implications, of the arresting match between the two.

Provides an innovative analysis of the nature and interplay of observation and conceptualization. Radder shows that observation is always conceptually interpreted, and concepts affect the way observational processes are conducted in the first place.