Explore Google's Book Search Feature for Free!

[turbo]

I was not sure to put this post, since it could be of possible benefit to everyone here, but if the mods think it's advisable, I'm sure they'll put it someplace appropriate. Google has a new feature that let's you search the content of books. Sometimes it's only relevant excerpts and tables of content, but if you toggle the preference from "All Books" to "Full View Books", you can get to read entire books and journals.

It's pretty nice, although when I Googled "epistemology", almost all the books returned were from before 1920. That's a bit disturbing. Do people not bother researching the origins of the ideas underpinning their assumptions, or has that practice fallen out of favor, or is it perhaps practiced under another name?

How does it happen that a properly endowed natural scientist comes to concern himself with epistemology? Is there not some more valuable work to be done in his specialty? That's what I hear many of my colleagues ask, and I sense it from many more. But I cannot share this sentiment. When I think about the ablest students whom I have encountered in my teaching—that is, those who distinguish themselves by their independence of judgment and not just their quick-wittedness—I can affirm that they had a vigorous interest in epistemology. They happily began discussions about the goals and methods of science, and they showed unequivocally, through tenacious defense of their views, that the subject seemed important to them.

Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they come to be stamped as "necessities of thought," "a priori givens," etc. The path of scientific progress is often made impassable for a long time by such errors. Therefore it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analyzing long-held commonplace concepts and showing the circumstances on which their justification and usefulness depend, and how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. Thus their excessive authority will be broken. They will be removed if they cannot be properly legitimated, corrected if their correlation with given things be far too superfluous, or replaced if a new system can be established that we prefer for whatever reason.

 

[chroot]

Keep in mind that:

a) Google's online library is not yet complete.
b) Some publishers have taken legal action to prevent Google from scanning their books.
c) Google cannot publish any books in entirety which are still under copyright.

The truth is that I don't think it'll take all that long for some distributed projects to completely slurp the entire contents of Google Print and produce an enormous, distributed copy of everything they've scanned, in entirety.

- Warren

 

[verty]

Well I imagine DRM will provide some mechanism for subscription libraries with protected content, although I'm not to pleased about letting a company control what I do.

 

[chroot]

DRM's a joke, you realize.

- Warren

 

[Yonoz]

Do people not bother researching the origins of the ideas underpinning their assumptions, or has that practice fallen out of favor, or is it perhaps practiced under another name?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science" .

 

[Daverz]

It's pretty nice, although when I Googled "epistemology", almost all the books returned were from before 1920. That's a bit disturbing. Do people not bother researching the origins of the ideas underpinning their assumptions, or has that practice fallen out of favor, or is it perhaps practiced under another name?

A gazillion authors of a gazillion books on the interpretation of quantum mechanics might beg to differ.