Models and Methods in the Philosophy of Science: Selected Essays / Edition 1

by Patrick Suppes

Overview

The thirty-one papers collected in this volume represent most of the articles that I have published in the philosophy of science and related foundational areas of science since 1970. The present volume is a natural successor to Studies in the Methodology and Foundations of Science, a collection of my articles published in 1969 by Reidel (now a part of Kluwer). The articles are arranged under five main headings. Part I contains six articles on general methodology. The topics range from formal methods to the plurality of science. Part II contains six articles on causality and explanation. The emphasis is almost entirely on probabilistic approaches. Part III contains six articles on probability and measurement. The importance of representation theorems for both probability and measurement is stressed. Part IV contains five articles on the foundations of physics. The first three articles are concerned with action at a distance and space and time, the last two with quantum mechanics. Part V contains eight articles on the foundations of psychology. This is the longest part and the articles reflect my continuing strong interest in the nature of learning and perception. Within each part the articles are arranged chronologically. I turn now to a more detailed overview of the content. The first article of Part I concerns the role of formal methods in the philosophy of science. Here I discuss what is the new role for formal methods now that the imperialism of logical positivism has disappeared.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780792322115
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	05/31/1993
Series:	Synthese Library , #226
Edition description:	1993
Pages:	510
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.36(d)

Table of Contents

1 The Role of Formal Methods in the Philosophy of Science.- 2 The Study of Scientific Revolutions: Theory and Methodology.- 3 Limitations of the Axiomatic Method in Ancient Greek Mathematical Sciences.- 4 The Plurality of Science.- 5 Heuristics and the Axiomatic Method.- 6 Representation Theory and the Analysis of Structure.- 7 Causal Analysis of Hidden Variables.- 8 Scientific Causal Talk.- 9 Explaining the Unpredictable.- 10 Conflicting Intuitions about Causality.- 11 When Are Probabilistic Explanations Possible?.- 12 Non-Markovian Causality in the Social Sciences with Some Theorems on Transitivity.- 13 Finite Equal-Interval Measurement Structures.- 14 The Measurement of Belief.- 15 The Logic of Clinical Judgment: Bayesian and Other Approaches.- 16 Arguments for Randomizing.- 17 Propensity Representations of Probability.- 18 Indeterminism or Instability, Does It Matter?.- 19 Descartes and the Problem of Action at a Distance.- 20 Some Open Problems in the Philosophy of Space and Time.- 21 Aristotle’s Concept of Matter and Its Relation to Modern Concepts of Matter.- 22 Popper’s Analysis of Probability in Quantum Mechanics.- 23 Probabilistic Causality in Quantum Mechanics.- 24 From Behaviorism to Neobehaviorism.- 25 Learning Theory for Probabilistic Automata and Register Machines, with Applications to Educational Research.- 26 Is Visual Space Euclidean?.- 27 Davidson’s Views on Psychology as a Science.- 28 Current Directions in Mathematical Learning Theory.- 29 On Deriving Models in the Social Sciences.- 30 The Principle of Invariance with Special Reference to Perception.- 31 Can Psychological Software be Reduced to Physiological Hardware?.- Author Index.