Four Decades of Scientific Explanation

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Release : 2006-07-12
Genre : Philosophy
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Four Decades of Scientific Explanation - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Four Decades of Scientific Explanation write by Wesley C. Salmon. This book was released on 2006-07-12. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Provides an account of the developments in scientific explanation that transpired in the last four decades of the twentieth century. This book underscores the need for a consensus of approach and evaluations of methodology in scientific explanation, with the goal of providing an understanding of natural phenomena

Scientific Explanation

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Release : 1962-05-25
Genre : Science
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Book Rating : 653/5 ( reviews)

Scientific Explanation - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Scientific Explanation write by Philip Kitcher. This book was released on 1962-05-25. Scientific Explanation available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Scientific Explanation was first published in 1962. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Is a new consensus emerging in the philosophy of science? The nine distinguished contributors to this volume apply that question to the realm of scientific explanation and, although their conclusions vary, they agree in one respect: there definitely was an old consensus. Co-editor Wesley Salmon's opening essay, "Four Decades of Scientific Explanation," grounds the entire discussion. His point of departure is the founding document of the old consensus: a 1948 paper by Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, "Studies in the Logic of Explanation," that set forth, with remarkable clarity, a mode of argument that came to be known as the deductive-nomological model. This approach, holding that explanation dies not move beyond the sphere of empirical knowledge, remained dominant during the hegemony of logical empiricism from 1950 to 1975. Salmon traces in detail the rise and breakup of the old consensus, and examines the degree to which there is, if not a new consensus, at least a kind of reconciliation on this issue among contemporary philosophers of science and clear agreement that science can indeed tell us why. The other contributors, in the order of their presentations, are: Peter Railton, Matti Sintonen, Paul W. Humphreys, David Papineau, Nancy Cartwright, James Woodward, Merrilee H. Salmon, and Philip Kitcher.

Four Decades of Scientific Explanation

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Release : 2006-06-15
Genre : Philosophy
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Book Rating : 022/5 ( reviews)

Four Decades of Scientific Explanation - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Four Decades of Scientific Explanation write by Wesley C. Salmon. This book was released on 2006-06-15. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. As Aristotle stated, scientific explanation is based on deductive argument-yet, Wesley C. Salmon points out, not all deductive arguments are qualified explanations. The validity of the explanation must itself be examined. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation provides a comprehensive account of the developments in scientific explanation that transpired in the last four decades of the twentieth century. It continues to stand as the most comprehensive treatment of the writings on the subject during these years.Building on the historic 1948 essay by Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, "Studies in the Logic of Explanation," which introduced the deductive-nomological (D-N) model on which most work on scientific explanation was based for the following four decades, Salmon goes beyond this model's inherent basis of describing empirical knowledge to tells us "not only what, but also why." Salmon examines the predominant models in chronological order and describes their development, refinement, and criticism or rejection.Four Decades of Scientific Explanation underscores the need for a consensus of approach and ongoing evaluations of methodology in scientific explanation, with the goal of providing a better understanding of natural phenomena.

The Foundations of Scientific Inference

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Release : 1967-09
Genre : Philosophy
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Book Rating : 259/5 ( reviews)

The Foundations of Scientific Inference - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Foundations of Scientific Inference write by Wesley Salmon. This book was released on 1967-09. The Foundations of Scientific Inference available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Not since Ernest Nagel’s 1939 monograph on the theory of probability has there been a comprehensive elementary survey of the philosophical problems of probablity and induction. This is an authoritative and up-to-date treatment of the subject, and yet it is relatively brief and nontechnical. Hume’s skeptical arguments regarding the justification of induction are taken as a point of departure, and a variety of traditional and contemporary ways of dealing with this problem are considered. The author then sets forth his own criteria of adequacy for interpretations of probability. Utilizing these criteria he analyzes contemporary theories of probability, as well as the older classical and subjective interpretations.

Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World

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Release : 2020-11-10
Genre : Science
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Book Rating : 480/5 ( reviews)

Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World write by Wesley C. Salmon. This book was released on 2020-11-10. Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view (a version of the epistemic conception) is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a robust argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation (that explanations are arguments) to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts.