This book challenges the evidence-based practice movement to re-think its assumptions. Firmly rooted in real practice while drawing lucidly on a great breadth of theoretical frameworks, it examines afresh how clinicians use knowledge.Evidence-based practice has recently become a key part of the training of all health professionals. Yet despite its ‘gold-standard’ status, it is faltering because too much effort has gone into insisting on an idealised model of how clinicians ought to...

Greek, Indian and Arabic Logic marks the initial appearance of the multi-volume Handbook of the History of Logic. Additional volumes will be published when ready, rather than in strict chronological order. Soon to appear are The Rise of Modern Logic: From Leibniz to Frege. Also in preparation are Logic From Russell to Gödel, Logic and the Modalities in the Twentieth Century, and The Many-Valued and Non-Monotonic Turn in Logic. Further volumes will follow, including Mediaeval and Renaissanc...

The present volume of the Handbook of the History of Logic brings together two of the most important developments in 20th century non-classical logic. These are many-valuedness and non-monotonicity. On the one approach, in deference to vagueness, temporal or quantum indeterminacy or reference-failure, sentences that are classically non-bivalent are allowed as inputs and outputs to consequence relations. Many-valued, dialetheic, fuzzy and quantum logics are, among other things, principled a...

With the publication of the present volume, the Handbook of the History of Logic turns its attention to the rise of modern logic. The period covered is 1685-1900, with this volume carving out the territory from Leibniz to Frege. What is striking about this period is the earliness and persistence of what could be called 'the mathematical turn in logic'. Virtually every working logician is aware that, after a centuries-long run, the logic that originated in antiquity came to be displaced by ...

Starting at the very beginning with Aristotle's founding contributions, logic has been graced by several periods in which the subject has flourished, attaining standards of rigour and conceptual sophistication underpinning a large and deserved reputation as a leading expression of human intellectual effort. It is widely recognized that the period from the mid-19th century until the three-quarter mark of the century just past marked one of these golden ages, a period of explosive creativity...

This volume covers a wide range of conceptual, epistemological and methodological issues in the philosophy of science raised by reflection upon medical science and practice. Several chapters examine such general meta-scientific concepts as discovery, reduction, theories and models, causal inference and scientific realism as they apply to medicine or medical science in particular. Some discuss important concepts specific to medicine (diagnosis, health, disease, brain death). A topic such as...

One of the most striking features of mathematics is the fact that we are much more certain about the mathematical knowledge we have than about what mathematical knowledge is knowledge of. Are numbers, sets, functions and groups physical entities of some kind? Are they objectively existing objects in some non-physical, mathematical realm? Are they ideas that are present only in the mind? Or do mathematical truths not involve referents of any kind? It is these kinds of questions that have en...

The most pressing problems facing humanity today — over-population, energy shortages, climate change, soil erosion, species extinctions, the risk of epidemic disease, the threat of warfare that could destroy all the hard-won gains of civilization, and even the recent fibrillations of the stock market — are all ecological or have a large ecological component. in this volume philosophers turn their attention to understanding the science of ecology and its huge implications for the human proj...

Philosophy of Chemistry investigates the foundational concepts and methods of chemistry, the science of the nature of substances and their transformations. This groundbreaking collection, the most thorough treatment of the philosophy of chemistry ever published, brings together philosophers, scientists and historians to map out the central topics in the field. The 33 articles address the history of the philosophy of chemistry and the philosophical importance of some central figures in the ...

Philosophy of Linguistics investigates the foundational concepts and methods of linguistics, the scientific study of human language. This groundbreaking collection, the most thorough treatment of the philosophy of linguistics ever published, brings together philosophers, scientists and historians to map out both the foundational assumptions set during the second half of the last century and the unfolding shifts in perspective in which more functionalist perspectives are explored. The openi...

Amid a welter of simultaneous policy initiatives, treatment centres were a top-down NHS innovation that became subverted into a multiplicity of solutions to different local problems. This highly readable account of how and why they evolved with completely unforeseen results reveals clear, practical lessons based on case study research involving over 200 interviews. Policy makers, managers and clinicians undertaking any organisational innovation cannot afford to ignore these findings.

The term ‘mindlines’ has become common currency in the world of research implementation and evidence-based practice. This book updates, develops and applies the mindlines model more widely. It sheds light on how we can realistically mobilise and transform research-based evidence into practice in context.This illuminating book shows how the mindlines model can be put to work. It highlights how practitioners collectively share and internalise implicit, flexible ways of rapidly handli...