A Fractal Epistemology for a Scientific Psychology

A Fractal Epistemology for a Scientific Psychology PDF Author: Terry Marks-Tarlow
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527544931
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
Fractal dynamics provide an unparalleled tool for understanding the evolution of natural complexity throughout physical, biological, and psychological realms. This book’s conceptual framework helps to reconcile several persistent dichotomies in the natural sciences, including mind-brain, linear-nonlinear, subjective-objective, and even personal-transpersonal processes. A fractal approach is especially useful when applied to recursive processes of consciousness, both within their ordinary and anomalous manifestations. This novel way to study the interconnection of seemingly divided wholes encompasses multiple dimensions of experience and being. It brings together experts in diverse fields—neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, physicists, physiologists, psychoanalysts, mathematicians, and professors of religion and music composition—to demonstrate the value of fractals as model, method, and metaphor within psychology and related social and physical sciences. The result is a new perspective for understanding what has often been dismissed as too subjective, idiosyncratic, and ineffably beyond the scope of science, bringing these areas back into a natural-scientific framework.

A Fractal Epistemology for a Scientific Psychology

A Fractal Epistemology for a Scientific Psychology PDF Author: Terry Marks-Tarlow
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527544931
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
Fractal dynamics provide an unparalleled tool for understanding the evolution of natural complexity throughout physical, biological, and psychological realms. This book’s conceptual framework helps to reconcile several persistent dichotomies in the natural sciences, including mind-brain, linear-nonlinear, subjective-objective, and even personal-transpersonal processes. A fractal approach is especially useful when applied to recursive processes of consciousness, both within their ordinary and anomalous manifestations. This novel way to study the interconnection of seemingly divided wholes encompasses multiple dimensions of experience and being. It brings together experts in diverse fields—neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, physicists, physiologists, psychoanalysts, mathematicians, and professors of religion and music composition—to demonstrate the value of fractals as model, method, and metaphor within psychology and related social and physical sciences. The result is a new perspective for understanding what has often been dismissed as too subjective, idiosyncratic, and ineffably beyond the scope of science, bringing these areas back into a natural-scientific framework.

Reflexive Methodology

Reflexive Methodology PDF Author: Mats Alvesson
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446244733
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Praise for the First Edition: 'Reflexive Methodology is a textbook indispensable to any young researcher. It does not tell its readers how to do research. It does something much more important: It shows how research has been done in the qualitative tradition, thus encouraging the readers to make their own choices' - Barbara Czarniawska, Goteborg University 'I would go so far as to argue that this book should be on the reading list of all social scientists and philosophers with an interest in the theory and practice of research' - Prometheus Reflexive Methodology established itself as a groundbreaking success, providing researchers with an invaluable guide to a central problem in research methodology - how to put field research and interpretations in perspective, paying attention to the interpretive, political and rhetorical nature of empirical research. Now thoroughly updated, the Second Edition includes a new chapter on positivism, social constructionism and critical realism, and offers new conclusions on the applications of methodology. It also provides further illustrations and updates that build on the acclaimed and successful first edition. Reflexivity is an essential part of the research process. In this book, Mats Alvesson and Kaj Skoldberg make explicit the links between techniques used in empirical research and different research traditions, giving a theoretically informed approach to qualitative research. The authors provide balanced reviews and critiques of the major schools of grounded theory, ethnography, hermeneutics, critical theory, postmodernism and poststructuralism, discourse analysis, genealogy and feminism. This book points the way to a more open-minded, creative interaction between theoretical frameworks and empirical research. It continues to be essential reading for students and researchers across the social sciences.

Fractals: A Very Short Introduction

Fractals: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Kenneth Falconer
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191663441
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Many are familiar with the beauty and ubiquity of fractal forms within nature. Unlike the study of smooth forms such as spheres, fractal geometry describes more familiar shapes and patterns, such as the complex contours of coastlines, the outlines of clouds, and the branching of trees. In this Very Short Introduction, Kenneth Falconer looks at the roots of the 'fractal revolution' that occurred in mathematics in the 20th century, presents the 'new geometry' of fractals, explains the basic concepts, and explores the wide range of applications in science, and in aspects of economics. This is essential introductory reading for students of mathematics and science, and those interested in popular science and mathematics. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Radical Embodied Cognitive Science

Radical Embodied Cognitive Science PDF Author: Anthony Chemero
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262516470
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
A proposal for a new way to do cognitive science argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than computation and representation. While philosophers of mind have been arguing over the status of mental representations in cognitive science, cognitive scientists have been quietly engaged in studying perception, action, and cognition without explaining them in terms of mental representation. In this book, Anthony Chemero describes this nonrepresentational approach (which he terms radical embodied cognitive science), puts it in historical and conceptual context, and applies it to traditional problems in the philosophy of mind. Radical embodied cognitive science is a direct descendant of the American naturalist psychology of William James and John Dewey, and follows them in viewing perception and cognition to be understandable only in terms of action in the environment. Chemero argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than in terms of computation and representation. After outlining this orientation to cognition, Chemero proposes a methodology: dynamical systems theory, which would explain things dynamically and without reference to representation. He also advances a background theory: Gibsonian ecological psychology, “shored up” and clarified. Chemero then looks at some traditional philosophical problems (reductionism, epistemological skepticism, metaphysical realism, consciousness) through the lens of radical embodied cognitive science and concludes that the comparative ease with which it resolves these problems, combined with its empirical promise, makes this approach to cognitive science a rewarding one. “Jerry Fodor is my favorite philosopher,” Chemero writes in his preface, adding, “I think that Jerry Fodor is wrong about nearly everything.” With this book, Chemero explains nonrepresentational, dynamical, ecological cognitive science as clearly and as rigorously as Jerry Fodor explained computational cognitive science in his classic work The Language of Thought.

Mythic Imagination Today

Mythic Imagination Today PDF Author: Terry Marks-Tarlow
Publisher: Brill Research Perspectives in
ISBN: 9789004448421
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Mythic Imagination Today is an illustrated guide to the interpenetration of mythology and science throughout the ages. This monograph brings alive our collective need for story as a guide to the rules, roles, and relationships of everyday life.

Psyche's Veil

Psyche's Veil PDF Author: Terry Marks-Tarlow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317723651
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Historically, the language and concepts within clinical theory have been steeped in linear assumptions and reductionist thinking. Because the essence of psychotherapy involves change, Psyche’s Veil suggests that clinical practice is inherently a nonlinear affair. In this book Terry Marks-Tarlow provides therapists with new language, models and metaphors to narrow the divide between theory and practice, while bridging the gap between psychology and the sciences. By applying contemporary perspectives of chaos theory, complexity theory and fractal geometry to clinical practice, the author discards traditional conceptions of health based on ideals of regularity, set points and normative statistics in favour of models that emphasize unique moments, variability, and irregularity. Psyche’s Veil further explores philosophical and spiritual implications of contemporary science for psychotherapy. Written at the interface between artistic, scientific and spiritual aspects of therapy, Psyche’s Veil is a case-based book that aspires to a paradigm shift in how practitioners conceptualize critical ingredients for internal healing. Novel treatment of sophisticated psychoanalytical issues and tie-ins to interpersonal neurobiology make this book appeal to both the specialist practitioner, as well as the generalist reader. .

Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy: The Neurobiology of Embodied Response

Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy: The Neurobiology of Embodied Response PDF Author: Terry Marks-Tarlow
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393707989
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
A systematic look at the role of “gut feelings” in psychotherapy. What actually happens in psychotherapy, outside the confines of therapeutic models and techniques? How can clinicians learn to pick up on interpersonal nuance, using their intuition to bridge the gap between theory and practice? Drawing from 30 years of clinical experience, Marks-Tarlow explores the central—yet neglected—topic of intuition in psychotherapy, sharing clinical insights and intuitions that can help transform traumatized brains into healthy minds. Bridging art and science, Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy is grounded in interpersonal neurobiology, and filled with rich case vignettes, personal stories, and original artwork. In the early chapters of the book, Marks-Tarlow defines clinical intuition as a right-brain, fully embodied mode of perceiving, relating, and responding to the ongoing flows and changing dynamics of psychotherapy. She examines how the body “has a mind of its own” in the form of implicit processes, uncovering the implicit roots of clinical intuition within human empathy and emphasizing the importance of play to clinical intuition. Encouraging therapists to bring their own unique senses of humor to clinical practice, she explains how the creative neural powers of playfulness, embedded within sensitive clinical dialogs, can move clients’ lives toward lasting positive affective growth. Later chapters explore the play of imagination within clinical intuition, where imagery and metaphor can lead to deeper insight about underlying emotions and relational truths than words alone; the developmental foundations for intuition; and clinical intuition as a vehicle for developing and expressing wisdom. At the close of each chapter, reflective exercises help the reader personally integrate the concepts. Part of the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, this wonderful guidebook will help clinicians harness the power of spontaneous intuitive thinking to transform their therapeutic practices.

Science and Moral Imagination

Science and Moral Imagination PDF Author: Matthew J. Brown
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822987678
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
The idea that science is or should be value-free, and that values are or should be formed independently of science, has been under fire by philosophers of science for decades. Science and Moral Imagination directly challenges the idea that science and values cannot and should not influence each other. Matthew J. Brown argues that science and values mutually influence and implicate one another, that the influence of values on science is pervasive and must be responsibly managed, and that science can and should have an influence on our values. This interplay, he explains, must be guided by accounts of scientific inquiry and value judgment that are sensitive to the complexities of their interactions. Brown presents scientific inquiry and value judgment as types of problem-solving practices and provides a new framework for thinking about how we might ethically evaluate episodes and decisions in science, while offering guidance for scientific practitioners and institutions about how they can incorporate value judgments into their work. His framework, dubbed “the ideal of moral imagination,” emphasizes the role of imagination in value judgment and the positive role that value judgment plays in science.

Theory of Identities

Theory of Identities PDF Author:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231541457
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
François Laruelle proposes a theory of identity rooted in scientific notions of symmetry and chaos, emancipating thought from the philosophical paradigm of Being and reconnecting it with the real world. Unlike most contemporary philosophers, Laruelle does not believe language, history, and the world shape identity but that identity determines our relation to these phenomena. Both critical and constructivist, Theory of Identities finds fault with contemporary philosophy's reductive relation to science and its attachment to notions of singularity, difference, and multiplicity, which extends this crude approach. Laruelle's new theory of science, its objects, and philosophy, introduces an original vocabulary to elaborate the concepts of determination, fractality, and artificial philosophy, among other ideas, grounded in an understanding of the renewal of identity. Laruelle's work repairs the rift between philosophical and scientific inquiry and rehabilitates the concept of identity that continental philosophers have widely criticized. His argument positions him clearly against Deleuze, Badiou, the new materialists, and other thinkers who stray too far from empirical approaches that might revitalize philosophy's practical applications.

A Fractal Epistemology for a Scientific Psychology

A Fractal Epistemology for a Scientific Psychology PDF Author: Terry Marks-Tarlow
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 9781527540231
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
Fractal geometry provides an unparalleled tool for understanding the evolution of natural complexity throughout the physical and biological realms. Fractal dynamics also help to reconcile perplexing dichotomies, such as subjective-objective, mind-brain, self-other, and linear-nonlinear processes. In their application to recursive processes of consciousness, both within ordinary and uncanny manifestations, they open a novel way of studying the interconnectedness of seemingly divided wholes. This extends to the most inclusive ways of encountering reality, described as transpersonal and even spiritual dimensions of experience. This volume pulls together experts in diverse fields, such as neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, physicists, physiologists, and mathematicians to demonstrate the value of fractal geometry as both a model and metaphor within psychology and related social and physical sciences. The result is a new perspective for understanding what has often been dismissed as too subjective, idiosyncratic, and ineffably beyond the scope of science, bringing the conversation back into a scientific framework.