Relations Between Sciences

Professor Pantin examines the relations between the sciences and will appeal to both professional scientists and to philosophers of science.

C. F. A. Pantin (Author), A. M. Pantin (Edited by), W. H. Thorpe (Edited by)

9780521148153, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 June 2010

218 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.49 kg

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.

Preface
1. The restricted and the unrestricted sciences
2. The features of the natural world
3. Living systems and natural selection
4. The classification of objects and phenomena
5. Methods in the unrestricted sciences
Summary
Appendix 1. Life and the conditions of existence (from Biology and Personality, edited by I. P. Ramsey, Oxford, Blackwell, 1965)
Appendix 2. Learning, world-models and pre-adaptation (reprinted from Animal Behaviour, supplement I, 1965)
Appendix 3. 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.

Subject Areas: Mathematics [PB]