Nature of Explanation Craik

This volume addresses the question of time from the perspective of the time of nature. Its aim is to provide some insights about the nature of time on the basis of the different uses of the concept of time in natural sciences. Presenting a dialogue between philosophy and science, it features a collection of papers that investigate the representation, modeling and understanding of time as they appear in physics, biology, geology and paleontology.

This expanded second edition of Relativity and the Nature of Spacetime c- tains several major changes and a number of additions to different ch- ters. Two chapters (Chaps. 6 and 7), which discussed two speci?c groups of arguments against the reality of spacetime, have been transformed into - pendices (A and B). Two new chapters (Chaps. 6 and 10) have been added. Chapter 6, entitled Why Is the Issue of the Nature of Spacetime So Imp- tant?, elaborates on what was Sect. 5. 6 of the ?rst edition, and addresses some recent work on the nature of spacetime – for example, the growing (or evolving) block universe model of the world, which has recently been - vived by several physicists as what appears to be the last remaining alter- tive to the Minkowski absolute four-dimensional world (after it had become an undeniable fact that three-dimensionalism, or presentism, contradicts the relativistic experimental evidence). Chapter 10, entitled Spacetime and the Nature of Quantum Objects and based on what used to be Sects. 6. 2 and 6. 3 in the ?rst edition, explores the implications of the issue of the nature of spacetime for quantum physics, in order to see whether it can provide some insight into the nature of quantum objects. Two new sections have been included, namely, Sect. 5. 6 entitled Re- tivization of Existence and Observers in General Relativity and Sect. 7. 6 - titled Probing the Anisotropic Velocity of Light by a Terrestrial Experiment.

This edited volume brings closer two contemporary science education research areas: Nature of Science (NOS) and Social Justice (SJ). It starts a dialogue on the characteristics of NOS for SJ with the purpose of advancing the existing discussion and creating new avenues for research. Using a variety of approaches and perspectives, the authors of the different chapters engage in a dialogue on the construct of NOS for SJ, its characteristics, as well as ways of addressing it in science classrooms.

This book explains exactly what human knowledge is. The key concepts in this book are structures and algorithms, i.e., what the readers “see” and how they make use of what they see. Thus in comparison with some other books on the philosophy (or methodology) of science, which employ a syntactic approach, the author’s approach is model theoretic or structural.

A dominant feature of our ordinary experience of the world is a sense of irreversible change: things lose form, people grow old, energy dissipates. On the other hand, a major conceptual scheme we use to describe the natural world, molecular dynamics, has reversibility at its core. The need to harmonize conceptual schemes and experience leads to several questions, one of which is the focus of this book. How does irreversibility at the macroscopic level emerge from the reversibility that prevails at the molecular level? Attempts to explain the emergence have emphasized probability, and assigned different probabilities to the forward and reversed directions of processes so that one direction is far more probable than the other. The conclu­ sion is promising, but the reasons for it have been obscure. In many cases the aim has been to find an explana­ tion in the nature of probability itself. Reactions to that have been divided: some think the aim is justified while others think it is absurd.

A lucid explanation of the basic contours of the Theravada Abhidamma system for serious students of Buddhist thought.