Table of Contents:
- Preface
- A Human Perception and Thinking
- 1 The human brain
- 1.1 Brain and nervous system
- 1.2 Brain and mind
- 1.3 Human perception
- 1.4 Evolutionary theory of knowledge
- 2 Logic and mathematics
- 2.1 Elements of symbolic logic
- 2.2 The axiomatic method
- 2.3 Logical paradoxes and Gödel's theorem
- 2.4 Inexact concepts, "fuzzy logic"
- 2.5 Dialectic thinking
- 2.6 Geometry: dimensions two to infinity
- B Natural Science
- 3 Physics
- 3.1 Classical mechanics and determinism
- 3.2 Deterministic chaos
- 3.3 Probability
- 3.4 The theory of relativity
- 3.5 Quantum theory
- 3.6 Elementary particles
- 3.7 Space and time; cosmology
- 3.8 Inverse problems
- 3.9 Induction, verification, falsification
- 3.10 The structure of scientific revolutions
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- 4 Systems, information, evolution
- 4.1 Feedback, regulation, downward causation
- 4.2 Self-organization
- 4.3 Entropy, information, evolution
- 4.4 Data and errors
- 4.5 Complexity and reductionism
- C Philosophy
- 5 Philosophy for scientists
- 5.1 Realism, idealism and dualism
- 5.2 The three-world model
- 5.3 Subject and object
- 5.4 Historical landmarks
- 6 Philosophical implications of science
- 6.1 Matter and mind
- 6.2 Materialism, idealism and the outer world
- 6.3 Time, creativity, and block universe
- 6.4 Freedom of the will
- 6.5 Laws of nature
- 6.6 Theories of everything
- 6.7 The Absolute
- 6.8 Pluralism
- Selected additional reading
- Index
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