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Densely argued, erudite and rich in examples from both art and science...Scientific Representation is both provocative and subtle, and as well as the science studies aficionado. It takes us beyond the issue of representation in science to offer one of the most well throught-out representations of science currently available. (Steven French Times Higher Education Supplement )
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In this book van Fraassen develops an alternative to scientific realism by constructing and evaluating three mutually reinforcing theories.
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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
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although twenty years old, Van Fraassen's constructive empiricism is still one of the most appealing options in the realism/empiricism-debate. Van Fraassen holds a scientific realism for observable phenomena, but if two scientific theories are both adequate in explaining the observable, it's only a matter of pragmatic virtues to choose between them.
This seems plausible. In science unobservable objects are postulated to explain the observable. As such, they can hardly be considered "real" in the same way as observable ones.
Naturally the main problem in Van Fraassen's theory is explaining the difference between observable and unobservable phenomena. Surprisingly, he leaves the problem for empirical science and goes on explaining his philosophical standpoints as if the problem had been solved. This, of course, is far from the truth. For instance, evidence of many objects in astronomy can only be derived from other observations. Still, it doesn't seem to be just a pragmatic question whether there are, for example, planets outside of our solar system.
Van Fraassen's main idea is to combine realistic and pragmatic viewpoints by the scientific object's empirical status. Being a realist for observable objects and a pragmaticist for unobservable objects, he names himself a constructive empiricist for scientific objects in general. As such, it's an intriguing crossover between epistemological positions...and very much a common sense one as well.
Also notable is Van Fraassen's ability to present complex philosophical viewpoints in an understandable manner. His introduction to scientific realism is one of the best I've read.
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Isn't this exactly what science is? Isn't this exactly how the logic of statistics works? I'm surprised that anybody can believe in scientific realism after reading this.
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4 reviews
20 of 23 people found the following review helpful
An attack on then and still fashionable scientific realism.
29 Oct 1997
Format: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.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Wonderfully important book
10 Nov 2003
Format: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.
10 of 19 people found the following review helpful
A book on very contemporary philosophy of science
4 Mar 1999
Format: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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