World Views and Scientific Discipline Formation

World Views and Scientific Discipline Formation PDF Author: W.R. Woodward
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401131643
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 474

Get Book Here

Book Description
The various efforts to develop a Marxist philosophy of science in the one time 'socialist' countries were casualties of the Cold War. Even those who were in no way Marxists, and those who were undogmatic in their Marxisms, now confront a new world. All the more harsh is it for those who worked within the framework imposed upon professional philosophy by the official ideology. Here in this book, we are concerned with some 31 colleagues from the late German Democratic Republic, representative in their scholarship of the achievements of a curiously creative while dismayingly repressive period. The literature published in the GDR was blossoming, certainly in the final decade, but it developed within a totalitarian regime where personal careers either advanced or faltered through the private protection or denunciation of mentors. We will never know how many good minds did not enter the field of philosophy in the first place due to their prudent judgments that there was a virtual requirement that the candidate join the Socialist Unity (i.e. Communist) Party. Among those who started careers and were sidetracked, the record is now beginning to be revealed; and for the rest, the price of 'doing philosophy' was mostly silence in the face of harassments the likes of which make academic politics in the West seem child's play.

World Views and Scientific Discipline Formation

World Views and Scientific Discipline Formation PDF Author: W.R. Woodward
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401131643
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 474

Get Book Here

Book Description
The various efforts to develop a Marxist philosophy of science in the one time 'socialist' countries were casualties of the Cold War. Even those who were in no way Marxists, and those who were undogmatic in their Marxisms, now confront a new world. All the more harsh is it for those who worked within the framework imposed upon professional philosophy by the official ideology. Here in this book, we are concerned with some 31 colleagues from the late German Democratic Republic, representative in their scholarship of the achievements of a curiously creative while dismayingly repressive period. The literature published in the GDR was blossoming, certainly in the final decade, but it developed within a totalitarian regime where personal careers either advanced or faltered through the private protection or denunciation of mentors. We will never know how many good minds did not enter the field of philosophy in the first place due to their prudent judgments that there was a virtual requirement that the candidate join the Socialist Unity (i.e. Communist) Party. Among those who started careers and were sidetracked, the record is now beginning to be revealed; and for the rest, the price of 'doing philosophy' was mostly silence in the face of harassments the likes of which make academic politics in the West seem child's play.

Phenomenological Psychology as Rigorous Science

Phenomenological Psychology as Rigorous Science PDF Author: Alexander Nicolai Wendt
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031586387
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 121

Get Book Here

Book Description


Chinese Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology

Chinese Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology PDF Author: Fan Dainian
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792334637
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 506

Get Book Here

Book Description
The articles in this collection were all selected from the first five volumes of the Journal of Dialectics of Nature published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences between 1979 and 1985. The Journal was established in 1979 as a comprehensive theoretical publication concerning the history, philosophy and sociology of the natural sciences. It began publication as a response to China's reform, particularly the policy of opening to the outside world. Chinese scholars began to undertake distinctive, original research in these fields. This collection provides a cross-section of their efforts during the initial phase. To enable western scholars to understand the historical process of this change in Chinese academics, Yu Guangyuan's `On the Emancipation of the Mind' and Xu Liangying's `Essay on the Role of Science and Democracy in Society' have been included in this collection. Three of the papers included on the philosophy of science are discussions of philosophical issues in cosmology and biology by scientists themselves. The remaining four are written by philosophers of science and discuss information and cognition, homeostasis and Chinese traditional medicine, the I Ching (Yi Jing) and mathematics, etc. Papers have been selected on the history of both classical and modern science and technology, the most distinctive of which are macro-comparisons of the development of science in China and the west. Some papers discuss the issue of the demarcation of periods in the history of science, the history of ancient Chinese mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy, machinery, medicine, etc. Others discuss the history of modern physics and biology, the history of historiography of science in China and the history of regional development of Chinese science and technology. Also included are biographies of three post-eighteenth-century Chinese scholars, Li Shanlan (1811-1882), Hua Hengfang (1833–1902), and Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), who contributed greatly to the introduction of western science and scholarship to China. In addition, three short papers have been included introducing the interactions between Chinese scholars and three great western scientists, Niels Bohr, Norbert Wiener, and Robert A. Millikan.

National Military Establishments and the Advancement of Science and Technology

National Military Establishments and the Advancement of Science and Technology PDF Author: P. Forman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781402002502
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
To some philosophers, seeking to understand the human condition, technology is a necessary guide. But to think through the complex human phenomenon of technology we must tackle philosophy of science, philosophy of culture, moral issues, comparative civilizational studies, and the economics of specific industrial and military technologies in their historical contexts. The philoso pher wants to grasp the technological factor in this troubled world, even as we see it is only one factor, and that it does not speak openly for itself. Put directly, our human troubles to a considerable extent have been transformed, exaggerated, distorted, even degraded, perhaps transcended, by what engi neers and scientists, entrepreneurs and politicians, have wrought. But our problems are ancient, problems of dominations, struggles, survival, values in conflict, greed and insane sadisms. To get some conceptual light on the social reality which seems immediately to be so complicated, a philosopher will need to learn from the historians of technology. A few years ago, the philosopher Elisabeth Straker concluded that "a his torical philosophy of technology [is required] since history - and history alone - provides all those concepts that form part of the repertoire of the philosoph ical analysis of technology". And she added that this goes far beyond the triviality that like other cultural achievements technology has its historical development. Now historical comprehension is no substitute for a logical methodology in the analysis of technological problems.

The Scientific Enterprise

The Scientific Enterprise PDF Author: Edna Ullmann-Margalit
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401126887
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
The volume before us is the fourth in the series of proceedings of what used to be the Israel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science. This Colloquium has in the meantime been renamed. It now bears the name of Yehoshua Bar-Hillel (1915-1975). Bar-Hillel was an eminent philosopher of science, language, and cognition, as well as a fearless fighter for enlightenment and a passionate teacher who had a durable influence on Israeli philosophical life. The essays collected in this volume have of course this much in common, that they are all in, of, and pertaining to science. They also share the property of having all been delivered before live, and often lively, audiences in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, in the years 1984-1986. As is customary in the volumes of this series, the essays and commentaries presented here are intended to strike a rather special balance between the disciplines to which the Colloquium is dedicated. The historical and sociological vantage point is addressed in Kramnick's and Mali's treatment of Priestley, in Vickers' and Feldhay's studies of the Renaissance occult, and in Warnke's and Barasch's work on the imagination. From a philosophical angle several concepts, all material to the methodology of science, are taken up: rule following, by Smart and Margalit; analysis, by Ackerman; explanation, by Taylor; and the role of mathematics in physics, by Levy-Leblond and Pitowsky.

Science Under Socialism

Science Under Socialism PDF Author: Kristie Macrakis
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674794771
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Get Book Here

Book Description
An international cast of contributors (Americans, former East Germans, and former West Germans) take the reader on a journey from the view of science policymakers, to the construction of "socialist" institutions for science, to the role of espionage in technology transfer, to the social and political context of the chemical industry, engineers, nuclear power, biology, computers, and finally the career trajectories of scientists through the vicissitudes of twentieth-century German history."--BOOK JACKET.

Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution

Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution PDF Author: Walter Roy Laird
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402059671
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume deals with a variety of moments in the history of mechanics when conflicts arose within one textual tradition, between different traditions, or between textual traditions and the wider world of practice. Its purpose is to show how the accommodations sometimes made in the course of these conflicts ultimately contributed to the emergence of modern mechanics.

A Guinea Pig's History of Biology

A Guinea Pig's History of Biology PDF Author: Jim Endersby
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674027138
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 544

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved," Darwin famously concluded The Origin of Species, and for confirmation we look to...the guinea pig? How this curious creature and others as humble (and as fast-breeding) have helped unlock the mystery of inheritance is the unlikely story Jim Endersby tells in this book. Biology today promises everything from better foods or cures for common diseases to the alarming prospect of redesigning life itself. Looking at the organisms that have made all this possible gives us a new way of understanding how we got here--and perhaps of thinking about where we're going. Instead of a history of which great scientists had which great ideas, this story of passionflowers and hawkweeds, of zebra fish and viruses, offers a bird's (or rodent's) eye view of the work that makes science possible. Mixing the celebrities of genetics, like the fruit fly, with forgotten players such as the evening primrose, the book follows the unfolding history of biological inheritance from Aristotle's search for the "universal, absolute truth of fishiness" to the apparently absurd speculations of eighteenth-century natural philosophers to the spectacular findings of our day--which may prove to be the absurdities of tomorrow. The result is a quirky, enlightening, and thoroughly engaging perspective on the history of heredity and genetics, tracing the slow, uncertain path--complete with entertaining diversions and dead ends--that led us from the ancient world's understanding of inheritance to modern genetics.

Physics, Philosophy, and the Scientific Community

Physics, Philosophy, and the Scientific Community PDF Author: K. Gavroglu
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401726582
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Get Book Here

Book Description
In three volumes, a distinguished group of scholars from a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the humanities and the arts contribute essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The range of the essays, as well as their originality, and their critical and historical depth, pay tribute to the extraordinary scope of Professor Cohen's intellectual interests, as a scientist-philosopher and a humanist, and also to his engagement in the world of social and political practice. The essays presented in Physics, Philosophy, and the Scientific Community (Volume I of Essays in Honor of Robert S. Cohen) focus on philosophical and historical issues in contemporary physics: on the origins and conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics, on the reception and understanding of Bohr's and Einstein's work, on the emergence of quantum electrodynamics, and on some of the sharp philosophical and scientific issues that arise in current scientific practice (e.g. in superconductivity research). In addition, several essays deal with critical issues within the philosophy of science, both historical and contemporary: e.g. with Cartesian notions of mechanism in the philosophy of biology; with the language and logic of science - e.g. with new insights concerning the issue of a `physicalistic' language in the arguments of Neurath, Carnap and Wittgenstein; with the notion of `elementary logic'; and with rational and non-rational elements in the history of science. Two original contributions to the history of mathematics and some studies in the comparative sociology of science round off this outstanding collection.

Self-Observation in the Social Sciences

Self-Observation in the Social Sciences PDF Author: Joshua W. Clegg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351296787
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book Here

Book Description
Notwithstanding the mythical demise of "introspection," self-observation has always been an integral aspect of the social sciences. In the century following the "behavioral revolution," psychology has seen a reduction not so much in the frequency as in the rigor with which self-observation is practiced. A great deal of self-observation has been renamed or obscured (as, for example, "self-report"), but this has served only to defer and impoverish important theoretical and technical work. This volume, which contributes to the development of a rigorous theory of self-observation, is organized around three general objectives: to re-animate a discourse on self-observation through a historical analysis of various self-observation traditions; to outline and begin to address some of the unique theoretical challenges of self-observation; and to elaborate some of the technical and practical details necessary for realizing a program of research dedicated to self-observation. In the first section of the book, three historians of psychology trace the evolution of self-observation. In the second, three scholars who are currently working in contemporary traditions of self-observation discuss the basic theoretical and practical challenges involved in conducting self-observation research. In the final two sections of the book, scholars from the phenomenological and narrative traditions trace the history, theory, and practice of self-observation in their respective traditions. Self-Observation in the Social Sciences continues the fine tradition set by Transaction's History and Theory of Psychology series edited by Jaan Valsiner. It is of interest to psychologists and to those who study methodology within the social sciences.