Science has been identified as a crucial element in the competitiveness and sustainability of America in the global economy. American citizens, especially minority populations, however, are not pursuing science education or careers. Past research has implicated `attitudes toward science' as an important factor in the public's participation in science. I applied Ajzen's (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior to attitudes toward science to predict science-related sustainability-action intentions and evaluated whether scientists and Native Americans differed in their general attitudes toward science, cultural values, and specific beliefs about science. Analyses revealed that positive attitude toward science and the cultural value of individualism predicted intentions to engage with science-related sustainability actions. Unexpectedly, scientists and Native Americans did not differ in their cultural values or positive attitude toward science. However, Natives Americans held significantly more negative attitude toward science than scientists. Implications for science education and attitudes towards science theory and application are discussed.

Many prominent scientists have pointed out that philosophy is of no benefit to science. Stephen Hawking asserts: Philosophy is dead! Sciences use conceptions like natural laws, matter, nature, theories, etc. But science is also confronted with questions such as: "What is a natural law?" "What is nature?" "What is matter?" and "What is a scientific theory?" These (metatheoretical) questions exceed the sphere of competence of science – they are items of the philosophy of science. Philosophy of science is a metatheory of science. The Philosophy of science overlaps epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics by exploring whether scientific results are true, or whether entities like quarks or electrons really exist. More detailed investigations bring various questions into consideration such as: "How do we define the boundaries between different scientific disciplines?" "Is there a relation between the beauty and the truth of a scientific theory?" and "How do we distinguish between science and pseudoscience?" Additionally, the philosophy of science is concerned with ethical problems of modern technology, with the methodological questions, with the reconstruction of the structure and the development of scientific theories, and with revealing of any indoctrination of science. The optimistic conclusion of this paper is: Philosophy is still alive – but the philosopher has to participate in round-table discussions with scientists. We just want philosophers talking to scientists!

Many prominent scientists have pointed out that philosophy is of no benefit to science. Stephen Hawking asserts: Philosophy is dead! Sciences use conceptions like natural laws, matter, nature, theories, etc. But science is also confronted with questions such as: "What is a natural law?" "What is nature?" "What is matter?" and "What is a scientific theory?" These (metatheoretical) questions exceed the sphere of competence of science – they are items of the philosophy of science. Philosophy of science is a metatheory of science. The Philosophy of science overlaps epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics by exploring whether scientific results are true, or whether entities like quarks or electrons really exist. More detailed investigations bring various questions into consideration such as: "How do we define the boundaries between different scientific disciplines?" "Is there a relation between the beauty and the truth of a scientific theory?" and "How do we distinguish between science and pseudoscience?" Additionally, the philosophy of science is concerned with ethical problems of modern technology, with the methodological questions, with the reconstruction of the structure and the development of scientific theories, and with revealing of any indoctrination of science. The optimistic conclusion of this paper is: Philosophy is still alive – but the philosopher has to participate in round-table discussions with scientists. We just want philosophers talking to scientists!

No description available.

A possible "discursive turn" is believed to have been observed within Swedish political science in later years. The purpose of this study is to examine whether or not such a turn has actually taken place, in order to further determine if a resulting theoretical homogeneity poses a risk to the ability of Swedish political science to identify and respond to its full width of possible research problems, and to determine its perspectives on both these problems and the results that are later communicated to the general society. To do so, the study poses the following primary research question: "Has a discursive turn occurred within Swedish political science?" This question is then broken down into two specified research questions. "Has discourse analysis become a more common approach for doctoral dissertations in political science during the period of 2000-2013?" "Have ideas corresponding with discourse theory become more common within doctoral dissertations in political science that are not pure discourse analyses during the period of 2000-2013?" These questions are then answered by examining all known 406 doctoral dissertations in political science published in Sweden during the 21st century up until (and including) the year of 2013, using two forms of content analysis, one manual and one computer-assisted. The study finds no clear evidence of a discursive turn in Swedish political science since the turn of the century. The results demonstrate, however, that while ideas corresponding with discourse theory do not appear to have become unambiguously more common in recent times, they do appear in some form in a majority of the examined dissertations, albeit most often on the margin. The study finds no significant indications of a theoretical homogenisation that might impede upon the ability of political science to identify and respond to its full width of research problems. Discourse analysis appears to have a stable presence within Swedish political science, but does not appear to risk contributing to a homogenous research climate that might damage the plurality of research. Instead, it might be seen as a contribution to this plurality.

Ce mémoire propose une conception naturaliste et normative de l'axiologie scientifique contemporaine, c'est-à-dire des buts de la science et des scientifiques. Nous commençons par présenter le naturalisme en philosophie des sciences, en particulier ses dimensions scientifique, méthodologique et ontologique. Nous discutons le sophisme naturaliste et l'objection de la normativité souvent adressée aux approches naturalistes, principalement à travers le prisme de l'épistémologie naturalisée de Quine (1969). Nous illustrons ensuite ces thèmes - naturalisme, normativité, et axiologie scientifique - au moyen de la théorie de Laudan (1987), qui articule un début de théorie axiologique de la science qui se veut naturaliste et normative. Nous soulignons le caractère insatisfaisant de sa théorie, et proposons une conception plus riche et plus détaillée de l'axiologie scientifique. Nous analysons pour ce faire différents liens entre la science, l'industrie, le gouvernement et la société. Nous dégageons en particulier une tendance axiologique pragmatique de la science contemporaine. Finalement, nous ébauchons un cadre normatif instrumental inspiré de Laudan (1987)pour réfléchir sur l'axiologie scientifique. / This master proposes a naturalist and normative conception of contemporary scientific axiology, i.e., of science's and scientists' goals. We start off by discussing some naturalistic positions in philosophy of science, their scientific, methodological and ontological dimensions as well. We review the naturalistic fallacy and the normativity objection against naturalistic approaches, mostly in light of Quine's (1969) naturalized epistemology. We then illustrate these themes - naturalism, normativity, and scientific axiology - by discussing Laudan's (1987) naturalistic and normative theory of scientific axiology. We underscore the unsatisfying character of his theory, and propose instead a richer and more detailed one. In order to do that, we analyse some relations between science, industry, government and society. We identify and discuss a pragmatic axiological trend in particular. Finally, we sketch an instrumental normative framework for thinking about scientific axiology.

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<p>The dissertation brings together approaches across the fields of physics, critical theory, literary studies, philosophy of physics, sociology of science, and history of science to synthesize a hybrid approach for instigating more rigorous and intense cross-disciplinary interrogations between the sciences and the humanities. I explore the concept of speculation in particle physics and science fiction to examine emergent critical approaches for working in the two areas of literature and physics (the latter through critical science studies), but with the expectation of contributing new insights to media theory, critical code studies, and also the science studies of science fiction. </p><p>There are two levels of conversations going on in the dissertation; at the first level, the discussion is centered on a critical historiography and philosophical implications of the discovery Higgs boson in relation to its position at the intersection of old (current) and the potential for new possibilities in quantum physics; I then position my findings on the Higgs boson in connection to the double-slit experiment that represents foundational inquiries into quantum physics, to demonstrate the bridge between fundamental physics and high energy particle physics. The conceptualization of the variants of the double-slit experiment informs the aforementioned critical comparisons. At the second level of the conversation, theories are produced from a close study of the physics objects as speculative engine for new knowledge generation that are then reconceptualized and re-articulated for extrapolation into the speculative ontology of hard science fiction, particularly the hard science fiction written with the double intent of speaking to the science while producing imaginative and socially conscious science through the literary affordances of science fiction. The works of science fiction examined here demonstrate the tension between the internal values of physics in the practice of theory and experiment and questions on ethics, culture, and morality.</p><p>Nevertheless, the dissertation hopes to show the beginnings of a possibility, through the contentious but generative space provided by speculative physics, to produce more cross-collaborative thinking between physics as represented by the hard sciences, and science fiction representing the objects of literary enterprise and creative evolution.</p> / Dissertation

Mokslinis realizmas yra filosofinis požiūris tvirtinantis, kad mokslo teorijos teigia tiesą apie pasaulį. Šis požiūris nebūtų filosofiškai įdomus, jei jo nesiektų paneigti įvairūs filosofiniai, istoriniai ir sociologiniai kontrargumentai. Šiame darbe analizuojami Paulo Feyerabendo, Arthuro Fine‘o, Thomo S. Kuhno, Larry Laudano, Baso van Fraasseno bei socialinio konstruktyvizmo prieš mokslinį realizmą nukreipti argumentai. Vertinama, kaip šie argumentai atsilaiko prieš naujausius argumentus mokslinio realizmo naudai, pateiktus Philipo Kitcherio, Jarretto Leplino, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Stathiso Psillos ir kitų mokslinių realistų darbuose. Darbe teigiama, kad mokslinis realizmas yra nuoseklus, savo teiginius gerai pagrindžiantis, geriausiai mokslo sėkmę paaiškinantis mokslo teorijų aiškinimas ir todėl laikytinas teisingu teorinis požiūris. Mokslinis realizmas yra nuoseklus teorinis požiūris, kadangi pagrįsdamas dvi prielaidas, kad egzistuoja nuo mąstymo nepriklausomas ir tam tikrą struktūrą turintis pasaulis (ontologinė prielaida) bei kad mokslas yra pajėgus šį pasaulį pažinti (episteminė prielaida), daro išvadą apie mokslo teorijų semantiką, jog teorijos parodo, koks yra pasaulis. Mokslinis realizmas gerai pagrindžia savo teiginius ir prieš jį nukreipti argumentai nepajėgia jo paneigti. Savąjį episteminį optimizmą mokslinis realizmas pagrindžia neigdamas galimybę nubrėžti griežtą ribą tarp stebimų ir negalimų stebėti esinių ir reiškinių bei tvirtindamas abdukcijos (geriausio... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Scientific realism is a philosophical approach that claims the literal truth of scientific theories. This approach would not be philosophically interesting if there were not ample philosophical, historical and sociological arguments that would argue against it. In this thesis we evaluate the arguments of Paul Feyerabend, Arthur Fine, Thomas S. Kuhn, Larry Laudan and Bas van Fraassen as well as the challenge of social constructivists. All the counterarguments are weighed against the most up-to-date arguments for scientific realism – notably, Philip Kitcher, Jarrett Leplin, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Stathis Psillos and others. We claim that scientific realism is a consistent and soundly substantiated account of scientific theories which best explains the empirical success of scientific theories and which, therefore, is justly believed to be a truthful theoretical attitude. Scientific realism is a consistent theoretical attitude because it starts from the two premises that there is a mind independent world of a particular structure (an ontological premise) and that science is able to know this world (an epistemic premise) and concludes with a semantic thesis that scientific theories represent what the world is like. Scientific realism is a sound and well substantiated theoretical attitude because the arguments against it do not succeed to refute it. It grounds its epistemic optimism in the denial to draw a rigid line between the observable and unobservable aspects of the world and in... [to full text]

The aim of this project is to discern possible patterns in the changes of epistemic frameworks and in the way in which factors cause or stimulate such changes. Article 1 illustrates forms of consensus between the views of various prominent 20th century philosophers of science on the characteristics and functions of pre-scientific frameworks in scientific activity. This is done by highlighting various helpful insights from the reformational tradition as a point of departure. Article 2 attempts to achieve more clarity on how changes in epistemic frameworks occur, whilst article 3 discerns the factors influencing framework change. Article 4 illustrates and evaluates the relationship between change and constancy in the viewpoints of various philosophers and scientists throughout history. The project suggests that change and constancy can be related to epistemic frameworks according to a pattern referring to the irreducibility of coherents where change and constancy exist in cohesion. As a consequence, change is never completely random or absolute. Although a broad variety of factors play a role in framework changes, a pattern can be discerned in the sense that some factors play a regulative role, so that change is dynamic but not arbitrary. / Thesis (PhD (Philosophy))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013