[PDF] Rock Bone And Ruin eBook

Author : Adrian Currie
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 43,75 MB
Release : 2024-05-21
Category : Science
ISBN : 0262552035

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An argument that we should be optimistic about the capacity of “methodologically omnivorous” geologists, paleontologists, and archaeologists to uncover truths about the deep past. The “historical sciences”—geology, paleontology, and archaeology—have made extraordinary progress in advancing our understanding of the deep past. How has this been possible, given that the evidence they have to work with offers mere traces of the past? In Rock, Bone, and Ruin, Adrian Currie explains that these scientists are “methodological omnivores,” with a variety of strategies and techniques at their disposal, and that this gives us every reason to be optimistic about their capacity to uncover truths about prehistory. Creative and opportunistic paleontologists, for example, discovered and described a new species of prehistoric duck-billed platypus from a single fossilized tooth. Examining the complex reasoning processes of historical science, Currie also considers philosophical and scientific reflection on the relationship between past and present, the nature of evidence, contingency, and scientific progress. Currie draws on varied examples from across the historical sciences, from Mayan ritual sacrifice to giant Mesozoic fleas to Mars's mysterious watery past, to develop an account of the nature of, and resources available to, historical science. He presents two major case studies: the emerging explanation of sauropod size, and the “snowball earth” hypothesis that accounts for signs of glaciation in Neoproterozoic tropics. He develops the Ripple Model of Evidence to analyze “unlucky circumstances” in scientific investigation; examines and refutes arguments for pessimism about the capacity of the historical sciences, defending the role of analogy and arguing that simulations have an experiment-like function. Currie argues for a creative, open-ended approach, “empirically grounded” speculation.

Author : Adrian Currie
Publisher :
Page : 516 pages
File Size : 11,36 MB
Release : 2014
Category : Convergence (Biology)
ISBN :

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We should be optimistic about historical science's capacity to uncover past events, even those leaving little trace. Moreover, historical science does more than describe or catalogue the past. In uncovering patterns and weaving narratives, historical scientists provide explanations: why history unfolded as it did, and how it could have been otherwise. These claims are related: the historical scientist's drive for explanation increases her reach into the past, as speculative hypotheses provide avenues for fresh tests and linking past events together. I examine historical science, building a picture of its epistemic and explanatory credentials. These are, first, explanations of sauropod gigantism. Sauropods were one of the most successful lineages of the Mesozoic, comfortably outdoing all terrestrial animals in size. How did this evolve and how was it possible physiologically? Second, the 'snowball earth' explanation of Neoproterozoic deposits. Rocks formed over 500 million years ago show distinctive glacial signs, but formed in the tropics. By the snowball earth hypothesis the entire earth was ice-locked for brief periods. We might be pessimistic about finding answers to these questions. Although access to past events is granted by their downstream effects, 'traces', these signals decay over time. Historical scientists frequently face incomplete, 'gappy', and 'faint', difficult to access data-sets. Moreover, we sometimes lack manipulative access to these events, so traditional experimental investigation is unavailable. However such data-sets are also 'dispersed', heterogeneous, allowing us to draw on and knit together multiple lines of evidence. Moreover, there are evidential sources which are independent of signal decay. I describe two sources. First, 'surrogative' evidence. This evidence accesses the past by (1) supporting 'midrange' theory (background theory which links traces to past events); (2) supporting general models of causal systems, the dynamics of past events; (3) testing between hypotheses about the past. Second, explanatory relations can be evidential. Some explanations of past events are 'interdependent': the occurrence of one event makes another more likely, and vice versa. Other explanations of the past cite 'common processes': events are unified as instances of the same process-type, and provide evidential support in virtue of this. Moreover, historical science is not 'parochial', or merely concerned about, or restricted to, particular histories. I demonstrate that historical scientists are frequently interested in understanding 'fragile systems': relatively contingent systems which occur under specific circumstances but, nonetheless, support counterfactuals. Even when they are interested in explaining particular events, historical scientists draw on evidence from other instance types. These considerations ground optimism about historical science, but they are also revelatory of broader issues in the philosophy of science. I discuss how some historical explanations, in particular those which describe complex narratives about particular cases, come apart from 'systems-based' or 'mechanistic' explanation. I also demonstrate that the use of models, particularly simulations, in historical science has a far more epistemic character than contemporary treatments of modelling suggest. As opposed to using models to maximize predictive power, explanatory salience, or for heuristic traction, historical scientists use models to compensate for minimal data and to empirically differentiate between hypotheses.

Author : Sarah J. Maas
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 739 pages
File Size : 21,54 MB
Release : 2018-05
Category : Young Adult Fiction
ISBN : 1619635208

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Sarah J. Maas hit the New York Times SERIES list at #1 with A Court of Wings and Ruin!

Author : Vincent Ialenti
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 43,44 MB
Release : 2020-09-22
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 0262539268

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A guide to long-term thinking: how to envision the far future of Earth. We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future—to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn to inhabit a longer now. Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation; and the deflation of expertise—today's popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet's emergency. Astrophysicists, geologists, historians, evolutionary biologists, climatologists, archaeologists, and others can teach us the art of long-termism. For a case study in long-term thinking, Ialenti turns to Finland's nuclear waste repository “Safety Case” experts. These scientists forecast far future glaciations, climate changes, earthquakes, and more, over the coming tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands or millions—of years. They are not pop culture “futurists” but data-driven, disciplined technical experts, using the power of patterns to construct detailed scenarios and quantitative models of the far future. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.

Author : Anton Killin
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 38,79 MB
Release : 2021-04-26
Category : Science
ISBN : 3030610527

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This volume explores various themes at the intersection of archaeology and philosophy: inference and theory; interdisciplinary connections; cognition, language and normativity; and ethical issues. Showcasing this heterogeneity, its scope ranges from the method of analogical inference to the evolution of the human mind; from conceptual issues in assessing the health of past populations to the ethics of cultural heritage tourism. It probes the archaeological record for evidence of numeracy, curiosity and creativity, and social complexity. Its contributors comprise an interdisciplinary cluster of philosophers, archaeologists, anthropologists, and psychologists, from a variety of career stages, of whom many are leading experts in their fields. Chapter 3 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Author : Kostas Kampourakis
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 341 pages
File Size : 42,58 MB
Release : 2020-09-24
Category : Science
ISBN : 1108491839

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A short and accessible introduction to philosophy of science for students and researchers across the life sciences.

Author : Caitlin Donahue Wylie
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 37,42 MB
Release : 2021-08-31
Category : Science
ISBN : 0262542676

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An investigation of the work and workers in fossil preparation labs reveals the often unacknowledged creativity and problem-solving on which scientists rely. Those awe-inspiring dinosaur skeletons on display in museums do not spring fully assembled from the earth. Technicians known as preparators have painstakingly removed the fossils from rock, repaired broken bones, and reconstructed missing pieces to create them. These specimens are foundational evidence for paleontologists, and yet the work and workers in fossil preparation labs go largely unacknowledged in publications and specimen records. In this book, Caitlin Wylie investigates the skilled labor of fossil preparators and argues for a new model of science that includes all research work and workers. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, Wylie shows that the everyday work of fossil preparation requires creativity, problem-solving, and craft. She finds that preparators privilege their own skills over technology and that scientists prefer to rely on these trusted technicians rather than new technologies. Wylie examines how fossil preparators decide what fossils, and therefore dinosaurs, look like; how labor relations between interdependent yet hierarchically unequal collaborators influence scientific practice; how some museums display preparators at work behind glass, as if they were another exhibit; and how these workers learn their skills without formal training or scientific credentials. The work of preparing specimens is a crucial component of scientific research, although it leaves few written traces. Wylie argues that the paleontology research community's social structure demonstrates how other sciences might incorporate non-scientists into research work, empowering and educating both scientists and nonscientists.

Author : Matt Grossmann
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 20,27 MB
Release : 2021-07-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0197518990

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It seems like most of what we read about the academic social sciences in the mainstream media is negative. The field is facing mounting criticism, as canonical studies fail to replicate, questionable research practices abound, and researcher social and political biases come under fire. In response to these criticisms, Matt Grossmann, in How Social Science Got Better, provides a robust defense of the current state of the social sciences. Applying insights from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science and providing new data on research trends and scholarly views, he argues that, far from crisis, social science is undergoing an unparalleled renaissance of ever-broader understanding and application. According to Grossmann, social science research today has never been more relevant, rigorous, or self-reflective because scholars have a much better idea of their blind spots and biases. He highlights how scholars now closely analyze the impact of racial, gender, geographic, methodological, political, and ideological differences on research questions; how the incentives of academia influence our research practices; and how universal human desires to avoid uncomfortable truths and easily solve problems affect our conclusions. Though misaligned incentive structures of course remain, a messy, collective deliberation across the research community has shifted us into an unprecedented age of theoretical diversity, open and connected data, and public scholarship. Grossmann's wide-ranging account of current trends will necessarily force the academy's many critics to rethink their lazy critiques and instead acknowledge the path-breaking advances occurring in the social sciences today.

Author : Robert Chapman
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 16,3 MB
Release : 2016-10-06
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1472534697

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How do archaeologists work with the data they identify as a record of the cultural past? How are these data collected and construed as evidence? What is the impact on archaeological practice of new techniques of data recovery and analysis, especially those imported from the sciences? To answer these questions, the authors identify close-to-the-ground principles of best practice based on an analysis of examples of evidential reasoning in archaeology that are widely regarded as successful, contested, or instructive failures. They look at how archaeologists put old evidence to work in pursuit of new interpretations, how they construct provisional foundations for inquiry as they go, and how they navigate the multidisciplinary ties that make archaeology a productive intellectual trading zone. This case-based approach is predicated on a conviction that archaeological practice is a repository of considerable methodological wisdom, embodied in tacit norms and skilled expertise – wisdom that is rarely made explicit except when contested, and is often obscured when questions about the status and reach of archaeological evidence figure in high-profile crisis debates.