This text focuses on two major issues: the nature of scientific inquiry and the relations between scientific disciplines. Designed to introduce the basic issues and concepts in the philosophy of science, Bechtel writes for an audience with little or no philosophical background.
The first part of the book explores the legacy of Logical Positivism and the subsequent post-Positivistic developments in the philosophy of science. The second section examines arguments for and against using a model of theory reduction to integrate scientific disciplines. The book concludes with a chapter...
This text focuses on two major issues: the nature of scientific inquiry and the relations between scientific disciplines. Designed to introduce the ba...
Emphasizing the relevance of philosophical work to investigations in other cognitive sciences, this text examines such issues as the meaning of language, the mind-body problem, the functionalist theories of cognition, and intentionality.
Emphasizing the relevance of philosophical work to investigations in other cognitive sciences, this text examines such issues as the meaning of langua...
This text aims to teach the constructions of good arguments first and then introduce criticism as a secondary skill. The emphasis is not on learning to name fallacies, but on being able to identify weaknesses in an argument so as to be able to construct an effective critique of that argument.
This text aims to teach the constructions of good arguments first and then introduce criticism as a secondary skill. The emphasis is not on learning t...
In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in divergent explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system...
In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in...
