The Routledge Handbook Of Mechanisms And Mechanical Philosophy

Scientists studying the burning of stars, the evolution of species, DNA, the brain, the economy, and social change, all frequently describe their work as searching for mechanisms. Despite this fact, for much of the twentieth century philosophical discussions of the nature of mechanisms remained outside philosophy of science. The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into four Parts: Historical perspectives on mechanisms The nature of mechanisms Mechanisms and the philosophy of science Disciplinary perspectives on mechanisms. Within these Parts central topics and problems are examined, including the rise of mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century; what mechanisms are made of and how they are organized; mechanisms and laws and regularities; how mechanisms are discovered and explained; dynamical systems theory; and disciplinary perspectives from physics, chemistry, biology, biomedicine, ecology, neuroscience, and the social sciences. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science, the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as metaphysics, philosophy of psychology, and history of science.

The New Mechanical Philosophy argues for a new image of nature and of science—one that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, and that casts the work of science as an effort to discover and understand those mechanisms. Drawing on an expanding literature on mechanisms in physical, life, and social sciences, Stuart Glennan offers an account of the nature of mechanisms and of the models used to represent them. A key quality of mechanisms is that they are particulars - located at different places and times, with no one just like another. The crux of the scientist's challenge is to balance the complexity and particularity of mechanisms with our need for representations of them that are abstract and general. This volume weaves together metaphysical and methodological questions about mechanisms. Metaphysically, it explores the implications of the mechanistic framework for our understanding of classical philosophical questions about the nature of objects, properties, processes, events, causal relations, natural kinds and laws of nature. Methodologically, the book explores how scientists build models to represent and understand phenomena and the mechanisms responsible for them. Using this account of representation, Glennan offers a scheme for characterizing the enormous diversity of things that scientists call mechanisms, and explores the scope and limits of mechanistic explanation.

This volume argues for a new image of science that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, casting the work of science as an effort to understand those mechanisms. Glennan offers an account of the nature of mechanisms and of the models used to represent them in physical, life, and social sciences.

This volume offers a broad, philosophical discussion on mechanical explanations. Coverage ranges from historical approaches and general questions to physics and higher-level sciences . The contributors also consider the topics of complexity, emergence, and reduction. Mechanistic explanations detail how certain properties of a whole stem from the causal activities of its parts. This kind of explanation is in particular employed in explanatory models of the behavior of complex systems. Often used in biology and neuroscience, mechanistic explanation models have been often overlooked in the philosophy of physics. The authors correct this surprising neglect. They trace these models back to their origins in physics. The papers present a comprehensive historical, methodological, and problem-oriented investigation. The contributors also investigate the conditions for using models of mechanistic explanations in physics. The last papers make the bridge from physics to economics, the theory of complex systems and computer science . This book will appeal to graduate students and researchers with an interest in the philosophy of science, scientific explanation, complex systems, models of explanation in physics higher level sciences, and causal mechanisms in science.

This volume emphasizes the diversity and fruitfulness of early modern mechanism as a program, as a concept, as a model. Mechanistic study of the living body but also of the mind and mental processes are examined in careful historical focus, dealing with figures ranging from the first-rank (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Cudworth, Gassendi, Locke, Leibniz, Kant) to less well-known individuals (Scaliger, Martini) or prominent natural philosophers who have been neglected in recent years (Willis, Steno, etc.). The volume moves from early modern medicine and physiology to late Enlightenment and even early 19th-century psychology, always maintaining a conceptual focus. It is a contribution to a newly active field in the history and philosophy of early modern life science. It is of interest to scholars studying the history of medicine and the development of mechanistic theories.

In scholarly debates, as well as in everyday parlance, we tend to pull science and technology apart: science gives us theory, and technology applies it. In practice, however, science and technologies are highly intertwined. In Techno-Scientific Practices: An Informational Approach, Federica Russo looks at the practice of science and elucidates the role of technologies and instruments in the process of knowledge production. In this exercise, it becomes evident that technologies cannot be analyzed on their own, but always in relation to epistemic agents. Thus, Techno-Scientific Practices emphasizes the importance of analyzing the process of knowledge production in techno-scientific contexts, in which there is a triad of relations to look at: us, the instruments, and the world. The book thus builds bridges between the philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, and science and technology studies in an unprecedent way.

A thought-provoking resource detailing why causal theory is useful in geographical enquiry and how it can be developed through mechanism-based thinking. Includes a multitude of approaches and concepts in human geography today, covering important caveats, key considerations, and a synthetic approach Details contemporary geographical thought, covering theory in Marxism, poststructuralism and post-phenomenology/posthumanism, and feminism and postcolonialism Explores relationality and relational thought in contemporary human geography, plus moving towards a relational theory for the 2020s and beyond Discusses mechanism and process in causal explanation, covering causal theory and actors, neoliberalization, and the process-mechanism distinction of neoliberalism Essential reading for academics, geographers, and scholars seeking unique perspective on an important facet of the field

Epistemic contextualism is a recent and hotly debated topic in philosophy. Contextualists argue that the language we use to attribute knowledge can only be properly understood relative to a specified context. How much can our knowledge depend on context? Is there a limit, and if so, where does it lie? What is the relationship between epistemic contextualism and fundamental topics in philosophy such as objectivity, truth, and relativism? The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising thirty-seven chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into eight parts: Data and motivations for contextualism Methodological issues Epistemological implications Doing without contextualism Relativism and disagreement Semantic implementations Contextualism outside ‘knows’ Foundational linguistic issues. Within these sections central issues, debates and problems are examined, including contextualism and thought experiments and paradoxes such as the Gettier problem and the lottery paradox; semantics and pragmatics; the relationship between contextualism, relativism, and disagreement; and contextualism about related topics like ethical judgments and modality. The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism is essential reading for students and researchers in epistemology and philosophy of language. It will also be very useful for those in related fields such as linguistics and philosophy of mind.