Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Philosophy of Science Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

1,131 Full-Text Articles 797 Authors 584,700 Downloads 144 Institutions

All Articles in Philosophy of Science

Faceted Search

1,131 full-text articles. Page 39 of 44.

Two Faces Of Media While Covering Human Right Activities In India, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr 2011 India Today Group

Two Faces Of Media While Covering Human Right Activities In India, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

The situation of human rights in India is a complex one, as a result of the country's large size and tremendous diversity, its status as a developing country and a sovereign, secular, democratic republic, and its history as a former colonial territory. The Constitution of India provides for Fundamental rights, which include freedom of religion. Clauses also provide for Freedom of Speech, as well as separation of executive and judiciary and freedom of movement within the country and abroad. In its report on human rights in India during 2010, Human Rights Watch stated India had "significant human rights problems". They …


Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Michael Phan, Jeniene Hassan 2011 University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Michael Phan, Jeniene Hassan

Festival of Communities: UG Symposium (Posters)

Embryonic stem cell research has the potential to regenerate malfunctioning tissues and replace harmful cancer cells. Although it holds the potential to alleviate malicious disabilities and diseases, it raises ethical concerns due to the destruction of a fertilized human embryo. In certain religions (Catholics and Christians), embryonic stem cell research is detested due to the destruction of a human at its early stages of life (embryo). On the other hand, scientists believe that embryonic stem cells can “someday…used to treat human diseases.” (Hansen 879) This analysis on embryonic stem cell research will consider both the supporting and opposing side of …


Global Warming: At What Point Does Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Release Become Unethical?, Luke Good, Gladys Lopez 2011 University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Global Warming: At What Point Does Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Release Become Unethical?, Luke Good, Gladys Lopez

Festival of Communities: UG Symposium (Posters)

In recent decades, the concept of global warming has developed increasing concern among the scientific community and general public alike. What was initially dismissed as little more than unlikely has now become a severe warning for global climate crisis threatening not only our way of life but ultimate future existence on this planet? Global warming is defined as the steady mean increase in atmospheric temperature, the primary asserted cause thereof being increased emissions and inherent atmospheric concentrations of “greenhouse gases” – carbon dioxide in particular. These gases contribute to the greenhouse effect by trapping radiation (from the sun) in the …


Language Discourse- A Critical Analysis Of Michel Focault's Work On Language Discourse With Special Reference To His Masterpiece "The Archeology Of Knowledge", Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr 2011 India Today Group

Language Discourse- A Critical Analysis Of Michel Focault's Work On Language Discourse With Special Reference To His Masterpiece "The Archeology Of Knowledge", Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication or debate". The following are three more specific definitions: (1) In semantics and discourse analysis: A generalization of the concept of conversation to all modalities and contexts. (2) "The totality of codified linguistic usages attached to a given type of social practice. (E.g.: legal discourse, medical discourse, religious discourse.)" (3) In the work of Michel Foucault, and social theorists inspired by him: "an entity of sequences of signs in that they are enouncements (enoncés)" (Foucault 1969: 141). An enouncement (often translated as "statement") is not a unity of signs, but an abstract …


Risen Apes And Fallen Angels: The New Museology Of Human Origins, Stephen Asma 2011 Columbia College Chicago

Risen Apes And Fallen Angels: The New Museology Of Human Origins, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

There has been a little explosion of "origin" exhibitions in the past few years. The recent bicentennial of Darwin's birth, in 2009, ushered in a bevy of traveling exhibitions and events. Grandscale permanent exhibitions have recently opened at the American Museum of Natural History (the Spitzer Hall of Human Origins) in New York, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins) in Washington, D.C. A new museology is afoot, and some of the recent changes are worth tracking. And let's not forget the recently opened Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Even in …


The Bee-Haviour Of Scientists: An Analogy Of Science From The World Of Bees, Ben Trubody 2011 University of Gloucestershire

The Bee-Haviour Of Scientists: An Analogy Of Science From The World Of Bees, Ben Trubody

Between the Species

I am going to compare the strategies and communication bees use in order to locate and retrieve nectar to the world of science and the scientist. The analogy is intentionally anthropomorphic but I wish to argue that if successful bees made assumptions they would be similar to those of the scientist: flowers can be regarded as facts, nectar as knowledge, honey as technology and their ‘waggle-dance’ as communication of ideas. I would like to say that this is to be used as an analogy and should not be taken to be a statement of the scientific method as an emergent …


Challenges Before Traditional Media In The Age Of Digital Media-How To Integrate It With Digital Media-The Way Ahead, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr 2011 India Today Group

Challenges Before Traditional Media In The Age Of Digital Media-How To Integrate It With Digital Media-The Way Ahead, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

You may have heard of digital media, but you may have no idea what it is and how it can help you out when it comes to marketing. It's definitely important that you get up to speed so you can use this to benefit your business. Basically digital media refers to any type of electronic media out there. Today media can be accessed in many ways, including with hand held devices like mobile phones, laptops, desktops, mp3 players, and more.Digital media must be stored in an electronic way, so there is a lot of digital content on the internet today, …


Collaboration Using Open Notebook Science In Academia, Andrew Lang, Jean-Claude Bradley, Steven Koch, Cameron Neylon 2011 Drexel University

Collaboration Using Open Notebook Science In Academia, Andrew Lang, Jean-Claude Bradley, Steven Koch, Cameron Neylon

College of Science and Engineering Faculty Research and Scholarship

Technology has a profound effect on how scientists can communicate with each other. This affects how quickly science can progress and what kinds of collaboration are possible. Although the printing press and the subsequent establishment of scientifi c journals dramatically increased the ability of researchers to disseminate their results and ideas, close collaborations between geographically separated individuals had to await the availability of telecommunication technologies, particularly the development of the Internet. Today, the ubiquity of sophisticated and easy - to - use tools to exchange information is enabling the creation of a “ shared presence ” between people, regardless of …


The East Unleashed, Raam P. Gokhale 2011 SelectedWorks

The East Unleashed, Raam P. Gokhale

Raam P Gokhale

A Dialogue Concerning the Political Ramifications of the Developing World


The Study Of Social Sciences In Developing Societies: Towards An Adequate Conceptualization Of Relevance, Syed Farid Alatas 2011 Faculty of Art & Social Sciences

The Study Of Social Sciences In Developing Societies: Towards An Adequate Conceptualization Of Relevance, Syed Farid Alatas

farid alatas

Since the 19th century, there has been a strong awareness of a lack of fit between the western1 social sciences and non-western realities. Many examples of the irrelevance of western concepts, theories and assumptions have been noted in the literature. The fact that the social sciences emerged in the West, were initially practised in the Third World by colonialists and other European scholars, and then finally implanted among the locals during and after formal independence, had raised the question of the relevance of these bodies of knowledge to Third World societies and their problems. Some nonwestern scholars in the 19th …


Adaptation As Process: The Future Of Darwinism And The Legacy Of Theodosius Dobzhansky, David Depew 2011 University of Iowa

Adaptation As Process: The Future Of Darwinism And The Legacy Of Theodosius Dobzhansky, David Depew

David J Depew

Conceptions of adaptation have varied in the history of genetic Darwinism depending on whether what is taken to be focal is the process of adaptation, adapted states of populations, or discrete adaptations in individual organisms. I argue that Theodosius Dobzhansky’s view of adaptation as a dynamical process contrasts with so-called “adaptationist” views of natural selection figured as “design-without-a-designer” of relatively discrete, enumerable adaptations. Correlated with these respectively process and product oriented approaches to adaptive natural selection are divergent pictures of organisms themselves as developmental wholes or as “bundles” of adaptations. While even process versions of genetical Darwinism are insufficiently sensitive …


Rethinking Mechanistic Explanation, Stuart Glennan 2011 Butler University

Rethinking Mechanistic Explanation, Stuart Glennan

Stuart Glennan

Philosophers of science typically associate the causal-mechanical view of scientific explanation with the work of Railton and Salmon. In this paper I shall argue that the defects of this view arise from an inadequate analysis of the concept of mechanism. I contrast Salmon's account of mechanisms in terms of the causal nexus with my own account of mechanisms, in which mechanisms are viewed as complex systems. After describing these two concepts of mechanism, I show how the complex-systems approach avoids certain objections to Salmon's account of causal-mechanical explanation. I conclude by discussing how mechanistic explanations can provide understanding by unification.


Mechanisms, Causes, And The Layered Model Of The World, Stuart Glennan 2011 Butler University

Mechanisms, Causes, And The Layered Model Of The World, Stuart Glennan

Stuart Glennan

Most philosophical accounts of causation take causal relations to obtain between individuals and events in virtue of nomological relations between properties of these individuals and events. Such views fail to take into account the consequences of the fact that in general the properties of individuals and events will depend upon mechanisms that realize those properties. In this paper I attempt to rectify this failure, and in so doing to provide an account of the causal relevance of higher-level properties. I do this by critiquing one prominent model of higher-level properties – Kim’s functional model of reduction – and contrasting it …


Ephemeral Mechanisms And Historical Explanation, Stuart Glennan 2011 Butler University

Ephemeral Mechanisms And Historical Explanation, Stuart Glennan

Stuart Glennan

While much of the recent literature on mechanisms has emphasized the superiority of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation over laws and nomological explanation, paradigmatic mechanisms—e.g., clocks or synapses – actually exhibit a great deal of stability in their behavior. And while mechanisms of this kind are certainly of great importance, there are many events that do not occur as a consequence of the operation of stable mechanisms. Events of natural and human history are often the consequence of causal processes that are ephemeral and capricious. In this paper I shall argue that, notwithstanding their ephemeral nature, these processes deserve to be …


Mechanisms And The Nature Of Causation, Stuart Glennan 2011 Butler University

Mechanisms And The Nature Of Causation, Stuart Glennan

Stuart Glennan

In this paper I offer an analysis of causation based upon a theory of mechanisms – complex systems whose "internal" parts interact to produce a system's "external" behavior. I argue that all but the fundamental laws of physics can be explained by reference to mechanisms. Mechanisms provide an epistemologically unproblematic way to explain the necessity which is often taken to distinguish laws from other generalizations. This account of necessity leads to a theory of causation according to which events are causally related when there is a mechanism that connects them. I present reasons why the lack of an account of …


Singular And General Causal Relations: A Mechanist Perspective, Stuart Glennan 2011 Butler University

Singular And General Causal Relations: A Mechanist Perspective, Stuart Glennan

Stuart Glennan

My aim in this paper is to make a case for the singularist view from the perspective of a mechanical theory of causation (Glennan 1996, 1997, 2010, forthcoming), and to explain what, from this perspective, causal generalizations mean, and what role they play within the mechanical theory.


Mechanisms And The Nature Of Causation, Stuart Glennan 2011 Butler University

Mechanisms And The Nature Of Causation, Stuart Glennan

Stuart Glennan

In this paper I offer an analysis of causation based upon a theory of mechanisms – complex systems whose "internal" parts interact to produce a system's "external" behavior. I argue that all but the fundamental laws of physics can be explained by reference to mechanisms. Mechanisms provide an epistemologically unproblematic way to explain the necessity which is often taken to distinguish laws from other generalizations. This account of necessity leads to a theory of causation according to which events are causally related when there is a mechanism that connects them. I present reasons why the lack of an account of …


Just-If-Ication, Raam P. Gokhale 2011 SelectedWorks

Just-If-Ication, Raam P. Gokhale

Raam P Gokhale

A Discussion of Scientific Reasoning


Coerced Confessional, Miracle Exoneration: The Case Of Ex-Monster Jerry Hobbs, Stephen Asma 2011 Columbia College Chicago

Coerced Confessional, Miracle Exoneration: The Case Of Ex-Monster Jerry Hobbs, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

No abstract provided.


The New Atheists' Narrow World-View, Stephen Asma 2011 Columbia College Chicago

The New Atheists' Narrow World-View, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

The article discusses atheism, Buddhism, and the practice of animism in southeast Asia. Atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris are discussed as is the argument regarding the "provincialism" of religion. It is noted that some atheists echo the statement by philosopher Karl Marx that religion is an opiate that should be done away with because it has little moral value. The use of spirit houses as a part of religious practice in southeast Asia is described. The opinion held by theists on animism is explored. Other topics include living conditions in Cambodia and the role of religion in …


Digital Commons powered by bepress