Foreword -- The Kaiserreich: Military power and science - 'Sturdy pillars of Germany's greatness' -- Einstein's path to Berlin -- World War I -- Upshot -- Einstein in private – not quite in private -- The Weimar Republic: Boycott of German science -- World renown -- Sponsorship – the Einstein Tower -- A target for right-wing propaganda and violence -- Emissary and emigré – Einstein's for…
What is a Law of Nature? -- Are there Laws of Nature at All? -- Can the Laws of Nature be Genuine Laws? -- Are the Laws of Logic Laws of Nature? -- Are the Laws of Mathematics Laws of Nature? -- Properties of Laws -- Does Every Law of Nature Express an Invariance (Symmetry)? -- Is Every Law of Nature Spacetime Invariant? -- Dynamical and Statistical Laws -- Laws, Boundary Conditions, and Consta…
Entropy and the Second Law -- Challenges (1870–1980) -- Modern Quantum Challenges: Theory -- Low-Temperature Experiments and Proposals -- Modern Classical Challenges -- Gravitational Challenges -- Chemical Nonequilibrium Steady States -- Plasma Paradoxes -- MEMS/NEMS Devices -- Special Topics.The second law of thermodynamics is considered one of the central laws of science, engineering and te…
Probabilistic Reasoning and Evidentiary Value -- Unreliable Probabilities, Risk Taking, and Decision Making -- Rights, Games and Social Choice -- The Dynamics of Belief Systems: Foundations vs. Coherence Theories -- The Role of Expectations in Reasoning -- How Logic Emerges from the Dynamics of Information -- Induction, Conceptual Spaces and AI -- Three Levels of Inductive Inference -- Framewor…
What’s New in Scientific Advice to Politics? -- Bioethical Controversies and Policy Advice: The Production of Ethical Expertise and its Role in the Substantiation of Political Decision-Making -- Advisory Systems in Pluralistic Knowledge Societies: A Criteria-Based Typology to Assess and Optimize Environmental Policy Advice -- Institutional Design for Socially Robust Knowledge: The National To…
The History of Acta Biotheoretica and the Nature of Theoretical Biology -- Images of the Genome: From Public Debates to Biology, and Back, and Forth -- The Functional Perspective of Organismal Biology -- Infectious Biology: Curse or Blessing? Reflections on Biology in Other Disciplines, with a Case Study of Migraine -- The Composite Species Concept: A Rigorous Basis for Cladistic Practice -- Th…
Preface -- What is consciousness?- The Global Neuronal Workspace model. An introduction to information theory. The Shannon Coding Theorem. More heuristics: a 'tuning theorem'. The Shannon-McMillan Theorem. The Rate Distortion Theorem. Large deviations -- Fluctuations. The fundamental homology with statistical physics. Cognition as generalized language -- Theory. Two neural network examples. Int…
What is Mental Disorder? -- Are Mental Disorders Natural Kinds? -- The Problem of Theory-Ladenness -- The D.S.M. and Feedback in Applied Science.Classifying Madness examines the conceptual foundations of the D.S.M., the main classification of mental disorders used by psychiatrists world-wide. It will be of interest to both mental health professionals and to philosophers interested in classifica…
Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- Chapter 1 Introduction -- Chapter 2 Models, theories and laws in philosophy of science and science education -- Chapter 3 Nature of science in science education: An integrated view -- Chapter 4 Understanding atomic models in chemistry: Why do models change? -- Chapter 5 Understanding stoichiometry: Do scientific laws help in learning science? -- Chapter…
Where does theory come from in educational research and how is it operationalized in diverse, interdisciplinary contexts and professional settings? This volume examines the places and spaces of theory in doctoral work across a wide range of interdisciplinary themes and fields of inquiry on a global scale.