Model-Based Demography: Essays on Integrating Data, Technique and Theory - Brossura

Burch, Thomas K.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 3319880276 ISBN 13: 9783319880273

Casa editrice: Springer, 2018

Riassunto

Late in a career of more than sixty years, Thomas Burch, an internationally known social demographer, undertook a wide-ranging methodological critique of demography. This open access volume contains a selection of resulting papers, some previously unpublished, some published but not readily accessible. Rejecting the idea that demography is simply a branch of applied statistics, his work views it as an autonomous and complete scientific discipline. When viewed from the perspective of modern philosophy of science, specifically the semantic or model-based school, demography is a balanced discipline, with a rich body of techniques and data, but also with more and better theories than generally recognized. As demonstrated in this book, some demographic techniques can also be seen as theoretical models, and some substantive/behavioral models, commonly rejected as theory because of inconsistent observations, are now seen as valuable theoretical models, for example demographic transition theory.  This book shows how demography can build a strong theoretical edifice on its broad and deep empirical foundation by adoption of the model-based approach to science. But the full-fruits of this approach will require demographers to make greater use of computer modeling in the statement and manipulation of theoretical ideas, as well as for numerical computation.

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Informazioni sull?autore

After completing his graduate work in sociology and demography at the Office of Population 

Research, Princeton University, Thomas Burch taught at Marquette, and at Georgetown University, where he helped found the Center for Population Research. From 1970 to 1975 he served in the Demographic Division [Associated Director] of The Population Council. He then joined the University of Western Ontario to help develop a new Ph.D. program in social demography. He was elected President of the Canadian Population Society in 1992-94, and received that organizations Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. Currently he is Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria and Research Affiliate of the Centre for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington. His main research interests have been fertility, marriage and divorce, household and family structure, and kinship. He has had an abiding interest in demographic theory, and concern over the relative neglect of the

ory by the discipline. In the 1990s, he began to develop a new vision for the codification, presentation, and future development of demography, based on the semantic or model-based approach to the philosophy of science.  In this view of demography, technique, empirical research and theory are in better balance. And demography is seen to have more good theory than is generally realized.

Dalla quarta di copertina

 Late in a career of more than sixty years, Thomas Burch, an internationally known social demographer, undertook a wide-ranging methodological critique of demography. This open access volume contains  a selection of resulting papers, some previously unpublished, some published but not readily accessible [from past meetings of The International Union for the Scientific Study of Population and its research committees, or from other small conferences and seminars]. Rejecting the idea that demography is simply a branch of applied statistics, his work views it as an autonomous and complete scientific discipline. When viewed from the perspective of modern philosophy of science, specifically the semantic or model-based school, demography is a balanced discipline, with a rich body of techniques and data, but also with more and better theories than generally recognized. As demonstrated in this book, some demographic techniques can also be seen as theoretical

models, and some substantive/behavioral models, commonly rejected as theory because of inconsistent observations, are now seen as valuable theoretical models, for example demographic transition theory.  This book shows how demography can build a strong theoretical edifice on its broad and deep empirical foundation by adoption of the model-based approach to science. But the full-fruits of this approach will require demographers to make greater use of computer modeling [both macro- and micro-simulation], in the statement and manipulation of theoretical ideas, as well as for numerical computation.

This book is open access under a CC BY license.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Springer
• Data di pubblicazione: 2018
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 3319880276
• ISBN 13: 9783319880273
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 220
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: CMN Printpool Inh. Mathis Neumann; https://www.also.com/ec/cms5/en_6000/6000/index.jsp; ; Friedrich-Karl-Str. 9; Hamburg; Germania