Feest / Steinle Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-3-11-025361-0
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 3, 308 Seiten

Reihe: Berlin Studies in Knowledge Research

Recent philosophy and history of science has seen a surge of interest in the role of concepts in scientific research. Scholars working in this new field focus on scientific concepts, rather than theories, as units of analysis and on the ways in which concepts are formed and used rather than on what they represent. They analyze what has traditionally been called the context of discovery, rather than (or in addition to) the context of justification. And they examine the dynamics of research rather than the status of the finished research results.This volume provides detailed case studies and general analyses to address questions raised by these points, such as:- Can concepts be clearly distinguished from the sets of beliefs we have about their referents?- What - if any - sense can be made of the separation between concepts and theories?- Can we distinguish between empirical and theoretical concepts?- Are there interesting similarities and differences between the role of concepts in the empirical sciences and in mathematics?- What underlying notion of investigative practice could be drawn on to explicate the role of concept in such practice? - From a philosophical point of view, is the distinction between discovery and justification a helpful frame of reference for inquiring into the dynamics of research?- From a historiographical point of view, does a focus on concepts face the danger of falling back into an old-fashioned history of ideas?

Zielgruppe

Academics, Institutes, Libraries

Autoren/Hrsg.

Feest, Uljana

Steinle, Friedrich

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Wirtschaftsmathematik und -statistik
• Mathematik | Informatik Mathematik Mathematik Interdisziplinär Finanz- und Versicherungsmathematik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice: Introduction;7
2;Concept as Vessel and Concept as Use;29
3;Rethinking Scientific Concepts for Research Contexts: The Case of the Classical Gene;53
4;The Dynamics of Scientific Concepts: The Relevance of Epistemic Aims and Values;81
5;Goals and Fates of Concepts: The Case of Magnetic Poles;111
6;Mathematical Concepts and Investigative Practice;133
7;Experimentation and the Meaning of Scientific Concepts;155
8;Exploratory Experiments, Concept Formation, and Theory Construction in Psychology;173
9;Early Concepts in Investigative Practice – The Case of the Virus;197
10;Scientific Concepts in the Engineering Sciences: Epistemic Tools for Creating and Intervening with Phenomena;225
11;Modeling Practices in Conceptual Innovation: An Ethnographic Study of a Neural Engineering Research Laboratory;251
12;Conceptual Development in Interdisciplinary Research;277
13;List of Contributors;299
14;Index;303

Über Autor(innen)

Uljana Feest and Friedrich Steinle, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany.