Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T15:00:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Stenio G de Oliveira.pdf: 1227425 bytes, checksum: 972ee38681a58bf0f9ccea1e721ad8e0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-09-16 / A importância e o uso da história e filosofia das Ciências no ensino têm sido defendidos, de maneira enfática, por diferentes autores visando uma educação científica de qualidade. Da mesma forma, evidentemente com diferentes argumentos, outros autores são contrários ao seu uso. Colocando-me do lado dos defensores deste uso, neste trabalho defende-se que o ensino das Ciências e sua aprendizagem precisam ser acompanhados pelo estudo sobre a natureza da Ciência, haja vista que tanto a história como a filosofia das Ciências são importantes para pesquisadores e para professores. O presente estudo busca analisar as visões de dois filósofos da Ciência, Thomas Kuhn e Paul Feyerabend, que apontam importantes perspectivas para a discussão sobre o desenvolvimento científico. Ambos estudam a Revolução Copernicana, e verificam que o desenvolvimento científico nem sempre está condicionado a fatores racionais, ou metodológicos, entendidos como um conjunto de regras a ser seguido ou um conjunto de passos que norteiam a atividade científica. O método utilizado nesta dissertação foi de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, com foco principal na leitura dos livros destes dois autores. Isto é feito em duas partes: a primeira através de uma revisão de suas visões de Ciência e a segunda é uma tentativa pessoal de recortar suas descrições e análises sobre a Revolução Copernicana. Estes recortes têm a intenção de ressaltar, tendo por base os trabalhos de astrônomos como Copérnico e outros posteriores a ele, características, passagens ou influências subjetivas dentro da atividade científica. Subjetividade para Kuhn, irracionalidade para Feyerabend. O que se busca neste trabalho é oferecer subsídios para a discussão clássica de nossa visão de Ciência como sendo sempre racional , metodologicamente rígida, e evidenciar elementos de subjetividades/irracionalidades(?) na atividade científica que devem ser trabalhados e discutidos no ensino de Ciências.

Orientador: José Carlos Pinto de Oliveira / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-20T22:43:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Oliveira_AmeliadeJesus_D.pdf: 1526573 bytes, checksum: 35175fb8e24d12c518f965da0659e2db (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: Pierre Duhem e Thomas Kuhn aparecem como personagens privilegiados nas discussões historiográficas acerca de como a ciência se desenvolve e são classificados, respectivamente, como continuísta e descontinuísta. Este trabalho resulta de uma análise comparativa entre as visões desses dois filósofos e historiadores da ciência. Nosso propósito inicial foi compreender como eles poderiam ter visões tão díspares acerca do desenvolvimento científico, já que ambos são vistos também como participantes do mesmo grupo de filósofos para quem a estreiteza entre a história e a filosofia da ciência é admitida de maneira consensual. A pesquisa inicialmente orientada pela questão ?Como a ciência se desenvolve?' em suas obras nos levou a questionar a própria classificação da qual partimos. Na ausência de elementos corroboradores da difundida oposição entre as duas visões históricas, exploramos em suas obras dois eventos tidos comumente como revolucionários na história da ciência - os que levam o nome de Copérnico e Newton. Esse exame possibilitou a descoberta de uma insuspeitada semelhança entre a visão de Duhem e Kuhn acerca do desenvolvimento científico que neutraliza o antagonismo entre continuísmo e descontinuísmo em suas obras. Sustentamos que esse antagonismo resulta de uma abordagem bastante parcial de seus trabalhos em filosofia e história da ciência, uma abordagem que não leva em consideração os contextos diferentes de suas obras. O que observamos é que, em momentos distintos da história da ciência, Duhem e Kuhn acreditaram no rompimento com uma tradição histórica responsável por uma imagem enganadora do modo da ciência se desenvolver e que, portanto, precisava ser ultrapassada. Na tradição criticada por Duhem, os historiadores relatavam o surgimento repentino de grandes teorias, sem nenhum vínculo com a tradição; só viam revoluções. Na tradição criticada por Kuhn, os historiadores, ao reescreverem a história da ciência a partir da visão e do aparato conceitual de seu momento presente, acabaram tornando ocultas as revoluções. O resultado do trabalho reflete, sim, a tentativa inicial de compreender como se dá o desenvolvimento da ciência em Duhem e Kuhn, mas essa tentativa nos conduziu à necessidade de abandonar as usuais classificações conferidas às suas visões / Abstract: Pierre Duhem and Thomas Kuhn appear as privileged characters in the historiographical discussions about how science develops and are classified, respectively, as continuist and discontinuist. This thesis is the result of a comparative analysis between the views of these philosophers and historians of science. Our initial purpose was to understand how they could have such different views about the scientific development, since both are seen also as participants of the same group of philosophers that admit the necessary intimate connection between the history and the philosophy of science. The research, initially conducted by the question ?how does science develop?' in their works, led us to question the proper classification from which we started. In the absence of elements which corroborate the widespread opposition between the two historical views, we explore in their works two events usually regarded as revolutionary in the history of science - those that bear the names of Copernicus and Newton. This examination made possible the discovery of an unsuspected similarity between Duhem's and Kuhn's views about the scientific development that neutralizes the antagonism between continuism and discontinuism in their works. We maintain that this antagonism results from a very much partial approach of their works in philosophy and history of science, an approach that does not consider the different contexts of their works. What we observe is that Duhem and Kuhn in different times of history of science had believed in the rupture with a historical tradition which was responsible for a misleading image of scientific development, and therefore had to be overcome. In the tradition that is criticized by Duhem, historians related the sudden emergence of great theories, without any connections with the tradition; they just saw revolutions. In the tradition that is criticized by Kuhn, historians, by rewriting the history of science from a perspective of their contemporary moment, ended up turning the revolutions hidden. The result of this work does reflect the initial attempt of understanding how the scientific development occurs in Duhem and Kuhn, but this attempt has led us to the need of abandoning the usual classifications that are attributed to their views / Doutorado / Filosofia / Doutor em Filosofia

The United States (US) witnessed remarkable growth in annual long distance travel over the past few decades. Over half of the long distance travel in the US is made for pleasure, including visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and leisure activities. This trend could continue with increased use of information and communication technologies for socialization, and enhanced mobility being achieved using fuel-efficient (electric/hybrid) and technology enhanced vehicles. Despite these developments, and recent interest to implement alternate mass transit options to serve this market, not much exists on the measurement, analysis and modeling of long distance pleasure travel in the U.S. Statewide and national models are used to estimate long distance travel, but these are predominantly trip-based models, making it difficult to understand long distance trips as collection of household-level travel behavior. This form of travel behavior has been studied a lot in tourism, but in a piecemeal manner, such as to (from) a specific destination. Further, most of these studies are confined to analyzing leisure market, with VFR market gaining recognition only recently. In essence, annual household long distance pleasure travel behavior needs to be studied in a comprehensive manner rather than as isolated trips. This is because, most of these household travel decisions are undertaken considering their annual time and monetary budget, and their perceived cost to travel to one (or more) destination for given pleasure purpose on one (or more) occasion using a given mode of travel. Thus, the main objective of this dissertation is to develop a comprehensive behavioral model framework to analyze the above-discussed annual household long distance pleasure travel choices. To start the above effort, it is first required to collect detailed annual household travel data, last collected over two decades ago (e.g.: ATS, 1995). No such recent effort has been pursued due to the significant labor and economic resource required to undertake it. There exist recent surveys (NHTS, 2001), but collected over a shorter (four week) period, and require significant processing even to arrive at aggregate annual travel estimates. Second, besides surveys, there is a need for additional data to estimate households’ annual pleasure travel budget, and their cost to travel and stay at each of their potential destination choices, which are not readily available. Thus, as the first goal, this dissertation analyzes long distance travel reported across historical surveys (NPTS; ATS; NHTS), to understand the differences in their definition, enumeration of purpose and collection methods. The intent here is twofold, first to conceive a method to estimate annual travel from surveys with shorter collection period. Further, the second intent is to gather travel patterns from these historical datasets such that it informs the second goal of this dissertation, i.e. development of a behavioral framework to analyze annual household pleasure travel. To this effect, this research also analyzes pleasure expenditures using Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX, BLS) data. Interestingly, the analysis reveals CEX pleasure travel expenditure pattern to be similar to the travel pattern reported for the same market segments in travel survey (ATS). Importantly, the above analysis informs the development of behavioral models, pursued as two distinct tasks to achieve the second goal. As the first task, a novel econometric model and forecasting procedure is developed to analyze a household’s annual long distance leisure travel decisions. Specifically, a households’ time spent across one (or more) destination and travel mode to such destination for leisure is modeled subject to time and money budget constraints. In this methodological framework, the destination choice is modeled as a continuous variable (time at destination) using Multiple-Discrete Continuous Extreme Value model (MDCEV). While, travel mode choice to these destination(s) are modeled as a discrete choice, through a nested Multinomial Logit Model (MNL), with price variation introduced across the above choice of destination(s) and travel modes (air/ground). This required estimating annual monetary budgets, travel cost and per night lodging cost for each sample household, with each of them having 210 potential destinations and 2 travel mode choices respectively. The second task, involved the development of a broader national model system to analyze households’ annual pleasure travel decisions such as: choice (duration) at destination(s), travel purpose (VFR or leisure), mode (airplane or auto) choice and trip frequencies to these destination(s) using the same dataset. It was modeled in two stages, with the first stage estimating households’ annual pleasure time budget using a stochastic frontier model. This budget was then used as constraint to analyze households’ annual choice of destination and purpose using a nested MDCEV-MNL model in the second stage. A log sum variable from a nested joint multinomial logit model of trip frequency and mode choice for each purpose (VFR or leisure) is also introduced as input at this stage. This model was then validated using a prediction procedure, and further applied to test a policy scenario (increase in travel cost). The above national pleasure travel demand model could be further enhanced by including monetary constraints and price variation as in the first task. Overall, the model system proposed in this dissertation forms the foundation for a national comprehensive long distance travel model. This could be achieved through inclusion of other prominent travel purpose such as business and commuting to the national travel demand model presented in this research.

This dissertation examines the way the Pythagorean conception of the incommensurable structures the assertions of subjective agency in Blaise Pascal’s Pensées (1670), Søren Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), and Alain Badiou’s Being and Event (1988). The Pythagoreans coined the term “incommensurable,” alogos, to describe magnitudes that cannot emerge within a specific system of signification. Across three chapters, I extend the Pythagorean understanding of the incommensurable into the areas of philosophy, religious studies, and mathematics in order to posit the fundamental instability at the core of subjective agency. Moving from Thomas S. Kuhn’s failure to define the incommensurable logically in his Structures of Scientific Revolutions, I argue that such a conception of the incommensurable must be understood as fundamentally faith-based. Given the fact that the incommensurable cannot emerge into signification, its existence must be posited on faith. Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Badiou each move from a faith-based assertion of the incommensurable to offer a conception of subjective agency within a specific system of signification. Thus, against the work of Bonaventura Cavalieri and Evangelista Torricelli, Pascal refigures the incommensurably infinite to establish a heterodox subjective agency within Augustinian faith-by-grace; Kierkegaard manages to navigate the incommensurability of direct communication and personal faith by effacing his pseudonym Johannes Climacus; and Alain Badiou relies on the incommensurable “event” to imagine the possibility the subject’s calling into being of the new. In each of these three texts, the incommensurable functions to guarantee the possibility of subject agency within a specific system of signification.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magister en Filosofía / La literatura en filosofía de las ciencias frecuentemente identifica a Sir Karl Popper como un filósofo anti-relativista y a Thomas Kuhn como uno relativista. No obstante, y en especial respecto del estadounidense, estas identificaciones no están exentas de problemas. En el presente estudio se desarrolla una evaluación comparativa de los modelos de las ciencias de ambos autores con el propósito de determinar cuál es su posición exacta respecto del relativismo epistemológico en las ciencias. En tanto ambos modelos difieren sustantivamente en su terminología y enfoques, la metodología a seguir será contraponerlos con una postura que provee una serie de tesis bien determinadas con las cuales se neutraliza eficientemente el relativismo en las ciencias, a saber, el realismo científico. Se determinará si los modelos en cuestión siguen las tesis expuestas por este realismo para neutralizar el relativismo o si postulan maneras alternativas de conseguir el mismo fin. La finalización de esta evaluación arrojará conclusiones que permiten matizar las identificaciones que provee la literatura. En primer lugar, se muestra que el modelo de Popper puede ser considerado como anti-relativista, pero uno de carácter ineficaz. Dicho de otro modo, uno que no provee razones para defender que la ciencia no sea una empresa relativista. Por otro lado, se muestra que el modelo de Kuhn debe ser considerado uno relativista moderado. En otras palabras, un tipo de relativismo que al menos provee razones para negar que la ciencia sea una empresa relativista radical. / Diciembre 2021

Si l'économie comportementale (EC) est désormais reconnue, de récents débats ont soulevé des questions quant à la nature de cette « révolution » pour l'économie. L’objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier l'EC d'un point de vue philosophique, sociologique et historique afin de cerner les enjeux qui entourent son émergence. Contrairement à une partie de la littérature qui tend à comparer l'EC, l’économie néoclassique et les hétérodoxies côte à côte, nous avons utilisé une approche kuhnienne actualisée mettant l’accent sur les interactions intra et interdisciplinaires. L’adoption de certaines postures rhétoriques ont conduit à ce que nous avons appelé une « révolution ambiguë » qui mélange des transformations majeures pour l'économie (rôle de l'interdisciplinarité) avec des éléments conservateurs visibles (structure formelle des modèles). Si l’EC a été adoptée par une partie importante des économistes, notre étude de cas portant sur des controverses récentes nous a amenés à soutenir que l’EC est localement incommensurable avec certaines approches défendant l’économie comme discipline autonome. Nous avons également mis en avant des interprétations conflictuelles sur la nature de l’EC à l’intérieur même du champ. En utilisant une approche quantitative, nous soutenons que la mobilité disciplinaire affichée par les fondateurs de l’EC a été interprétée de deux manières. Alors que certains plaident en faveur d'un retour à une « science normale », compatible avec le reste des sciences économiques, d'autres ont adopté l'interdisciplinarité pratiquée par les fondateurs pour repousser les frontières de l'économie dans des directions plus éloignées du cœur traditionnelle de l’économie. / While Behavioral economics (BE) is successful, recent debates prompted questions about the nature of this 'revolution' for economics. The aim of this thesis is to investigate BE from a philosophical, sociological, and historical perspective to better qualify what the tensions and stakes surrounding the change brought about by it are. Contrasting with most of the literature that tends to compare BE, neoclassical economics, and heterodoxies side-by-side, we use an up-to-date Kuhnian approach to focus on intra and interdisciplinary interactions. Because of the role of outsiders in BE, its proponents adopted particular rhetorical stances that led to what we call a ‘revolution on the fence’ that mixes important transformations for economics (e.g. emphasis on interdisciplinarity and empirics) with visible conservative elements (e.g. structure of formal models). While many economists have partly adopted the practices introduced by BE, we argue based on a case-study of incommensurability in recent controversies that BE is locally incompatible with the strongest interpretations of the methodology of revealed preferences, as well as with the interpretation of economics as an insular disciplines. Moreover, we also find contradictory interpretations of what BE is within the field. Using quantitative and networks analysis, we argue that the initial disciplinary mobility displayed by BE’s founders, is interpreted in two ways. While some argue for a return to ‘normal science’ compatible with most of economics, others adopted the interdisciplinarity praised by BE’s founders to push the frontiers of economics in directions further away from the core of traditional economics concerns.

This dissertation deals with the Czechoslovak and Polish community of "scientists of science" (mainly historians, philosophers, and methodologists of science) from 1962 to 1989. It focuses not only on the inner evolution of this community (scientists, their works, scientific institutions etc.), but it also examines how was this community formed by the tradition of scientific thought on the one hand, and by the contemporary political and ideological context (Soviet influences, Marxism-Leninism, monopoly of the communist party) on the other. It focuses also on the ability of the scientific community to accept or reflect influences from the Western Europe or United States - which means from the so-called "capitalist countries". Two spheres are analysed to clarify dispositions of Polish and Czechoslovak "scientists of science" to foreign transfers: first, scientists' possibilities to travel to Western countries (research stays, participations at congresses etc.), and second, accessibility to foreign (mainly Western) scientific literature. Functioning of Western concepts in the community of Polish and Czechoslovak "scientists of science" is illustrated by an example of the reception of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions from 1962. This dissertation shows that the role of scientific...

No description available.

Consider a lossy compression system with l distributed encoders and a centralized decoder. Each encoder compresses its observed source and forwards the compressed data to the decoder for joint reconstruction of the target signals under the mean squared error distortion constraint. It is assumed that the observed sources can be expressed as the sum of the target signals and the corruptive noises, which are generated independently from two (possibly di erent) symmetric multivariate Gaussian distributions. Depending on the parameters of such Gaussian distributions, the rate-distortion limit of this lossy compression system is characterized either completely or for a subset of distortions (including, but not necessarily limited to, those su fficiently close to the minimum distortion achievable when the observed sources are directly available at the decoder). The results are further extended to the robust distributed compression setting, where the outputs of a subset of encoders may also be used to produce a non-trivial reconstruction of the corresponding target signals. In particular, we obtain in the high-resolution regime a precise characterization of the minimum achievable reconstruction distortion based on the outputs of k + 1 or more encoders when every k out of all l encoders are operated collectively in the same mode that is greedy in the sense of minimizing the distortion incurred by the reconstruction of the corresponding k target signals with respect to the average rate of these k encoders. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

No description available.