Overview
- Offers a philosophical discussion on mechanical explanations in physics and computer science
- Features a comprehensive historical, methodological and problem-oriented investigation
- Sheds new light on the topics of emergence and reduction in complex systems
Part of the book series: European Studies in Philosophy of Science (ESPS, volume 11)
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About this book
This volume offers a broad, philosophical discussion on mechanical explanations. Coverage ranges from historical approaches and general questions to physics and higher-level sciences . The contributors also consider the topics of complexity, emergence, and reduction.
Mechanistic explanations detail how certain properties of a whole stem from the causal activities of its parts. This kind of explanation is in particular employed in explanatory models of the behavior of complex systems. Often used in biology and neuroscience, mechanistic explanation models have been often overlooked in the philosophy of physics. The authors correct this surprising neglect. They trace these models back to their origins in physics. The papers present a comprehensive historical, methodological, and problem-oriented investigation. The contributors also investigate the conditions for using models of mechanistic explanations in physics. The last papers make the bridge from physics to economics,the theory of complex systems and computer science . This book will appeal to graduate students and researchers with an interest in the philosophy of science, scientific explanation, complex systems, models of explanation in physics higher level sciences, and causal mechanisms in science.Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
- Autonomous Action in Complex Mechanical Systems
- Causal Explanation
- Causal Mechanisms in Science
- Complex Systems
- Computation and Reality
- Computer Simulations in Physics
- Mechanical Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century
- Mechanistic Explanation
- Models of Explanation in Computer Science
- Models of Explanation in Physics
- Multilevel Reality and Mechanistic Explanations
- New Mechanistic Philosophy
- New Mechanistic Turn of Causal Epistemology
- Non-Reductionist Accounts of Explanation in the sciences
- Scientific Explanation
- Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches of Physics
- Multilevel Reality
- Mechanisms in Physics
Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Mechanisms in History and Today
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Mechanisms, Causality, and Multilevel Systems
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From Physics to Complexity and Computation
Reviews
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Gregor Schiemann is Professor for Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at the Bergische Universität in Wuppertal. He holds a diploma in physics and a PhD in Philosophy. His areas of specialization are: history and philosophy of science, the concept of nature and the relation between science and lifeworld. Selected publications: Hermann von Helmholtz's Mechanism: The Loss of Certainty (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009); Werner Heisenberg (München: Beck, 2008); as editor and author (with M. Heidelberger) The Significance of the Hypothetical in the Natural Sciences. (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2009), (with A. Nordmann and H. Radder) Science Transformed? Debating claims of an epochal break (Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); as editor (with D. Lehmkuhl and E. Scholz) Towards a Theory of Spacetime Theories (Dordrecht: Springer, 2017).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Mechanistic Explanations in Physics and Beyond
Editors: Brigitte Falkenburg, Gregor Schiemann
Series Title: European Studies in Philosophy of Science
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10707-9
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-10706-2Published: 09 September 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-10707-9Published: 28 August 2019
Series ISSN: 2365-4228
Series E-ISSN: 2365-4236
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 220
Number of Illustrations: 6 b/w illustrations
Topics: Philosophy of Mathematics, Classical Mechanics, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, History of Philosophy, Mathematics of Computing