This collection of original essays offers a comprehensive examination of scientific progress, which has been a central topic in recent debates in philosophy of science. Traditionally, debates over scientific progress have focused on different methodological approaches, notably the epistemic and semantic approaches. The chapters in Part I of the book examine these two traditional approaches, as well as the newly revived functional and newly developed noetic approaches. Part II features in-depth case studies of scientific progress from the history of science. The chapters cover individual sciences including physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, seismology, psychology, sociology, economics, and medicine. Finally, Part III of the book explores important issues from contemporary philosophy of science. These chapters address the implications of scientific progress for the scientific realism/anti-realism debate, incommensurability, values in science, idealisation, scientific speculation, interdisciplinarity, and scientific perspectivalism. New Philosophical Perspectives on Scientific Progress will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on the history and philosophy of science.

This book seeks to provide new perspectives, to broaden the field of philosophy of science, or to renew themes that have had a great impact on the profession. Thus, after an initial chapter to situate the current trends in philosophy of science and the prospective of the near future, it offers contributions in five thematic blocks: I) Philosophy of Medicine and Climate Change; II) Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet; III) New Analyses of Probability and the Use of Mathematics in Practice; IV) Scientific Progress Revisited; and V) Scientific Realism and the Instrumentalist Alternative. Within this framework, the volume addresses such relevant issues as the methodological validity of medical evidence or decision making in situations of uncertainty; recent advances in Artificial Intelligence and the future of the Internet; current forms of empirically based methodological pluralism and new ways of understanding mathematics with scientific practice; and the revision of the approaches to scientific progress based on the experiences accumulated in recent decades.

Engineering mechanics is one of the fundamental branches of science that is important in the education of professional engineers of any major. Most of the basic engineering courses, such as mechanics of materials, fluid and gas mechanics, machine design, mechatronics, acoustics, vibrations, etc. are based on engineering mechanics courses. In order to absorb the materials of engineering mechanics, it is not enough to consume just theoretical laws and theorems—a student also must develop an ability to solve practical problems. Therefore, it is necessary to solve many problems independently. This book is a part of a four-book series designed to supplement the engineering mechanics courses. This series instructs and applies the principles required to solve practical engineering problems in the following branches of mechanics: statics, kinematics, dynamics, and advanced kinetics. Each book contains between 6 and 8 topics on its specific branch and each topic features 30 problems to be assigned as homework, tests, and/or midterm/final exams with the consent of the instructor. A solution of one similar sample problem from each topic is provided. This first book contains seven topics of statics, the branch of mechanics concerned with the analysis of forces acting on construction systems without an acceleration (a state of the static equilibrium). The book targets the undergraduate students of the sophomore/junior level majoring in science and engineering.

This book offers an integrated historical and philosophical examination of the origin of genetics. The author contends that an integrated HPS analysis helps us to have a better understanding of the history of genetics, and sheds light on some general issues in the philosophy of science. This book consists of three parts. It begins with historical problems, revisiting the significance of the work of Mendel, de Vries, and Weldon. Then it turns to integrated HPS problems, developing an exemplar-based analysis of the development and the progress in early genetics. Finally, it discusses philosophical problems: conceptual change, evidence, and theory choice. Part I lays out a new historiography, serving as a basis for the discussions in part II and part III. Part II introduces a new integrated HPS method to analyse and interpret the historiography in Part I and to re-examine the philosophical issues in Part III. Part III develops new philosophical accounts which will in turn make a better sense of the history of scientific practice more generally. This book provides a practical defence of integrated HPS: the best way to defend integrated HPS is to do it.

What is temperature, and how can we measure it correctly? These may seem like simple questions, but the most renowned scientists struggled with them throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. In Inventing Temperature, Chang examines how scientists first created thermometers; how they measured temperature beyond the reach of standard thermometers; and how they managed to assess the reliability and accuracy of these instruments without a circular reliance on the instruments themselves. In a discussion that brings together the history of science with the philosophy of science, Chang presents the simple eet challenging epistemic and technical questions about these instruments, and the complex web of abstract philosophical issues surrounding them. Chang's book shows that many items of knowledge that we take for granted now are in fact spectacular achievements, obtained only after a great deal of innovative thinking, painstaking experiments, bold conjectures, and controversy. Lurking behind these achievements are some very important philosophical questions about how and when people accept the authority of science.

This edited volume explores the interplay between philosophies in a wide-ranging analysis of how technological applications in science inform our systems of thought. Beginning with a historical background, the volume moves on to explore a host of topics, such as the uses of technology in scientific observations and experiments, the salient relationship between technology and mechanistic notions in science and the ways in which today’s vast and increasing computing power helps scientists achieve results that were previously unattainable. Technology allows today’s researchers to gather, in a matter of hours, data that would previously have taken weeks or months to assemble. It also acts as a kind of metaphor bank, providing biologists in particular with analogies (the heart as a ‘pump’, the nervous system as a ‘computer network’) that have become common linguistic currency. This book also examines the fundamental epistemological distinctions between technology and science and assesses their continued relevance. Given the increasing amalgamation of the philosophies of science and technology, this fresh addition to the literature features pioneering work in a promising new field that will appeal both to philosophers and scientific historiographers.