In this book van Fraassen develops an alternative to scientific realism by constructing and evaluating three mutually reinforcing theories.
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Editorial Reviews
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"An excellent extre� to the current debates on this topic, as seen by van Fraassenn who is probably the most direct and severe opponent of scientific realism."--Review of Metaphysics
"A most useful and stimulating book. It brings together some of the main strands in the 'dialectic' of post-positivist analytic philosophy, and moreover, it does this with lucidity, charm, erudition, and great intelligence....Would make an excellent text for a middle to upper-level course in contemporary philosophy of science."--Journal of Philosophy
"Would make an excellent introduction to the philosophical issues clustering around scientific realism for undergraduates if set in conjunction with the recent realist literature.
"Important not only for its contributions to special topics such as the theory of explanation and the use of probability, but important also for its detailed and sustained critique of scientific realism."--Philosophy of Science
About the Author
Bas. C. van Fraassen is at Princeton University.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An attack on then and still fashionable scientific realism.,
By
This review is from: The Scientific Image (Clarendon Library of Logic & Philosophy) (Paperback)
Bas van Fraassen rejects the current trend in philosophy of science toward scientific realism. In this book, he advocates something he calls constructive empiricism as an alternative; his constructive empiricism has a neo-positivist feel to it, but the development of his own position is not the most interesting aspect of this book. His criticisms of scientific realism, which really form the heart of the work, are extremely detailed, forceful, and interesting; they present a challenge which, after a decade and a half, scientific realists have yet to meet.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderfully important book,
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This review is from: The Scientific Image (Clarendon Library of Logic & Philosophy) (Paperback)
This is a must read for anyone wishing to sincerely engage in philosophy of science. It should change the way you think about science, but it does not deny anything essential to science. Just so you know, Van Fraassen is a Catholic, so he does seem to believe in unobservable entities, though he denies that empirical science as it is commonly understood can tell us anything about them directly.
9 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book on very contemporary philosophy of science,
This review is from: The Scientific Image (Clarendon Library of Logic & Philosophy) (Paperback)
In this book, van Fraassen put forth a 'constructive empiricist' anti-realist account of science. The book contains many metaphors and even a short story. Yet it is often unclear whether he is prescribing norms for scientists, and merely describing their practice. (This may result from his counterfactual account, which strangely seems to warrant belief in propositions containing terms allegedly referring to unobservables that have nevertheless not been observed. At best, the account makes perfect agnosticism preferable to belief-formation with respect to propositions containing unobservable terms, where such prescriptions are justified on the basis of something other than facts.) The book represents what positivist philosophy might have become in the absence of thinkers who were more sensitive to the subtleties between the philosophy of language and ontology.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
THE opposition between empiricism and realism is old, and can be introduced by illustrations from many episodes in the history of philosophy. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
conjunction objection, empirical substructures, virtual sequence, empirical import, literal construal, tungsten plate, empirical adequacy, causal net, empirical equivalence, epistemic probability, empirical strength, empiricist point, constructive empiricism, epistemic commitment, simplifying hypothesis, propensity interpretation, scientific realism Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Absolute Space, David Lewis, Ignorance Interpretation, Richard Boyd, Wesley Salmon, Five Ways, Patrick Suppes, Gilbert Harman, Grover Maxwell, Michael Dummett, Pierre Duhem, The Third Way New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
THE opposition between empiricism and realism is old, and can be introduced by illustrations from many episodes in the history of philosophy. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
conjunction objection, empirical substructures, virtual sequence, empirical import, literal construal, tungsten plate, empirical adequacy, causal net, empirical equivalence, epistemic probability, empirical strength, empiricist point, constructive empiricism, epistemic commitment, simplifying hypothesis, propensity interpretation, scientific realism Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Absolute Space, David Lewis, Ignorance Interpretation, Richard Boyd, Wesley Salmon, Five Ways, Patrick Suppes, Gilbert Harman, Grover Maxwell, Michael Dummett, Pierre Duhem, The Third Way New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 63
books:
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100
books
cite this book:
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- Philosophy of Science (Dimensions of Philosophy) by Clark Glymour on 5 pages
- Theory and Evidence by Clark N. Glymour in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Summa Theologiae by St.Thomas Aquinas on page 158, page 205, and page 207
- The Direction of Time (Dover Books on Physics) by Hans Reichenbach in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Summa Theologiae: Volume 2, Existence and Nature of God: 1a. 2-11 (Summa Theologiae (Cambridge University Press)) by Thomas Aquinas on page 158, page 205, and page 207
See all 63 books this book cites
- Images of Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series) by Paul M. Churchland on 29 pages
- The Philosophy of Science (Oxford Readings in Philosophy) by David Papineau on 8 pages
- Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism: Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics (Critical Realism: Interventions) by Christopher Norris on 7 pages
- Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Readings (Routledge Contemporary Readings in Philosophy) by Yuri Balashov on 6 pages
- Scientific Inquiry: Readings in the Philosophy of Science by Robert Klee on 5 pages
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