This book highlights the existence of a diversity of methods in science, in general, in groups of sciences (natural, social or the artificial), and in individual sciences. This methodological variety is open to a number of consequences, such as the differences in the research according to levels of reality (micro, meso and macro), which leads to multi-scale modelling and to questioning “fundamental” parts in the sciences, understood as the necessary support for the whole discipline. In addition, this volume acknowledges the need to assess the efficacy of procedures and methods of scientific activity in engendering high quality results in research made; the relevance of contextual factors for methodology of science; the existence of a plurality of stratagems when doing research in empirical sciences (natural, social and of the artificial); and the need for an ethical component while developing scientific methods, because values should have a role in scientific research. The book is of interest to a broad audience of philosophers, academics in various fields, graduate students and research centers interested in methodology of science.
Methodological Alternatives to Reductionism, Monism and Universalism
(Wenceslao J. Gonzalez).- Part I: A New Framework for Methodological
Prospects to Scientific Research. Levels of Reality, Complexity, and
Approaches to Scientific Method (Wenceslao J. Gonzalez).- Multiscale
Modeling: Explanation and Emergence (Robert W. Batterman).- Part II:
Pragmatist Approaches to Methodology of Science. Methodological Pragmatism
(Nicholas Rescher).- Methodological Incidence of the Realms of Reality:
Prediction and Complexity (Amanda Guillan).- Part III: Contextual Factors for
Methodology of Science. Information and Pluralism: Consequences for
Scientific Method (Giovanni Camardi).- The Methodology of Theories in
Context: The Case of Economic Clustering (Catherine Greene and Max
Steuer).- Part IV: Methodological Pluralism in Natural Sciences and Sciences
of the Artificial. Plurality of Explanatory Strategies in Biology: Mechanisms
and Networks (Alvaro Moreno).- Scientific Prediction and Prescription in
Plant Genetic improvement as an Applied Science of Design: The Natural and
the Artificial (Pedro Martínez Gómez).- Part V: Methodological Pluralism in
Social Sciences and Ethical Values. Challenges to Validity from the
Standpoint of Methodological Pluralism: The Case of Survey Research in
Economics (María Caamaño).- Economic Method and its Ethical Component:
Pluralism, Objectivity and Values in Amartya Sens Model (Alessandra Cenci).
Wenceslao J. Gonzalez is Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science (University of A Coruña). He is a Full Member of the Académie International de Philosophie des Sciences/International Academy for Philosophy of Sciences. He has been a Team Leader of the European Science Foundation program entitled The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective (2008-2013). He has been named a Distinguished Researcher by the Main National University of San Marcos in Lima (Peru). He has been a member of the National Committee for Evaluation of the Scientific Activity of Spain. Gonzalez has been a visiting researcher at the Universities of St. Andrews, Münster and London (LSE, CPNSS), as well as Visiting Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science and Visiting Scholar of the Department of Philosophy (U. Pittsburgh). He has given lectures at the Universities of Pittsburgh, Stanford, Quebec in Montreal, Helsinki and Nevada at Reno. The conferences in which he has participated include those organized by the Universities of Uppsala, New South Wales, Bologna, Canterbury (NZ), Vienna, Beijing, Harvard and Boston. He received the Research Award in Humanities given in 1995 by the Autonomous Community of Galicia (Spain). He was President of the Committee of Doctoral Programs at the University of A Coruña (2002-2004). His publications include monographs such as Philosophico-Methodological Analysis of Prediction and its Role in Economics (Springer, 2015) and the edition of 40 volumes on philosophy of science, such as Bas van Fraassens Approach to Representation and Models in Science (2014).
