Frontiers Of Science And Philosophy

Six essays by noted philosophers of science include the following topics: explanation in science and in history; philosophy and the scientific image of man; psychoanalysis and parapsychology; the conceptual basis of the biological sciences; the nature of time; and problems of microphysics.

'Grayling brings satisfying order to daunting subjects' Steven Pinker _________________________ In very recent times humanity has learnt a vast amount about the universe, the past, and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to learn: the science we have, for example, addresses just 5 per cent of the universe; pre-history is still being revealed, with thousands of historical sites yet to be explored; and the new neurosciences of mind and brain are just beginning. What do we know, and how do we know it? What do we now know that we don't know? And what have we learnt about the obstacles to knowing more? In a time of deepening battles over what knowledge and truth mean, these questions matter more than ever. Bestselling polymath and philosopher A. C. Grayling seeks to answer them in three crucial areas at the frontiers of knowledge: science, history and psychology. A remarkable history of science, life on earth, and the human mind itself, this is a compelling and fascinating tour de force, written with verve, clarity and remarkable breadth of knowledge. _________________________ 'Remarkable, readable and authoritative. How he has mastered so much, so thoroughly, is nothing short of amazing' Lawrence M. Krauss, author of A Universe from Nothing 'This book hums with the excitement of the great human project of discovery' Adam Zeman, author of Aphantasia

Science at the Frontiers: Perspectives on the History and Philosophy of Science brings new voices to the study of the history and philosophy of science. It supplements current literature on these fields, highlighting sciences that are overlooked, by the current literature and viewing classic problems in the field from new perspectives. Archaeologist and philosopher of science William H. Krieger asked a group of working scientists, philosophers of science, and historians of science to present a series of case studies in a range of disciplines including archaeology, medicine, forestry, biology and genetics to predict the future for their fields. Their chapters give new perspectives on many of the questions that have resisted solution in the classical canon while raising new questions born out of new perspectives and new historical, scientific, and philosophical approaches. Those studying the philosophy and history of science and those who are already practicing?-scientists, philosophers of science, and historians of science will gain a great deal from this book Book jacket.

Steve Fuller has a reputation for setting the terms of debate within science and technology studies. In his latest book, New Frontiers in Science and Technology Studies he charts the debates likely to be of relevance in the coming years. Should science and technology be treated as separate entities? What impact has globalization had on science and technology? Can science be clearly distinguished from other forms of knowledge? Does the politicization of science really matter? Is there a role for the social regulation of scientific inquiry? Should we be worried about research fraud? These questions are explored by examining an array of historical, philosophical and contemporary sources. Attention is paid, for example, to the Bruno Latour's The Politics of Nature as a model for science policy, as well as the global controversy surrounding Bjorn Lomborg's The Sceptical Environmentalist, which led to the dismantling and re-establishment of the Danish national research ethics board. New Frontiers in Science and Technology Studies will appeal strongly to scholars and advanced undergraduate and graduate students in courses concerned with the social dimensions of science and technology, and anyone who cares about the future of science.

Millions of scientific articles are published each year, making it difficult to stay abreast of advances within even the smallest subdisciplines. Traditional approaches to the study of science, such as the history and philosophy of science, involve closely reading a relatively small set of journal articles. And yet many questions benefit from casting a wider net: Is most scientific change gradual or revolutionary? What are the key sources of scientific novelty? Over the past several decades, a massive effort to digitize the academic literature and equip computers with algorithms that can distantly read and analyze a digital database has taken us one step closer to answering these questions. The Dynamics of Science brings together a diverse array of contributors to examine the largely unexplored computational frontiers of history and philosophy of science. Together, they reveal how tools and data from automated textual analysis, or machine “reading,” combined with methods and models from game theory and cultural evolutionary theory, can begin to answer fundamental questions about the nature and history of science.

The fundamental question whether, or in which sense, science informs us about the real world has pervaded the history of thought since antiquity. Is what science tells us about the world determined unambiguously by facts or does the content of any scientific theory in some way depend on the human condition? "Sokal`s hoax" added a new dimension to this controversial debate, which very quickly came to been known as "Science Wars". "Knowledge and the World" examines and reviews the broad range of philosophical positions on this issue, stretching from realism to relativism, to expound the epistemic merits of science, and to address the central question: in which sense can science justifiably claim to provide a truthful portrait of reality? This book addresses everyone interested in the philosophy and history of science, and in particular in the interplay between the social and natural sciences.