Models of Discovery

Models of Discovery PDF

Author: Herbert A. Simon

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 9401095213

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We respect Herbert A. Simon as an established leader of empirical and logical analysis in the human sciences while we happily think of him as also the loner; of course he works with many colleagues but none can match him. He has been writing fruitfully and steadily for four decades in many fields, among them psychology, logic, decision theory, economics, computer science, management, production engineering, information and control theory, operations research, confirmation theory, and we must have omitted several. With all of them, he is at once the technical scientist and the philosophical critic and analyst. When writing of decisions and actions, he is at the interface of philosophy of science, decision theory, philosophy of the specific social sciences, and inventory theory (itself, for him, at the interface of economic theory, production engineering and information theory). When writing on causality, he is at the interface of methodology, metaphysics, logic and philosophy of physics, systems theory, and so on. Not that the interdisciplinary is his orthodoxy; we are delighted that he has chosen to include in this book both his early and little-appreciated treatment of straightforward philosophy of physics - the axioms of Newtonian mechanics, and also his fine papers on pure confirmation theory.

Models of Discovery

Models of Discovery PDF

Author: Herbert Alexander Simon

Publisher:

Published: 1977

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 9789027708588

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In these essays, the author attacks the central problems in the philosophy of science from the viewpoint of a working scientist who relates the philosophical questions to methodological issues that have arisen in his own research. The essays deal with six main topics: the validation of hypotheses, the logic of causal ordering and its relation to the definability and identifiability of theoretical terms, the logic of imperatives and decisions, the structure of complex systems, the theory of scientific discovery, and the axiomization of scientific theories. He treats these topics in a unified way by employing the analytic tools of model theory and by putting the discovery of theories, rather than their testing, at the center of the stage. Questions surrounding the axiomization of theories are examined in the light of real examples (Newtonian mechanics and Ohm's law) rather than simplified, hypothetical ones. Formalisms are not avoided, but they are always used as a means and not as ends in themselves.--

Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery

Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery PDF

Author: L. Magnani

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1461548136

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The volume is based on the papers that were presented at the Interna tional Conference Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery (MBR'98), held at the Collegio Ghislieri, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, in December 1998. The papers explore how scientific thinking uses models and explanatory reasoning to produce creative changes in theories and concepts. The study of diagnostic, visual, spatial, analogical, and temporal rea soning has demonstrated that there are many ways of performing intelligent and creative reasoning that cannot be described with the help only of tradi tional notions of reasoning such as classical logic. Traditional accounts of scientific reasoning have restricted the notion of reasoning primarily to de ductive and inductive arguments. Understanding the contribution of model ing practices to discovery and conceptual change in science requires ex panding scientific reasoning to include complex forms of creative reasoning that are not always successful and can lead to incorrect solutions. The study of these heuristic ways of reasoning is situated at the crossroads of philoso phy, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and logic; that is, at the heart of cognitive science. There are several key ingredients common to the various forms of model based reasoning to be considered in this book. The models are intended as in terpretations of target physical systems, processes, phenomena, or situations. The models are retrieved or constructed on the basis of potentially satisfying salient constraints of the target domain.

Scientific Discovery in the Social Sciences

Scientific Discovery in the Social Sciences PDF

Author: Mark Addis

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-09-12

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 3030237699

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This volume offers selected papers exploring issues arising from scientific discovery in the social sciences. It features a range of disciplines including behavioural sciences, computer science, finance, and statistics with an emphasis on philosophy. The first of the three parts examines methods of social scientific discovery. Chapters investigate the nature of causal analysis, philosophical issues around scale development in behavioural science research, imagination in social scientific practice, and relationships between paradigms of inquiry and scientific fraud. The next part considers the practice of social science discovery. Chapters discuss the lack of genuine scientific discovery in finance where hypotheses concern the cheapness of securities, the logic of scientific discovery in macroeconomics, and the nature of that what discovery with the Solidarity movement as a case study. The final part covers formalising theories in social science. Chapters analyse the abstract model theory of institutions as a way of representing the structure of scientific theories, the semi-automatic generation of cognitive science theories, and computational process models in the social sciences. The volume offers a unique perspective on scientific discovery in the social sciences. It will engage scholars and students with a multidisciplinary interest in the philosophy of science and social science.

Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology

Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology PDF

Author: Lorenzo Magnani

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-08-31

Total Pages: 633

ISBN-13: 364237428X

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This book contains contributions presented during the international conference on Model-Based Reasoning (MBR ́012), held on June 21-23 in Sestri Levante, Italy. Interdisciplinary researchers discuss in this volume how scientific cognition and other kinds of cognition make use of models, abduction, and explanatory reasoning in order to produce important or creative changes in theories and concepts. Some of the contributions analyzed the problem of model-based reasoning in technology and stressed the issues of scientific and technological innovation. The book is divided in three main parts: models, mental models, representations; abduction, problem solving and practical reasoning; historical, epistemological and technological issues. The volume is based on the papers that were presented at the international

Experiment, theory, and practice

Experiment, theory, and practice PDF

Author: Петр Леонидович Капица

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 1980-04-30

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 9789027710628

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In tbis splendid collection of the articles and addresses of P. L. Kapitza, the author remarks on the insight of the 18th century Ukrainian philosopher Skovoroda who wrote: "We must be grateful to God that He created the world in such a way that everytbing simple is true, and everything compli cated is untrue. " At another place, Kapitza meditates on the roles played by instinct, imagination, audacity, experiment, and hard work in the develop ment of science, and for a moment seems to despair at understanding the dogged arguments of great scientists: "Einstein loved to refer to God when there was no more sensible argument!" With Academician Kapitza, there are reasoned arguments, plausible alter natives, humor and humane discipline, energy and patience, a skill for the practical, and transcendent clarity about what is at issue in theoretical practice as in engineering necessities. Kapitza has been physicist, engineer, research manager, teacher, humanist, and tbis book demonstrates that he is a wise interpreter of historical, philosophical, and social realities. He is also, in C. P. Snow's words, strong, brave, and good (Variety of Men, N. Y. 1966, p. 19). In this preface, we shall point to themes from Kapitza's interpretations of science and life. On scientific work. Good work is never done with someone else's hands. The separation of theory from experience, from experimental work, and from practice, above all harms theory itself.

Reinventing Discovery

Reinventing Discovery PDF

Author: Michael Nielsen

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-04-07

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0691202842

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"Reinventing Discovery argues that we are in the early days of the most dramatic change in how science is done in more than 300 years. This change is being driven by new online tools, which are transforming and radically accelerating scientific discovery"--

Theory and Experiment

Theory and Experiment PDF

Author: Diderik Batens

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 9400928750

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This is not "another collection of contributions on a traditional subject." Even more than we dared to expect during the preparatory stages, the papers in this volume prove that our thinking about science has taken a new turn and has reached a new stage. The progressive destruction of the received view has been a fascinating and healthy experience. At present, the period of destruction is over. A richer and more equilibrated analysis of a number of problems is possible and is being cru'ried out. In this sense, this book comes right on time. We owe a lot to the scholars of the Kuhnian period. They not only did away with obstacles, but in several respects instigated a shift in attention that changed history and philosophy of science in a irreversible way. A c1earcut example - we borrow it from the paper by Risto Hilpinen - concerns the study of science as a process, Rnd not only as a result. Moreover, they apparently reached several lasting results, e.g., concerning the tremendous impact of theoretical conceptions on empirical data. Apart from baffling people for several decades, this insight rules out an other return to simple-minded empiricism in the future.