The highly sophisticated techniques of modern engineering are normally conceived of in practical terms. Corresponding to the instrumental function of technology, they are designed to direct the forces of nature according to human purposes. Yet, as soon as the realm of mere skills is exceeded, the intended useful results can only be achieved through planned and preconceived action processes involving the deliberately considered application of well designed tools and devices. This is to say that in all complex cases theoretical reasoning becomes an indispensable means to accomplish the...

'Human Communication' is a field of interest of enormous breadth, being one which has concerned students of many different disciplines. It spans the imagined 'gap' between the 'arts' and the 'sciences', but it forms no unified academic subject. There is no commonly accepted terminology to cover aU aspects. The eight articles comprising this book have been chosen to illustrate something of the diversity yet, at the same time, to be comprehensible to readers from different academic disciplines. They cannot pretend to cover the whole field Some attempt has been made to present them in an order...

This book has been written primarily for the applied and social scientist and student who longs for an integrated picture of the foundations on which his research must ultimately rest; but hopefully the book may also serve philosophers interested in applied disciplines and in systems methodology. If integration was the major motto, the need for a method ology, appropriate to the teleological peculiarities of all applied sciences, was the main impetus behind the conception of the present work. This need I felt a long time ago in my own area of analytical and empirical research in accounting...

noting in this connection that KotarbiIiski's assumptions were proved true many years later, and that increasingly representatives of various scientific disciplines have come to observe paradigms of efficiency which had often tended to be ignored; empirical studies involving a large concentration of personnel, financial resources and equipment are now guided by the principles of efficiency and economy. In his second paper Kotarbiriski referred to Alfred Espinas, the French philosopher and sociologist, and to other authors who repre- sented the praxiological viewpoint, together with that of...

In this book two ethical systems are described in the language of mathematics. Ordinarily mathematics is thought to be a science of quantity. Indeed, manipulation of quantities constitutes much of mathematics. Elementary applied mathematics deals with reckoning and measurement, where concrete quantities are objects of attention, such as counting sheep or weighing corno But the operations on these quantities are performed with the help of symbols, from which concrete referents have been 'abstracted out': 3 + 5 = 8 regardless of whether the symbols stand for numbers of sheep or tons of corno...

The highly sophisticated techniques of modern engineering are normally conceived of in practical terms. Corresponding to the instrumental function of technology, they are designed to direct the forces of nature according to human purposes. Yet, as soon as the realm of mere skills is exceeded, the intended useful results can only be achieved through planned and preconceived action processes involving the deliberately considered application of well designed tools and devices. This is to say that in all complex cases theoretical reasoning becomes an indispensable means to accomplish the...

The present volume helps to understand how the collection of miscellaneous disciplines, called the science of science, came into being. One tradition goes back to the Greek thinkers and includes practically every great name in the history of philosophy, since almost all philosophers took a stand on epistemological problems. To be sure, theory of knowledge is not to be identified with theory of science. Science is a relatively new phenomenon, dating from modern times. It is a source of knowledge, the main source (in our type of culture), but certainly not the only one. Also, epistemology deals...