How to Reason + Reasoning in the Sciences

How to Reason + Reasoning in the Sciences PDF Author: Richard L Epstein
Publisher: Advanced Reasoning Forum
ISBN: 1938421450
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book

Book Description
Too often we're guided by what we last heard, by our friends' approval, by impulse—our desires, our fears. Without reflection. Without even stopping to think. ** In this book you'll learn how to reason and find your way better in life. You'll learn to see the consequences of what you and others say and do. You'll learn to see the assumptions that you and others make. You'll learn how to judge what you should believe. These are the skills we all need to make good decisions. ** Claims. Arguments. Fallacies. Analogies. Generalizing. Cause and Effect. Explanations. These are clearly set out with hundreds of examples from daily life showing how to use them. Illustrations using a cast of cartoon characters make the concepts memorable. And many exercises will help you to check your understanding. ** Truly a book for all—from high school to graduate school, from auto repair to managing a company. How to Reason will help you find a way in life that is clearer and not buffetted by the winds of nonsense and fear. ******* In Reasoning in the Sciences, you'll learn how to use your reasoning skills to understand how scientists make definitions, what an experiment is, what can go wrong with an experiment, how scientists reason with models and theories, what counts as a good explanation in science, and how to distinguish science from magic, religion, and fraud. No background in science is needed, just a healthy appetitite for learning.

How to Reason + Reasoning in the Sciences

How to Reason + Reasoning in the Sciences PDF Author: Richard L Epstein
Publisher: Advanced Reasoning Forum
ISBN: 1938421450
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book

Book Description
Too often we're guided by what we last heard, by our friends' approval, by impulse—our desires, our fears. Without reflection. Without even stopping to think. ** In this book you'll learn how to reason and find your way better in life. You'll learn to see the consequences of what you and others say and do. You'll learn to see the assumptions that you and others make. You'll learn how to judge what you should believe. These are the skills we all need to make good decisions. ** Claims. Arguments. Fallacies. Analogies. Generalizing. Cause and Effect. Explanations. These are clearly set out with hundreds of examples from daily life showing how to use them. Illustrations using a cast of cartoon characters make the concepts memorable. And many exercises will help you to check your understanding. ** Truly a book for all—from high school to graduate school, from auto repair to managing a company. How to Reason will help you find a way in life that is clearer and not buffetted by the winds of nonsense and fear. ******* In Reasoning in the Sciences, you'll learn how to use your reasoning skills to understand how scientists make definitions, what an experiment is, what can go wrong with an experiment, how scientists reason with models and theories, what counts as a good explanation in science, and how to distinguish science from magic, religion, and fraud. No background in science is needed, just a healthy appetitite for learning.

How We Reason

How We Reason PDF Author: Philip Nicholas Johnson-Laird
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198569769
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 584

Get Book

Book Description
Good reasoning can lead to success; bad reasoning can lead to catastrophe. Yet, it's not obvious how we reason, and why we make mistakes. This book looks at the mental processes that underlie our reasoning. It provides the most accessible account yet of the science of reasoning.

The Outer Limits of Reason

The Outer Limits of Reason PDF Author: Noson S. Yanofsky
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026252984X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 419

Get Book

Book Description
This exploration of the scientific limits of knowledge challenges our deep-seated beliefs about our universe, our rationality, and ourselves. “A must-read for anyone studying information science.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own intuitions about the world—including our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Yanofsky describes simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve: • perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense • different levels of infinity • the bizarre world of the quantum • the relevance of relativity theory • the causes of chaos theory • math problems that cannot be solved by normal means • statements that are true but cannot be proven Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there.

Styles of Reasoning in the British Life Sciences

Styles of Reasoning in the British Life Sciences PDF Author: James Elwick
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822981831
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book

Book Description
Elwick explores how the concept of "compound individuality" brought together life scientists working in pre-Darwinian London. Scientists conducting research in comparative anatomy, physiology, cellular microscopy, embryology and the neurosciences repeatedly stated that plants and animals were compounds of smaller independent units. Discussion of a "bodily economy" was widespread. But by 1860, the most flamboyant discussions of compound individuality had come to an end in Britain. Elwick relates the growth and decline of questions about compound individuality to wider nineteenth-century debates about research standards and causality. He uses specific technical case studies to address overarching themes of reason and scientific method.

Understanding Scientific Reasoning

Understanding Scientific Reasoning PDF Author: Ronald N. Giere
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Get Book

Book Description
Not everything that claims to be science is. UNDERSTANDING SCIENTIFIC REASONING shows you easy-to-use principles that let you distinguish good science from bad information you encounter in both textbooks and the popular media. And because it uses the same processes that scientists use (but simplified), you'll know you're getting the most reliable instruction around. You'll also learn how to reason through case studies using the same informal logic skills employed by scientists.

Science and Public Reason

Science and Public Reason PDF Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136288406
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book

Book Description
This collection of essays by Sheila Jasanoff explores how democratic governments construct public reason, that is, the forms of evidence and argument used in making state decisions accountable to citizens. The term public reason as used here is not simply a matter of deploying principled arguments that respect the norms of democratic deliberation. Jasanoff investigates what states do in practice when they claim to be reasoning in the public interest. Reason, from this perspective, comprises the institutional practices, discourses, techniques and instruments through which governments claim legitimacy in an era of potentially unbounded risks—physical, political, and moral. Those legitimating efforts, in turn, depend on citizens’ acceptance of the forms of reasoning that governments offer. Included here therefore is an inquiry into the conditions that lead citizens of democratic societies to accept policy justification as being reasonable. These modes of public knowing, or “civic epistemologies,” are integral to the constitution of contemporary political cultures. Methodologically, the book is grounded in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). It uses in-depth qualitative studies of legal and political practices to shed light on divergent cross-cultural constructions of public reason and the reasoning political subject. The collection as a whole contributes to democratic theory, legal studies, comparative politics, geography, and ethnographies of modernity, as well as STS.

The Enigma of Reason

The Enigma of Reason PDF Author: Hugo Mercier
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674368304
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Get Book

Book Description
“Brilliant...Timely and necessary.” —Financial Times “Especially timely as we struggle to make sense of how it is that individuals and communities persist in holding beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited.” —Darren Frey, Science If reason is what makes us human, why do we behave so irrationally? And if it is so useful, why didn’t it evolve in other animals? This groundbreaking account of the evolution of reason by two renowned cognitive scientists seeks to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue, helps us justify our beliefs, convince others, and evaluate arguments. It makes it easier to cooperate and communicate and to live together in groups. Provocative, entertaining, and undeniably relevant, The Enigma of Reason will make many reasonable people rethink their beliefs. “Reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant...Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?...Cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber [argue that] reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems...[but] to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker “Turns reason’s weaknesses into strengths, arguing that its supposed flaws are actually design features that work remarkably well.” —Financial Times “The best thing I have read about human reasoning. It is extremely well written, interesting, and very enjoyable to read.” —Gilbert Harman, Princeton University

The Limits of Scientific Reasoning

The Limits of Scientific Reasoning PDF Author: David Faust
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816613591
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book

Book Description
The Limits of Scientific Reasoning was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The study of human judgment and its limitations is essential to an understanding of the processes involved in the acquisition of scientific knowledge. With that end in mind, David Faust has made the first comprehensive attempt to apply recent research on human judgment to the practice of science. Drawing upon the findings of cognitive psychology, Faust maintains that human judgment is far more limited than we have tended to believe and that all individuals - scientists included—have a surprisingly restricted capacity to interpret complex information. Faust's thesis implies that scientists do not perform reasoning tasks, such as theory evaluation, as well as we assume they do, and that there are many judgments the scientist is expected to perform but cannot because of restrictions in cognitive capacity. "This is a very well-written, timely, and important book. It documents and clarifies, in a very scholarly fashion, what sociologists and psychologists of science have been flirting with for several decades—namely, inherent limitations of scientific judgment," –Michael Mahoney, Pennsylvania State University David Faust is director of psychology at Rhode Island Hospital and a faculty member of the Brown University Medical School. He is co-author of Teaching Moral Reasoning: Theory and Practice.

Theory and Evidence

Theory and Evidence PDF Author: Barbara Koslowski
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262112093
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book

Book Description
Koslowski boldly criticizes many of the currently classic studies and musters a compelling set of arguments, backed by an exhaustive set of experiments carried out during the last decade.

Scientific Reasoning and Argumentation

Scientific Reasoning and Argumentation PDF Author: Frank Fischer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351400428
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book

Book Description
Competence in scientific reasoning is one of the most valued outcomes of secondary and higher education. However, there is a need for a deeper understanding of and further research into the roles of domain-general and domain-specific knowledge in such reasoning. This book explores the functions and limitations of domain-general conceptions of reasoning and argumentation, the substantial differences that exist between the disciplines, and the role of domain-specific knowledge and epistemologies. Featuring chapters and commentaries by widely cited experts in the learning sciences, educational psychology, science education, history education, and cognitive science, Scientific Reasoning and Argumentation presents new perspectives on a decades-long debate about the role of domain-specific knowledge and its contribution to the development of more general reasoning abilities.