Abstract
Ideas are the starting point of all purposeful action , as it presupposes ideas of means and ends. In other words, the changes brought about by action are ultimately traced back to the faculty of reason.
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Notes
- 1.
What Tarde is describing is actually the imaginary case of a world without causal regularity, not one in which there are no resemblances.
- 2.
It is interesting to note that a related concept known as JND (Just-Noticeable Difference) occurs in the branch of experimental psychology known as psychophysics which focuses on sense, sensation, and perception. JND refers to the amount something must be changed in order for it to be detectable at least half of the time. This concept is also referred to as the differential threshold.
- 3.
Newell and Simon (1976) mention a number of important qualitative explanations from the “hard” sciences, such as “the cell doctrine in biology”, “the theory of plate tectonics” in geology and “the germ theory of disease” in medicine. Of particular noteworthiness is the “doctrine of atomism” as the qualitative bases of chemistry that allowed a replacement by quantitative law, since “the underlying species of atoms are so simple and limited in their variety”. This is unlike the case of “cells, tectonic plates, and germs” where variety is too great and qualitative principles remain of obvious importance (Newell and Simon 1976; Thagard and Toombs 2005).
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Tonsberg, T.A., Henderson, J.S. (2016). The Ultimate A Priori of Discovery. In: Understanding Leadership in Complex Systems. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40445-5_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40445-5_15
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