Epistemology & Methodology III: Philosophy of Science and Technology Part I: Formal and Physical Sciences

Abstract

INTRODUCTION 1 1. The Chasm between S&T and the Humanities 1 2. Bridging the Chasm 3 3. Towards a Useful PS&T 5 4. Concluding Remarks 7 1. FORMAL SCIENCE: FROM LOGIC TO MATHEMATICS 9 1. Generalities 9 1.1 Two Main Types of Research Field 9 1.2 Some Peculiarities of Mathematics 16 2. Mathematics and Reality 26 2.1 Conceptual Existence 26 2.2 Mathematics and Reality 33 3. Logic 40 3.1 Logic Lato Sensu 40 3.2 Non-standard Logics 55 4. Pure and Applied Mathematics 75 4 1 Applications of Mathematics 75 4.2 An Example: Probability 86 5. Foundations and Philosophy 95 5.1 Foundations of Mathematics 95 5.2 Philosophies of Mathematics 107 6. Concluding Remarks 121 2. physical science: from physics to earth science 124 1. Preliminaries 124 1.1 Physical Quantity, Convention, Measurement 125 1.2 Theory, Metatheory, Protophysics 134 2. Two Classics 140 2.1 Classical Mechanics 140 2.2 Statistical Mechanics 148 3. Two Relativities 155 3.1 Special Relativity 155 3.2 General Relativity 161 4. Quantons 165 4.1 Classons and Quantons 165 4.2 The State Function and its Referents 169 5. Chance 178 5.1 Probability 178 5.2 Double Slit and Double Logic 187 6. Realism and Classicism 191 6.1 Measurement and Projection 191 6.2 Hidden Variables, Separability, and Realism 205 7. Chemistry 219 7.1 Philosophy and Chemistry 219 7.2 Is Chemistry Reducible to Physics? 226 8. Megaphysics 231 8.1 Earth Sciences 231 8.2 Cosmology 235 9. Concluding Remarks 241