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Faraday to Einstein: constructing meaning in scientific theories

Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers (1984)

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  1. The multifaceted role of imagination in science and religion. A critical examination of its epistemic, creative and meaning-making functions.Ingrid Malm Lindberg - 2021 - Dissertation, Uppsala University
    The main purpose of this dissertation is to examine critically and discuss the role of imagination in science and religion, with particular emphasis on its possible epistemic, creative, and meaning-making functions. In order to answer my research questions, I apply theories and concepts from contemporary philosophy of mind on scientific and religious practices. This framework allows me to explore the mental state of imagination, not as an isolated phenomenon but, rather, as one of many mental states that co-exist and interplay (...)
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  • Mapping Experiment as a Learning Process: How the First Electromagnetic Motor Was Invented.David Gooding - 1990 - Science, Technology and Human Values 15 (2):165-201.
    Narrative accounts misrepresent discovery by reconstructing worlds ordered by success rather than the world as explored. Such worlds rarely contain the personal knowledge that informed actual exploration and experiment. This article describes an attempt to recover situated learning in a material environment, tracing the discovery of the first electromagnetic motor by Michael Faraday in September 1821 to show how he modeled new experience and invented procedures to communicate that novelty. The author introduces a notation to map experiment as an active (...)
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  • On Understanding: Maxwell on the Methods of Illustration and Scientific Metaphor.Jordi Cat - 2001 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 32 (3):395-441.
    In this paper I examine the notion and role of metaphors and illustrations in Maxwell's works in exact science as a pathway into a broader and richer philosophical conception of a scientist and scientific practice. While some of these notions and methods are still at work in current scientific research-from economics and biology to quantum computation and quantum field theory-, here I have chosen to attest to their entrenchment and complexity in actual science by attempting to make some conceptual sense (...)
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  • Rapid Learning in a Children's Museum via Analogical Comparison.Dedre Gentner, Susan C. Levine, Raedy Ping, Ashley Isaia, Sonica Dhillon, Claire Bradley & Garrett Honke - 2016 - Cognitive Science 40 (1):224-240.
    We tested whether analogical training could help children learn a key principle of elementary engineering—namely, the use of a diagonal brace to stabilize a structure. The context for this learning was a construction activity at the Chicago Children's Museum, in which children and their families build a model skyscraper together. The results indicate that even a single brief analogical comparison can confer insight. The results also reveal conditions that support analogical learning.
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  • Two problems for the explanatory coherence theory of acceptability.L. Jonathan Cohen - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):471-471.
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  • On the testability of ECHO.D. C. Earle - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):474-474.
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  • Texting ECHO on historical data.Jan M. Zytkow - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):489-490.
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  • Coherence and abduction.Paul O'Rorke - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):484-484.
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  • Probability and normativity.David Papineau - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):484-485.
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  • Theory autonomy and future promise.Matti Sintonen - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):488-488.
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  • Psychology, or sociology of science?N. E. Wetherick - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):489-489.
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  • Are explanatory coherence and a connectionist model necessary?Jerry R. Hobbs - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):476-477.
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  • Inference to the best explanation is basic.John R. Josephson - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):477-478.
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  • Mathematical Representations in Science: A Cognitive–Historical Case History.Ryan D. Tweney - 2009 - Topics in Cognitive Science 1 (4):758-776.
    The important role of mathematical representations in scientific thinking has received little attention from cognitive scientists. This study argues that neglect of this issue is unwarranted, given existing cognitive theories and laws, together with promising results from the cognitive historical analysis of several important scientists. In particular, while the mathematical wizardry of James Clerk Maxwell differed dramatically from the experimental approaches favored by Michael Faraday, Maxwell himself recognized Faraday as “in reality a mathematician of a very high order,” and his (...)
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  • Hypothetical and Inductive Heuristics.Scott E. Kleiner - 1990 - Philosophica 45.
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  • The Dynamics of Scientific Concepts: The Relevance of Epistemic Aims and Values.Ingo Brigandt - 2012 - In Uljana Feest & Friedrich Steinle (eds.), Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice. de Gruyter. pp. 75-103.
    The philosophy of science that grew out of logical positivism construed scientific knowledge in terms of set of interconnected beliefs about the world, such as theories and observation statements. Nowadays science is also conceived of as a dynamic process based on the various practices of individual scientists and the institutional settings of science. Two features particularly influence the dynamics of scientific knowledge: epistemic standards and aims (e.g., assumptions about what issues are currently in need of scientific study and explanation). While (...)
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  • Patterns of Medical Discovery.Paul Thagard - 2011 - In Fred Gifford (ed.), Philosophy of Medicine. Boston: Elsevier.
    Here are some of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine: blood circulation (1620s), vaccination, (1790s), anesthesia (1840s), germ theory (1860s), X- rays (1895), vitamins (early 1900s), antibiotics (1920s-1930s), insulin (1920s), and oncogenes (1970s). This list is highly varied, as it includes basic medical knowledge such has Harvey’s account of how the heart pumps blood, hypotheses about the causes of disease such as the germ theory, ideas about the treatments of diseases such as antibiotics, and medical instruments such (...)
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  • Explanatory coherence (plus commentary).Paul Thagard - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):435-467.
    This target article presents a new computational theory of explanatory coherence that applies to the acceptance and rejection of scientific hypotheses as well as to reasoning in everyday life, The theory consists of seven principles that establish relations of local coherence between a hypothesis and other propositions. A hypothesis coheres with propositions that it explains, or that explain it, or that participate with it in explaining other propositions, or that offer analogous explanations. Propositions are incoherent with each other if they (...)
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  • The Epistemic Goal of a Concept: Accounting for the Rationality of Semantic Change and Variation.Ingo Brigandt - 2010 - Synthese 177 (1):19-40.
    The discussion presents a framework of concepts that is intended to account for the rationality of semantic change and variation, suggesting that each scientific concept consists of three components of content: 1) reference, 2) inferential role, and 3) the epistemic goal pursued with the concept’s use. I argue that in the course of history a concept can change in any of these components, and that change in the concept’s inferential role and reference can be accounted for as being rational relative (...)
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  • Is history and philosophy of science withering on the Vine?Steve Fuller - 1991 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 21 (2):149-174.
    Nearly thirty years after the first stirrings of the Kuhnian revolution, history and philosophy of science continues to galvanize methodological discussions in all corners of the academy except its own. Evidence for this domestic stagnation appears in Warren Schmaus's thoughtful review of Social Epistemology in which Schmaus takes for granted that history of science is the ultimate court of appeal for disputes between philosophers and sociologists. As against this, this essay argues that such disputes may be better treated by experimental (...)
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  • How scientific ideas develop and how to develop scientific ideas.Marga Vicedo - 1995 - Biology and Philosophy 10 (4):489-499.
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  • Conceptual change in science and in science education.Nancy J. Nersessian - 1989 - Synthese 80 (1):163 - 183.
    There is substantial evidence that traditional instructional methods have not been successful in helping students to restructure their commonsense conceptions and learn the conceptual structures of scientific theories. This paper argues that the nature of the changes and the kinds of reasoning required in a major conceptual restructuring of a representation of a domain are fundamentally the same in the discovery and in the learning processes. Understanding conceptual change as it occurs in science and in learning science will require the (...)
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  • The justification and selection of scientific theories.James T. Cushing - 1989 - Synthese 78 (1):1 - 24.
    This paper is a critique of a project, outlined by Laudan et al. (1986) recently in this journal, for empirically testing philosophical models of change in science by comparing them against the historical record of actual scientific practice. While the basic idea of testing such models of change in the arena of science is itself an appealing one, serious questions can be raised about the suitability of seeking confirmation or disconfirmation for large numbers of specific theses drawn from a massive (...)
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  • Chains of meaning: A model for concept formation in contemporary physics theories.Andreas Bartels - 1995 - Synthese 105 (3):347 - 379.
    The rationality of scientific concept formation in theory transitions, challenged by the thesis of semantic incommensurability, can be restored by theChains of Meaning approach to concept formation. According to this approach, concepts of different, succeeding theories may be identified with respect to referential meaning, in spite of grave diversity of the mathematical structures characterizing them in their respective theories. The criterion of referential identity for concepts is that they meet a relation ofsemantic embedding, i.e. that the embedding concept can be (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Prefacr.Lorenzo Magnani, Nancy J. Nersessian & Paul Thagard - 2000 - Foundations of Science 5 (2):121-127.
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  • Galileo and the indispensability of scientific thought experiment.Tamar Szabó Gendler - 1998 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (3):397-424.
    By carefully examining one of the most famous thought experiments in the history of science—that by which Galileo is said to have refuted the Aristotelian theory that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones—I attempt to show that thought experiments play a distinctive role in scientific inquiry. Reasoning about particular entities within the context of an imaginary scenario can lead to rationally justified concluusions that—given the same initial information—would not be rationally justifiable on the basis of a straightforward argument.
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  • From Science Studies to Scientific Literacy: A View from the Classroom.Douglas Allchin - 2014 - Science & Education 23 (9):1911-1932.
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  • Nancy J. Nersessian: Creating Scientific Concepts.Ryan D. Tweney - 2012 - Science & Education 21 (4):591-596.
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  • Rethinking the ‘Discovery’ of the electron.Theodore Arabatzis - 1996 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 27 (4):405-435.
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  • Thagard's Principle 7 and Simpson's paradox.Robyn M. Dawes - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):472-473.
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  • What's in a link?Jerome A. Feldman - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):474-475.
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  • Extending explanatory coherence.Paul Thagard - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):490-502.
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  • Explanatory coherence in neural networks?Daniel S. Levine - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):479-479.
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  • New science for old.Bruce Mangan & Stephen Palmer - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):480-482.
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  • Multisemiosis and Incommensurability.S. K. Arun Murthi & Sundar Sarukkai - 2009 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 23 (3):297-311.
    Central to Kuhn's notion of incommensurability are the ideas of meaning variance and lexicon, and the impossibility of translation of terms across different theories. Such a notion of incommensurability is based on a particular understanding of what a scientific language is. In this paper we first attempt to understand this notion of scientific language in the context of incommensurability. We consider the consequences of the essential multisemiotic character of scientific theories and show how this leads to even a single theory (...)
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  • The distribution of representation.Lisa M. Osbeck & Nancy J. Nersessian - 2006 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 36 (2):141–160.
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  • Model‐Based Reasoning in Distributed Cognitive Systems.Nancy J. Nersessian - 2006 - Philosophy of Science 73 (5):699-709.
    This paper examines the nature of model-based reasoning in the interplay between theory and experiment in the context of biomedical engineering research laboratories, where problem solving involves using physical models. These "model systems" are sites of experimentation where in vitro models are used to screen, control, and simulate specific aspects of in vivo phenomena. As with all models, simulation devices are idealized representations, but they are also systems themselves, possessing engineering constraints. Drawing on research in contemporary cognitive science that construes (...)
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  • The method to "meaning": A reply to Leplin.Nancy J. Nersessian - 1991 - Philosophy of Science 58 (4):678-686.
    In his article, "Is Essentialism Unscientific?" (1988), Jarrett Leplin claims that I do not have sufficient grounds for rejecting the customary "philosophical method of discovery" that allows for the direct transfer of theories developed in the philosophy of language to science. While admitting that all attempts at transfer thus far have failed, he still maintains that method is sound. I argue that the wholesale failure of these attempts is reason enough to suspect the method and to try to devise one (...)
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  • Continuity through revolutions: A frame-based account of conceptual change during scientific revolutions.Xiang Chen & Peter Barker - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (3):223.
    In this paper we examine the pattern of conceptual change during scientific revolutions by using methods from cognitive psychology. We show that the changes characteristic of scientific revolutions, especially taxonomic changes, can occur in a continuous manner. Using the frame model of concept representation to capture structural relations within concepts and the direct links between concept and taxonomy, we develop an account of conceptual change in science that more adequately reflects the current understanding that episodes like the Copernican revolution are (...)
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  • Toward a cognitive-historical understanding of Michael faraday's research: Editor's introduction.Ryan D. Tweney - 2006 - Perspectives on Science 14 (1):1-6.
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  • Transforming temporal knowledge: Conceptual change between event concepts.Xiang Chen - 2005 - Perspectives on Science 13 (1):49-73.
    : This paper offers a preliminary analysis of conceptual change between event concepts. It begins with a brief review of the major findings of cognitive studies on event knowledge. The script model proposed by Schank and Abelson was the first attempt to represent event knowledge. Subsequent cognitive studies indicated that event knowledge is organized in the form of dimensional organizations in which temporally successive actions are related causally. This paper proposes a frame representation to capture and outline the internal structure (...)
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  • Defending realism on the proper ground.Athanassios Raftopoulos - 2006 - Philosophical Psychology 19 (1):47-77.
    'Epistemological constructivism' holds that vision is mediated by background preconceptions and is theory-laden. Hence, two persons with differing theoretical commitments see the world differently and they could agree on what they see only if they both espoused the same conceptual framework. This, in its turn, undermines the possibility of theory testing and choice on a common theory-neutral empirical basis. In this paper, I claim that the cognitive sciences suggest that a part of vision may be only indirectly penetrated by cognition (...)
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  • (1 other version)Should physicists preach what they practice?Nancy J. Nersessian - 1995 - Science & Education 4 (3):203-226.
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  • Does ECHO explain explanation? A psychological perspective.Joshua Klayman & Robin M. Hogarth - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3):478-479.
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  • A Pluralist Approach to Extension: The Role of Materiality in Scientific Practice for the Reference of Natural Kind Terms.Ann-Sophie Barwich - 2013 - Biological Theory 7 (2):100-108.
    This article argues for a different outlook on the concept of extension, especially for the reference of general terms in scientific practice. Scientific realist interpretations of the two predominant theories of meaning, namely Descriptivism and Causal Theory, contend that a stable cluster of descriptions or an initial baptism fixes the extension of a general term such as a natural kind term. This view in which the meaning of general terms is presented as monosemantic and the referents as stable, homogeneous, and (...)
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  • Information, economics, and evolution: What scope for a ménage à trois?Max Boisot - 1994 - World Futures 41 (4):227-256.
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  • (1 other version)Abstraction via generic modeling in concept formation in science.Nancy J. Nersessian - 2005 - Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 86 (1):117-144.
    Cases where analogy has played a significant role in the formation of a new scientific concept are well-documented. Yet, how is it that genuinely new representations can be constructed from existing representations? It is argued that the process of ‘generic modeling’ enables abstraction of features common to both the domain of the source of the analogy and of the target phenomena. The analysis focuses on James Clerk Maxwell's construction of the electromagnetic field concept. The mathematical representation Maxwell constructed turned out (...)
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  • Social science-based understandings of science: Reflections on Fuller.Arie W. Kruglanski - 1991 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 21 (2):223-231.
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  • (1 other version)Reviews. [REVIEW]Caroline Dunmore - 1987 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (4):573-575.
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  • Can cognitive explanations be eliminated?Kai Hakkarainen - 2003 - Science & Education 12 (7):671-689.
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