Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the following:

• the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, in the UK, for financial support,
• Sally Hatton, for introducing him to the critiques of positivism and alternative epistemologies in the new social movements, of which standpoint epistemology is one, for many helpful discussions, and for recommending Social Research [27] and Principles of Dynamics [26], and providing copies thereof,
• Steve Julian, for suggesting the division of scientific advancement into three paths of increasing size, increasing energy, and increasing complexity, and for recommending Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [55], $1+1 = 3$? [10], and the works of Anderson [1,2,3],
• David MacKay, for tuition in Bayesian statistics, for pointing out a weakness in the definition of ``likelihood'' in this report, and for many helpful discussions,
• Jairo Tocancipá-Falla, for many helpful discussions, and for recommending From Physics to Anthropology and Back Again [64],
• Suzanne Zeedyk, for giving the lecture [76], in a discussion following which he first heard of the work of Harding [28,29] and of the concept of strong objectivity,
• Nancy Lane, for making the aforementioned post-lecture comment concerning strong objectivity,
• Marilyn Strathern, for recommending The Relation [70], and providing a copy thereof,
• Ramin Nakisa, for identifying Cournot's [11] system of hypothesis testing as a frequentist inference method, and for recommending Scientific Reasoning [34],
• Sam Gardiner, for recommending ``Giant magnetoresistance and microstructural characteristics of epitaxial $Fe$-$Ag$ and $Co$-$Ag$ granular thin films,'' [74], ``Correlation between dynamic magnetic hysteresis loops and nanoscale roughness of ultrathin $Co$ films'' [37], and ``Correlation between crystalline structure and soft magnetic properties in sputtered sendust films'' [15], and providing copies thereof,
• Thanos Mitrelias, the author's laboratory colleague when the bulk of this work was undertaken, for immense indulgence and patience while the author took research time to work on this project,
• Klaus Peter Kopper, the author's laboratory colleague when the bulk of this work was undertaken, for immense indulgence and patience while the author took research time to work on this project,
• Louise Madden, for pointing out that many in the new social movements are suspicious of quantitative methods, and therefore alerting him to the need to defend the quantitative nature of Bayesian statistics, as very different from the kind of quantitative methods that created the suspicion,
• Glenn Richer, for pointing out a need for greater clarity in the remarks, in this report, about the ideological associations of the Shannon entropy,
• Claude Demangeat, for pointing out that the derivation of statistical properties from quantum mechanics, which can be used as effective postulates, is as much a part of the first-principles tradition as of the emergent-phenomena tradition, and
• the Natural Environment Research Council, in the UK, for financial support.