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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 re...
A Unified Report on the “State of the Art” in the Philosophy of Biology In October 1993, the University of Pittsburgh hosted the Second Pittsburgh-Konstanz Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, with a focus on the rapidly growing field of philosophy of biology. An interdisciplinary group of philosophers and scientists came together to discuss the basic theories and concepts of biology and their connections with ethics, economics, and psychology. The colloquium organizers strove to create an event that would provide attendees with a wide overview on the current state of the philosophy of biology, with as many topics and views on these topics as possible. Those presentations are gathered here in a volume that offers the reader a varied and thorough survey of the field.
The science of criminology is at a crossroads. Despite accumulating a dizzying array of facts about crime, the field has yet to identify a body of theories that allows for the adequate prediction, explanation, and control of phenomena of central interest to criminologists. Mechanistic Criminology locates this problem within the field’s failure to conform to the expectations of scientific fields and reliance on antiquated methods of theory construction. The authors contend that this failure has resulted in an inability of criminologists to engage in theory falsification and competition—two central activities of science—that produce the forms of reliable knowledge that are unique to scie...
This volume addresses fundamental issues in the philosophy of science in the context of two most intriguing fields: biology and economics. Written by authorities and experts in the philosophy of biology and economics, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics provides a structured study of the concepts of mechanism and causality in these disciplines and draws careful juxtapositions between philosophical apparatus and scientific practice. By exploring the issues that are most salient to the contemporary philosophies of biology and economics and by presenting comparative analyses, the book serves as a platform not only for gaining mutual understanding between scientists and philosophers...
These are the conference proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Discovery Science (DS 2001). Although discovery is naturally ubiquitous in s- ence, and scientific discovery itself has been subject to scientific investigation for centuries, the term Discovery Science is comparably new. It came up in conn- tion with the Japanese Discovery Science project (cf. Arikawa's invited lecture on The Discovery Science Project in Japan in the present volume) some time during the last few years. Setsuo Arikawa is the father in spirit of the Discovery Science conference series. He led the above mentioned project, and he is currently serving as the chairman of the international steering committ...
Reasoning in Biological Discoveries brings together a series of essays, which focus on one of the most heavily debated topics of scientific discovery. Collected together and richly illustrated, Darden's essays represent a groundbreaking foray into one of the major problems facing scientists and philosophers of science. Divided into three sections, the essays focus on broad themes, notably historical and philosophical issues at play in discussions of biological mechanism; and the problem of developing and refining reasoning strategies, including interfield relations and anomaly resolution. Darden summarizes the philosophy of discovery and elaborates on the role that mechanisms play in biological discovery. Throughout the book, she uses historical case studies to extract advisory reasoning strategies for discovery. Examples in genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology reveal the process of discovery in action.
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