'Uncertainty and chance' is a subject with a broad span, in that there is no academic discipline or walk of life that is not beset by uncertainty and chance. In this book a range of approaches is represented by authors from varied disciplines: natural sciences, mathematics, social sciences and medical sciences. At one extreme, this volume is concerned with the foundations of probability. At the other extreme, we have scholars who acknowledge the concept of chance and uncertainty but do not (...) cope with it by means of systematic measurement or quantative analysis. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

For two hundred years, Americans have believed that they have an obligation to improve the lot of humanity, a belief that has consistently shaped U.S. foreign policy. Yet within this consensus, there are two competing schools of thought: the "exemplarist" school (Brands' term) which holds that what America chiefly owes the world is the benign example of a well-functioning democracy, and the "vindicationist" school which argues that force must sometimes supplement a good example. In this book, H.W. Brands traces the (...) evolution of these two schools as they emerged in the thinking and writing of the most important public thinkers of the past two centuries. (shrink)

David Hume was one of the most important British philosophers of the eighteenth century. The first part of his Treatise on Human Nature is a seminal work in philosophy. Hume on Knowledge introduces and assesses: * Humes life and the background of the Treatise * The ideas and text in the Treatise * Humes continuing importance to philosophy.

Philosophical analyses can aid scientists in several ways. For example, they can help resolve disagreements among scientists about issues such as the relative value of facts versus theories and observations versus inferences; they provide historical descriptions of how science went when it went well or badly and scientists can imitate these descriptions as though they were prescriptive rules; they identify "families" of theories and methodologies on the basis of common uses of key words, which can help scientists understand theories and (...) methodologies other than their own; and they can provide essential backgrounds for scientistsí debates about issues such as final causality, chance causality, and context effects. However, philosophical analyses cannot provide support for empirical findings or theoretical concepts. (shrink)

In the for 1952 , pp. 33 ff., Nikolaos M. Kontoleon published a most interesting inscription from the shrine of Archilochos on Paros. It was inscribed, as preserved, on two orthostats, which probably formed part of the structure of the hearth or bothros where offerings to the hero were made. There is much of interest to scholars in this new discovery, which is very fully and carefully interpreted by Kontoleon, and has been further discussed by Werner Peck . In this (...) article the present writer wishes to confine himself to some comments on the new evidence about responses of the Delphic oracle supplied by the inscription. This material is all found on the first of the two orthostats, and falls into two categories: responses connected with the setting up of the shrine, and responses connected with the life of Archilochus. (shrink)

The quantum mechanical measurement process is analyzed by means of an explicit generic model describing the interaction between object and measuring device. The solution of the Schrödinger equation for the whole system reflects the ‘collapse’ of the object wave function. A necessary condition is a sufficiently sharply peaked initial measurement device wave function, which is guaranteed in its classical limit. With this assumption, it is in particular proven that the off-diagonal elements of the object density matrix vanish. This study therefore (...) shows the reduction of the object state to be a consequence of Hamiltonian evolution of the total system. (shrink)