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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Determinism, Holism, and Complexity

Determinism, Holism, and Complexity

Pellegrini, Claudio
Cerrai, Paola
Freguglia, Paolo

Hardcover

BiologyLawns, Trees, & ShrubsPhysics

ISBN10: 0306474727
ISBN13: 9780306474729
Publisher: Springer
Published: Jan 31 2003
Pages: 402
Weight: 2.19
Height: 1.26 Width: 7.28 Depth: 9.50
Language: English
Determinism, holism and complexity: three epistemological attitudes that have easily identifiable historical origins and developments. Galileo believed that it was necessary to prune the impediments to extract the mathematical essence of physical phenomena, to identify the math- ematical structures representing the underlying laws. This Galilean method was the key element in the development of Physics, with its extraordinary successes. Nevertheless the method was later criticized because it led to a view of nature as essentially simple and orderly, and thus by choosing not to investigate several charac- teristics considered as an impediment, several essential aspects of the phenomenon under investigation might be left out. The Galilean point of view also contains an acknowledgement of the central role played by the causal nexus among phenomena. The mechanistic-deterministic de- scription of reality - for instance, a la Laplace - although acknowledging that it is not possible to predict phenomena exactly owing to unavoid- able measurement error, is based on the recognition of the their causal nature, even in an ontological sense. Consequently, deterministic predic- tion became the methodological fulcrum of mathematical physics. But although mechanistic determinism has had and, in many cases, still has, considerable success in Physics, in other branches of science this situa- tion is much less favourable.

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