Philosophical problems

3 It is therefore clear that the introduction of design features to aid decommissioning would require not only the solution of many technical problems but also the conscious making of policy decisions by those involved in the nuclear industry. 

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M. Steiner, The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998. 

All of Bell s papers on the conceptual and philosophical problems of quantum mechanics, including his landmark PIPR paper in which he derives his famous inequality, are collected in [bell87. An excellent collection of papers exploring the philosophical consequences of Bell s theorem appears in a volume edited by Crushing and McMullin [cush89. ... 

The most recent analysis of the treatise appeared in Urszula Szulakowska, Two Italian alchemical manuscripts some philosophical problems monism and dualism in Didier Kahn, Sylvain Matton (eds)., Alchimie art, histoire et mythes. Actes du 1 a colloque international de la Societe d Etude de I Histoire de I Alchimie, conference papers, Paris, College de France, 14-16 mars, 1991 (Paris/Milan, 1995), 249-63. 

Two Italian alchemical manuscripts some philosophical problems monism... 

The scientific and philosophical problems of such reductionist claims have been extensively debated.6 This paper will not deal with questions of scientific validity, but rather with some of the policy implications and applications of reductionist modes of thinking about the body and behavior. 

What we were trying to do in the column was to ascertain the behavior of a mathematical (not physical ) system in the face of a certain type of (simulated) physical behavior. There is nothing wrong with trying to come up with empirical methods for improving the practical performance of chemometric calibration, but one of the philosophical problems with the current state of chemometrics is that nobody is trying to do anything else, that is to determine the fundamental behavior of these mathematical systems. 

A philosophical problem remains, however. The Bunnett-Olsen method, which assumes the linearity of activity coefficient ratios in one another, still uses H0, and H0 values are derived using the cancellation assumption The cancellation assumption is eliminated altogether in the excess acidity method (also called the Marziano-Cimino-Passerini and Cox-Yates methods, which is unfortunate since both are the same - the term excess acidity method is preferred). 

Finally, low resolution mass spectrometry (LRMS) is applied to each separation fraction which exceeds a specified concentration when referred to the sample sources. The present levels are 0.5 fig/rn for gas streams, 1 mg/kg for solids, and 0.1 mg/1 for liquids. The selection of this particular technique, firmly in the middle of a transition between Levels 1 and 2, caused many philosophical problems concerning its proper use. The original Level 1 scheme did not contain LRMS. It has been included in the modified strategy to prevent potential triggering of Level 2 efforts based on large amounts of suspicious, but innocuous, oiganics. However, LRMS can be costly if constraints are not placed on how frequently it is applied. 

J.R.Croca, Experimental violation of Heisenberg uncertainty relations, talkat 5thUKConf. on Conceptual and Philosophical Problems in Physics, Oxford, Sept. 1996. 

V.A. Fock. Fundamental importance of approximate methods in theortical physics. In Philosophical Problems of Physics, Leningrad, 1974 [in Russian]. 

A biochemist typically must dissect an organism into separate biochemical constituents in order to carry out the intended studies. For instance, through isolating and purifying one protein from among tens of thousands in the cell, detailed, closely controlled in vitro experiments can be done on this particular study system (or biochemical trait, if you will). This requirement for simplification is absolutely necessary for controlled experimentation, yet is also the source of a major philosophical problem How do we know that the properties we measure in an isolated system resemble those... 

Does the Disquotational Theory Really Solve All Philosophical Problems Metaphilosophy 22... 

In Brian McGuinness (ed.) Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems The Second Law of Thermodynamics (pp. 13-14)... 

McGuinness, Brian. Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems. D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht. 1974. 

Shapere, Dudly. Philosophical Problems of Natural Science. The Macmillan Company, New York. 1965. 

But chaos is more than a tool. There are as yet unsolved philosophical problems in its wake. While relativity and quantum mechanics necessitated - and in fact originated from - a careful analysis of the concepts of space, time and measurement, chaos, already on the classical level, forces us to re-think the concepts of determinism and predictability. Thus, classical mechanics could not be further removed from the dusty subject it is usually portrayed as. On the contrary it is at the forefront of modern scientific research. Since path integrals provide a link between classical and quantum mechanics, conceptual and philosophical problems with classical mechanics are bound to manifest themselves on the quantum level. We are only at the beginning of a thorough exploration of these questions. But one fact is established already chaos has a profound in-fiuence on the quantum mechanics of atoms and molecules. This book presents some of the most prominent examples. 

Chemistry at the beginning of the nineteenth century was in a position analogous to Ptolemaic astronomy. Around 100 C.E., Ptolemy created his astronomical system, which could be used to accurately chart the movement of all the visible planets, the sun, and the moon. His system worked perfectly well for navigation, time keeping, and all the other activities for which knowing the place of celestial objects was needed. Yet, Ptolemy s system had a philosophical problem. Each of the planets had its own system of movement, and the laws of planetary motion were different from those that governed motion on the Earth. Newton s astronomy and physics put all the planets, the stars, and motion here on Earth into a single system. 

Today, the problem of certainty versus probability still exists and remains a philosophical problem, although, as it turned out, it has in no way stopped research. Scientists, especially physicists, were forced to change the way they expressed some ideas, but in some ways it made science more accurate, since it became easier to describe and explain the variability of nature. 

D. Oldroyd, An Examination of G. E. Stahl s Philosophical Problems of Universal Chemistry, Ambix, 20 (1973), pp. 36-52, p. 52. See also D. Oldroyd, The Doctrine of Property-Conferring Principles in Chemistry Origins and Antecedents , Organon, 12-13 (1976-7), pp. 441-62. 

See Pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem, pp. 51-61 and 115-16 Rouse, Philosophy ot Science and the Persistent Narratives of Modernity) p. 146. 

Pippin, R. B., Modernism as a Philosophical Problem On the Disatisfactions of European High Culture (Oxford Blackwell, 1991). 

So what good, then, what special value, does chemistry offer contemporary philosophy of science Typically philosophical problems, even problems in philosophy of science, are not confined to a particular science. For general problems—problems about representation, inference, discovery, explanation, realism, intertheoretic and interdisciplinary relations, and so on—what is needed are scientific illustrations that go to the heart of the matter without requiring specialized technical knowledge of the reader. The science needed for most philosophy is familiar, not esoteric, right in the middle of things, mature and diverse enough to illustrate a variety of fundamental issues. Almost uniquely, chemistry fits the description. 

And there is the philosophical problem. If such intertheoretic connections are important because, in company with experimental data, they test and confirm the reducing theory, then the inferential steps in such a reduction are critical to the role. In other words, we had better know why our approximations work it is not adequate to employ any old maneuver that produces agreement with observable data when such agreement serves as the benchmark by which to assess the approximate truth of the reducing theory, in this case, quantum mechanics. Much the same is true if we seek to codify connections to ensure logical consistency between our theories. 

Consideration of molecular chemical substances and coherent networks of chemical reactions in open systems does not raise the subtle problems that seem to be specific to quantum mechanics. But examining those chemical systems does suggest that fuller philosophical attention to the critical importance of the closure of relationships between components of compound individuals (i.e., ftdler appreciation of the discovery of group theory that Galois made two centuries ago) seems likely to help resolve some current philosophic problems, specifically those connected with emergence. 

A. Griinbaum Philosophical Problems of Space and Times. 2nd enlarged ed. [Synthese Library... 

P. Mittelstaedt Philosophical Problems of Modern Physics. Translated from the revised 4th German edition by W. Riemer and edited by R.S. Cohen. [Synthese Library 95] 1976... 

S. Amsterdamski Between Experience and Metaphysics. Philosophical Problems of the Evolution of Science. Translated from Polish. [Synthese Library 77] 1975... 

The references pertaining to chemical reactions will be given in Chapters 5 and 6. An exception, apart from a paper by Swinney, is the cited article by Winfree, describing the history of the Belousov-Zhabotinskii oscillatory reaction. The remaining references deal with philosophical problems. 

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