The Unknown as an Engine for Science: An Essay on the by Hans J. Pirner PDF

By Hans J. Pirner

ISBN-10: 3319185098

ISBN-13: 9783319185095

This e-book explores the boundaries of our wisdom. the writer indicates how uncertainty and indefiniteness not just outline the borders confining our knowing, yet how they feed into the method of discovery and aid to thrust back those borders. beginning with physics the writer collects examples from economics, neurophysiology, historical past, ecology and philosophy.

The first half indicates how details is helping to lessen indefiniteness. knowing rests on our skill to discover definitely the right context, within which we localize an issue as some extent in a community of connections. New parts has to be mixed with the outdated components of the present complicated wisdom procedure, to be able to revenue maximally from the data. An try is made to quantify the worth of knowledge through its skill to lessen indefiniteness.

The moment half explains tips to deal with indefiniteness with tools from fuzzy good judgment, choice concept, hermeneutics and semiotics. it isn't adequate that the hot aspect appears to be like in an test, one additionally has to discover a theoretical reason behind its lifestyles. Indefiniteness turns into an engine of technology, which provides upward thrust to new principles.

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Extra resources for The Unknown as an Engine for Science: An Essay on the Definite and the Indefinite (The Frontiers Collection)

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In quantum mechanics, the status of a particle is described by a function which treats it as a superposition of spatially-localized states. This “wavefunction” Ψ reflects a “virtual” state of the particle, which becomes real with the probability |Ψ(r)|2 when the position of the particle is determined by a measurement at the location r. g. in determining the momenta of the individual atoms within a hot gas. The observer of a gas cannot know the velocities and positions of all of its constituent atoms, since it is simply not possible in practice to measure all of them.

Insofar as an axon of cell A repeatedly excites another cell B, the cells modify themselves so that the effectiveness of the excitation is amplified. The strength of the neural interconnections is thus fundamental in the storage of recollections. Learning is based on a fine adjustment of the connections (synapses) between the nerve cells, which transfer the excitations from cell to cell. They permit the recognition of patterns that have been stored in the network. Descartes’ “res cogitans” is not a computer.

If we represent the size of a coffee cup by the first mark on this scale, we will have to place 13 marks along the scale to arrive at the size of an atomic nucleus. We would then have to continue three times as far along the scale of size reductions by a factor of 10 to arrive at the Planck length λ. Quantum gravity has evolved around a new indeterminacy relation, Dx  Dy [ k2 : Here, the smallest elementary length, the Planck length, is on the right-hand side of the inequality. This indeterminacy relation would mean that it is not possible to measure a length more precisely than the Planck length.

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The Unknown as an Engine for Science: An Essay on the Definite and the Indefinite (The Frontiers Collection) by Hans J. Pirner


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