Relations Between Sciences

by C. F. A. Pantin , Edited with Introduction and Notes by A. M. Pantin , W. H. Thorpe

• ISBN13: 9780521148153
• ISBN10: 0521148154
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-03
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Professor Pantin's wide range of scientific interests - he was a professional zoologist, an excellent field geologist and widely read in physics - enable him to speak authoritatively concerning the relations between the sciences. In this book, which was originally published in 1968, Professor Pantin pursues the ideas to which he first gave expression in his Tarner Lectures. He explains that the most difficult scientific problems lie in the unrestricted biological sciences, not in the physical, or restricted, sciences. He points out that the basic aim of all scientific research is the classification of attributes and events, and considers why certain kinds of classification are especially acceptable to the human mind, and what are the forces, often unrecognised, which give the impulse to scientific research and influence its direction. The book will appeal both to professional scientists and to philosophers of science.

Table of Contents

Preface

The restricted and the unrestricted sciences

The features of the natural world

Living systems and natural selection

The classification of objects and phenomena

Methods in the unrestricted sciences

Summary

Life and the conditions of existence (from Biology and Personality, edited by I. P. Ramsey, Oxford, Blackwell, 1965)

Learning, world-models and pre-adaptation (reprinted from Animal Behaviour, supplement I, 1965)

Organism and environment (paper read in 1965 at a meeting of the Study Group on 'Foundations of Cultural Unity', Bowdoin College, USA)

Notes and references

Index

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