Quantum Mechanics, Mathematics, Cognition and Action

by Mugur-Schachter, Mioara; Van Der Merwe, Alwyn

• ISBN13: 9781402011207
• ISBN10: 1402011202
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

The purpose of this book is to initiate a new discipline, namely a formalized epistemological method drawn from the cognitive strategies practised in the most effective among the modern scientific disciplines, as well as from general philosophical thinking. Indeed, what is lacking in order to improve our knowledge and our domination of the modes which nowadays are available for the generation and communication of knowledge, thoroughly and rapidly and with precision and detail? It is a systematic explication of the epistemological essence encrypted in the specialized languages and algorithms of the major modern scientific approaches, a systematic cross-referencing of the explicated results, and a final elaboration of a new coherent whole.Quantum mechanics, like a diver, can take us down to the level of the very first actions of our conceptualization of reality. And starting from there, it can induce an explicit understanding of certain fundamental features of the new scientific thinking.A formalized epistemology should not be mistaken for a crossdisciplinary or a multidisciplinary project. The latter projects are designed to offer to nonspecialists access to information, to results obtained inside specialized disciplines, as well as a certain understanding of these results; whereas a formalized epistemology should equip anyone with a framework for conceptualizing himself in whatever domain and direction he or she might choose. A formalized epistemology should not be mistaken either for an approach belonging to the modern cognitive sciences. These try to establish as neutrally as possible descriptions of how the human body-and-mind work spontaneously when knowledge is generated; whereas a method of conceptualization should establish what conceptual-operational deliberate procedures have to be applied in order to represent and to achieve processes of generation of knowledge optimized accordingly to any definite aims.This book addresses philosophers of science, physicists, mathematicians, logicians, computer scientists, researchers in cognitive sciences, and biologists, as well as any intellectual who is interested in scientific and philosophical thinking.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Introduction	p. ix
Preliminary Explorations: What, Why, How?	p. 1
Remarks About the Program for a Formalized Epistemology	p. 3
Formalized Epistemology in a Philosophical Perspective	p. 9
Formalized Epistemology, Logic, and Grammar	p. 21
Epistemic Operations and Formalized Epistemology: Contribution to the Study of the Role of Epistemic Operations in Scientific Theories	p. 37
Mathematical Physics and Formalized Epistemology: Debate with Jean Petitot	p. 73
On the Possibility of a Formalized Epistemology	p. 103
Constructive Contributions	p. 107
Quantum Mechanics Versus a Method of Relativized Conceptualization	p. 109
Mathematical and Formalized Epistemologies	p. 309
Ago-Antagonistic Systems	p. 325
Further Explorations	p. 349
Complexity of the "Basic Unit" of Language: Some Parallels in Physics and Biology	p. 351
About the Emergence of Invariances in Physics: from "Substantial" Conservation to Formal Invariance	p. 369
Form and Actuality	p. 389
To Suspended Informal Time	p. 431
The Constructed Objectivity of the Mathematics and the Cognitive Subject	p. 433
On Complexity	p. 463
Biographical Notes	p. 487
Author and Subject Index	p. 491
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