This book explores the image of science in the modern world.

The representation of uncertainty is a central issue in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and is being addressed in many different ways. Each approach has its proponents, and each has had its detractors. However, there is now an in creasing move towards the belief that an eclectic approach is required to represent and reason under the many facets of uncertainty. We believe that the time is ripe for a wide ranging, yet accessible, survey of the main for malisms. In this book, we offer a broad perspective on uncertainty and approach es to managing uncertainty. Rather than provide a daunting mass of techni cal detail, we have focused on the foundations and intuitions behind the various schools. The aim has been to present in one volume an overview of the major issues and decisions to be made in representing uncertain knowl edge. We identify the central role of managing uncertainty to AI and Expert Systems, and provide a comprehensive introduction to the different aspects of uncertainty. We then describe the rationales, advantages and limitations of the major approaches that have been taken, using illustrative examples. The book ends with a review of the lessons learned and current research di rections in the field. The intended readership will include researchers and practitioners in volved in the design and implementation of Decision Support Systems, Ex pert Systems, other Knowledge-Based Systems and in Cognitive Science.

This study explores the relation between knowledge, reasons and justification. It argues that you can rely on what you know, since what you know can be a reason you have and you can rely on your reasons. But the assumption that knowledge allows for a chance of error makes this a controversial position in epistemology.

Data analysis is of upmost importance in the mining of big data, where knowledge discovery and inference are the basis for intelligent systems to support the real world applications. However, the process involves knowledge acquisition, representation, inference and data, Bayesian network (BN) is the key technology plays a key role in knowledge representation, in order to pave way to cope with incomplete, fuzzy data to solve the real-life problems.This book presents Bayesian network as a technology to support data-intensive and incremental learning in knowledge discovery, inference and data fusion in uncertain environment.

The extent to which teachers should make use of theoretical and expert knowledge as opposed to tacit experiential knowledge, and how these might be combined, is a perennial issue in discussions on pedagogy. This book addresses these debates through a creative development of the concept of productive uncertainty. Using case studies focusing on teachers working with children with autism, a particularly fertile crucible for considering uncertainty, the book explores how the radical 20th century psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion's epistemological approach to uncertainty can be used to re-frame Donald Schön's concept of reflection in action, offering a new perspective on the practice of teachers and other caring professionals. Several areas of potential uncertainty are identified, including uncertainty relating to areas of practice including diagnosis, the relationship between expert knowledge and practice, the implications of autism for autonomy and agency, and uncertainties in relation to the understanding of and use of new technologies. A strong argument is made, based on both theoretical and empirical grounds, that in juggling between theoretical and tacit knowledge in the classroom there is more to be gained by staying with the struggle with uncertainty than by fleeing from it too early, into the promise of expert solutions. Consideration is also given to the relative importance of specific theoretical training for teachers, both in general and in relation to working with children with special educational needs, in the context of international and UK policy developments in this area. This book will be of key value to researchers and postgraduates in the fields of education studies, teacher thinking and research, psychoanalytically informed psychosocial studies, as well as to practitioners working in special educational needs/autism education.

“This book was written late in the North American night, with the rumbling thuds and booming train horns of the nearby rail yard echoing through my windows, reminding me of the train hoppers and gutter punks out there rolling through the darkness.” In Drift, Jeff Ferrell shows how dislocation and disorientation can become phenomena in their own right. Examining the history of drifting, he situates contemporary drift within today’s economic, legal, and cultural dynamics. He also highlights a distinctly North American form of drift—that of the train-hopping hobo—by tracing the hobo’s legal and political history and by detailing his own immersion in the world of contemporary train-hoppers. Along the way, Ferrell sheds light on the ephemeral intensity of drifting communities and explores the contested politics of drift: the strategies that legal authorities employ to control drifters in the interest of economic development, the social and spatial dislocations that these strategies ironically exacerbate, and the ways in which drifters create their own slippery forms of resistance. Ferrell concludes that drift constitutes a necessary subject of social inquiry and a way of revitalizing social inquiry itself, offering as it does new models for knowing and engaging with the contemporary world.

This edited volume brings together a group of international researchers and theorists from various intellectual and analytic traditions to explore the role uncertainty plays in creativity, learning, and development. Contributors to this volume draw on existing programs of research as well as introduce new and even speculative directions for research, theory and practice. Learning and life are filled with uncertainty. Although the experience of uncertainty can cause emotional discomfort or cognitive rigidity, uncertainty serves as a catalyst and condition for change. In this way, uncertainty represents a core facet in the interrelationship among creativity, learning, and development. Considerations for both the benefits and potential costs of uncertainty will be addressed in this volume with an aim of understanding how uncertainty can be better understood in light of creativity, learning, and development. Taken together this volume stands to contribute to our collective understanding of the role that uncertainty plays in learning and life and highlights how conceptualizing and studying uncertainty in new ways can promote positive and lasting change.