bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
On the Analysis of History and the Interdependence of the Social Sciences
Authors: Fisher Franklin M. 
Published: November 2002

One intellectual excitement has . . . been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following another as wave follows wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize ... the play of the contingent and the unforeseen. H. A. L. Fischer[The scientist] says, ‘I will seek for relationships among events that seem always to hold in fact, and when it occurs that they do not hold, I will search for additional conditions and a broader model that will (until new exceptions are discovered) restore my power of prediction.‘ Herbert A. SimonThe views of some historians and philosophers of history as to the possibility of fruitful historical generalization seem at odds with the underlying methodology of the other social sciences. A formal model of the world historical process is here presented within which this apparent contradiction is seen to be resolvable in terms of modern theories of probability and stochastic processes. This is done by giving rigorous form to procedures and statements in the social sciences. A formal treatment of the dependence of an investigation in one discipline on previous studies both in that area and in other social and natural sciences then follows naturally.
On a Proposed Revolution in Logic
Authors: Castaneda Hector Neri 
Published: November 2002

In his The Uses of Argument (Cambridge University Press, 1958), S. Toulmin presents serious charges against ordinary logical theory, e.g., that it does not distinguish between analytic or formally valid or conclusive or warrant-using arguments, that the distinction between premises and conclusion is a bad oversimplification, that “major premise” conceals the distinction between inference-warrant and inference-backings, that logicians have been mistakenly working under an ideal of geometrical form.The paper argues that none of the charges is proven, that most of them cannot be proven, that Toulmin's new logic is at best only vaguely hinted at and that his suggestions are positively obscure or mistaken.
Confirming Power of Observations Metricized for Decisions among Hypotheses
Authors: Finch Henry A. 
Published: November 2002

Experimental observations are often taken in order to assist in making a choice between relevant hypotheses ~H and H. The power of observations in this decision is here metrically defined by information-theoretic concepts and Bayes' theorem. The exact (or maximum power) of a new observation to increase or decrease Pr(H) the prior probability that H is true; the power of that observation to modify the total amount of uncertainty involved in the choice between ~H and H: the power of a new observation to reduce uncertainty toward the ideal amount, zero; all these powers are systematically shown to be exact metrical functions ofwhere the numerator is the likelihood of the new observation given H, and the denominator is the “expectedness” of the observation.
Studies in The Empiricist Theory of Scientific Meaning
Authors: Rozeboom William W. 
Published: November 2002

Part I is concerned with the tenet of modern Emperical Realism that while the theoretical concepts employed in science obtain their meanings entirely from the connections their usage establishes with the data language, the referents of such terms may be “unobservables,” that is, entities which cannot be discussed within the data language alone. Such a view avoids both the restrictive excesses of logical positivism and the epistemic laxity of transcendentalism; however, it also necessitates a break with classical semantics, for it follows from the empirical realistic position that a theoretical term must in principle be capable of simultaneously designating not just one entity, but indefinitely many.Drawing upon the Carnapian explication of “analytic truth,” Part II examines a possible axiomatic basis for the empiricist theory of scientific meaningfulness to demonstrate that even if theoretical terms are able to designate entities inaccessible to the observation language, as held by Empirical Realism, so long as the meanings of theoretical terms derive from their connections with the observation language, the meaning content of a theory is exhausted by its observational consequences.
Concerning Mr. Feigl's “Vindication” of Induction
Authors: Kading Daniel 
Published: November 2002

I wish to examine the “justification” or “vindication” of inductive procedure that has been set forth in various places by the late Professor Reichenbach and by Professor Feigl, most recently by the latter. Although Professor Feigl has explicitly referred to this kind of a “vindication” as “trivial,” it is nevertheless evident, from the stress placed upon and the space devoted to this proposal, that both Professors Feigl and Reichenbach attach considerable importance to it. Thus Professor Feigl says:It has to be shown that the normal inductive procedure is reasonable, not merely by definition in the light of common usage, but that this definition itself is not merely a result of linguistic habituation or of an arbitrary fiat. This can be achieved, as I have tried to show..., largely in agreement with Reichenbach's ideas, if the adoption of the rule of induction is made a matter of practical justification (vindication) rather than a matter of theoretical justification (validation).
Safety, Strength, Simplicity
Authors: Goodman Nelson 
Published: November 2002

When the evidence leaves us with a choice among hypotheses of unequal strength, how is the choice to be made?Caution would counsel us to choose the weakest, the hypothesis that asserts the least, since it is the least likely to fail us later. But the principle of maximum safety quickly reduces to absurdity; for it always dictates the choice of a hypothesis that does not go beyond the evidence at all.
Numerosity, Number, Arithmetization, Measurement and Psychology
Authors: Nelson Thomas M. , Bartley S. Howard 
Published: November 2002

The paper aims to put certain basic mathematical elements and operations into an empirical perspective, evaluate the empirical status of various analytic operations widely used within psychology and suggest alternatives to procedures criticized as inadequate.Experimentation shows the “manyness” of items to be a perceptual quality for both young children and animals and that natural operations are performed by naive children analogous to those performed by persons tutored in arithmetic. Number, counting, arithmetic operations therefore can make distinctions that are not inevitably arbitrary, and conceptual operations can obviously have a status as natural events with psychology. If the elements and conceptual operations involved in mathematical systems were not inherent in physiological process, various primitive discriminations could not be possible. Also, since some calculi have a natural status in a given empirical circumstance, the axioms of others can not be satisfied. Therefore the psychologist when acting as an empirical scientist seeks a calculus having a structure whose elements are isomorphic with natural units of stimulus and response and whose operations are isomorphic with whatever natural processes are involved.Measurement poses a special problem for the empirical scientist. It concerns but a single class of natural qualities and this only in a limited way. The concept of quantity has a natural counterpart but quantity and measurement are not wholly analogous. Measurement is defined, as H. S. Leonard suggests, as a theoretical activity. Measurement theory has a formal structure but empirical end. Measurement hypothesizes about the position of a particular quality within a definite range of qualities. It therefore is beholden to definite empirical restrictions.Some hypotheses-making systems use terms and relations per se as the context and starting point for dealing with discriminable events. Such procedures are “transcendent.” In empirical science, questions are part of problem-solving activity and their reference is naturally restricted. In providing description and explanation, psychological researchers frequently use calculi in a transcendent way. This results in theories that are only quasi-empirical and “half” true.The roles measurement plays in psychology are discussed. Of particular concern are those cases in which the results of measuring or a theory of measurement are used to define the “real” units, or the “real” relations involved in problematic psychological events, and thence to describe and explain behaviors of interest. Metaphysical or ontological usages of measurement sometimes occur. The implication of these arguments with regard to a view of empirical science is discussed.
The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox Re-Examined
Authors: Sharp David H. 
Published: November 2002

This paper discusses the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox from a new point of view. In section II, the arguments by which Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen reach their paradoxical conclusions are presented. They are found to rest on two critical assumptions:
(a)that before a measurement is made on a system consisting of two non-interacting but correlated sub-systems, the state of the entire system is exactly represented by:(b)that the exact measurement of an observable A in one of the sub-systems is possible.In section III it is shown that assumption (b) is incorrect. Thus we conclude, as did Bohr, that the results of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen are not valid.The arguments of section III are quite distinct from Bohr's, and therefore in Section IV this work is related to that of Bohr.
Kinds and Criteria of Scientific Laws
Authors: Bunge Mario 
Published: November 2002

Factual statements that might qualify for the status of law statements are classed from various philosophically relevant standpoints (referents, precision, structure of predicates, extension, systemicity, inferential power, inception, ostensiveness, testability, levels, and determination categories). More than seven dozen of not mutually exclusive kinds of lawlike statements emerge. Strictly universal and counterfactually powerful statements are seen to constitute just one kind of lawlike statements; classificatory and some statistical laws, e.g., are shown not to comply with the requirements of universality and counterfactual force.Conditions for lawlike statements to be called laws are then examined, and a liberal criterion of lawfulness is finally proposed, which reads thus: A proposition is a law statement if and only if it isa posteriori(not logically true), general in some respect (does not refer to unique objects), has been satisfactorily corroborated for the time being in some domain, and belongs to a theory (whether adult or embryonic). It is claimed that criteria of laws change alongside with the emergence of new usages of the term ‘law’, and that by adopting a liberal criterion of lawfulness we would conform to contemporary usage and would cease inhibiting the search for regularities in the sciences of man.
Ontological Induction and the Logical Typology of Scientific Variables
Authors: Rozeboom William W. 
Published: November 2002

It is widely agreed among philosophers of science today that no formal pattern can possibly be found in the origins of scientific theory. There is no such thing as a “logic of discovery,” insists this view—a scientific hypothesis is susceptible to methodological critique only in its relation to empirical consequences derived after the hypothesis itself has emerged through a spontaneous creative inspiration. Yet confronted with the tautly directed thrust of theory-building as actually practiced at the cutting edge of scientific research, this romantic denial of method in the genesis of ideas takes on the appearance of myth.It is the contention of this article that as empirical data ramify in logical complexity, they deposit a hard sediment of theory according to a standard inductive pattern so primitively compelling that it must be recognized as one of the primary forms of inferential thought. This process, here called “ontological induction,” is a distillation out of unwieldly observed regularities of more conceptually tractable states hypothesized to underlie them, and is the wellspring of our beliefs in theoretical entities. Previous failure to recognize this pattern of induction has undoubtedly been in substantial measure a result of inadequate attention to the structural details of scientific propositions; for in order to exhibit the nature of ontological induction clearly, it is first necessary to make extended forays through sparsely explored methodological terrain—notably, the nature of scientific “variables,” the logical form of “laws,” and the type-hierarchy of scientific concepts.
The Concept of Information and the Unity of Science
Authors: Wilkinson John 
Published: November 2002

An attempt is made in this paper to analyze the purely formal nature of information-theoretic concepts. The suggestion follows that such concepts, used to supplement the logical and mathematical structure of the language of science, represent an addition to this language of such a sort as to allow the use of a unitary language for the description of phenomena. (The alternative to this approach must be certain multi-linguistic and mutually untranslatable descriptions of related phenomena, as with the various versions of Complementarity).This conception is tested for the specific case of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, in order to show that, with the assumption of a suitable and intuitively satisfactory definition of the quantity of information contained in a measurement, the Heisenberg Principle becomes an informational restriction arising from the formal properties of the symbols of a given language rather than as a “law” of nature.
The Case Against Quantum Duality
Authors: Landé Alfred 
Published: November 2002

(1) The idea that diffraction of matter particles can only be understood in terms of a temporary wave transformation or ‘double manifestation’ is an uneconomical ad hoc hypothesis, shattered already in 1923 by the unitary quantum theory of diffraction of Duane which in 1926 became part of the quantum mechanics, with a statistical interpretation of wave-like appearances.(2) Bohr's re-interpretation of Heisenberg's uncertainty of prediction as an indeterminacy of existence rests on an illegitimate literal translation of a wave result into particle language which is at variance with experience as well as with the statistical interpretation.(3) The fact that one can transform the simple and unitary particle mechanics into a complicated wavelike form is only a weak substitute for genuine dualism — as if one would see dualism in the transformability from the geo- to the heliocentric reference system.(4) The strongest argument against a symmetry of the particle and the wave theory of matter is the explainability of the former in terms of simple postulates of invariance, leaving the wave formalism as a purely ad hoc construction.
The Dematerialization of Matter
Authors: Hanson Norwood Russell 
Published: November 2002

1. The philosophical version of the primary-secondary distinction concerns (a) the ‘real’ properties of matter, (b) the epistemology of sensation, and (c) a contrast challenged by Berkely as illusory.The scientific version of the primary-secondary distinction concerns (a′) the physical properties of matter, (b′) a contrast essential within the history of atomism, and (c′) a contrast challenged by 20th century microphysics as de facto untenable.2. The primary-secondary distinction within physics can be interpreted in two ways:a. it can refer to content; e.g. ‘Matter has the properties of mass, shape, density… etc. — it only appears to have the properties of warmth, fragrance, etc.’ Or,b. it can refer to form; e.g. ‘Whatever properties our best theories accord to primary matter, e.g., electrons, these are by definition primary. All other properties of, e.g., macromatter, are derivative.’Concerning 2.a., this interpretation is simply false when 17th, 18th, or 19th century values for the property-variables are introduced. Concerning 2.b., this either uninformative or misleading. It is uninformative when it constitutes no more than a decision to use the word ‘primary’ as an umbrella-word for all the properties contemporary micro-physics accords to fundamental material particles, whatever these may be. It is misleading when it turns on an implicit contrast between certain properties particles may be said to have when ‘harnessed’ to a detector, and certain other properties these particles have when free and unharnessed to any detector. This contrast does not exist. Quantum-theoretic information is always about particles-and-their-detectors-in-combination. Dissolve this combination and you destroy any possible knowledge of the particle. Hence the notion of ‘completely objectifiable properties of particles’ is in principle unsound. (Cf. Hanson, American Journal of Physics, 27 January, 1959).
The Role of Teleonomy in Evolution
Authors: De Laguna Grace A. 
Published: November 2002

The papers presented at the Chicago Darwin Centennial suggest a fresh approach to the philosophical problem of ends in nature. In order to avoid the implications of “teleology,” assumed to refer only to the process of evolution as directed towards goals, the discussants use “teleonomy” in reference to the biological organism as end-directed (for reproduction). They accept “teleonomy” only as descriptive, and neglect its significance for theory.The present thesis is that each of the three recognized phases of universal evolution: inorganic, organic, and post-organic initiated by the advent of man and his culture, is characterized and made possible by the emergence of a distinctive type of teleonomic organization. While the process of evolutionary change is not itself end-directed to any goal, the end-directed structures which arise are not only “in nature” but are themselves crucial factors in evolution, since it is on them that natural selection operates. By using the concept of teleonomy, it is argued, one can avoid the issue of “mechanism” versus “teleology.”
Temporally-Asymmetric Principles, Parity between Explanation and Prediction, and Mechanism Versus Teleology
Authors: Grünbaum Adolf 
Published: November 2002

Three major ways in which temporal asymmetries enter into scientific induction are discussed as follows:1. An account is given of the physical basis for the temporal asymmetry of recordability, which obtains in the following sense: except for humanly recorded predictions and one other class of advance indicators to be discussed, interacting systems can contain reliable indicators of only their past and not of their future interactions. To deal with the exceptional cases of non-spontaneous “pre-records,” a clarification is offered of the essential differences in the conditions requisite to the production of an indicator having retrodictive significance (“post-record”), on the one hand, and of one having predictive significance (“prerecord” or recorded prediction), on the other. Purported counter-examples to the asymmetry of spontaneous recordability are refuted.2. It is shown how in cases of asymmetric recordability, the associated retrodiction-prediction asymmetry makes for an asymmetry of assertibility as between an explanandum (or an explanans) referring to a future event and one referring to a past one. But it is argued that this epistemological asymmetry in the assertibility per se must be clearly distinguished from a logical asymmetry between the past and the future in regard to the inferability (deductive or inductive) of the explanandum from the explanans. And it is then contended that the failure to distinguish between an epistemological and a logical asymmetry vitiates the critiques that recent writers have offered of the Popper-Hempel thesis, which affirms symmetry of inferability as between predictive and post-explanatory arguments. In reply to Scriven, it is maintained that predictions based on mere indicators (rather than causes) do not establish an asymmetry in scientific understanding as between predictive arguments and post-explanatory ones.3. As a further philosophical ramification of the retrodiction-prediction asymmetry, a set of sufficient conditions are stated for the correctness of philosophical mechanism as opposed to teleology.
An Objective Approach to Measurement of Behavior
Authors: Delgado R. Rodriguez , Delgado J. M. R. 
Published: November 2002

Theoretical problems concerning concepts of systems and measurement of behavior were encountered during experimental studies of the effects of electrical stimulation of the brain on the social behavior of a monkey colony. General problems involved in the description and measurement of behavior of natural systems, and especially of organisms are discussed.In animals with differentiated brain the general process of stimulation may be divided into four subprocesses: input, throughput, transput and output.Categories of behavior, temporal and spatial units, and logical rules of homogeneity for sorting data and comparing measurements and categories, are discussed. Simple behavioral units are divided into: 1. Individuala.static or posturalb.dynamic or gestural 2. Sociala.staticb.dynamic. Complex behavior is divided into: 1. Simultaneous 2. Sequential 3. Syntactic 4. Roles.The process of interpretation of data by the observer is assumed to be dependent upon actual behavior of the system, techniques of observation and experimentation, theoretical and technical processes of analysis, and synthesis and integration of data. Expression of behavior in mathematical terms insures greater accuracy than descriptive methods and enables data to be processed with computers.
The Lorentz-Formulae and the Metrical Principle
Authors: Törnebohm Håkan 
Published: November 2002

The Lorentz-formulae are deduced from three factual statements the physical meaning of which is explained in terms of operations with clocks, light-signals and measuring rods. These statements are:(1) The time-length of a process is invariant.(2) The velocity of light is the same in all inertial systems.(3) The velocity of light is independent of the source.It is also shown that these statements can be deduced from the Lorentz-formulae. They are the physical content of the latter.The principle of relativity and the light-principle together, however, contain more physical meaning than the Lorentz-formulae.Operational definitions are given for all relevant concepts.
On Teaching Marxist Epistemology
Authors: Dunham Barrows 
Published: November 2002

Materialism is the view that existence does not necessarily involve perceiving or being perceived, knowing or being known. Dialectics is the view that the universe is a system of entities in process of change, the dynamic arising from the impact of the parts on one another. The epistemology of Dialectical Materialism (Marxism) is therefore the view that truth (i.e. the correspondence of a sentence with fact) can be determined by the following rule: “Examine any alleged state of affairs as related to and distinguished from a total environment, and you will know whether or not the sentence alleging that state of affairs is true.”No special pedagogy is required for Marxist epistemology: the only rule is the usual rule of honesty and candor which bids us teach every subject as that subject actually is.