Science / Philosophy & Social Aspects

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.

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.

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.

Emerging as a hot topic in the mid-twentieth century, causality is one of the most frequently discussed issues in contemporary philosophy. Thinking About Causes brings together top philosophers from the United States and Europe to focus on causality as a major force in philosophical and scientific thought.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Even though the philosophy of Solomon Maimon (1753-1800) is usually considered an important link between Kant’s transcendental philosophy and German idealism, his ideas have been neglected over the past two centuries. In this book Meir Buzaglo reconstructs Maimon’s philosophy, emphasizing the importance of its mathematics.

This volume surveys the nature and structure of theories in contemporary neuroscience, exploring many of its methodological techniques and problems.

Nicholas Rescher discusses the theoretical limits of science, emphasizing what it can discover, not what it should discover. He explores both the ideological and economic obstacles to scientific progress with a precision and clarity that makes his book accessible to philosophers and non-philosophers alike.

The Cosmos of Science presents a cross section of the best work currently being done in history and philosophy of science, exploring fundamental questions in four major areas: history of science; foundations of mathematics and physics; induction and scientific methodology; and action and rationality. Together these essays reveal the coherence and order of the cosmos of science.

Leading biologists and philosophers of biology discuss the basic theories and concepts of biology and their connections with ethics, economics, and psychology, providing a remarkably unified report on the “state of the art” in the philosophy of biology.

This volume honors and examines the founders of the philosophy of logical empiricism. Historical and interpretive essays clarify the scientific philosophies of Carnap, Reichenbach, Hempel, Kant, and others, while exploring the main topics of logical empiricist philosophy of science.