Perception and Scientific Observation

Perception and Scientific Observation PDF Author: Raymond E Rainville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description

Perception and Scientific Observation

Perception and Scientific Observation PDF Author: Raymond E Rainville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 500

Get Book Here

Book Description


Perception and Discovery

Perception and Discovery PDF Author: Norwood Russell Hanson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319697455
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Norwood Russell Hanson was one of the most important philosophers of science of the post-war period. Hanson brought Wittgensteinian ordinary language philosophy to bear on the concepts of science, and his treatments of observation, discovery, and the theory-ladenness of scientific facts remain central to the philosophy of science. Additionally, Hanson was one of philosophy’s great personalities, and his sense of humor and charm come through fully in the pages of Perception and Discovery. Perception and Discovery, originally published in 1969, is Hanson’s posthumous textbook in philosophy of science. The book focuses on the indispensable role philosophy plays in scientific thinking. Perception and Discovery features Hanson’s most complete and mature account of theory-laden observation, a discussion of conceptual and logical boundaries, and a detailed treatment of the epistemological features of scientific research and scientific reasoning. This book is of interest to scholars of philosophy of science, particularly those concerned with Hanson’s thought and the development of the discipline in the middle of the 20th century. However, even fifty years after Hanson’s early death, Perception and Discovery still has a great deal to offer all readers interested in science.

Histories of Scientific Observation

Histories of Scientific Observation PDF Author: Lorraine Daston
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226136787
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
Includes bibliographical referrences and index.

Histories of Scientific Observation

Histories of Scientific Observation PDF Author: Lorraine Daston
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226136795
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
Observation is the most pervasive and fundamental practice of all the modern sciences, both natural and human. Its instruments include not only the naked senses but also tools such as the telescope and microscope, the questionnaire, the photographic plate, the notebook, the glassed-in beehive, and myriad other ingenious inventions designed to make the invisible visible, the evanescent permanent, the abstract concrete. Yet observation has almost never been considered as an object of historical inquiry in itself. This wide-ranging collection offers the first examination of the history of scientific observation in its own right, as both epistemic category and scientific practice. Histories of Scientific Observation features engaging episodes drawn from across the spectrum of the natural and human sciences, ranging from meteorology, medicine, and natural history to economics, astronomy, and psychology. The contributions spotlight how observers have scrutinized everything—from seaweed to X-ray radiation, household budgets to the emotions—with ingenuity, curiosity, and perseverance verging on obsession. This book makes a compelling case for the significance of the long, surprising, and epistemologically significant history of scientific observation, a history full of innovations that have enlarged the possibilities of perception, judgment, and reason.

Experiment and the Making of Meaning

Experiment and the Making of Meaning PDF Author: D.C. Gooding
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400907079
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
. . . the topic of 'meaning' is the one topic discussed in philosophy in which there is literally nothing but 'theory' - literally nothing that can be labelled or even ridiculed as the 'common sense view'. Putnam, 'The Meaning of Meaning' This book explores some truths behind the truism that experimentation is a hallmark of scientific activity. Scientists' descriptions of nature result from two sorts of encounter: they interact with each other and with nature. Philosophy of science has, by and large, failed to give an account of either sort of interaction. Philosophers typically imagine that scientists observe, theorize and experiment in order to produce general knowledge of natural laws, knowledge which can be applied to generate new theories and technologies. This view bifurcates the scientist's world into an empirical world of pre-articulate experience and know how and another world of talk, thought and argument. Most received philosophies of science focus so exclusively on the literary world of representations that they cannot begin to address the philosophical problems arising from the interaction of these worlds: empirical access as a source of knowledge, meaning and reference, and of course, realism. This has placed the epistemological burden entirely on the predictive role of experiment because, it is argued, testing predictions is all that could show that scientists' theorizing is constrained by nature. Here a purely literary approach contributes to its own demise. The epistemological significance of experiment turns out to be a theoretical matter: cruciality depends on argument, not experiment.

Scientific Perspectivism

Scientific Perspectivism PDF Author: Ronald N. Giere
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226292142
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Many people assume that the claims of scientists are objective truths. But historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science have long argued that scientific claims reflect the particular historical, cultural, and social context in which those claims were made. The nature of scientific knowledge is not absolute because it is influenced by the practice and perspective of human agents. Scientific Perspectivism argues that the acts of observing and theorizing are both perspectival, and this nature makes scientific knowledge contingent, as Thomas Kuhn theorized forty years ago. Using the example of color vision in humans to illustrate how his theory of “perspectivism” works, Ronald N. Giere argues that colors do not actually exist in objects; rather, color is the result of an interaction between aspects of the world and the human visual system. Giere extends this argument into a general interpretation of human perception and, more controversially, to scientific observation, conjecturing that the output of scientific instruments is perspectival. Furthermore, complex scientific principles—such as Maxwell’s equations describing the behavior of both the electric and magnetic fields—make no claims about the world, but models based on those principles can be used to make claims about specific aspects of the world. Offering a solution to the most contentious debate in the philosophy of science over the past thirty years, Scientific Perspectivism will be of interest to anyone involved in the study of science.

Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science

Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science PDF Author: Patrick A. Heelan
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520908090
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Drawing on the phenomenological tradition in the philosophy of science and philosophy of nature, Patrick Heelan concludes that perception is a cognitive, world-building act, and is therefore never absolute or finished.

Observation and Objectivity

Observation and Objectivity PDF Author: Harold I. Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The author presents an epistemological theory of perception that occupies the middle ground between rational and empirical views of observation theory.

Remote Viewing

Remote Viewing PDF Author: Courtney Brown
Publisher: Farsight, Inc.
ISBN: 9780976676201
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Remote viewing is the mental ability to perceive and describe places, persons, or events at distant locations in the past, present, and future. This book describes the science and theory of the remote-viewing phenomenon. The reality of the remote-viewing phenomenon is not in dispute among a large body of respected researchers ¿ both inside and outside of academia ¿ who have published an extensive collection of high-quality investigations over the past few decades. But profound mysteries remain. This volume breaks new ground by resolving some of remote-viewing¿s greatest enigmas. In these pages, new research and new theories explain why remote viewing works, and why it is scientifically possible. These investigations utilize remote-viewing methods that are derivative of those used for decades in well-documented U.S. government funded psi research sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.). Filled with descriptions and analyses of highly original experiments, here is an investigation into the fascinating characteristics of time and physical reality using remote viewing as a tool of exploration, offering evidence that the past, present, and future truly exist simultaneously. The idea of differing future and past time lines is not just science fiction.

Perception, Theory, and Commitment

Perception, Theory, and Commitment PDF Author: Harold I. Brown
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226076188
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
With originality and clarity, Harold Brown outlines first the logical empiricist tradition and then the more historical and process-oriented approach he calls the “new philosophy of science.” Examining the two together, he describes the very transition between them as an example of the kind of change in historical tradition with which the new philosophy of science concerns itself. “I would recommend it to every historian of science and to every philosopher of science. . . . I found it clear, readable, accurate, cogent, insightful, perceptive, judicious, and full of original ideas.” —Maurice A. Finocchiaro, Isis “The best and most original aspect of the book is its overall conception.” —Thomas S. Kuhn Harold I. Brown is professor of philosophy at Northern Illinois University.