1,720,963 research outputs found
‘Introduction’ to the section ‘Philosophy of biology’
No full textThe present volume presents philosophy of science at its best, that is a philosophy of science that is done in close contact with current scientifi c research and carefully assesses and evaluates its commitments and consequences. As such it represents philosophy simpliciter at its best, for it is concerned with and dares to ask fundamental questions about the nature of things that stem from natural sciences, arguably our most reliable sources of knowledge of the world. The contributions make vividly clear that a philosophy that is totally disconnected from science is sterile and that the practice of science that is totally disconnected from a philosophical attempt to understand the natural world in its most general features is blind. Throughout the book we are confronted with questions about the nature of species, numbers, space, time, matter, consciousness and so on. Taking seriously these questions, along with other open problems in the philosophy of science, and keeping the dialogue between science and philosophy wide open, is likely to be our best bet for a deeper understanding of what surrounds us. The book has a further, deeply important merit. Being the result of a post-graduate conference, it brings together not only leading, long established experts in the field but also new, young researchers, that usually find too small a place within the academic environment. Promoting exactly this kind of interaction is an essential step in constructing a new paradigm for an open, collaborative and fruitful scientific community
Physics and metaphysics
No full textIn the recent debate scholars again discuss vividly the relation between physics and metaphysics (see DiSalle, 2006, pp. 57-58, Ladyman and Ross, 2007, Calosi, 2010 and Dorato, 2010). This is also consequence of the diffusion in contemporary philosophy of a metaphysical way of thinking, which either does not consider results of empirical sciences, or it uses them in a partial and distort manner (Lowe 2002 and 2006, Sider, 2001 and Varzi, 2001). The issue according to which there is a metaphysics before empirical sciences is an ancient new, if it already is in Aristotle (Met. E, 1026a, 10ss.), when he states that there is a proto-episteme (first science) concerning what is motionless and separated. Indeed Aristotle pays attention in avoiding that the proto-episteme neither coordinates nor contains in itself all the other disciplines . It follows that his “physics” – in our terms physics, biology and psychology – could not be deduced from the first science. In the Cartesian perspective, on the contrary, physics is the trunk of philosophy’s tree, whose roots are metaphysics (Descartes, Principes, 1647, AT, IX - 2, 14). Hence, in a certain sense, physics must be derived from metaphysics. Contemporary perspective is different. Scholars maintain that metaphysics is a conceptual (a priori) activity independent of physics. Nevertheless this does not mean the latter is derivable from the former. Ladyman and Ross (2007) and Dorato (2010) are against the contemporary perspective
Poincaré’s physics : ‘Conventionalism’ and the dispute regarding the Relativity priority
No full text
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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