[PDF] The Science Of Describing eBook

Author : Brian W. Ogilvie
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 402 pages
File Size : 30,96 MB
Release : 2008-09-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 0226620867

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Out of the diverse traditions of medical humanism, classical philology, and natural philosophy, Renaissance naturalists created a new science devoted to discovering and describing plants and animals. Drawing on published natural histories, manuscript correspondence, garden plans, travelogues, watercolors, and drawings, The Science of Describing reconstructs the evolution of this discipline of description through four generations of naturalists. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, naturalists focused on understanding ancient and medieval descriptions of the natural world, but by the mid-sixteenth century naturalists turned toward distinguishing and cataloguing new plant and animal species. To do so, they developed new techniques of observing and recording, created botanical gardens and herbaria, and exchanged correspondence and specimens within an international community. By the early seventeenth century, naturalists began the daunting task of sorting through the wealth of information they had accumulated, putting a new emphasis on taxonomy and classification. Illustrated with woodcuts, engravings, and photographs, The Science of Describing is the first broad interpretation of Renaissance natural history in more than a generation and will appeal widely to an interdisciplinary audience.

Author : Judith E. Winston
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 546 pages
File Size : 20,63 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780231068246

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A basic practical manual for the process of describing new species, this desperately needed desk reference and guide to nomenclatural procedure and taxonomic writing serves as a Strunk & White of species description, covering both botanical and zoological codes of nomenclature.

Author : Russell Hurlburt
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 44,85 MB
Release : 2011-08-19
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0262516497

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A psychologist and a philosopher with opposing viewpoints discuss the extent to which it is possible to report accurately on our own conscious experience, considering both the reliability of introspection in general and the particular self-reported inner experiences of "Melanie," a subject interviewed using the Descriptive Experience Sampling method. Can conscious experience be described accurately? Can we give reliable accounts of our sensory experiences and pains, our inner speech and imagery, our felt emotions? The question is central not only to our humanistic understanding of who we are but also to the burgeoning scientific field of consciousness studies. The two authors of Describing Inner Experience disagree on the answer: Russell Hurlburt, a psychologist, argues that improved methods of introspective reporting make accurate accounts of inner experience possible; Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosopher, believes that any introspective reporting is inevitably prone to error. In this book the two discuss to what extent it is possible to describe our inner experience accurately. Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel recruited a subject, "Melanie," to report on her conscious experience using Hurlburt's Descriptive Experience Sampling method (in which the subject is cued by random beeps to describe her conscious experience). The heart of the book is Melanie's accounts, Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel's interviews with her, and their subsequent discussions while studying the transcripts of the interviews. In this way the authors' dispute about the general reliability of introspective reporting is steadily tempered by specific debates about the extent to which Melanie's particular reports are believable. Transcripts and audio files of the interviews will be available on the MIT Press website. Describing Inner Experience? is not so much a debate as it is a collaboration, with each author seeking to refine his position and to replace partisanship with balanced critical judgment. The result is an illumination of major issues in the study of consciousness—from two sides at once.

Author : Dr. Martin Concoyle
Publisher : Trafford Publishing
Page : 831 pages
File Size : 37,10 MB
Release : 2014
Category : Education
ISBN : 1490723706

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The issue which the new ideas of these new books really raise with our culture, is not about whether they are true, since these new ideas identify a valid context for physical description, and whereas the current context for math and physics (2014) cannot do that, ie they cannot describe the stable properties of a general many-(but-few)-body system. Whereas the new ideas about math and physics can be used to solve the most fundamental problems about the physical world, in regard to understanding physical stability, a problem which the current descriptive context of math and physics (2014) cannot solve. That is, "what now, in 2014, passes for math and physics knowledge are delusions."* Yet these delusions are the ideas expressed in our propaganda-education system about math and physics. Rather The real issue, which these new ideas present to our culture, is about our cultural relation to "what is beyond the material world." That is, it is about our cultural representation of religion, or the spirit. In particular, in relation to the "previous knowledge humans needed to possess" in order to make Gobekli-tepe, Puma Punku, Stonehenge, etc, ie simply to be able to lift and position such large stones, as well as the understanding which is needed to go beyond the context of the material world, and into the context of all the ancient mythologies in regard to the ancient religious stories, etc etc *The current paradigm (in 2014) describes a general state of indefi nable randomness in which there is always "a chaotic transitioning process" which exists as random elementary-particle collisions, and which, supposedly, is perpetually occurring. Thus, their description of the wide range of the generally stable states of the many-(but-few)-body systems..., into which this "forever chaotically transitioning" process supposedly settles but explicit descriptions of this process do not exist. Instead their answer is that "such stable, many-(but-few)-body systems are too complicated to describe."

Author : Russell Hurlburt
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 10,72 MB
Release : 2011-08-19
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0262263165

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A psychologist and a philosopher with opposing viewpoints discuss the extent to which it is possible to report accurately on our own conscious experience, considering both the reliability of introspection in general and the particular self-reported inner experiences of "Melanie," a subject interviewed using the Descriptive Experience Sampling method. Can conscious experience be described accurately? Can we give reliable accounts of our sensory experiences and pains, our inner speech and imagery, our felt emotions? The question is central not only to our humanistic understanding of who we are but also to the burgeoning scientific field of consciousness studies. The two authors of Describing Inner Experience disagree on the answer: Russell Hurlburt, a psychologist, argues that improved methods of introspective reporting make accurate accounts of inner experience possible; Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosopher, believes that any introspective reporting is inevitably prone to error. In this book the two discuss to what extent it is possible to describe our inner experience accurately. Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel recruited a subject, "Melanie," to report on her conscious experience using Hurlburt's Descriptive Experience Sampling method (in which the subject is cued by random beeps to describe her conscious experience). The heart of the book is Melanie's accounts, Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel's interviews with her, and their subsequent discussions while studying the transcripts of the interviews. In this way the authors' dispute about the general reliability of introspective reporting is steadily tempered by specific debates about the extent to which Melanie's particular reports are believable. Transcripts and audio files of the interviews will be available on the MIT Press website. Describing Inner Experience? is not so much a debate as it is a collaboration, with each author seeking to refine his position and to replace partisanship with balanced critical judgment. The result is an illumination of major issues in the study of consciousness—from two sides at once.

Author : Robert Brennan
Publisher : James Clarke & Company
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 19,77 MB
Release : 2016-04-28
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0227905326

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The question of divine agency in the world remains one important unresolved underlying obstacle in the dialogue between theology and science. Modern notions of divine agency are shown to have developed out of the interaction of three factors in early modernity. Two are well known: late medieval perfect-being theology and the early modern application of the notion of the two books of God's revelation to the understanding of the natural order. It is argued the third is the early modern appropriation of theAugustinian doctrine of inspiration. This assumes the soul's existence and a particular description of divine agency in humans, which became more generally applied to divine agency in nature. Whereas Newton explicitly draws the parallel between divine agency in humans and that in nature, Darwin rejects its supposed perfection and Huxley raises serious questions regarding the traditional understanding of the soul. This book offers an alternative incarnational description of divine agency, freeing consideration of divine agency from being dependent on resolving the complex issues of perfect-being theology and the existence of the soul. In conversation with Barth's pneumatology, this proposal is shown to remain theologically coherent and plausible while resolving or avoiding a range of known difficulties in the science-theology dialogue.

Author : James C. Zimring
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 407 pages
File Size : 26,43 MB
Release : 2019-07-18
Category : Science
ISBN : 1108476856

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A timely and accessible synthesis of the strengths, weaknesses and reality of science through the eyes of a practicing scientist.