Polish Essays in the Philosophy of the Natural Sciences

Front Matter....Pages i-xxviii
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Reflections on Science and Rationality....Pages 3-17
The Epistemological and Methodological Sense of the Concept of Rationality....Pages 19-30
On Two Kinds of Conventionalism with Respect to Empirical Sciences....Pages 31-42
Realism and Instrumentalism: On a Priori Conditions of Science....Pages 43-50
Once More about Empirical Support....Pages 51-62
The Context of Discovery and the Context of Justification: A Reappraisal....Pages 63-74
Continuity and Anticumulative Changes in the Growth of Science....Pages 75-90
Some Remarks in Defense of the Incommensurability Thesis....Pages 91-102
Marxism and the Controversy over the Development of Science....Pages 103-111
Are there Definitively Falsifying Procedures in Science?....Pages 113-126
The Pluralistic Approach to Empirical Testing and the Special Forms of Experiment....Pages 127-133
Dialectical Correspondence and Essential Truth....Pages 135-146
Testing Idealizational Laws....Pages 147-151
Practical Idealization....Pages 153-165
Front Matter....Pages 167-167
An Interpretation of a Concept in Science by a Set of Operational Procedures....Pages 169-185
A Formal Definition of the Concept of Simplicity....Pages 187-195
Characteristics of Additive Quantities....Pages 197-207
Front Matter....Pages 209-209
On the Concept of Matter....Pages 211-214
Time Separation....Pages 215-222
Four Conceptions of Causation....Pages 223-235
Front Matter....Pages 237-237
On the Philosophy of Mathematics....Pages 239-248
Information, Regulation, Negentropy....Pages 249-264
Information and Signal....Pages 265-273
Front Matter....Pages 275-275
Principles of Physics as Metalaws....Pages 277-285
Structural Laws in Physics....Pages 287-297
Controversial Problems of the Probabilistic Interpretation of Quantum Phenomena....Pages 299-308
Quantum Mechanics and the Structure of Physical Theories....Pages 309-317
Difficulties with the Reduction of Classical to Relativistic Mechanics....Pages 319-332
Front Matter....Pages 333-333
Genetic and Historical Explanation in Biology....Pages 335-351
The Idealizational Status of Theoretical Biology....Pages 353-364
Chomsky’s Inconsistencies in his Critique of Evolutionary Conceptions of Language....Pages 365-373
Front Matter....Pages 375-375
The Problem of the Chemical Organization of Matter in the Light of a Closed Development Model....Pages 377-390
An Outline of a Simulation Model of Science as a Part of the Model of Action....Pages 391-405
The Notion of Technological Research and its Place among other Informational Activities....Pages 407-412
Difficulties with Absolutism: The Case of Von Weizsäcker’s Philosophy....Pages 413-430
Back Matter....Pages 431-491