Papers by Slobodan Perovic
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2017
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
Experiments were at the heart of the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, so it is not surprising ... more Experiments were at the heart of the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, so it is not surprising that their epistemological ramifications have been discussed by philosophers and scientists over the centuries, at times with exceptional passion. By and large, the debates on the nature, role, and aims of experimentation have been concerned with experiments in physics. Only very recently have experiments in biology and special sciences become a topic of major interest. With the advent of logical positivism in the 20th century, philosophical interest in science focused on the conceptual analysis of the logical structure of scientific theories and justification. Meanwhile, inspired by Newton’s view of the scientific method, inductivists argued that theories were straightforwardly induced from experimental results. In both cases, experiments were neglected as philosophically uninteresting tools that simply deliver data in order to confirm or induce theories. In the early 1980s, the New Experimentalism reacted to such oversimplified views of experimentation by carefully examining the complex relationship between theory and experiment. A multifaceted and lively debate was initiated, on the key question of whether—and in what sense—experimental evidence should be deemed theory-laden. A number of insightful epistemologically and methodologically motivated case studies of experimental instruments, techniques, and statistical methods have appeared, often in symbiosis with relevant historical studies. They have demonstrated that theories are often shaped by the experimental work, rather than the other way around, while theoretical changes and novel concepts emerge in the experiments that precede them. Various and often opposed philosophical perspectives on experimentation, ranging from empiricism to social constructivism, have emerged from such studies. The long-standing philosophical problem of realism has been reexamined in light of these new insights, while recent interest in simulation and modeling in science is currently merging with various strands of philosophy of experimentation. Although philosophy of experimentation has already thoroughly addressed the major areas of experimental physics and its history (a shining example being high-energy physics), condensed matter physics and current optics are two notable exceptions.
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2021
International Journal of Astrobiology
I outline a general thermodynamic condition for the earliest steps in the origin of life based on... more I outline a general thermodynamic condition for the earliest steps in the origin of life based on fluctuation theorems developed in the last two decades. I argue that the exponentially developing loop of asymmetric autocatalysis and thermodynamic tail-wind condition (TTC) in the prebiotic clutter was a key to a particular trajectory of decluttering via a sequence of early symmetry breaking events. Such decluttering was bound to result, most prominently, in homochiral amino acids and homochiral sugars composing nucleotides as the TTC exponentially favoured asymmetric autocatalytic processes over catalytic and symmetric autocatalytic processes in the clutter. I describe the loop's structure, including its chemical and physical properties, and explain that the TTC/asymmetric autocatalysis loop intersected with multiple chemical, geological and climatological feedback loops, thus providing conditions for the propagation of living systems as we know them.
Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness and Experiential Selfhood: Singular and Plural Seminar with Dan Zah... more Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness and Experiential Selfhood: Singular and Plural Seminar with Dan ZahaviInstitute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade, June 2017
Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering
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Papers by Slobodan Perovic