Paradoxes in Scientific Inference
Mark Chang
CRC Press, 15-Oct-2012 - Computers - 291 pages
Paradoxes are poems of science and philosophy that collectively allow us to address broad multidisciplinary issues within a microcosm. A true paradox is a source of creativity and a concise expression that delivers a profound idea and provokes a wild and endless imagination. The study of paradoxes leads to ultimate clarity and, at the same time, indisputably challenges your mind.
Paradoxes in Scientific Inference analyzes paradoxes from many different perspectives: statistics, mathematics, philosophy, science, artificial intelligence, and more. The book elaborates on findings and reaches new and exciting conclusions. It challenges your knowledge, intuition, and conventional wisdom, compelling you to adjust your way of thinking. Ultimately, you will learn effective scientific inference through studying the paradoxes.
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=IveGO5AZcHEC
The Role of Paradox in Science and Mathematics
by Robert M. Panoff, Shodor Education Foundation
and Michael J. South, Fulcrum.org
http://www.shodor.org/ssep/pae/editorials/paradox.html
What, Exactly, is a Paradox?
William G. Lycan
University of North Carolina
Quine divides paradoxes into three groups. A “veridical” paradox is one whose
“proposition” or conclusion is in fact true despite its air of absurdity. We decide that a
paradox is veridical when we look carefully at the argument and it convinces us, i.e., it
manages to show us how it is that the conclusion is true after all and appearances to the
contrary were misleading.
A “falsidical” paradox is one whose “proposition” or conclusion is indeed obviously
false or self-contradictory, but which contains a fallacy that is detectably responsible for
delivering the absurd conclusion. We decide that a paradox is falsidical when we look
carefully at the argument and spot the fallacy.
Oddly, Quine does not mention a third related category, the obverse of a veridical
paradox: the argument in question could have an obviously false or self-contradictory
conclusion, yet rest on no error of reasoning however subtle—so long as it has a premise
that looks for all the world true until we let the argument itself show us that and how the
premise is false after all. We might call this sort of paradox, for want of better, “premise-flawed.”
