Author: O. Giarini
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401117756
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
I consider it a privilege to have been invited to write a preface for "The Limits to Certainty". It is however paradoxical that a theo retical physicist be asked to write about a monograph dealing mainly with service economics. Notwithstanding, I am delighted to do so. Indeed, it is striking that two so widely different fields like physics and social science, and more especially economics, can interact in such a constructive way. There is no question here of reductionism. Nobody claims to be able to reduce social scien ces to physics, nor to use patterns of social interaction in order to formulate new laws for atoms. What is at stake here is more im portant than reduction; the age-old separation between the so-cal led "hard" and "soft sciences" is breaking down. This separation has a long history. First, one should recall the influence of Newton's achievement on the formulation of scienti fic goals. This influence led to the formulation of equilibrium mo dels for supply/demand adjustment. As was noticed by Walter Weisskopf: "the Newtonian paradigm underlying classical and non-classical economics interpreted the economy according to the patterns developed in classical physics and mechanics, in analogy to the planetary system, to a machine or clockwork: a closed auto nomous system ruled by endogenous factors of a highly selective nature, self-regulating and moving to a determinate, predictable point of equilibrium" (The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance (1984), Vol. 9, no. 33, pp. 335-360).
The Limits to Certainty
Author: O. Giarini
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401117756
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
I consider it a privilege to have been invited to write a preface for "The Limits to Certainty". It is however paradoxical that a theo retical physicist be asked to write about a monograph dealing mainly with service economics. Notwithstanding, I am delighted to do so. Indeed, it is striking that two so widely different fields like physics and social science, and more especially economics, can interact in such a constructive way. There is no question here of reductionism. Nobody claims to be able to reduce social scien ces to physics, nor to use patterns of social interaction in order to formulate new laws for atoms. What is at stake here is more im portant than reduction; the age-old separation between the so-cal led "hard" and "soft sciences" is breaking down. This separation has a long history. First, one should recall the influence of Newton's achievement on the formulation of scienti fic goals. This influence led to the formulation of equilibrium mo dels for supply/demand adjustment. As was noticed by Walter Weisskopf: "the Newtonian paradigm underlying classical and non-classical economics interpreted the economy according to the patterns developed in classical physics and mechanics, in analogy to the planetary system, to a machine or clockwork: a closed auto nomous system ruled by endogenous factors of a highly selective nature, self-regulating and moving to a determinate, predictable point of equilibrium" (The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance (1984), Vol. 9, no. 33, pp. 335-360).
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401117756
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
I consider it a privilege to have been invited to write a preface for "The Limits to Certainty". It is however paradoxical that a theo retical physicist be asked to write about a monograph dealing mainly with service economics. Notwithstanding, I am delighted to do so. Indeed, it is striking that two so widely different fields like physics and social science, and more especially economics, can interact in such a constructive way. There is no question here of reductionism. Nobody claims to be able to reduce social scien ces to physics, nor to use patterns of social interaction in order to formulate new laws for atoms. What is at stake here is more im portant than reduction; the age-old separation between the so-cal led "hard" and "soft sciences" is breaking down. This separation has a long history. First, one should recall the influence of Newton's achievement on the formulation of scienti fic goals. This influence led to the formulation of equilibrium mo dels for supply/demand adjustment. As was noticed by Walter Weisskopf: "the Newtonian paradigm underlying classical and non-classical economics interpreted the economy according to the patterns developed in classical physics and mechanics, in analogy to the planetary system, to a machine or clockwork: a closed auto nomous system ruled by endogenous factors of a highly selective nature, self-regulating and moving to a determinate, predictable point of equilibrium" (The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance (1984), Vol. 9, no. 33, pp. 335-360).
In Search of Certainty
Author: Mark Burgess
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1491923377
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 473
Book Description
Quite soon, the world’s information infrastructure is going to reach a level of scale and complexity that will force scientists and engineers to approach it in an entirely new way. The familiar notions of command and control are being thwarted by realities of a faster, denser world of communication where choice, variety, and indeterminism rule. The myth of the machine that does exactly what we tell it has come to an end. What makes us think we can rely on all this technology? What keeps it together today, and how might it work tomorrow? Will we know how to build the next generation—or will we be lulled into a stupor of dependence brought about by its conveniences? In this book, Mark Burgess focuses on the impact of computers and information on our modern infrastructure by taking you from the roots of science to the principles behind system operation and design. To shape the future of technology, we need to understand how it works—or else what we don’t understand will end up shaping us. This book explores this subject in three parts: Part I, Stability: describes the fundamentals of predictability, and why we have to give up the idea of control in its classical meaning Part II, Certainty: describes the science of what we can know, when we don’t control everything, and how we make the best of life with only imperfect information Part III, Promises: explains how the concepts of stability and certainty may be combined to approach information infrastructure as a new kind of virtual material, restoring a continuity to human-computer systems so that society can rely on them.
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1491923377
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 473
Book Description
Quite soon, the world’s information infrastructure is going to reach a level of scale and complexity that will force scientists and engineers to approach it in an entirely new way. The familiar notions of command and control are being thwarted by realities of a faster, denser world of communication where choice, variety, and indeterminism rule. The myth of the machine that does exactly what we tell it has come to an end. What makes us think we can rely on all this technology? What keeps it together today, and how might it work tomorrow? Will we know how to build the next generation—or will we be lulled into a stupor of dependence brought about by its conveniences? In this book, Mark Burgess focuses on the impact of computers and information on our modern infrastructure by taking you from the roots of science to the principles behind system operation and design. To shape the future of technology, we need to understand how it works—or else what we don’t understand will end up shaping us. This book explores this subject in three parts: Part I, Stability: describes the fundamentals of predictability, and why we have to give up the idea of control in its classical meaning Part II, Certainty: describes the science of what we can know, when we don’t control everything, and how we make the best of life with only imperfect information Part III, Promises: explains how the concepts of stability and certainty may be combined to approach information infrastructure as a new kind of virtual material, restoring a continuity to human-computer systems so that society can rely on them.
The Limits to Certainty
Author: Orio Giarini
Publisher: Springer
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192
Book Description
Publisher: Springer
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192
Book Description
Mathematics, the Loss of Certainty
Author: Morris Kline
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781435108479
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781435108479
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Searching for Certainty
Author: John L. Casti
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780349104553
Category : Forecasting
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
This comprehensive overview of the prediction game takes readers on a journey through the worlds of probability, chance and chaos, and investigates developmental biology, modern warfare, weather and climate prediction, mathematics, economics and games of chance.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780349104553
Category : Forecasting
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
This comprehensive overview of the prediction game takes readers on a journey through the worlds of probability, chance and chaos, and investigates developmental biology, modern warfare, weather and climate prediction, mathematics, economics and games of chance.
The Spirit of Islamic Law
Author: Bernard G. Weiss
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820319773
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
The volume outlines the prominent features of Muslim juristic thought: espousal of divine sovereignty; a fixation on divine texts; an uncompromisingly intentionalist approach to the interpretation of those texts; a frank acknowledgment of the fallibility of human endeavor to capture divine intent; a toleration of legal diversity; a moralistic bent grounded in a particular social vision; and finally, a preoccupation with the affairs of private individuals - especially family relations and contracts - coupled with a concern to define the limits of governmental power.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820319773
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
The volume outlines the prominent features of Muslim juristic thought: espousal of divine sovereignty; a fixation on divine texts; an uncompromisingly intentionalist approach to the interpretation of those texts; a frank acknowledgment of the fallibility of human endeavor to capture divine intent; a toleration of legal diversity; a moralistic bent grounded in a particular social vision; and finally, a preoccupation with the affairs of private individuals - especially family relations and contracts - coupled with a concern to define the limits of governmental power.
Impossibility : The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits
Author: John D. Barrow
Publisher: Oxford University Press, UK
ISBN: 019535138X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
Are there some things we can never think, or know, let alone do? In this fascinating book, acclaimed author John Barrow reveals the often paradoxical limits on knowledge and achievement, and shows that the notion of `impossibility' has played, and continues to play, a striking role in our thinking, and in the way in which we understand the universe and ourselves. - ;What are the true limits of science and human endeavour? The end of each century leads to a stocktaking of human achievement and our expectation about the future. This new book by John D. Barrow looks at what limits there might be to human discovery and what we might find, ultimately, to be unknowable, undoable, or unthinkable. Weaving together a tapestry of surprises, Barrow explores the frontiers of knowledge, taking in surrealism, impossible figures, time travel, paradoxes of logic and perspective, theological speculations about Beings for whom nothing is impossible -- all stimulate us to contemplate something more that what is. With sufficient time and money at our disposal, why should we find anything impossible? Barrow explores the limits that may be imposed upon a full understanding of the physical Universe by constraints of technology, computes, cost, and complexity. He considers how the nature of the universe's structure prevents us from answering the deepest questions about its beginning, its structure, and its future. And he delves into the deep limits imposed by the nature of knowledge itself, which have profound implications for any quest for complete knowledge. They take us into the debates over the problems of free will and consciousness. G--ouml--;del's famous theorem about our inability to capture the truths of mathematics by rules and axioms is explored to see if it has any implications for science. Clearly and engagingly written, and using simple explanations, this book reveals that impossibility is a deep and powerful notion: that any Universe complex enough to contain conscious beings will contain limits on what those beings can know about their Universe: that what we cannot know defines reality as surely as what we can know. Impossibility is a two-edged sword: it threatens the completeness of the scientific enterprise yet without it there would be no laws of Nature, no science, and no scientists. - ;In this illuminating, well-written account of Limits (with capital L), John D. Barrow chronicles and explains the limits of science as a reality-generation mechanism and why it matters.So for about as good an account as you're going to get of where science stops, read this book. It won't tell you any final answer. But the journey is far more interesting - and important - than the destination. - Nature
Publisher: Oxford University Press, UK
ISBN: 019535138X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
Are there some things we can never think, or know, let alone do? In this fascinating book, acclaimed author John Barrow reveals the often paradoxical limits on knowledge and achievement, and shows that the notion of `impossibility' has played, and continues to play, a striking role in our thinking, and in the way in which we understand the universe and ourselves. - ;What are the true limits of science and human endeavour? The end of each century leads to a stocktaking of human achievement and our expectation about the future. This new book by John D. Barrow looks at what limits there might be to human discovery and what we might find, ultimately, to be unknowable, undoable, or unthinkable. Weaving together a tapestry of surprises, Barrow explores the frontiers of knowledge, taking in surrealism, impossible figures, time travel, paradoxes of logic and perspective, theological speculations about Beings for whom nothing is impossible -- all stimulate us to contemplate something more that what is. With sufficient time and money at our disposal, why should we find anything impossible? Barrow explores the limits that may be imposed upon a full understanding of the physical Universe by constraints of technology, computes, cost, and complexity. He considers how the nature of the universe's structure prevents us from answering the deepest questions about its beginning, its structure, and its future. And he delves into the deep limits imposed by the nature of knowledge itself, which have profound implications for any quest for complete knowledge. They take us into the debates over the problems of free will and consciousness. G--ouml--;del's famous theorem about our inability to capture the truths of mathematics by rules and axioms is explored to see if it has any implications for science. Clearly and engagingly written, and using simple explanations, this book reveals that impossibility is a deep and powerful notion: that any Universe complex enough to contain conscious beings will contain limits on what those beings can know about their Universe: that what we cannot know defines reality as surely as what we can know. Impossibility is a two-edged sword: it threatens the completeness of the scientific enterprise yet without it there would be no laws of Nature, no science, and no scientists. - ;In this illuminating, well-written account of Limits (with capital L), John D. Barrow chronicles and explains the limits of science as a reality-generation mechanism and why it matters.So for about as good an account as you're going to get of where science stops, read this book. It won't tell you any final answer. But the journey is far more interesting - and important - than the destination. - Nature
Negative Certainties
Author: Jean-Luc Marion
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022680710X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
Now in paperback, Jean-Luc Marion's groundbreaking philosophy of human uncertainty. In Negative Certainties, renowned philosopher Jean-Luc Marion challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions we have developed about knowledge: that it is categorical, predicative, and positive. Following Descartes, Kant, and Heidegger, he looks toward our finitude and the limits of our reason. He asks an astonishingly simple—but profoundly provocative—question in order to open up an entirely new way of thinking about knowledge: Isn’t our uncertainty, our finitude, and rational limitations, one of the few things we can be certain about? Marion shows how the assumption of knowledge as positive demands a reductive epistemology that disregards immeasurable or disorderly phenomena. He shows that we have experiences every day that have no identifiable causes or predictable reasons and that these constitute a very real knowledge—a knowledge of the limits of what can be known. Establishing this “negative certainty,” Marion applies it to four aporias, or issues of certain uncertainty: the definition of man; the nature of God; the unconditionality of the gift; and the unpredictability of events. Translated for the first time into English, Negative Certainties is an invigorating work of epistemological inquiry that will take a central place in Marion’s oeuvre.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022680710X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
Now in paperback, Jean-Luc Marion's groundbreaking philosophy of human uncertainty. In Negative Certainties, renowned philosopher Jean-Luc Marion challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions we have developed about knowledge: that it is categorical, predicative, and positive. Following Descartes, Kant, and Heidegger, he looks toward our finitude and the limits of our reason. He asks an astonishingly simple—but profoundly provocative—question in order to open up an entirely new way of thinking about knowledge: Isn’t our uncertainty, our finitude, and rational limitations, one of the few things we can be certain about? Marion shows how the assumption of knowledge as positive demands a reductive epistemology that disregards immeasurable or disorderly phenomena. He shows that we have experiences every day that have no identifiable causes or predictable reasons and that these constitute a very real knowledge—a knowledge of the limits of what can be known. Establishing this “negative certainty,” Marion applies it to four aporias, or issues of certain uncertainty: the definition of man; the nature of God; the unconditionality of the gift; and the unpredictability of events. Translated for the first time into English, Negative Certainties is an invigorating work of epistemological inquiry that will take a central place in Marion’s oeuvre.
Beyond Beliefs
Author: Logan Gray
Publisher: Booklas Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
Beyond Beliefs: The Philosophy of Agnosticism Beyond Beliefs: The Philosophy of Agnosticism is a bold invitation to explore the limits of human knowledge and the essence of doubt. In this profound philosophical journey, Logan Gray unveils the historical, epistemological, and cultural roots of agnosticism—a stance that challenges both religious dogmatism and absolute skepticism. Through a rich and provocative analysis, the author guides readers through questions that transcend the everyday: What does it mean not to know? How does humanity grapple with the unknowable? With a critical yet respectful approach, the book delves into topics ranging from cosmological arguments and the impact of evolution to the intricate relationships between science, spirituality, and society. More than just a philosophy, Beyond Beliefs is a way of thinking—a manifesto for intellectual humility in a world overflowing with illusory certainties. This is an essential book for curious minds seeking to understand themselves and the universe, not as a set of definitive answers but as a journey toward the unknown.
Publisher: Booklas Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
Beyond Beliefs: The Philosophy of Agnosticism Beyond Beliefs: The Philosophy of Agnosticism is a bold invitation to explore the limits of human knowledge and the essence of doubt. In this profound philosophical journey, Logan Gray unveils the historical, epistemological, and cultural roots of agnosticism—a stance that challenges both religious dogmatism and absolute skepticism. Through a rich and provocative analysis, the author guides readers through questions that transcend the everyday: What does it mean not to know? How does humanity grapple with the unknowable? With a critical yet respectful approach, the book delves into topics ranging from cosmological arguments and the impact of evolution to the intricate relationships between science, spirituality, and society. More than just a philosophy, Beyond Beliefs is a way of thinking—a manifesto for intellectual humility in a world overflowing with illusory certainties. This is an essential book for curious minds seeking to understand themselves and the universe, not as a set of definitive answers but as a journey toward the unknown.
Critical Letters. Letter 1st(-4th). By R. F. Brancassine (Dr. F. Halle).
Author: Hughes R. P. Fraser HALLE
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description