Tollaksen is a researcher concentrating in the field of reverse causality, the idea that both the past and the future affect the present. His results, if fully accepted, defy any sort of reductionist explanation. A necessary reductionist viewpoint -- a reductionist assumption a holist might say -- is the flow of time, and all particles trapped therein, from low entropy to high. Causality is central to reductionism. Yet, in Tollaksen's experiment, by the time the decisions -- the causal phenomena -- are made, the measurements -- the affected phenomena -- are not only already over but all the reduced elements involved with those measurements already dissipated, destroyed, or gone wherever it is photons go when physicists are done with them. Tollaksen's experiment suggests that Pascal's barometer reads 30 inches of mercury not just because of what the atmospheric pressure is (at which it arrived by being what it was)…...

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Bibliography

1. "Holism in Science" Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web 28 March 2010

2. "Reductionism" Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web 28 March 2010

3. Merali, Zeeya "Back From the Future" Discover Magazine April 2010 pp. 39-44. Print.

Scientific Explanation
Must every scientific explanation contain a law of nature? For those who support the Deductive-Nomological Account, the answer is yes. Discuss critically the arguments for and against this view, and present your own analysis of which is stronger.

Date of Submittal

Must every scientific explanation contain a law of nature? For those who support the Deductive-Nomological Account, the answer is yes. Discuss critically the arguments for and against this view, and present your own analysis of which is stronger.

Deductive-Nomological Account

Arguments for and against the statement

Must every scientific explanation contain a law of nature? For those who support the Deductive-Nomological Account, the answer is yes. Discuss critically the arguments for and against this view, and present your own analysis of which is stronger.

Introduction

"Explanation" is sometimes used in what might be called its "pedagogical" or "clarificatory" sense, as opposed to the sense of explanation that we use when we want to talk about…...

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References

C.G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim. (1948) Studies in the logic of explanation. Philosophy of Science, 15:135-175,.

CG. Hempel.( 1965) Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. Free Press, New York,.

CG. Hempel. (1963). Explanation and prediction by covering laws. In Bernard Baumrin, editor, Philosophy of Science: The Delaware Seminar, pages 107-133, New York,. John Wiley and Sons.

D. Hume.(1980). Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Hackett, Indianopolis,. Contains the Posthumous Essays. Edited by Richard H. Popkin.

philosophy of science as developed by empiricists such as David Hume and completed by the logical positivist group. hy do they think truth can be best found by using the senses, the experimental method, and probability? Explain the verifiability theory and its meaning for such subjects as God, the super-natural, justice, morality, and political science. hat are the advantages and the limitations of this philosophical view?
The "Verifiability" or "Verificationist Theory of meaning" states that to understand a statement and to verify it one must first begin with a statement that can be proven true or false through sensory data. (Logic: The Verifiablity Theory of Meaning, 2004) In the Empiricist philosophy towards science, the source of all meaning is ultimately human sensory experience. Only meaningful statements can be true or false. Only statements whose meaning can be verified in observational terms can be true or false. This is in contrast…...

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Works Cited

Boyd, Richard. "Confirmation, Semantics and the Interpretation of Scientific Theory."  http://www.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.dir/SST/boyd.htm 

Feiser. James. "David Hume (1711-1776): Metaphysics and Epistemology." The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/h/humeepis.htm 

Logic: The Verifiability Theory of meaning. Theology Web. 11 Dec 2004

 http://www.theology.edu/logic/logic10.htm

More importantly, however, contemporary realists differ from Nightingale in four main areas, those of theistic assumption, methods of research, determinism, and naturalism. While contemporary realists certainly agree with Nightingale's position that simply realizing fact is not enough, and that actions based on findings is important (Porter, 2001), Nightingale inserted a certain assumption of God into her realistic viewpoints that modern realism avoids. Whereas Nightingale supported the concept that man's actions were dictated by God, modern realists recognize specific non-theistic causes for behaviors.

Secondly, Nightingale relied solely on quantitative method of research, since such methods were most available in her period. Such methods, involving the scientific, external, specific identification of patterns of events, are useful, but modern realists understand the need for individualistic understanding of information. Whereas Nightingale's focus was on identifying the patterns of relationships, modern realists focus more on understanding those relationships (Porter, 2001).

Third, modern realists differ slightly from Nightingale…...

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References

Barker, P.J., Reynolds, W., and Stevenson, C. (1999.) The human science basis of psychiatric nursing: theory and practice. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 25, 25-34.

Bashford, A. (2000.) Domestic scientists: Modernity, gender, and the negotiation of science in Australian medicine. Journal of Woman's History, 12(2), pp. 137.

Lawler, J. Knowing the body and embodiment: methodologies, discourses, and nursing. In J. Lawler (Ed.), The Body in Nursing (pp, 38-45). Melbourne, Churchill Livingstone.

Porter, S. (2001.) Nightingale's realist philosophy of science. Nursing Philosophy, 2, 14-25.

If the anomaly resists explanation within the paradigm, the paradigm is altered to include the anomaly. Therefore, to lead to a true crisis and to form the foundation of a scientific revolution, an anomaly must conflict with the basic tenets of the paradigm. In addition, the anomaly cannot be answered by normal research and problem-solving skills within the paradigm, regardless of the modifications.
Therefore, it can be said that crises and scientific revolution both begin with the recognition of an anomaly and the loosening of a paradigm and its associated rules. As the anomaly becomes more widely recognized, more research is devoted to resolving the anomaly, which changes the face of the discipline. As the anomaly is explained, it causes competition between competing explanations of the original paradigm. The result is that there are only three ways that a crisis can be resolved. The first method is for scientists to…...

Philosophy
Kuhn's ationale on the Irrationality of Scientific evolutions

"Communities in this sense exist, of course, at numerous levels. The most global is the community of all natural scientists."

~Thomas S. Kuhn, from The Structure of Scientific evolutions

To understand Thomas Kuhn's ideas regarding scientific revolutions, one must have a grasp on Kuhn's ideas relating to the history of science in general. Kuhn's perspective on the history of science is that scientific knowledge is not accumulative. He did not perceive the accumulation of knowledge as linear. Thus, before Kuhn explains the irrationality of scientific revolutions, he explains the irrationality of the historical picture of science in general. The paper will contend that scientific revolutions are irrational because science is irrational. As will be demonstrated by Kuhn and other authors, there is no specific logic as to why some theories and paradigms become popular and other do not. To paraphrase Kuhn, often whoever presented the…...

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References:

Andersen, H., Barker, P., & Chen, X. 'Kuhn's mature philosophy of science and cognitive psychology.' Philosophical Psychology, Volume 9, issue 3, 1996, p. 347 -- 363.

Bird, Alexander, 'Thomas Kuhn', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), , 2011 (accessed 2012 March 14).

Budd, J.M., & Hill, H. 'The Cognitive and Social Lives of Paradigms in Information Science.' , 2007 (accessed 2012 March 15).

Eng, L. 'The accidental rebel: Thomas Kuhn and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.' STS Concepts, , 2011, (accessed 2012 March 14).

Science and Religion: Conflict
Historical and Psychological Reasons for the Conflict Between Science and Religion

There is obvious controversy on the tensions between science and religion. A growing number of well-known figures deny any logical conflict between science and religion. For example, Langdon Gilkey says the following:

[T]o say that evolution' excludes God' is [. . .] merely to say that it is a theory within natural science. It is not to say that this theory is essentially atheistic or represents atheism. It is because science is limited to a certain level of explanation that scientific and religious theories can exist side by side without excluding one another, that one person can hold both to the scientific accounts of origins and to a religious account, to the creation of all things by God [. . .].

Ian Barbour believes that science and religion are "complementary languages," complementary ways of analyzing the same reality from…...

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Works Cited

Gould, Stephen Jay. Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (NY: Ballantine Books) 1999.

Holtzmann, Seth. Science and Relgion: The Categorial Conflct. International Journal For Philosophy of Religion. 2003, 54:77-99.

The information collected through these observations would then be documented and organized in ways that support the understanding of the underlying phenomena (Wolff, 2012).
Throughout history, scientific revolution has always centered on investigations that are conducted and developed through various observations. This process of investigation or observation has also included the review of existing scientific beliefs or practices. According to Francis Bacon, scientific revolution begins from existing evidence and gradually proceeds from specific observations to provisional generalizations or theories. The process is then cautiously repeated to establish some general truths that can be the basis of people's beliefs.

The scientific investigations that form the nature of scientific revolution are also based on observations that are directed by theory. ather than the mere collection and tabulation of data, scientific observations are in the form of hypotheses, which are also known as experiments. This is largely because experiments help in approving or disapproving…...

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Reference:

Wolff, R.P. (2012). Philosophy of science. In About philosophy. Pearson Education, Inc.

Philosophy of Chemistry
The work of Scerri (2000) asks the question of what could the connections between chemistry and philosophy possible be "apart from the obvious superficial one of their both representing quests for knowledge?" (p.1) Scerri states that in the view of the chemist "the philosopher -- who conducts no experiments whatsoever -- is not worthy of very high esteem. From the scientific perspective, philosophical views do not seem very dynamic, since they sometime stem from established philosophical doctrines or a priori beliefs about the ways the world should be." (2000, p.1) It is reported as well that philosophers "for their part are proud of their training in rigorous ways of thinking. They freely admit to not engaging in the grubby details of the experimental world because such activities might limit the generalities of their claims and of their attempts to depict reality in its broadest terms." (Scerri, 2000, p.1)

elief…...

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Bibliography

Scerri, ER (1997) Philosophy of Chemistry -- A New Interdisciplinary Field?. Retrieved from:  http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/scerri/pdf/poc_=JCE_article.pdf 

Hoffmann, R. The Same and Not the Same; Columbia University Press: New York, 1995. Knight, D. Ideas in Chemistry, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 1992. Nye, M.J. From Chemical Philosophy to Theoretical Chemistry; University of California Press: Berkeley, 1993. Laszlo, P. La Parole des Choses; Collection Savoir-Science: Paris, 1993. Hoffmann, R.; Laszlo, P. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Engl. 1991, 30, 1 -- 16

Scerri, ER and McIntyre, L (2000) The Case for the Philosophy of Chemistry. Retrieved from:  http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/256/1/Case_for_poc.pdf 

Schummer, J. (2006) Philosophy of Chemistry. in: Donald M. Borchert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Second Edition, Macmillan, New York 2006. Retrieved from:  http://www.joachimschummer.net/papers/2006_Philchem_MacmillanEncyclopedia.pdf

In other words, scientific realism says that science can find the truth about everything (Erickson, 2005, 58-60).
Conversely, if there is realism, there must follow anti-realism which, in science, means that there are certain unobservable, and therefore only speculative, claims about the universe. These speculations are not detectable within the construct of human understanding, ability to observe, or even to adequately define other than theoretically. For example, we can observe the function of quantum space, but not the reality (if there is such). We can observe the characteristics of the DNA molecule, but not the actual mechnism by which DNA actually works. By the very nature of our construct, then, even our instrumentation is biased to measure what we expect, not necessarily what is (Braver, 2007). Irrealism takes both these theories nd asks if the objects we study really exist -- or if it is the nature of the study…...

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REFERENCES

Braver, L. (2007). A Think of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism.

Chicago, IL.: Northwestern University Press.

Dacey, A. (2004, December). Is Science Making Us more Ignorant? Retrieved September

14, 2010, from Skeptical Inquirer:  http://www.csicop.org/si/show/is_science_making_us_more_ignorant

Hume's Problem Of Induction
David Hume is known as one of the foremost skeptics and humanists of his time, who exalted in mankind's ability to transform the world through science. Somewhat ironically, then, one of his most far-reaching philosophical contributions was to phrase the problem of induction which today is often thought to deny scientific knowledge. Just a couple chapters of a single book, Hume posed a question which has yet to be satisfactorily answered, despite the great intervening time. In its most simple form, Hume's problem merely asked what evidence there was to support the instinctive understanding that the future would resemble the past, and then pointed out that since he could see no logical reason why this should be the case, then he could not with reasonably say that it must be so. And despite attempts to dismiss his challenge, it seems no one has yet come up with…...

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References

Anderson, James. "Secular Responses to the Problem of Induction." 2002.

A www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/induction.html

Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Harvard Classics Online.  http://www.bartleby.com/37/3/ 

Loops, S. "Problem of Induction." 2000.  http://www.strange-loops.com/philinduction.html

Brain, and Heart: A Feminist Epistemology for the Natural Sciences," Hilary Rose attempts to create a philosophy of science that is not contingent upon female scientists seeing the world 'like men,' or as male scientists do. In other words, Rose suggests that rather than suggesting that the scientific perspective is gender neutral and can be assumed by both male and female individuals, females in the scientific profession must create a different epistemology or way of understanding and learning about the world that transcends the binaries created by the men whom have dominated the scientific profession until now.
Rose states that the sciences have traditionally created a sharp division between what is done by the hand, the mind, and the heart -- or through craft, intellect, and emotion. Rose suggests that such a division has not simply traditionally and falsely been used to exclude women from excelling in the intellectual, objective…...

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Works Cited

Keller, Evelyn Fox. Reflections On Gender And Science.

Rose, Hilary. "Hand, Brain, and Heart: A Feminist Epistemology for the Natural Sciences." Signs (1983).

Philosophy of Science
Scientific theories allow scientists to organize their observations regarding reality and existence, and predict or create future observations or results. Scientific theories need to be consistent, testable, verifiable and useful in order to be valid and reliable. Theories are typically ideas about the ways in which things work. Scientific theory relates to logical and empirical criteria that can be tested and validated. For science to exist and to be considered valid there must be a logically consistent idea presented to the public that explains certain conditions or realities. To be valid, science must explain something and should be proven via experimentation. Science should also enable the user to have a better understanding of the item or issue it is explaining. This relates to validity.

Thesis) will argue in this paper that science needs to be independently verified to be considered science but also that science does not need to…...

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References

Curd, Martin. Cover, J.A. Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998.

Strauss, James D. "The Heart of Postmodernism" Lincoln Christian Seminary, Lincoln: 2003. Available:

 http://www.worldvieweyes.org/resources/Strauss/HeartofPMKuhnPopperGoed.htm 

Jones, Roger. "Philosophy of Science." Retrieved November 16, 2003,  http://www.philosopher.org/uk/sci.htm

Philosophy is a one of the most perplexing, interesting and intriguing branch of study that seeks to understand the world from a viewpoint not commonly used. Three are many different branches of philosophy and three important ones include metaphysics, epistemology and axiology.
Epistemology refers to the branch of study that tries to go deeper into the meaning and scope of knowledge. The field is concerned with important and pertinent questions concerning knowledge such as what is knowledge, how is it acquired and how do we know some of things that we know. For example we understand that adding 2 and 2 would give us 4. Epistemology is simply concerned with the origin of this knowledge and not with how we add etc. Moser (2002) writes: "Epistemology characterized broadly, is an account of knowledge. Within the discipline of philosophy, epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge and justification: in particular,…...

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References

1. Edgar Sheffield Brightman, A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1940)

2 W.H. Walsh, Metaphysics (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1963)

3. Paul K. Moser, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)

4. Enrique Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation.

Philosophy & Science
The Subjectivity of Science: The role of philosophy in explaining the nature of science

James L. Christian, in his book "Philosophy," centers his discussion in providing a philosophical perspective to the nature of science. In his discussion of science in a philosophical context and its relation with human society, Christian asserts, " ... In general there is so much mathematical inconsistency to our experience of nature's operations that we have arrived at the point of accepting a naturalistic world-view of nature." In this passage, the author elucidates on the point that despite science's objective nature, its root and origin is still determined by human nature, which is inherently objective. This thesis is reflected in the works of Carl Hempel, Bertrand Russell, and Richard Feynman, men of philosophy and science, who have expressed their understanding of science's nature as human society experiences it in the contemporary society.

Carl Hempel's discourse, "Explanation…...