Philosophy of Science Commons^™

A Four-Legged Megalosaurus And Swimming Brontosaurs, Jordan C. Oldham

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

Thomas Kuhn in his famous work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions laid out the framework for his theory of how science changes. At the advent of dinosaur paleontology fossil hunters like Gideon Mantell discovered some of the first dinosaurs like Iguanodon and Megalosaurus. Through new disciples like Georges Cuvier’s comparative anatomy lead early dinosaur paleontologist to reconstruct them like giant reptiles of absurd proportions. This lead to the formation of a new paradigm that prehistoric animals like dinosaurs existed and eventually went extinct. The first reconstructions of dinosaur made them to look like giant counterparts of their modern cousins. …

Social Media: On Tech-Caves, Virtual Panopticism, And The Science Fiction-Like State In Which We Unwittingly Find Ourselves, Michael Major

Theses

Making use of three historic philosophical thought experiments, this paper blends psychological perspectives with philosophical reasoning to show how social media is corrupting our perception of reality, the result of which is ultimately detrimental to society as a whole. This is accomplished by first using Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” to analyze and discuss the ways in which social media is limiting humanity’s access to real knowledge. Next, Michel Foucault’s analysis of punishment in its social context, Discipline and Punish, is used to discuss the ways in which social media is adversely affecting our behavior. Finally, Robert Nozick’s “Experience …

Paradigms And Paleoartists: How Our Perception Of Dinosaurs Forms, Jordan C. Oldham

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

Thomas Kuhn in his famous work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions put forth his idea about how science changes. Kuhn thought that science changed by scientific revolutions brought on by an anomaly. After the anomaly, a crisis point would ensue as more scientists would research the anomaly. While in the process of research they would abandon the old paradigm in favor of one that would explain the anomaly. Not all anomalies create a crisis, but can rather result in a paradigm shift. These shifts occur within the old paradigm, and do not led to the formation of a new paradigm. …

Mathematicians Versus Philosophers In Recent Work On Mathematical Beauty, Viktor Blåsjö

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Recent attempts at defining mathematical beauty fall roughly into two schools of thought. One takes its starting point in the subjective experience of the mathematician and characterises mathematical beauty in cognitive terms. The other seeks to reduce beauty to objective notions such as truth, symmetry, or simplicity. This second approach is popular among analytic philosophers, who are committed to seeing mathematics and science as prototypically rational enterprises. I criticise this stance on the grounds that this commitment makes its supporters approach beauty in mathematics not with a genuine desire to sympathetically understand it, but with the preconceived goal of explaining …

Ideology In Physics: Ontological Naturalism And Theism Confront Big Bang, Cosmic Fine Tuning, And The Multiverse Of M-Theory, Anthony Walsh, Marc Ruffinengo

Journal of Ideology

The most profound questions that philosophers and scientists have asked across the centuries have been metaphysical and existential, such as “What is the meaning and purpose of life, why are we here, and why is there something rather than nothing?” There can be no definitive answers to these questions, so those who pose and propose answers to them necessarily engage ideology. Some physicists have become philosophers in that they are attempting to answer these profound questions with highly speculative theories as, for instance, Hawking and Mlodonow’s book The Grand Design (2010) which they tout as providing new answers to age-old …

The Participating Mind In The Quantum Universe, Menas Kafatos, Keun-Hang Susan Yang

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The Orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics, which followed the Copenhagen Interpretation but was enhanced by primarily Werner Heisenberg and John von Neumann into a fully developed theory, brought in, among others, the role of measurement, available choices and response of the quantum system. It is, more consistent and clear than other interpretations of quantum mechanics as it provides account of the interactions of observers with the external world. As such, the Orthodox interpretation does a lot more than just account for physical interactions in the atomic world, which was the original goal of quantum mechanics in the early part of …

Revolution In Ideology: Crafting A Holistic Scientific Dialectic, Nathan Neill

Dialogue & Nexus

Ideology drives scientific research far more than is acknowledged. Since science itself is conducted by individuals, each scientist has a biased conception of themselves and their surroundings relative to the rest of the universe, even if it is never explicated. This sense of relation to the greater universe is what defines the ideology of the individual. It is this sense of relation and self that creates the individual, who goes on to investigate the natural world by the scientific method. In this paper I will examine extant scientific ideology, particularly in Western science, and propose changes that could be helpful.

Philosophers On The Fringe: Albert Schweitzer, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Aldo Leopold, And The Wrongful Polarization Of Environmentalist History 2017, Minnie A.M. Lauzon

Master's Theses

This thesis includes three articles (chapters) intending to encourage clarification of an area of environmental history that has not received adequate attention since the publication of Roderick Nash’s Wilderness and the American Mind. Since its publication in 1967, little research has been dedicated to understanding the scholarly or philosophical influence Albert Schweitzer and Liberty Hyde Bailey had on Aldo Leopold. Since my undertaking of this topic, I have established two primary goals. First, I want to provide clarification to environmentalists, academics, and the populace at large that environmentalism does not have to be bound by rules and convention, but can …

Knowing How: A Computational Approach, Joseph A. Roman

Student Publications

With advances in Artificial Intelligences being achieved through the use of Artificial Neural Networks, we are now at the point where computers are able to do tasks that were previously only able to be accomplished by humans. These advancements must cause us to reconsider our previous understanding of how people come to know how to do a particular task. In order to unpack this question, I will first look to an account of knowing how presented by Jason Stanley in his book Know How. I will then look towards criticisms of this view before using evidence presented by the existence …

Edgar Allan Poe’S Cosmology And Natural Theology: A Constructive Postmodern Appreciation, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Contrary to some literary classifications, Edgar Allan Poe’s book-length prose poem Eureka is not intended to be fiction. In Eureka Poe was seriously attempting to advance ‘truth’ about the universe. Poe was doing natural science and poetry in the tradition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other natural philosophers. Poe’s prose poem is natural scientific astronomy and cosmology, plus natural theology, not science fiction.

The Trilogy Of Science: Filling The Knowledge Management Gap With Knowledge Science And Theory, Anthony Shawn Bates

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The international knowledge management field has different ways of investigating, developing, believing, and studying knowledge management. Knowledge management (KM) is distinguished deductively by know-how, and its intangible nature establishes different approaches to KM concepts, practices, and developments. Exploratory research and theoretical principles have formed functional intelligences from 1896 to 2013, leading to a knowledge management knowledge science (KMKS) concept that derived a grounded theory of knowledge activity (KAT). This study addressed the impact of knowledge production problems on KM practice. The purpose of this qualitative meta-analysis study was to fit KM practice within the framework of knowledge science (KS) study. …

Social Justice In Social-Ecological Systems: Resilience Through Stakeholder Engagement, Frederick I. Lauer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Successful management of social-ecological systems (SES) is predicated on quality collaborative exchanges between project stakeholders and management. The Southwest Crown of the Continent Collaborative (SWCC) Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) provided an opportunity to explore landscape scale collaborative management and SES outcomes. Global change and future uncertainty of landscapes prompted the SWCC to employ restoration treatment alternatives throughout 1.4 million acres of forests, most of which are publicly held. The SWCC currently monitors environmental and economic variables, with plans to monitor social variables. This thesis formalizes a proposed framework to investigate SES resilience, and explores public engagement as an …

Rationality, Parapsychology, And Artificial Intelligence In Military And Intelligence Research By The United States Government In The Cold War, Guy M. Lomeo

Theses and Dissertations

A study analyzing the roles of rationality, parapsychology, and artificial intelligence in military and intelligence research by the United States Government in the Cold War. An examination of the methodology behind the decisions to pursue research in two fields that were initially considered irrational.

Similarity, Adequacy, And Purpose: Understanding The Success Of Scientific Models, Melissa Jacquart

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A central component to scientific practice is the construction and use of scientific models. Scientists believe that the success of a model justifies making claims that go beyond the model itself. However, philosophical analysis of models suggests that drawing inferences about the world from successful models is more complex. In this dissertation I develop a framework that can help disentangle the related strands of evaluation of model success, model extendibility, and the ability to draw ampliative inferences about the world from models.

I present and critically assess two leading accounts of model assessment, arguing that neither is sufficient to provide …

Fundamental Awareness: A Framework For Integrating Science, Philosophy And Metaphysics, Neil D. Theise, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The ontologic framework of Fundamental Awareness proposed here assumes that non-dual Awareness is foundational to the universe, not arising from the interactions or structures of higher level phenomena. The framework allows comparison and integration of views from the three investigative domains concerned with understanding the nature of consciousness: science, philosophy, and metaphysics. In this framework, Awareness is the underlying reality, not reducible to anything else. Awareness and existence are the same. As such, the universe is non-material, self-organizing throughout, a holarchy of complementary, process driven, recursive interactions. The universe is both its own first observer and subject. Considering the world …

Tests For Intrinsicness Tested, Kelvin J. Mcqueen, René Van Woudenberg

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Various tests have been proposed as helps to identify intrinsic properties. This paper compares three prominent tests (we call them Perfect Duplication, Real Change, and Lonely) and shows that they fail to pass adequate verdicts on a set of three properties. The paper examines whether improved versions of the tests can reduce or remove these negative outcomes. We reach the sceptical conclusion that whereas some of the tests must be discarded as inadequate because they don’t yield definite results, the remaining tests depend for their application on the details of fundamental particle physics so much so that they cannot be …

The Physicist - Philosophers: The Legacy Of James Clerk Maxwell And Herrmann Von Helmholtz, Peter Skiff

Faculty Books & Manuscripts

One of the most effective, and most mysterious, tools of modern theoretical physics is a mathematical method including what is here called “field theory.” The success of this procedure in unraveling the “zoology” of fundamental particles and their behavior is a marvel. The philosophical context of this marvel is the source of endless academic controversy. The core of the method is a blend of mathematics and description created by “physicist-philosophers,” from Maxwell and Helmholtz to Einstein and Schrödinger. This book tries to unravel the mystery, or at least chronicle it.

Probabilistic Reasoning In Cosmology, Yann Benétreau-Dupin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cosmology raises novel philosophical questions regarding the use of probabilities in inference. This work aims at identifying and assessing lines of arguments and problematic principles in probabilistic reasoning in cosmology.

The first, second, and third papers deal with the intersection of two distinct problems: accounting for selection effects, and representing ignorance or indifference in probabilistic inferences. These two problems meet in the cosmology literature when anthropic considerations are used to predict cosmological parameters by conditionalizing the distribution of, e.g., the cosmological constant on the number of observers it allows for. However, uniform probability distributions usually appealed to in such arguments …

Models Of Time Travel And Their Consequences, Antonio M. Mantica

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

How do we travel through time? We know that we can move forward in it (we have no choice), but can we jump forward in time? Can we go backward in time? It also gives rise to other troubling questions: is time measurable in distinct increments, or does it flow continuously? In "Models of Time Travel and their Consequences," Antonio Mantica walks the reader through current understandings of how time functions in Einstein's universe and proposes three distinct models to explain it. Following that, he provides a list of experiments to credit or discredit the models. Appropriate for audiences of …

Toward A Theory Of Multi-Method Modeling And Simulation Approach, Mariusz A. Balaban

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The representation via simulation models can easily lead to simulation models too simple for their intended purpose, or with too much detail, making them hard to understand. This problem is related to limitations of the modeling and simulation methods. A multi-method Modeling and Simulation (M&S) approach has the potential for improved representation by taking advantage of methods' strengths and mitigating their weaknesses. Despite a high appeal for using multiple M&S methods, several related problems should be addressed first. The current level of theoretical, methodological, and pragmatic knowledge related to a multi-method M&S approach is limited. It is problematic that there …

Are There Really Two Different Bell’S Theorems?, Travis Norsen

Physics: Faculty Publications

This is a polemical response to Howard Wiseman’s recent paper, “The two Bell’s theorems of John Bell”. Wiseman argues that, in 1964, Bell established a conflict between the quantum mechanical predictions and the joint assumptions of determinism and (what is now usually known as) “parameter independence”. Only later, in 1976, did Bell, according to Wiseman, first establish a conflict between the quantum mechanical predictions and locality alone (in the specific form that Bell would sometimes call “local causality”). Thus, according to Wiseman, the long-standing disagreements about what, exactly, Bell’s theorem does and does not prove can be understood largely as …

Four Tails Problems For Dynamical Collapse Theories, Kelvin J. Mcqueen

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

The primary quantum mechanical equation of motion entails that measurements typically do not have determinate outcomes, but result in superpositions of all possible outcomes. Dynamical collapse theories (e.g. GRW) supplement this equation with a stochastic Gaussian collapse function, intended to collapse the superposition of outcomes into one outcome. But the Gaussian collapses are imperfect in a way that leaves the superpositions intact. This is the tails problem. There are several ways of making this problem more precise. But many authors dismiss the problem without considering the more severe formulations. Here I distinguish four distinct tails problems. The first (bare tails …

Mass Additivity And A Priori Entailment, Kelvin J. Mcqueen

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

The principle of mass additivity states that the mass of a composite object is the sum of the masses of its elementary components. Mass additivity is true in Newtonian mechanics but false in special relativity. Physicists have explained why mass additivity is true in Newtonian mechanics by reducing it to Newton’s microphysical laws. This reductive explanation does not fit well with deducibility theories of reductive explanation such as the modern Nagelian theory of reduction, and the a priori entailment theory of reduction that is prominent in the philosophy of mind. Nonetheless, I argue that a reconstruction of the explanation that …

Failure Of Science, Death Of Nature, H.F. Recher

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

As a people, Australians have lost contact with the world of nature, Risking the collapse of civilization. One factor in the alienation of nature in Australia is the failure of the scientific community to take responsibility for the technology created by the knowledge generated from scientific research. Science has failed to protect Australia's flora and fauna. Scientists must communicate more widely with society, but need to be educated on how to communicate and on their ethical responsibilities to others and other species. Government needs to show leadership in environmental management and nature conservation, while conservationists need to 'invert the paradigm', …

Identical Particles In Quantum Mechanics : Operational And Topological Considerations, Klil H. Neori

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation reports our investigation into the existence of anyons, which interpolate between bosons and fermions, in light of the Symmetrization Postulate, which states that only the two extremes exist. The Symmetrization Postulate can be understood as asserting that there are only two consistent ways of combining the behavior of distinguishable particles to obtain the behavior of identical ones. We showed that anyonic behavior then arises because of the way in which the probability amplitudes of distinguishable particles in two dimensions are affected by the topology of the space. These can then be combined in one of the ways arising …

All At One Point: The New Physics Of Italo Calvino And Jorge Luis Borges, Mark Thomas Rinaldi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work of comparative literary criticism focuses on the presence of mathematical and scientific concepts and imagery in the works of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, beginning with an historical overview of scientific philosophy and an introduction to the most significant scientific concepts of the last several centuries, before shifting to deep, scientifically-driven analyses of numerous individual fictions, and finally concluding with a meditation on the unexpectedly fictive aspects of science and mathematics. The close readings of these authors' fictions are contextualized with thorough explanations of the potential literary implications of theories from physics, mathematics, neuroscience and chaos theory. …

Schrödinger And Nietzsche And Life: Eternal Recurrence And The Conscious Now, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

The phenomenological question of consciousness usually associated with Husserl (although there are echoes of this in Augustine as in Marcus Aurelius, Kant and Schopenhauer), is the consciousness of the now, the present moment. I explore this consciousness for Erwin Schrödinger, which for him included reference to the Upaniṣads together with Nietzsche’s central teaching or “thinking” of the eternal recurrence of the same.

The Problem Of Confirmation In The Everett Interpretation, Emily Adlam

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

I argue that the Oxford school Everett interpretation is internally incoherent, because we cannot claim that in an Everettian universe the kinds of reasoning we have used to arrive at our beliefs about quantum mechanics would lead us to form true beliefs. I show that in an Everettian context, the experimental evidence that we have available could not provide empirical confirmation for quantum mechanics, and moreover that we would not even be able to establish reference to the theoretical entities of quantum mechanics. I then consider a range of existing Everettian approaches to the probability problem and show that they …

It's About Time: Dynamics Of Inflationary Cosmology As The Source Of The Asymmetry Of Time, Emre Keskin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project is about the asymmetry of time. The main source of discontent for physicists and philosophers alike is that even though in every physical theory we developed and/or discovered for explaining how the universe functions, the laws are time reversal invariant; there seems to be a very genuine asymmetry between the past and the future. The aim of this project is to examine several attempts to solve this friction between the laws of physics and the asymmetry and provide a new proposal that makes use of modern cosmology. In the recent history of physics and in contemporary philosophy of …

Advances In Documentation, Digital Curation, Virtual Exhibition, And A Test Of 3d Geometric Morhpometrics: A Case Study Of The Vanderpool Vessels From The Ancestral Caddo Territory, Robert Z. Selden Jr., Timothy K. Perttula, Michael J. O'Brien

CRHR: Archaeology

Three-dimensional (3D) digital scanning of archaeological materials is typically used as a tool for artifact documentation. With the permission of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, 3D documentation of Caddo funerary vessels from the Vanderpool site (41SM77) was conducted with the initial goal of ensuring that these data would be publicly available for future research long after the vessels were repatriated. A digital infrastructure was created to archive and disseminate the resultant 3D datasets, ensuring that they would be accessible by both researchers and the general public (CRHR 2014a). However, 3D imagery can be used for much more than documentation. To …