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Author: Nicholas Rescher Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre ISBN: 0822972069 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 298
Book Description
Perfected science is but an idealization that provides a useful contrast to highlight the limited character of what we do and can attain. This lies at the core of various debates in the philosophy of science and Rescher’s discussion focuses on the question: how far could science go in principle—what are the theoretical limits on science? He concentrates on what science can discover, not what it should discover. He explores in detail the existence of limits or limitations on scientific inquiry, especially those that, in principle, preclude the full realization of the aims of science, as opposed to those that relate to economic obstacles to scientific progress. Rescher also places his argument within the politics of the day, where "strident calls of ideological extremes surround us," ranging from the exaggeration that "science can do anything"—to the antiscientism that views science as a costly diversion we would be well advised to abandon. Rescher offers a middle path between these two extremes and provides an appreciation of the actual powers and limitations of science, not only to philosophers of science but also to a larger, less specialized audience.
Author: Nicholas Rescher Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre ISBN: 0822972069 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 298
Book Description
Perfected science is but an idealization that provides a useful contrast to highlight the limited character of what we do and can attain. This lies at the core of various debates in the philosophy of science and Rescher’s discussion focuses on the question: how far could science go in principle—what are the theoretical limits on science? He concentrates on what science can discover, not what it should discover. He explores in detail the existence of limits or limitations on scientific inquiry, especially those that, in principle, preclude the full realization of the aims of science, as opposed to those that relate to economic obstacles to scientific progress. Rescher also places his argument within the politics of the day, where "strident calls of ideological extremes surround us," ranging from the exaggeration that "science can do anything"—to the antiscientism that views science as a costly diversion we would be well advised to abandon. Rescher offers a middle path between these two extremes and provides an appreciation of the actual powers and limitations of science, not only to philosophers of science but also to a larger, less specialized audience.
Author: Del Ratzsch Publisher: InterVarsity Press ISBN: 9780830876822 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
Science, especially naturalistic science, has come under fire of late. No longer does it command the near universal respect it once held. From the right has come a fresh attack on Darwinism and arguments for intelligent design. From the left postmodern theorists have attacked the very notion of objective truth claims, scientific or otherwise. Into the fray Del Ratzsch breathes a breath of calm. He asks, What is science? What can it tell us? What can't it tell us? What challenges does it offer to Christian faith? How should a Christian respond? Originally published under the title Philosophy of Science, this revised volume surveys how views of science have developed and changed over time, especially since the Kuhnian revolution of the 1960s. Now updated to reflect current discussions of intelligent design and postmodern views of science, Science & Its Limits offers readers a thoughtful perspective on contemporary trends and useful advice on how to approach faith and science issues.
Author: John Dupré Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199248060 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
Dupré warns that our understanding of human nature is being distorted by two faulty and harmful forms of pseudo-scientific thinking. He claims it is important to resist scientism - an exaggerated conception of what science can be expected to do.
Author: John Horgan Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465050859 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
As staff writer for Scientific American, John Horgan has a window on contemporary science unsurpassed in all the world. Who else routinely interviews the likes of Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Stephen Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts? In The End Of Science, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be simply human, and scientists, he writes, "are rarely so human . . . so at there mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge."This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final "theory of everything" that signals the end? Is the age of great discoverers behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding detains to existing theories? Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to there and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, plectics, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, Marx's view of progress, Kuhn's view of revolutions, cellular automata, robots, and the Omega Point, with Fred Hoyle, Noam Chomsky, John Wheeler, Clifford Geertz, and dozens of other eminent scholars. The resulting narrative will both infuriate and delight as it mindless Horgan's smart, contrarian argument for "endism" with a witty, thoughtful, even profound overview of the entire scientific enterprise. Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information as speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike. As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literaty criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls "ironic science." Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.
Author: Marcelo Gleiser Publisher: Civitas Books ISBN: 0465031714 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 370
Book Description
A natural philosophy expert who is also a physics and astronomy professor discusses the limits of scientific explanations and how our knowledge of the universe and its nature will always remain necessarily incomplete. 15,000 first printing.
Author: Noson S. Yanofsky Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 026252984X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 419
Book Description
This exploration of the scientific limits of knowledge challenges our deep-seated beliefs about our universe, our rationality, and ourselves. “A must-read for anyone studying information science.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own intuitions about the world—including our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Yanofsky describes simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve: • perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense • different levels of infinity • the bizarre world of the quantum • the relevance of relativity theory • the causes of chaos theory • math problems that cannot be solved by normal means • statements that are true but cannot be proven Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there.
Author: Stanley L. Jaki Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute ISBN: Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
This new collection of writings from America's foremost authority on the relationship between science and religion, Templeton Prize-winner Stanley L. Jaki, is an incisive overview of the intersection of science with the most fundamental areas of human culture.
Author: Peter Meusburger Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1402055552 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 230
Book Description
Do traditional distinctions between "belief" and "knowledge" still make sense? How are differences between knowledge and belief understood in different cultural contexts? This book explores conflicts between various types of knowledge, especially between orthodox and heterodox knowledge systems, ranging from religious fundamentalism to heresies within the scientific community itself. Beyond addressing many fields in the academy, the book discusses learned individuals interested in the often puzzling spatial and cultural disparities of knowledge and clashes of knowledge.
Author: Neil Tarrant Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226819426 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
A look at the history of censorship, science, and magic from the Middle Ages to the post-Reformation era. Neil Tarrant challenges conventional thinking by looking at the longer history of censorship, considering a five-hundred-year continuity of goals and methods stretching from the late eleventh century to well into the sixteenth. Unlike earlier studies, Defining Nature’s Limits engages the history of both learned and popular magic. Tarrant explains how the church developed a program that sought to codify what was proper belief through confession, inquisition, and punishment and prosecuted what they considered superstition or heresy that stretched beyond the boundaries of religion. These efforts were continued by the Roman Inquisition, established in 1542. Although it was designed primarily to combat Protestantism, from the outset the new institution investigated both practitioners of “illicit” magic and inquiries into natural philosophy, delegitimizing certain practices and thus shaping the development of early modern science. Describing the dynamics of censorship that continued well into the post-Reformation era, Defining Nature's Limits is revisionist history that will interest scholars of the history science, the history of magic, and the history of the church alike.
Author: Nicholas Rescher
Author: Nicholas Rescher
Author: Del Ratzsch
Author: John Dupré
Author: John Horgan
Author: Peter Brian Medawar
Author: Marcelo Gleiser
Author: Noson S. Yanofsky
Author: Stanley L. Jaki
Author: Peter Meusburger
Author: Neil Tarrant