The Search for a Methodology of Social Science

The Search for a Methodology of Social Science PDF Author: S. Turner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401734615
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Stephen Turner has explored the ongms of social science in this pioneering study of two nineteenth century themes: the search for laws of human social behavior, and the accumulation and analysis of the facts of such behavior through statistical inquiry. The disputes were vigorously argued; they were over questions of method, criteria of explanation, interpretations of probability, understandings of causation as such and of historical causation in particular, and time and again over the ways of using a natural science model. From his careful elucidation of John Stuart Mill's proposals for the methodology of the social sciences on to his original analysis of the methodological claims and practices of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, Turner has beautifully traced the conflict between statistical sociology and a science offactual description on the one side, and causal laws and a science of nomological explanation on the other. We see the works of Comte and Quetelet, the critical observations of Herschel, Buckle, Venn and Whewell, and the tough scepticism of Pearson, all of these as essential to the works of the classical founders of sociology. With Durkheim's essay on Suicide and Weber's monograph on The Protestant Ethic, Turner provides both philosophical analysis to demonstrate the continuing puzzles over cause and probability and also a perceptive and wry account of just how the puzzles of our late twentieth century are of a piece with theirs. The terms are still familiar: reasons vs.

The Search for a Methodology of Social Science

The Search for a Methodology of Social Science PDF Author: S. Turner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401734615
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
Stephen Turner has explored the ongms of social science in this pioneering study of two nineteenth century themes: the search for laws of human social behavior, and the accumulation and analysis of the facts of such behavior through statistical inquiry. The disputes were vigorously argued; they were over questions of method, criteria of explanation, interpretations of probability, understandings of causation as such and of historical causation in particular, and time and again over the ways of using a natural science model. From his careful elucidation of John Stuart Mill's proposals for the methodology of the social sciences on to his original analysis of the methodological claims and practices of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, Turner has beautifully traced the conflict between statistical sociology and a science offactual description on the one side, and causal laws and a science of nomological explanation on the other. We see the works of Comte and Quetelet, the critical observations of Herschel, Buckle, Venn and Whewell, and the tough scepticism of Pearson, all of these as essential to the works of the classical founders of sociology. With Durkheim's essay on Suicide and Weber's monograph on The Protestant Ethic, Turner provides both philosophical analysis to demonstrate the continuing puzzles over cause and probability and also a perceptive and wry account of just how the puzzles of our late twentieth century are of a piece with theirs. The terms are still familiar: reasons vs.

Polish Essays in the Methodology of the Social Sciences

Polish Essays in the Methodology of the Social Sciences PDF Author: J. Wiatr
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789400993549
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description


A Boole Anthology

A Boole Anthology PDF Author: James Gasser
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940159385X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Modern mathematical logic would not exist without the analytical tools first developed by George Boole in The Mathematical Analysis of Logic and The Laws of Thought. The influence of the Boolean school on the development of logic, always recognised but long underestimated, has recently become a major research topic. This collection is the first anthology of works on Boole. It contains two works published in 1865, the year of Boole's death, but never reprinted, as well as several classic studies of recent decades and ten original contributions appearing here for the first time. From the programme of the English Algebraic School to Boole's use of operator methods, from the problem of interpretability to that of psychologism, a full range of issues is covered. The Boole Anthology is indispensable to Boole studies and will remain so for years to come.

Theoretical Knowledge

Theoretical Knowledge PDF Author: Vyacheslav S. Stepin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402030460
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
In Theoretical Knowledge an original conception of a structure and dynamics of scientific knowledge is proposed. A detailed analysis of the foundations of science performed by the author allowed him to develop new ideas and approaches, to demonstrate how sociocultural factors are incorporated in the process of yielding of new theories. He shows direct and inverse links between foundations of science and new theories and empirical facts evolved from those, how among many potentially possible histories of science a culture selects just those directions which become a real history of science. The author analyses mechanisms of the generation of scientific theories and shows that those are changed in the process of historical development of science. He displays three historical types of scientific rationality (classical, non-classical and post-non-classical, which appears in modern science) and shows features of their coexistence and interplay. It is shown that along with the emerging of post-non-classical rationality science increases the sphere of its worldview applications. Science begins to correlate not only with the basic values of technogenic civilization but also with some values and patterns of traditional cultures. The investigation is based on the extensive literature on the history of natural and social sciences. The reader will find in the book authentic historical reconstructions of the processes of the development of classical and quantum electrodynamics, relativity, and conceptions of evolution in biology.

Body, Mind, and Method

Body, Mind, and Method PDF Author: Donald F. Gustafson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400994796
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Simple seeing. Plain talking. Language in use and persons in action. These are among the themes of Virgil Aldrich's writings, from the 1930's onward. Throughout these years, he has been an explorer of conceptual geography: not as a foreign visitor studying an alien land, but close up 'in the language in which we live, move, and have our being'. This is his work. It is clear to those who know him best that he also has fun at it. Yet, in the terms of his oft-cited distinction, it is equally clear that he is to be counted not among the funsters of philosophy, but among its most committed workers. Funsters are those who attempt to do epistemology, metaphysics, or analysis by appealing to examples which are purely imaginary, totally fictional, as unrealistic as you like, 'completely unheard of'. Such imaginative wilfullness takes philosophers away from, not nearer to, 'the rough ground' (Wittgenstein) where our concepts have their origin and working place. In the funsters' imagined, 'barely possible' (but actually impossible) world, simple seeing becomes transformed into the sensing of sense-data; plain talk is rejected as imprecise, vague, and misleading; and per sons in action show up as ensouled physical objects in motion. Then the fly is in the bottle, buzzing out its tedious tunes: the problem of perception of the external world; the problem of meaning and what it is; the mind-body problem. Image-mongering has got the best of image-management.

Shapes of Forms

Shapes of Forms PDF Author: L. Albertazzi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401729905
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
impossible triangle, after apprehension of the perceptively given mode of being of that 'object', the visual system assumes that all three sides touch on all three sides, whereas this happens on only one side. In fact, the sides touch only optically, because they are separate in depth. In Meinong's words, Penrose's triangle has been inserted in an 'objective', or in what we would today call a "cognitive schema". Re-examination of the Graz school's theory, as said, sheds light on several problems concerning the theory of perception, and, as Luccio points out in his contribution to this book, it helps to eliminate a number of over-simplistic commonplaces, such as the identification of the cognitivist notion of 'top down' with Wertheimer's 'von oben unten', and of 'bottom up' with his 'von unten nach oben'. In fact, neither Hochberg's and Gregory's 'concept-driven' perception nor Gibson's 'data-driven' perception coincide with the original conception of the Gestalt.

The Growth of Mathematical Knowledge

The Growth of Mathematical Knowledge PDF Author: Emily Grosholz
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401595585
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Mathematics has stood as a bridge between the Humanities and the Sciences since the days of classical antiquity. For Plato, mathematics was evidence of Being in the midst of Becoming, garden variety evidence apparent even to small children and the unphilosophical, and therefore of the highest educational significance. In the great central similes of The Republic it is the touchstone ofintelligibility for discourse, and in the Timaeus it provides in an oddly literal sense the framework of nature, insuring the intelligibility ofthe material world. For Descartes, mathematical ideas had a clarity and distinctness akin to the idea of God, as the fifth of the Meditations makes especially clear. Cartesian mathematicals are constructions as well as objects envisioned by the soul; in the Principles, the work ofthe physicist who provides a quantified account ofthe machines of nature hovers between description and constitution. For Kant, mathematics reveals the possibility of universal and necessary knowledge that is neither the logical unpacking ofconcepts nor the record of perceptual experience. In the Critique ofPure Reason, mathematics is one of the transcendental instruments the human mind uses to apprehend nature, and by apprehending to construct it under the universal and necessary lawsofNewtonian mechanics.

History and Philosophy of Constructive Type Theory

History and Philosophy of Constructive Type Theory PDF Author: Giovanni Sommaruga
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401593930
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
A comprehensive survey of Martin-Löf's constructive type theory, considerable parts of which have only been presented by Martin-Löf in lecture form or as part of conference talks. Sommaruga surveys the prehistory of type theory and its highly complex development through eight different stages from 1970 to 1995. He also provides a systematic presentation of the latest version of the theory, as offered by Martin-Löf at Leiden University in Fall 1993. This presentation gives a fuller and updated account of the system. Earlier, brief presentations took no account of the issues related to the type-theoretical approach to logic and the foundations of mathematics, while here they are accorded an entire part of the book. Readership: Comprehensive accounts of the history and philosophy of constructive type theory and a considerable amount of related material. Readers need a solid background in standard logic and a first, basic acquaintance with type theory.

In Search of a New Humanism

In Search of a New Humanism PDF Author: M.R. Egidi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401718520
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This collection of essays presents a systematic and up-to-date survey of the main aspects of Georg Henrik von Wright's philosophy, tracing the general humanistic leitmotiv to be found in his vast, varied output. The analysis covers the developments in Von Wright's thought up to the end of the 1990s. The essays are arranged thematically to focus on the chief areas of Von Wright's interests: practical rationality; human action and determinism; philosophical logic and theories of norms; research in the analytical tradition; and Wittgenstein studies. Readership: Scholars and students of moral philosophy, logic, psychology, sociology, cognitive science and the history of contemporary philosophy.

Theory Change, Ancient Axiomatics, and Galileo’s Methodology

Theory Change, Ancient Axiomatics, and Galileo’s Methodology PDF Author: Jaakko Hintikka
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400990456
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Proceedings of the 1978 Pisa, Italy, September 4-8, 1978 Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science