First published in 1993. Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? Does time flow at an even rate? These are just two of the questions that won't be answered in Pseudo-Problems. This book explains how problems are dissolved rather than solved. Roy Sorenson takes the most important and interesting examples from one hundred years of analytic philosophy (and the odd one from the centuries before) to consolidate a new theory of dissolution. Pseudo-Problems is a fast-moving, fascinating alternative history of twentieth-century analytic philosophy, and a fine example of what philosophical analysis should be. Not least, it is an important contribution to the debates about creativity and problem solving.

First published in 1993. Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? Does time flow at an even rate? These are just two of the questions that won't be answered in Pseudo-Problems. This book explains how problems are dissolved rather than solved. Roy Sorenson takes the most important and interesting examples from one hundred years of analytic philosophy (and the odd one from the centuries before) to consolidate a new theory of dissolution. Pseudo-Problems is a fast-moving, fascinating alternative history of twentieth-century analytic philosophy, and a fine example of what philosophical analysis should be. Not least, it is an important contribution to the debates about creativity and problem solving.

CHAPTER 1. STANDARD PSEUDO-DIFFERENTIAL BOUNDARY PROBLEMS AND THEIR REALIZATIONS 1. 1 Introductory remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 1. 2 The calculus of pseudo-differential boundary problems . . •. 19 1. 3 Green's formula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 1. 4 Realizations and normal boundary conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 1. 5 Parameter-ellipticity and parabolicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 1. 6 Adjoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 1. 7 Semiboundedness and coerciveness . . . . . . . . •. . . . . . . . . . . •. . . . 96 CHAPTER 2. THE CALCULUS OF PARAMETER-DEPENDENT OPERATORS 2. 1 Parameter-dependent pseudo-differential operators . . •. . . . . 125 2. 2 The transmission property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 2. 3 Parameter-dependent boundary symbol s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 2. 4 Operators and kernels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 2. 5 Continuity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 2. 6 Composition of xn-independent boundary symbol operators . . 234 2. 7 Compositions in general . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 2. 8 Strictly homogeneous symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 CHAPTER 3. PARAMETRIX AND RESOLVENT CONSTRUCTIONS 3. 1 Ellipticity. Auxiliary elliptic operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 3. 2 The parametrix construction . . . . . . . . . . •. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 3. 3 The resolvent of a realization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 3. 4 Other special cases . . . . . . •. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 CHAPTER 4. SOME APPLICATIONS 4. 1 Evolution problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 4. 2 The heat operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 4. 3 An index formula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 4. 4 Complex powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 4. 5 Spectral asymptotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 4. 6 Implicit eigenvalue problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . •. . . . . 437 4. 7 Singular perturbations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 APPENDIX. VARIOUS PREREQUISITES (A. 1 General notation. A. 2 Functions and distributions. A. 3 Sobolev spaces. A. 4 Spaces over sub sets of mn. A. 5 Spaces over manifolds. A. 6 Notions from 473 spectral theory. ) '" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . •. . . . . . . •. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . •. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle. In The Logical Structure of the World, Carnap adopts the position of "methodological solipsism" and shows that it is possible to describe the world from the immediate data of experience. In his Pseudoproblems in Philosophy, he asserts that many philosophical problems are meaningless.

“A remarkable contribution to one of the most vexing problems in science: the ‘demarcation’ problem, or how to distinguish science from nonscience.” —Francisco J. Ayala, author of Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion What sets the practice of rigorously tested, sound science apart from pseudoscience? In this volume, the contributors seek to answer this question, known to philosophers of science as “the demarcation problem.” This issue has a long history in philosophy, stretching as far back as the early twentieth century and the work of Karl Popper. But by the late 1980s, scholars in the field began to treat the demarcation problem as impossible to solve and futile to ponder. However, the essays that Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry have assembled in this volume make a rousing case for the unequivocal importance of reflecting on the separation between pseudoscience and sound science. Moreover, the demarcation problem is not a purely theoretical dilemma of mere academic interest: it affects parents’ decisions to vaccinate children and governments’ willingness to adopt policies that prevent climate change. Pseudoscience often mimics science, using the superficial language and trappings of actual scientific research to seem more respectable. Even a well-informed public can be taken in by such questionable theories dressed up as science. Pseudoscientific beliefs compete with sound science on the health pages of newspapers for media coverage and in laboratories for research funding. Now more than ever the ability to separate genuine scientific findings from spurious ones is vital, and The Philosophy of Pseudoscience provides ground for philosophers, sociologists, historians, and laypeople to make decisions about what science is or isn’t. “A manual to overcome our natural cognitive biases.” —Corriere della Sera (Italy)

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the existence of weak solutions of unsteady problems with variable exponents. The central motivation is the weak solvability of the unsteady p(.,.)-Navier–Stokes equations describing the motion of an incompressible electro-rheological fluid. Due to the variable dependence of the power-law index p(.,.) in this system, the classical weak existence analysis based on the pseudo-monotone operator theory in the framework of Bochner–Lebesgue spaces is not applicable. As a substitute for Bochner–Lebesgue spaces, variable Bochner–Lebesgue spaces are introduced and analyzed. In the mathematical framework of this substitute, the theory of pseudo-monotone operators is extended to unsteady problems with variable exponents, leading to the weak solvability of the unsteady p(.,.)-Navier–Stokes equations under general assumptions. Aimed primarily at graduate readers, the book develops the material step-by-step, starting with the basics of PDE theory and non-linear functional analysis. The concise introductions at the beginning of each chapter, together with illustrative examples, graphics, detailed derivations of all results and a short summary of the functional analytic prerequisites, will ease newcomers into the subject.

This volume consists of papers inspired by the special session on pseudo-differential operators at the 10th ISAAC Congress held at the University of Macau, August 3-8, 2015 and the mini-symposium on pseudo-differential operators in industries and technologies at the 8th ICIAM held at the National Convention Center in Beijing, August 10-14, 2015. The twelve papers included present cutting-edge trends in pseudo-differential operators and applications from the perspectives of Lie groups (Chapters 1-2), geometry (Chapters 3-5) and applications (Chapters 6-12). Many contributions cover applications in probability, differential equations and time-frequency analysis. A focus on the synergies of pseudo-differential operators with applications, especially real-life applications, enhances understanding of the analysis and the usefulness of these operators.

Consists of the expository paper based on the 6-hour minicourse given by Professor Bert-Wolfgang Schulze, and sixteen papers based on lectures given at the workshop and on invitations.

This volume is based on lectures given at the workshop on pseudo-differential operators held at the Fields Institute from December 11, 2006 to December 15, 2006. The two main themes of the workshop and hence this volume are partial differential equations and time-frequency analysis. The contents of this volume consist of five mini-courses for graduate students and post-docs, and fifteen papers on related topics. Of particular interest in this volume are the mathematical underpinnings, applications and ramifications of the relatively new Stockwell transform, which is a hybrid of the Gabor transform and the wavelet transform. The twenty papers in this volume reflect modern trends in the development of pseudo-differential operators.