Measuring and Reasoning: Numerical Inference in the Sciences

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Fred L. BooksteinCambridge University Press, 2/28/2014EAN 9781107024151, ISBN10: 1107024153Hardcover, 559 pages, 23.5 x 16 x 3.4 cmLanguage: EnglishIn Measuring and Reasoning, Fred L. Bookstein examines the way ordinary arithmetic and numerical patterns are translated into scientific understanding, showing how the process relies on two carefully managed forms of argument: • Abduction: the generation of new hypotheses to accord with findings that were surprising on previous hypotheses, and • Consilience: the confirmation of numerical pattern claims by analogous findings at other levels of measurement. These profound principles include an understanding of the role of arithmetic and, more importantly, of how numerical patterns found in one study can relate to numbers found in others. More than 200 figures and diagrams illuminate the text. The book can be read with profit by any student of the empirical nature or social sciences and by anyone concerned with how scientists persuade those of us who are not scientists why we should credit the most important claims about scientific facts or theories.Part I. The Basic Structure of a Numerical Inference1. Getting started2. Consilience as a rhetorical strategy3. Abduction and strong inferencePart II. A Sampler of Strategies4. The undergraduate coursePart III. Numerical Inference for General Systems5. Abduction and consilience in more complicated systems6. The singular value decompositiona family of pattern engines for organized systems7. Morphometrics, and other examplesPart IV. What Is to Be Done?8. Retrospect and prospect. Show more