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Models of Rationality and the History of ScienceDissertation, The University of Western Ontario (Canada). 1981.Thinkers as diverse as Kuhn and Salmon agree that should an account of scientific rationality not square with actual scientific practice, then this should be considered as a reductio ad absurdum of the proposed norms and not be taken as evidence that the history of science is in large measure irrational. While many are willing to accept the need to do justice to the history of science as a constraint on the acceptability of any candidate theory of scientific method, very few are willing to use t…Read more
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1Thought Experiments in Science, Philosophy, and the Arts (edited book)Routledge. 2012.From Lucretius throwing a spear beyond the boundary of the universe to Einstein racing against a beam of light, thought experiments stand as a fascinating challenge to the necessity of data in the empirical sciences. Are these experiments, conducted uniquely in our imagination, simply rhetorical devices or communication tools or are they an essential part of scientific practice? This volume surveys the current state of the debate and explores new avenues of research into the epistemology of thou…Read more
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36Latour’s Prosaic ScienceCanadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (2). 1991.The most embarrassing thing about ‘facts’ is the etymology of the word. The Latin facere means to make or construct. Bruno Latour, like so many other anti-realists who revel in the word’s history, thinks facts are made by us: they are a social construction. The view acquires some plausibility in Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts which Latour co-authored with Steve Woolgar.1 This work, first published a decade ago, has become a classic in the sociology of science litera…Read more
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33Platonism and laws: A reply to Demetra Sfendoni‐MentzouInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 8 (3). 1994.his paper is a reply to Demetra Sfendoni‐Mentzou; it defends a realist—indeed a platonist—account of laws of nature.
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49Platonism, Metaphor, and MathematicsDialogue 43 (1): 47-. 2004.RésuméDans leur livre récent, George Lakoff et Rafael Núñez se livrent à une critique naturaliste soutenue du platonisme traditionnel concernant les entités mathématiques. Ils affirment que des résultats récents en sciences cognitives démontrent qu'il est faux. En particulier, ils estiment que la découverte que la cognition mathématique s'appuie pour une large part sur les métaphores conceptuelles est incompatible avec le platonisme. Nous montrons ici que tel n'est pas le cas. Nous examinons et …Read more
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35History and the Norms of SciencePSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1980. 1980.Starting from the assumption that the history of science is, in some significant sense, rational and thus that historical episodes may serve as evidence in choosing between competing normative methodologies of science, the question arises: "Just what is this history-methodology evidential relation?" After examining the proposals of Laudan, a more plausible account is proposed.
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84What is applied mathematics?Foundations of Science 2 (1): 21-37. 1997.A number of issues connected with the nature of applied mathematics are discussed. Among the claims are these: mathematics "hooks onto" the world by providing models or representations, not by describing the world; classic platonism is to be preferred to structuralism; and several issues in the philosophy of science are intimately connected to the nature of applied mathematics
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172Thought Experiments in Science, Philosophy, and MathematicsCroatian Journal of Philosophy 7 (1): 3-27. 2007.Most disciplines make use of thought experiments, but physics and philosophy lead the pack with heavy dependence upon them. Often this is for conceptual clarification, but occasionally they provide real theoretical advances. In spite of their importance, however, thought experirnents have received rather little attention as a topic in their own right until recently. The situation has improved in the past few years, but a mere generation ago the entire published literature on thought experiments …Read more
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120Marco Panza and Andrea Sereni. Plato's Problem: An Introduction to Mathematical Platonism. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ISBN 978-0-230-36548-3 (hbk); 978-0-230-36549-0 (pbk); 978-1-13726147-2 (e-book); 978-1-13729813-3 (pdf). Pp. xi + 306 (review)Philosophia Mathematica (1). 2013.
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68D avid B ostock . Philosophy of mathematics: An introductionPhilosophia Mathematica 18 (1): 127-129. 2010.(No abstract is available for this citation)
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55The rational and the socialRoutledge. 1989.THE SOCIOLOGICAL TURN The problem we are concerned with is just this: How should we understand science? Are we to account for scientific knowledge (or ...
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66Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 23 (2): 226-227. 1983.
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43Realism, Miracles, and the Common CausePSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982. 1982.The principle of the common cause, which gets its justification from the miracle arguments, probably constitutes the best reason for being a scientific realist. However, results in quantum mechanics steming from the work of Bell raise difficulties which anti-realists have been quick to seize. The author tries to overcome the problem and save scientific realism by reformulating the principle of the common cause so that a distinction is made between a priori and a posteriori correlations.
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33Platonic explanation: Or, what abstract entities can do for youInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 3 (1). 1988.(1988). Platonic explanation: Or, what abstract entities can do for you. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 51-67. doi: 10.1080/02698598808573324
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118John D. Barrow, Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking, and BeingPhilosophia Mathematica 2 (3): 251-251. 1994.
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186What is a definition?Foundations of Science 3 (1): 111-132. 1998.According to the standard view of definition, all defined terms are mere stipulations, based on a small set of primitive terms. After a brief review of the Hilbert-Frege debate, this paper goes on to challenge the standard view in a number of ways. Examples from graph theory, for example, suggest that some key definitions stem from the way graphs are presented diagramatically and do not fit the standard view. Lakatos's account is also discussed, since he provides further examples that suggest ma…Read more
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59Newton's bucket, Einstein's elevator, Schrödinger's cat – these are some of the best-known examples of thought experiments in the natural sciences. But what function do these experiments perform? Are they really experiments at all? Can they help us gain a greater understanding of the natural world? How is it possible that we can learn new things just by thinking? In this revised and updated new edition of his classic text _The Laboratory of the Mind_, James Robert Brown continues to defend aprio…Read more
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58Review of M. Giaquinto, The Search for Certainty: A Philosophical Account of Foundations of Mathematics (review)Mind 113 (449): 177-179. 2004.
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27_Philosophy of Mathematics_ is an excellent introductory text. This student friendly book discusses the great philosophers and the importance of mathematics to their thought. It includes the following topics: * the mathematical image * platonism * picture-proofs * applied mathematics * Hilbert and Godel * knots and nations * definitions * picture-proofs and Wittgenstein * computation, proof and conjecture. The book is ideal for courses on philosophy of mathematics and logic.
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1Michael Redhead, Incompleteness, Nonlocality, and Realism: A Prolegomenon to the Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 8 (8): 316-320. 1988.
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24EPR As A Priori ScienceCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 18 (sup1): 253-272. 1992.Contemporary empiricism is closely allied with naturalism. Not only do empiricists hold that all our knowledge is based upon sensory experience, but they also tend to offer some sort of causal account of how this experience comes about. The causal ingredient in knowledge seems very plausible — after all, my knowing that there is a tea cup on my desk is based on sense impressions which are caused by the cup itself. Photons come from the cup to my eye; a signal is then sent down the optic nerve in…Read more
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University of Toronto, St. George CampusDepartment of Philosophy
Institute for the History and Philosophy of ScienceRetired faculty
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |