Theory Building

This book explores new findings on the long-neglected topic of theory construction and discovery, and challenges the orthodox, current division of scientific development into discrete stages: the stage of generation of new hypotheses; the stage of collection of relevant data; the stage of justification of possible theories; and the final stage of selection from among equally confirmed theories.

This book systematically summarizes the current research progress of attachment ventilation, covering vertical wall attachment, column attachment, and adaptive attachment ventilation. Attachment ventilation is a high-performance ventilation mode that was first proposed by the author, Prof. Angui Li 20 years ago. Now it has been widely used in office spaces, subway stations, high-speed railway stations, international airport terminals, and other large spaces. This book introduces attachment ventilation in detail to eliminate the cooling/heating load of the occupied zone and provide an expected environment for the air-conditioned zone. Attachment ventilation combines the advantages of traditional mixed ventilation and displacement ventilation. This book consists of six chapters, covering a series of airflow patterns, mechanisms, parameter correlations, and attachment ventilation design methods. It is helpful for HVAC engineers to design attachment ventilation effectively.

This book introduces the theory of stochastic processes with applications taken from physics and finance. Fundamental concepts like the random walk or Brownian motion but also Levy-stable distributions are discussed. Applications are selected to show the interdisciplinary character of the concepts and methods. In the second edition of the book a discussion of extreme events ranging from their mathematical definition to their importance for financial crashes was included.

This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-​Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar).

What do we mean by semiotic perception? Why should the concepts of perception and expressivity be reinterpreted within the encompassing framework of a dynamic theory of semiotic fields and forms? Can we redeploy the concept of form in such a way as to make explicit such a native solidarity (‘chiasmatic’ would have said Merleau-Ponty) between perception, praxis and expression – and first and foremost in the activity of language, right to the heart of the life of the social and speaking animal that we are? What then would be the epistemological and ontological consequences, and how might this affect the way we describe semiolinguistic forms? This book aims to provide answers to these questions by opening up avenues of research on how to understand the linguistic and semiotic dimensions at work in the constitution of experience, both individual and collective.

This book, edited and authored by a closely collaborating network of social scientists and psychologists, recasts typical research topics in these fields into the language of nonlinear, dynamic and complex systems.