Science / Philosophy & Social Aspects

Allan Franklin provides an overview of notable experiments in particle physics. Using papers published in Physical Review, the journal of the American Physical Society, as his basis, Franklin details the experiments themselves, their data collection, the events witnessed, and the interpretation of results. From these papers, he distills the dramatic changes to particle physics experimentation from 1894 through 2009.

Examines the essential role of understanding in the scientific process, through three key topics: understanding and explanation, understanding and models, and understanding in scientific practice.

On Leibniz examines many aspects of Leibniz’s work and life. This expanded edition adds new chapters that explore Leibniz’s revolutionary deciphering machine; his theoretical interest in cryptography and its ties to algebra; his thoughts on eternal recurrence theory; his rebuttal of the thesis of improvability in the world and cosmos; and an overview of American scholarship on Leibniz.

A comprehensive philosophical analysis of the use of scientific models in historic and contemporary contexts.

Winner of the the 2016 Southern Cone Studies Section Social Sciences Book Award from the Latin American Studies AssociationThe philosophy of the mind is at the central core of this volume. Essays examine topics such as folk psychology, neuropsychology, psychoanalytic theory, the role of mental content in voluntary action, the functional and qualitative properties of color, meanings as conceptual structures, cognitive luck, and animal cognition.

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.

The inaugural volume of the series, devoted to the work of philosopher Adolf Grunbaum, encompasses the philosophical problems of space, time, and cosmology, the nature of scientific methodology, and the foundations of psychoanalysis.

Through essays on both rhetorical theory and case studies, leaders in the disciplines of rhetoric, sociology, philosophy, and history converge and clash to explore the rhetoric of science.

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.

A comprehensive reexamination of the work of the twentieth-century scientist-turned-philosopher Michael Polanyi that offers a deeper understanding of his theories and rationale.

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.

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.

Collection of essays that identify the values crucial to science, distinguish some of the criteria that can be used for value identification, and elaborate the conditions for warranting certain values as necessary or central to scientific research.

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

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.