UNDERSTANDING SCIENTIFIC REASONING develops critical reasoning skills and works with students to improve their level of scientific and technological literacy. Giere teaches students how to understand and critically evaluate scientific information they encounter in popular and professional media. With its focus on science, Understanding Scientific Reasoning helps students learn how to examine scientific reports with a reasonable degree of sophistication. Giere explains how to reason through case studies using the same informal logic skills employed by scientists. Students sharpen their abilities to analyze a complex series of propositions and hypotheses in the same manner as scientists.

Understanding Scientific Reasoning

Giere, Ronald N.

Science & Math

Harcourt College Pub.

UNDERSTANDING SCIENTIFIC REASONING develops critical reasoning skills and works with students to improve their level of scientific and technological literacy. Giere teaches students how to understand and critically evaluate scientific information they encounter in popular and professional media. With its focus on science, Understanding Scientific Reasoning helps students learn how to examine scientific reports with a reasonable degree of sophistication. Giere explains how to reason through case studies using the same informal logic skills employed by scientists. Students sharpen their abilities to analyze a complex series of propositions and hypotheses in the same manner as scientists.

Understanding scientific reasoning

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

HOLT. RINEHART AND WINSTON

Wadsworth Publishing

Not everything that claims to be science is. UNDERSTANDING SCIENTIFIC REASONING shows you easy-to-use principles that let you distinguish good science from bad information you encounter in both textbooks and the popular media. And because it uses the same processes that scientists use (but simplified), you'll know you're getting the most reliable instruction around. You'll also learn how to reason through case studies using the same informal logic skills employed by scientists.

Bickle, John

Mauldin, Robert

Cengage Learning'

"This volume presents an attempt to construct a unified cognitive theory of science in relatively short compass. It confronts the strong program in sociology of science and the positions of various postpositivist philosophers of science, developing significant alternatives to each in a reeadily comprehensible sytle. It draws loosely on recent developments in cognitive science, without burdening the argument with detailed results from that source. . . . The book is thus a provocative one. Perhaps that is a measure of its value: it will lead scholars and serious student from a number of science studies disciplines into continued and sharpened debate over fundamental questions."â€”Richard Burian, Isis "The writing is delightfully clear and accessible. On balance, few books advance our subject as well."â€”Paul Teller, Philosophy of Science

Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations)

Univ of Chicago Pr

"This volume presents an attempt to construct a unified cognitive theory of science in relatively short compass. It confronts the strong program in sociology of science and the positions of various postpositivist philosophers of science, developing significant alternatives to each in a reeadily comprehensible sytle. It draws loosely on recent developments in cognitive science, without burdening the argument with detailed results from that source. . . . The book is thus a provocative one. Perhaps that is a measure of its value: it will lead scholars and serious student from a number of science studies disciplines into continued and sharpened debate over fundamental questions."—Richard Burian, Isis "The writing is delightfully clear and accessible. On balance, few books advance our subject as well."—Paul Teller, Philosophy of Science

Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series)

University of Chicago Press

Debate over the nature of science has recently moved from the halls of academia into the public sphere, where it has taken shape as the "science wars." At issue is the question of whether scientific knowledge is objective and universal or socially mediated, whether scientific truths are independent of human values and beliefs. Ronald Giere is a philosopher of science who has been at the forefront of this debate from its inception, and Science without Laws offers a much-needed mediating perspective on an increasingly volatile line of inquiry. Giere does not question the major findings of modern science: for example, that the universe is expanding or that inheritance is carried by DNA molecules with a double helical structure. But like many critics of modern science, he rejects the widespread notion of science—deriving ultimately from the Enlightenment—as a uniquely rational activity leading to the discovery of universal truths underlying all natural phenomena. In these highly readable essays, Giere argues that it is better to understand scientists as merely constructing more or less abstract models of limited aspects of the world. Such an understanding makes possible a resolution of the issues at stake in the science wars. The critics of science are seen to be correct in rejecting the Enlightenment idea of science, and its defenders are seen to be correct in insisting that science does produce genuine knowledge of the natural world. Giere is utterly persuasive in arguing that to criticize the Enlightenment ideal is not to criticize science itself, and that to defend science one need not defend the Enlightenment ideal. Science without Laws thus stakes out a middle ground in these debates by showing us how science can be better conceived in other ways.

Science without Laws (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations)

Many people assume that the claims of scientists are objective truths. But historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science have long argued that scientific claims reflect the particular historical, cultural, and social context in which those claims were made. The nature of scientific knowledge is not absolute because it is influenced by the practice and perspective of human agents. Scientific Perspectivism argues that the acts of observing and theorizing are both perspectival, and this nature makes scientific knowledge contingent, as Thomas Kuhn theorized forty years ago.Using the example of color vision in humans to illustrate how his theory of “perspectivism” works, Ronald N. Giere argues that colors do not actually exist in objects; rather, color is the result of an interaction between aspects of the world and the human visual system. Giere extends this argument into a general interpretation of human perception and, more controversially, to scientific observation, conjecturing that the output of scientific instruments is perspectival. Furthermore, complex scientific principles—such as Maxwell’s equations describing the behavior of both the electric and magnetic fields—make no claims about the world, but models based on those principles can be used to make claims about specific aspects of the world.Offering a solution to the most contentious debate in the philosophy of science over the past thirty years, Scientific Perspectivism will be of interest to anyone involved in the study of science.

Scientific Perspectivism

Many people assume that the claims of scientists are objective truths. But historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science have long argued that scientific claims reflect the particular historical, cultural, and social context in which those claims were made. The nature of scientific knowledge is not absolute because it is influenced by the practice and perspective of human agents.Scientific Perspectivism argues that the acts of observing and theorizing are both perspectival, and this nature makes scientific knowledge contingent, as Thomas Kuhn theorized forty years ago.
Using the example of color vision in humans to illustrate how his theory of “perspectivism” works, Ronald N. Giere argues that colors do not actually exist in objects; rather, color is the result of an interaction between aspects of the world and the human visual system. Giere extends this argument into a general interpretation of human perception and, more controversially, to scientific observation, conjecturing that the output of scientific instruments is perspectival. Furthermore, complex scientific principles—such as Maxwell’s equations describing the behavior of both the electric and magnetic fields—make no claims about the world, but models based on those principles can be used to make claims about specific aspects of the world. Offering a solution to the most contentious debate in the philosophy of science over the past thirty years,Scientific Perspectivism will be of interest to anyone involved in the study of science.

Foundations of scientific method: The nineteenth century

Richard S. Westfall (Ed. )

Indiana University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Giere, Ronald N.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Giere, Ronald N.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Giere, Ronald N.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Understanding Scientific Reasoning

Understanding scientific reasoning

Understanding Scientific Reasoning

Understanding Scientific Reasoning

Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations)

Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series)

Science without Laws (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations)

Scientific Perspectivism

Scientific Perspectivism

Foundations of scientific method: The nineteenth century