The New Mechanical Philosophy - 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 New Mechanical Philosophy write by Stuart Glennan. This book was released on 2017-07-26. The New Mechanical Philosophy available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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 representations of them that are abstract and general. This volume weaves together metaphysical and methodological questions about mechanisms. Metaphysically, it explores the implications of the mechanistic framework for our understanding of classical philosophical questions about the nature of objects, properties, processes, events, causal relations, natural kinds and laws of nature. Methodologically, the book explores how scientists build models to represent and understand phenomena and the mechanisms responsible for them. Using this account of representation, Glennan offers a scheme for characterizing the enormous diversity of things that scientists call mechanisms, and explores the scope and limits of mechanistic explanation.
The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy
The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy - 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 Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy write by Stuart Glennan. This book was released on 2017-07-06. The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Scientists studying the burning of stars, the evolution of species, DNA, the brain, the economy, and social change, all frequently describe their work as searching for mechanisms. Despite this fact, for much of the twentieth century philosophical discussions of the nature of mechanisms remained outside philosophy of science. The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into four Parts: Historical perspectives on mechanisms The nature of mechanisms Mechanisms and the philosophy of science Disciplinary perspectives on mechanisms. Within these Parts central topics and problems are examined, including the rise of mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century; what mechanisms are made of and how they are organized; mechanisms and laws and regularities; how mechanisms are discovered and explained; dynamical systems theory; and disciplinary perspectives from physics, chemistry, biology, biomedicine, ecology, neuroscience, and the social sciences. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science, the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as metaphysics, philosophy of psychology, and history of science.
Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion
Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion - 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 Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion write by Klaas van Berkel. This book was released on 2013-08-14. Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "Historians of science and the philosophy of science find the substance and stance of Isaac Beeckman's thought highly interesting, for it represented an early attempt to develop a comprehensive picture of the world by means of mechanistic theory, that is, forces acting upon one another. Besides possibly influencing Descartes, this view broke away from medieval religious assumptions and belief in occult forces. Berkel teases out Beeckman's evolving approach to nature by means of his extensive journals, explaining the leading concept of "picturability." Beeckman supplied a stepping stone (one still not widely appreciated) on the path that led to the scientific revolution"--
The Mechanical World
The Mechanical 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 The Mechanical World write by Beate Krickel. This book was released on 2019-01-04. The Mechanical World available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This monograph examines the metaphysical commitments of the new mechanistic philosophy, a way of thinking that has returned to center stage. It challenges a variant of reductionism with regard to higher-level phenomena, which has crystallized as a default position among these so-called New Mechanists. Furthermore, it opposes those philosophers who reject the possibility of interlevel causation. Contemporary philosophers believe that the explanation of scientific phenomena requires the discovery of relevant mechanisms. As a result, new mechanists are, in the main, concerned solely with epistemological questions. But, the author argues, their most central claims rely on metaphysical assumptions. Thus, they must also take into account metaphysics, a system of thought concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world around it. This branch of philosophy does indeed matter to the empirical sciences. The chapters investigate the nature of mechanisms, their components, and the ways in which they can bring about different phenomena. In addition, the author develops a novel account of causation in terms of activities. The analysis provides the basis for many further research projects on mechanisms and their relations to, for example, the mind-body problem, realization, multiple realization, natural kinds, causation, laws of nature, counterfactuals, and scientific levels.
Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers
Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers - 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 Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers write by David S. Sytsma. This book was released on 2017. Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Richard Baxter, one of the 17th century's most famous Puritans, is known as an author of devotional literature. But he was also skilled in medieval philosophy. In this work, David Sytsma draws on largely unexamined works to present a chronogolical and thematic account of Baxter's relation to the people and concepts involved in the rise of mechanical philosophy in late-17th-century England
