Philosophy of Science Commons^™

Book Review: Philosophy Of Science After Feminism By Janet Kourany, Gizem Karaali

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Janet Kourany’s book is a strange one: published by Oxford University Press (as a part of its Studies in Feminist Philosophy series), it is an academically oriented book, but reading it, you sense that this is not yet another theoretical monograph. For Kourany has her ax to grind, and more importantly she has a program to promote. The program is for philosophers of science and is motivated and encouraged by the amazing work done in the past few decades by feminist scientists and feminist scholars of science, technology, and society. In the following I will try to explain why I …

Oyun: A New, Free Program For Iterated Prisoner’S Dilemma Tournaments In The Classroom, Charles H. Pence, Lara Buchak

Faculty Publications

Evolutionary applications of game theory present one of the most pedagogically accessible varieties of genuine, contemporary theoretical biology. We present here Oyun (oy-oon, http://charlespence.net/oyun), a program designed to run iterated prisoner's dilemma tournaments, competitions between prisoner's dilemma strategies developed by the students themselves. Using this software, students are able to readily design and tweak their own strategies, and to see how they fare both in round-robin tournaments and in “evolutionary” tournaments, where the scores in a given “generation” directly determine contribution to the population in the next generation. Oyun is freely available, runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, …

Schrödinger And Nietzsche On Life: The Eternal Recurrence Of The Same, Babette Babich

Working Papers

Schrödinger and Nietzsche on Life: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same

This essay explores Schrödinger’s reflections on measurement, consciousness, and personal identity. Schrödinger’s, What Is Life? is read together with Nietzsche’s own reflections on the same question, in his aphorism What is Life? together with Nietzsche’s teaching of the eternal return of the selfsame. Schrödinger’s own thinking is influenced as is Nietzsche’s by Schopenhauer but Schrödinger also has the Vedic tradition as this influenced Schopenhauer himself in view.

The Quantum Dialectic, Logan Kelley

Pitzer Senior Theses

A philosophic account of quantum physics. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part I is dedicated to laying the groundwork of quantum physics, and explaining some of the primary difficulties. Subjects of interest will include the principle of locality, the quantum uncertainty principle, and Einstein's criterion for reality. Quantum dilemmas discussed include the double-slit experiment, observations of spin and polarization, EPR, and Bell's theorem. The first part will argue that mathematical-physical descriptions of the world fall short of explaining the experimental observations of quantum phenomenon. The problem, as will be argued, is framework of the physical descriptive schema. Part …

Holism And Non-Separability Applied To Quantum Mechanics, Catherine E. Nisson

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Einstein was never satisfied with quantum mechanics. He argued that quantum mechanics was incomplete for two main reasons; it violated the locality principle and the separability principle. The violation of separability is an unavoidable consequence of quantum interactions. Non-separability can be seen in quantum entanglement. Non-locality, however, is more controversial. Einstein and his associates published the EPR paper in order to argue for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics. Years later, John Bell formulated what became known as the Bell Inequalities in response to the EPR paper. The Bell Inequalities are seen as a major obstacle for quantum locality. I will …

The Economics Of The Atomic Bomb: Cost And Utilization, Jonathan M. Davis Mr.

Senior Honors Theses

Few moments in human history can be compared to the culmination of events that brought the atomic bomb into creation.  It is incredible to contemplate that while a nation was fighting a two front war that spanned from Europe into the Pacific, that the United States was able to utilize the time, energy, brains, materials, manpower, and capital to complete a project in four years. That under any other circumstances would have taken greater than half a century to complete.

First, this thesis will discuss breakthroughs in research that led scientists to believe that the atomic weapons could be built, …

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 …

The Exploratory Value Of Agent-Based Models In Social Science, Ricardo Andress Rivera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

N/A

Cold War Origins Of The International Federation For Information Processing, Ksenia Tatarchenko

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) was born as a nongovernmental federation with the main goal of bringing together computer professionals from countries in the East and West. This article examines the Cold War context of the IFIP's origins and the mechanisms its founders used to reconcile computing and politics and to construct computing as an international discipline.

On Relational Quantum Mechanics, Oscar Acosta

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A problem facing quantum mechanics is that there are a number of views or interpretations available that purport to 'explain' quantum mechanics. In this paper I discuss and analyze the view of relational quantum mechanics by Carlo Rovelli in the context of theoretical underdetermination. I will show that even though Rovelli offers a view that consolidates some of the aspects of competing theories it still falls short of breaking out of the theoretical underdetermination. The criteria that I have used to consider a theory successful in this context is one that increases the predictive output of quantum theory. Lacking an …

Zeno Of Elea: Where Space, Time, Physics, And Philosophy Converge An Everyman’S Introduction To An Unsung Hero Of Philosophy, William Turner

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Zeno of Elea, despite being among the most important of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, is frequently overlooked by philosophers and scientists alike in modern times. Zeno of Elea’s arguments on have not only been an impetus for the most important scientific and mathematical theories in human history, his arguments still serve as a basis for modern problems and theoretical speculations. This is a study of his arguments on motion, the purpose they have served in the history of science, and modern applications of Zeno of Elea’s arguments on motion.

Unruly Complexity: Ecology, Interpretation, Engagement, Peter Taylor

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publication Series

Ambitiously identifying fresh issues in the study of complex systems, Peter J. Taylor, in a model of interdisciplinary exploration, makes these concerns accessible to scholars in the fields of ecology, environmental science, and science studies. Unruly Complexity explores concepts used to deal with complexity in three realms: ecology and socio-environmental change; the collective constitution of knowledge; and the interpretations of science as they influence subsequent research.

For each realm Taylor shows that unruly complexity-situations that lack definite boundaries, where what goes on "outside" continually restructures what is "inside," and where diverse processes come together to produce change-should not be suppressed …

From Guts To God: Credulity, Postmodernism, And Contemporary Physics, Michael Hardin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

In an attempt to remove one of the major misunderstandings made by individuals in the humanities about contemporary physics, the issue of incredulity, this essay examines Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge against contemporary and twentieth-century theories and discoveries in physics. One of the best arguments against incredulity is the frequent use of god as metaphor within physics. In Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, two physicists, argue that the use of metaphor is one of the characteristics of postmodern science; this essay concludes with a discussion of those elements …

Of Parts And Wholes: Self-Similarity And Synecdoche In Science, Culture And Literature, Dirk Vanderbeke

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

The discussion here centers on how self-similarity, or parts resembling a whole, has been a recurring aspect in the most diverse fields of human thinking from antiquity to the present. Primary examples are drawn from physics, biology, cybernetics, alchemy, philosophy, myth and, of course, language and literature. The author argues that self-similar patterns are one of the persistent ways in which the human mind structures its experience and knowledge of the world, and then examines some of the questions that arise when an almost ubiquitous concept, structure or linguistic and literary phenomenon resurfaces in a new guise in …

Objectivity, Information, And Maxwell's Demon, Steven Weinstein

Dartmouth Scholarship

This paper examines some common measures of complexity, structure, and information, with an eye toward understanding the extent to which complexity or information‐content may be regarded as objective properties of individual objects. A form of contextual objectivity is proposed which renders the measures objective, and which largely resolves the puzzle of Maxwell's Demon.

Trends. Science Is Apolitical As Political, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This Trends article discusses the nature of science from a political psychological perspective.

Rethinking Mechanistic Explanation, Stuart Glennan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

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.

The Observing Body: Quantum Mechanics, The Anthropic Principles, And Panopticism, C. Jason Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

When philosopher of history and science Michel Serres wrote of that rare and narrow passage between the human sciences and the exact sciences [1], he intended to suggest not only the infrequency and difficulty of such contact, but also the unwillingness on either side to engage in what could be a dangerous, low-profit venture. It seems a long haul back to our common origins in philosophia, and typically, efforts to regain common ground between the disciplines have approached the problem as a one-sided move from the exact sciences to the study of the humanities. Notable exceptions such …

Abstracting Aristotle’S Philosophy Of Mathematics, John J. Cleary

Research Resources

In the history of science perhaps the most influential Aristotelian division was that

between mathematics and physics. From our modern perspective this seems like an unfortunate deviation from the Platonic unification of the two disciplines, which guided Kepler and Galileo towards the modern scientific revolution. By contrast, Aristotle’s sharp distinction between the disciplines seems to have led to a barren scholasticism in physics, together with an arid instrumentalism in Ptolemaic astronomy. On the positive side, however, astronomy was liberated from commonsense realism for the conceptual experiments of Aristarchus of Samos, whose heliocentric hypothesis was not adopted by later astronomers because …

Is Information Systems A Science? An Inquiry Into The Nature Of The Information Systems Discipline, Deepak Khazanchi, Bjørn Erik Munkvold

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

The Information Systems (IS) discipline is apparently undergoing an identity crisis. Academicians question the need for IS departments in colleges stating the absence of a core for the field and its integration within other business functions as a basis for its elimination. At the same time, many practitioners, as reflected in the US government's recent IT labor shortage report, continue to ignore IS as a distinct field of study. This article briefly outlines these and other challenges and argues that notwithstanding underlying philosophical differences, it can be concluded that IS is an emerging scientific discipline. This conclusion is reached through …

The Humanistic Aspects Of Mathematics And Their Importance, Philip J. Davis

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Dialectical Laws And Elementary Catastrophes, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the newly developed Catastrophe Theory of Rene Thorn and E.C. Zeeman, it is possible to find mathematical interpretation of certain aspects of Hegelian and Marxist dialectics. Specifically, the three "classical" dialectical principles, (1) the transformation of quantity into quality, ( 2) the mutual interpenetration(or - the unity and struggle) of opposites, and (3) the negation of the negation, can be modeled using the seven "elementary catastrophe " given by Thom , especially the catastrophe known as the "cusp." Far from being an empty metaphysics or scholasticism, as critics have argued , these principles embody genuine insights into a class …

The Intentionality Structure Of Complementarity, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

In this article Heelan argues that the return to the concrete and empirical implied in Heisenberg's insight on the importance of observables in physics was not, however, in Heisenberg's case, accompanied by a thorough re-thinking of the rationalist presuppositions of classical physics. The effect on Bohr, however, was to lead him to a complete rejection of rationalism and to the adoption of the contrary extreme, empiricism. The profound – though largely implicit – cause of the disagreement between Bohr and Heisenberg as to the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics, was resolved in the sumnler of 1927, by the common acceptance …

The Discovery Of Quantum Mechanics, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

In this chapter Heelan discusses how Heisenberg's insight of 1925, that physics should concern itself henceforth only with relations between observables, changed the intentionality-structure of physics. This insight led Heisenberg to the construction of a quantum mechanics of observables. Heelan briefly discusses the significance of his insighand of his rejection of Schrödinger's wave mechanics; the novelty of quantum mechanics as a physical theory, and the meaning he attributed to its most surprising result, viz., the Indeterminacy Relations. The crisis was a crisis of the rationalism inherent in the outlook of classical physics, and Heisenberg's insistence on "observable quantities" was a …

Scholasticism An Intellectual Basis And Unifying Principle Of Modern Science, Alice V. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Amid the almost uninterrupted disintegration of systems during the last three centuries, the philosophy of St. Thomas has alone been able to stand the shock of criticism; it alone has proved sufficiently solid and comprehensive to serve as an intellectual basis and unifying principle for all the new facts and phenomena brought to light by modern science.