Search results for "Hard and soft science"
showing 9 items of 9 documents
Specificities and Vagaries of Medicine from the Viewpoint of Hard Sciences
2013
Among many other beautiful reflections on the ontology of medicine, in his Handbook of Analytic Philosophy of Medicine, Sadegh Zadeh promotes Fuzzy Sets Theory among the basic instruments of logic for medical understanding, highlights the importance of vagueness in the medical language and as an intrinsic property of medical epistemology, and invokes the clear advantages of a medical fuzzy taxonomy to overcome the binary concept of being healthy/ill. We briefly discuss these aspects, relating them to the peculiarity of Fuzziness as the only purely scientific notion among the foundational tools needed to define an analytic philosophy of medicine more concerned with an explicatum of the notio…
Reference density trends in the major disciplines
2018
Abstract The aim of this study was to determine whether different areas of knowledge presented different behaviour with regard to the number of references cited per journal document or if, conversely, they shared the same reference density practices. Bibliometric and bibliographic data were collected from 27,141 journals (indexed between 2001 and 2015 in the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR)) and the growth rates in reference density and number of documents and journals in each category were calculated at different levels of aggregation. Our analysis identified that (a) mean reference density values in some Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities categories were equal to or higher than t…
A Few Remarks on the Roots of Fuzziness Measures
2012
In the forty years from the introduction of Fuzzy Entropy, fuzziness measures has been employed in many different fields pertaining both hard and soft sciences, from medicine to art, from engineering to linguistics. If we look back at the road traveled, we can safely state that on of the main reasons for this enduring presence, and maybe the most underrated, is the truly uniqueness of the concept of fuzziness. Far from a reminiscence, this consideration is more of a projection on the future of fuzziness: we strongly believe that the innovation implicit in the concept, while having sometime hindered in the past its perception as a powerful paradigm and tool for the hard science community, wi…
Do Uncertainty and Fuzziness Present Themselves (and Behave) in the Same Way in Hard and Human Sciences?
2010
In the present paper the question whether uncertainty and fuzziness present themselves and behave in the same way (or not) in hard and human sciences will be briefly discussed. This problem came out from the attempt to answer the question asked by Lotfi Zadeh on the (apparent) strangeness of a very limited use of fuzzy sets in human sciences.
Fuzzy Set Theory as a Methodological Bridge between Hard Sciences and Humanities
2013
In this paper, we will investigate the possible role of fuzzy set theory (FST), and more generally the ensemble of technologies and theoretical approaches known as soft computing, as a methodological bridge between hard sciences and humanities. We will try, building on previous works, to investigate the “family links” between these disciplines and show how FST may be of help in promoting a connection between the “two cultures”. We will discuss Carnap and his paradox of explication, the dilemma between imagination and rigor according to Bateson, the problem of interdisciplinarity, and the consequences of precision and exactness. C
Theory of Computation, Fuzziness and a physics of the immaterial
2013
In this paper we advance three clear-cut proposals as a contribution to the discussion on the role of notions of Computation and Fuzziness as a bridge between Hard and Soft Sciences. We suggest that an important difference between the two great fami- lies of science lies in their subject or research having a grounding in nature or not, and that Theory of Computation is a glaring exception to this classifi- cation, being a textbook hard science but dealing with the immaterial. We further advance that such unicity is strongly connected with Church-Turing thesis, and discuss about the role of Computation and Fuzziness as pillars of immaterial sciences
On Some “family resemblances” of Fuzzy Set Theory and Human Sciences
2011
The aim of this paper is to underline the importance of detecting similarities or at least, ‘family resemblances’ among different fields of investigation. As a matter of fact, the attention will be focused mainly on fuzzy sets and a few features of human sciences; however, I hope that the arguments provided and the general context outlined will show that the problem of picking up (dis)similarities among different disciplines is of a more general interest. Usually strong dichotomies guide out attempts at understanding the paths along which scientific research proceed; i.e., soft versus hard sciences, humanities versus the sciences of nature, Naturwissenschaften versus Geisteswissenschaften, …
Technology and human sciences: A dialogue to be constructed or a common tread to be rediscovered?
2013
In this contribution we begin to discuss the thesis that an analysis of the similarities and differences of typical methodologies of human sciences, technology and hard sciences show some unforeseen but strong similarities between human sciences and technologies. In this context fuzzy sets ideas provide useful tools which help to render the analysis more quantitative but without loosing the connection with a purely descriptive analysis. These kinds of considerations would have been hardly conceivable in the setting of XIX Century conception of science. It is the development of Information sciences that has allowed these problems to emerge. In this paper we shall then briefly outline the gen…
Observing The Decision-Making Process
2016
International audience; In this chapter we ask how knowledge can be acquired about the decision-making processes associated with residential choice. As shown by the results of the many areas of research set out in chapter 2, a great number of factors may influence the decision to move home. Because we are more especially interested in the actual decision-making process, we must consider the mental factors that may condition it.