This session will examine these questions across several disciplines and historical periods, from Romantic literature to contemporary science textbooks. Certainly, the federal government, once formed, became a major factor in the shaping of Australian scientific agendas. In this year when Australia celebrates the centenary of federation, it is appropriate that we reflect on the place of science in Australian consciousness and in national affairs, in the years before and after 1901. These imply specific 'ontic commitments', assumptions about the sorts of things that there are. Discoveries in graph theory have led to precise formulations of independence in causal models, clarifying the relationship between causality and statistical relevance.
Any paper exploring causal models and process theories is welcome.
These philosophical debates have had far ranging implications in statistically orientated sciences, such as Psychology. Many scientific realists ground their position in an appeal to a commonsense realism about ordinary middle-sized objects. But, if as Sellars and others have suggested, there is a conflict between science and the commonsense or manifest image of the world, then it may not be possible to ground scientific realism in commonsense. This session will explore both the contrast between the manifest and scientific images of the world, with special reference to the relationship between scientific and commonsense realism. In recent years there have been various attempts to rewrite physics in terms of information.