Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Philosophy & Social Aspects

"Creative Environments" is a follow-up on the book Creative Space in the same series and by the same authors, serving this time as editors of a broader book on computational intelligence and knowledge engineering tools for supporting knowledge creation. This book contains four parts. The first part presents a further development of models of knowledge creation presented already in Creative Space, in particular the Triple Helix of normal academic knowledge creation and a new, integrated model of normal academic and organizational knowledge creation, called Nanatsudaki (seven waterfalls)...

Alan Musgrave has consistently defended two positions that he regards as commonsensical - critical realism and critical rationalism. In defence of critcal realism he argues for the objective existence of the external world as opposed to idealism, as well as arguing for scientific realism against all anti-realist accounts of science. His critical rationalism is drawn from the work of Karl Popper and stands opposed to inductivist and irrationalist methodologies. In defence of these positions, Musgrave's writings have covered a wide range of topics in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of...

Contemporary discussions of the success of science often invoke an ancient metaphor from Plato's Phaedrus: successful theories should "carve nature at its joints." But is nature really "jointed"? Are there natural kinds of things around which our theories cut? The essays in this volume offer reflections by a distinguished group of philosophers on a series of intertwined issues in the metaphysics and epistemology of classification.

The contributors consider such topics as the relevance of natural kinds in inductive inference; the role of natural kinds in natural laws; the...

This volume shows how nanotechnology takes on a wide range of socio-historically specific meanings in the context of globalization, across multiple localities, institutions and collaborations, through diverse industries, research labs, and government agencies and in a variety of discussions within the public sphere itself. It explores the early origins of nanotechnologies; the social, economic, and political organization of the field; and the cultural and subjective meanings ascribed to nanotechnologies in social settings.

This exciting compendium brings together, for the first time, some of the foremost scholars of Rene Girard s mimetic theory, with leading imitation researchers from the cognitive, developmental, and neuro sciences. These chapters explore some of the major discoveries and developments concerning the foundational, yet previously overlooked, role of imitation in human life, revealing the unique theoretical links that can now be made from the neural basis of social interaction to the structure and evolution of human culture and religion. Together, mimetic scholars and imitation researchers are...

First, the book starts at a lower mathematical level than standard books with tensor calculus of sufficient maturity to make it possible to give detailed calculations of relativistic predictions of practical experiments. Self-contained introductions are given, for example vector calculus, differential calculus and integrations. Second, in-between calculations have been included,...