Author: David I. Spivak
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262320533
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 495
Book Description
An introduction to category theory as a rigorous, flexible, and coherent modeling language that can be used across the sciences. Category theory was invented in the 1940s to unify and synthesize different areas in mathematics, and it has proven remarkably successful in enabling powerful communication between disparate fields and subfields within mathematics. This book shows that category theory can be useful outside of mathematics as a rigorous, flexible, and coherent modeling language throughout the sciences. Information is inherently dynamic; the same ideas can be organized and reorganized in countless ways, and the ability to translate between such organizational structures is becoming increasingly important in the sciences. Category theory offers a unifying framework for information modeling that can facilitate the translation of knowledge between disciplines. Written in an engaging and straightforward style, and assuming little background in mathematics, the book is rigorous but accessible to non-mathematicians. Using databases as an entry to category theory, it begins with sets and functions, then introduces the reader to notions that are fundamental in mathematics: monoids, groups, orders, and graphs—categories in disguise. After explaining the “big three” concepts of category theory—categories, functors, and natural transformations—the book covers other topics, including limits, colimits, functor categories, sheaves, monads, and operads. The book explains category theory by examples and exercises rather than focusing on theorems and proofs. It includes more than 300 exercises, with solutions. Category Theory for the Sciences is intended to create a bridge between the vast array of mathematical concepts used by mathematicians and the models and frameworks of such scientific disciplines as computation, neuroscience, and physics.
Category Theory for the Sciences
Author: David I. Spivak
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262320533
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 495
Book Description
An introduction to category theory as a rigorous, flexible, and coherent modeling language that can be used across the sciences. Category theory was invented in the 1940s to unify and synthesize different areas in mathematics, and it has proven remarkably successful in enabling powerful communication between disparate fields and subfields within mathematics. This book shows that category theory can be useful outside of mathematics as a rigorous, flexible, and coherent modeling language throughout the sciences. Information is inherently dynamic; the same ideas can be organized and reorganized in countless ways, and the ability to translate between such organizational structures is becoming increasingly important in the sciences. Category theory offers a unifying framework for information modeling that can facilitate the translation of knowledge between disciplines. Written in an engaging and straightforward style, and assuming little background in mathematics, the book is rigorous but accessible to non-mathematicians. Using databases as an entry to category theory, it begins with sets and functions, then introduces the reader to notions that are fundamental in mathematics: monoids, groups, orders, and graphs—categories in disguise. After explaining the “big three” concepts of category theory—categories, functors, and natural transformations—the book covers other topics, including limits, colimits, functor categories, sheaves, monads, and operads. The book explains category theory by examples and exercises rather than focusing on theorems and proofs. It includes more than 300 exercises, with solutions. Category Theory for the Sciences is intended to create a bridge between the vast array of mathematical concepts used by mathematicians and the models and frameworks of such scientific disciplines as computation, neuroscience, and physics.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262320533
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 495
Book Description
An introduction to category theory as a rigorous, flexible, and coherent modeling language that can be used across the sciences. Category theory was invented in the 1940s to unify and synthesize different areas in mathematics, and it has proven remarkably successful in enabling powerful communication between disparate fields and subfields within mathematics. This book shows that category theory can be useful outside of mathematics as a rigorous, flexible, and coherent modeling language throughout the sciences. Information is inherently dynamic; the same ideas can be organized and reorganized in countless ways, and the ability to translate between such organizational structures is becoming increasingly important in the sciences. Category theory offers a unifying framework for information modeling that can facilitate the translation of knowledge between disciplines. Written in an engaging and straightforward style, and assuming little background in mathematics, the book is rigorous but accessible to non-mathematicians. Using databases as an entry to category theory, it begins with sets and functions, then introduces the reader to notions that are fundamental in mathematics: monoids, groups, orders, and graphs—categories in disguise. After explaining the “big three” concepts of category theory—categories, functors, and natural transformations—the book covers other topics, including limits, colimits, functor categories, sheaves, monads, and operads. The book explains category theory by examples and exercises rather than focusing on theorems and proofs. It includes more than 300 exercises, with solutions. Category Theory for the Sciences is intended to create a bridge between the vast array of mathematical concepts used by mathematicians and the models and frameworks of such scientific disciplines as computation, neuroscience, and physics.
The Sciences of the Artificial
Author: Herbert Alexander Simon
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156
Book Description
The Sciences of the Artificialreveals the design of an intellectual structure aimed at accommodating those empirical phenomena that are "artificial" rather than "natural." The goal is to show how empirical sciences of artificial systems are possible, even in the face of the contingent and teleological character of the phenomena, their attributes of choice and purpose. Developing in some detail two specific examples—human psychology and engineering design—Professor Simon describes the shape of these sciences as they are emerging from developments of the past 25 years. "Artificial" is used here in a very specific sense: to denote systems that have a given form and behavior only because they adapt (or are adapted), in reference to goals or purposes, to their environment. Thus, both man-made artifacts and man himself, in terms of his behavior, are artificial. Simon characterizes an artificial system as an interface between two environments—inner and outer. These environments lie in the province of "natural science," but the interface, linking them, is the realm of "artificial science." When an artificial system adapts successfully, its behavior shows mostly the shape of the outer environment and reveals little of the structure or mechanisms of the inner. The inner environment becomes significant for behavior only when a system reaches the limits of its rationality and adaptability, and contingency degenerates into necessity.
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156
Book Description
The Sciences of the Artificialreveals the design of an intellectual structure aimed at accommodating those empirical phenomena that are "artificial" rather than "natural." The goal is to show how empirical sciences of artificial systems are possible, even in the face of the contingent and teleological character of the phenomena, their attributes of choice and purpose. Developing in some detail two specific examples—human psychology and engineering design—Professor Simon describes the shape of these sciences as they are emerging from developments of the past 25 years. "Artificial" is used here in a very specific sense: to denote systems that have a given form and behavior only because they adapt (or are adapted), in reference to goals or purposes, to their environment. Thus, both man-made artifacts and man himself, in terms of his behavior, are artificial. Simon characterizes an artificial system as an interface between two environments—inner and outer. These environments lie in the province of "natural science," but the interface, linking them, is the realm of "artificial science." When an artificial system adapts successfully, its behavior shows mostly the shape of the outer environment and reveals little of the structure or mechanisms of the inner. The inner environment becomes significant for behavior only when a system reaches the limits of its rationality and adaptability, and contingency degenerates into necessity.
The Science of Science
Author: Dashun Wang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108492665
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 315
Book Description
This is the first comprehensive overview of the exciting field of the 'science of science'. With anecdotes and detailed, easy-to-follow explanations of the research, this book is accessible to all scientists, policy makers, and administrators with an interest in the wider scientific enterprise.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108492665
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 315
Book Description
This is the first comprehensive overview of the exciting field of the 'science of science'. With anecdotes and detailed, easy-to-follow explanations of the research, this book is accessible to all scientists, policy makers, and administrators with an interest in the wider scientific enterprise.
The Sciences of the Soul
Author: Fernando Vidal
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226855880
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429
Book Description
Fernando Vidal’s trailblazing text on the origins of psychology traces the development of the discipline from its appearance in the late sixteenth century to its redefinition at the end of the seventeenth and its emergence as an institutionalized field in the eighteenth. Originally published in 2011, The Sciences of the Soul continues to be of wide importance in the history and philosophy of psychology, the history of the human sciences more generally, and in the social and intellectual history of eighteenth-century Europe.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226855880
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429
Book Description
Fernando Vidal’s trailblazing text on the origins of psychology traces the development of the discipline from its appearance in the late sixteenth century to its redefinition at the end of the seventeenth and its emergence as an institutionalized field in the eighteenth. Originally published in 2011, The Sciences of the Soul continues to be of wide importance in the history and philosophy of psychology, the history of the human sciences more generally, and in the social and intellectual history of eighteenth-century Europe.
Books and the Sciences in History
Author: Marina Frasca-Spada
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521659390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460
Book Description
This book, published in 2000, examines the intersection between science and books from early medieval times to the nineteenth century.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521659390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460
Book Description
This book, published in 2000, examines the intersection between science and books from early medieval times to the nineteenth century.
A History of the Sciences
Author: Stephen Finney Mason
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The Sciences’ Media Connection –Public Communication and its Repercussions
Author: Simone Rödder
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400720858
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 375
Book Description
The Yearbook addresses the overriding question: what are the effects of the ‘opening up’ of science to the media? Theoretical considerations and a host of empirical studies covering different configurations provide an in-depth analysis of the sciences’ media connection and its repercussions on science itself. They help to form a sound judgement on this recent development.
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400720858
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 375
Book Description
The Yearbook addresses the overriding question: what are the effects of the ‘opening up’ of science to the media? Theoretical considerations and a host of empirical studies covering different configurations provide an in-depth analysis of the sciences’ media connection and its repercussions on science itself. They help to form a sound judgement on this recent development.
Mereology and the Sciences
Author: Claudio Calosi
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319053566
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 389
Book Description
This volume is the first systematic and thorough attempt to investigate the relation and the possible applications of mereology to contemporary science. It gathers contributions from leading scholars in the field and covers a wide range of scientific theories and practices such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering. Throughout the volume, a variety of foundational issues are investigated both from the formal and the empirical point of view. The first section looks at the topic as it applies to physics. The section addresses questions of persistence and composition within quantum and relativistic physics and concludes by scrutinizing the possibility to capture continuity of motion as described by our best physical theories within gunky space times. The second part tackles mathematics and shows how to provide a foundation for point-free geometry of space switching to fuzzy-logic. The relation between mereological sums and set-theoretic suprema is investigated and issues about different mereological perspectives such as classical and natural Mereology are thoroughly discussed. The third section in the volume looks at natural science. Several questions from biology, medicine and chemistry are investigated. From the perspective of biology, there is an attempt to provide axioms for inferring statements about part hood between two biological entities from statements about their spatial relation. From the perspective of chemistry, it is argued that classical mereological frameworks are not adequate to capture the practices of chemistry in that they consider neither temporal nor modal parameters. The final part introduces computer science and engineering. A new formal mereological framework in which an indeterminate relation of part hood is taken as a primitive notion is constructed and then applied to a wide variety of disciplines from robotics to knowledge engineering. A formal framework for discrete mereotopology and its applications is developed and finally, the importance of mereology for the relatively new science of domain engineering is also discussed.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319053566
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 389
Book Description
This volume is the first systematic and thorough attempt to investigate the relation and the possible applications of mereology to contemporary science. It gathers contributions from leading scholars in the field and covers a wide range of scientific theories and practices such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering. Throughout the volume, a variety of foundational issues are investigated both from the formal and the empirical point of view. The first section looks at the topic as it applies to physics. The section addresses questions of persistence and composition within quantum and relativistic physics and concludes by scrutinizing the possibility to capture continuity of motion as described by our best physical theories within gunky space times. The second part tackles mathematics and shows how to provide a foundation for point-free geometry of space switching to fuzzy-logic. The relation between mereological sums and set-theoretic suprema is investigated and issues about different mereological perspectives such as classical and natural Mereology are thoroughly discussed. The third section in the volume looks at natural science. Several questions from biology, medicine and chemistry are investigated. From the perspective of biology, there is an attempt to provide axioms for inferring statements about part hood between two biological entities from statements about their spatial relation. From the perspective of chemistry, it is argued that classical mereological frameworks are not adequate to capture the practices of chemistry in that they consider neither temporal nor modal parameters. The final part introduces computer science and engineering. A new formal mereological framework in which an indeterminate relation of part hood is taken as a primitive notion is constructed and then applied to a wide variety of disciplines from robotics to knowledge engineering. A formal framework for discrete mereotopology and its applications is developed and finally, the importance of mereology for the relatively new science of domain engineering is also discussed.
Causality in the Sciences
Author: Phyllis McKay Illari
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199574138
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 953
Book Description
Why do ideas of how mechanisms relate to causality and probability differ so much across the sciences? Can progress in understanding the tools of causal inference in some sciences lead to progress in others? This book tackles these questions and others concerning the use of causality in the sciences.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199574138
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 953
Book Description
Why do ideas of how mechanisms relate to causality and probability differ so much across the sciences? Can progress in understanding the tools of causal inference in some sciences lead to progress in others? This book tackles these questions and others concerning the use of causality in the sciences.
Memory Practices in the Sciences
Author: Geoffrey C. Bowker
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262524899
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
How the way we hold knowledge about the past—in books, in file folders, in databases—affects the kind of stories we tell about the past. The way we record knowledge, and the web of technical, formal, and social practices that surrounds it, inevitably affects the knowledge that we record. The ways we hold knowledge about the past—in handwritten manuscripts, in printed books, in file folders, in databases—shape the kind of stories we tell about that past. In this lively and erudite look at the relation of our information infrastructures to our information, Geoffrey Bowker examines how, over the past two hundred years, information technology has converged with the nature and production of scientific knowledge. His story weaves a path between the social and political work of creating an explicit, indexical memory for science—the making of infrastructures—and the variety of ways we continually reconfigure, lose, and regain the past. At a time when memory is so cheap and its recording is so protean, Bowker reminds us of the centrality of what and how we choose to forget. In Memory Practices in the Sciences he looks at three "memory epochs" of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries and their particular reconstructions and reconfigurations of scientific knowledge. The nineteenth century's central science, geology, mapped both the social and the natural world into a single time package (despite apparent discontinuities), as, in a different way, did mid-twentieth-century cybernetics. Both, Bowker argues, packaged time in ways indexed by their information technologies to permit traffic between the social and natural worlds. Today's sciences of biodiversity, meanwhile, "database the world" in a way that excludes certain spaces, entities, and times. We use the tools of the present to look at the past, says Bowker; we project onto nature our modes of organizing our own affairs.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262524899
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
How the way we hold knowledge about the past—in books, in file folders, in databases—affects the kind of stories we tell about the past. The way we record knowledge, and the web of technical, formal, and social practices that surrounds it, inevitably affects the knowledge that we record. The ways we hold knowledge about the past—in handwritten manuscripts, in printed books, in file folders, in databases—shape the kind of stories we tell about that past. In this lively and erudite look at the relation of our information infrastructures to our information, Geoffrey Bowker examines how, over the past two hundred years, information technology has converged with the nature and production of scientific knowledge. His story weaves a path between the social and political work of creating an explicit, indexical memory for science—the making of infrastructures—and the variety of ways we continually reconfigure, lose, and regain the past. At a time when memory is so cheap and its recording is so protean, Bowker reminds us of the centrality of what and how we choose to forget. In Memory Practices in the Sciences he looks at three "memory epochs" of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries and their particular reconstructions and reconfigurations of scientific knowledge. The nineteenth century's central science, geology, mapped both the social and the natural world into a single time package (despite apparent discontinuities), as, in a different way, did mid-twentieth-century cybernetics. Both, Bowker argues, packaged time in ways indexed by their information technologies to permit traffic between the social and natural worlds. Today's sciences of biodiversity, meanwhile, "database the world" in a way that excludes certain spaces, entities, and times. We use the tools of the present to look at the past, says Bowker; we project onto nature our modes of organizing our own affairs.