The Explanationist Defense of Scientific Realism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Explanationist Defense of Scientific Realism write by Dorit A. Ganson. This book was released on 2020-01-31. The Explanationist Defense of Scientific Realism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Ganson offers new hope in this work for the defense of scientific realism by undermining powerful anti-realist objections and advocating an abandonment of naturalist and externalist strategies.
Resisting Scientific Realism
Resisting Scientific Realism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Resisting Scientific Realism write by K. Brad Wray. This book was released on 2018-11-01. Resisting Scientific Realism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In this book K. Brad Wray provides a comprehensive survey of the arguments against scientific realism. In addition to presenting logical considerations that undermine the realists' inferences to the likely truth or approximate truth of our theories, he provides a thorough assessment of the evidence from the history of science. He also examines grounds for a defence of anti-realism, including an anti-realist explanation for the success of our current theories, an account of why false theories can be empirically successful, and an explanation for why we should expect radical changes of theory in the future. His arguments are supported and illustrated by cases from the history of science, including a sustained study of the Copernican Revolution, and a study of the revolution in early twentieth century chemistry, when chemists came to classify elements by their atomic number rather than by their atomic weight.
The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism
The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism write by Juha Saatsi. This book was released on 2017-11-22. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Scientific realism is a central, long-standing, and hotly debated topic in philosophy of science. Debates about scientific realism concern the very nature and extent of scientific knowledge and progress. Scientific realists defend a positive epistemic attitude towards our best theories and models regarding how they represent the world that is unobservable to our naked senses. Various realist theses are under sceptical fire from scientific antirealists, e.g. empiricists and instrumentalists. The different dimensions of the ensuing debate centrally connect to numerous other topics in philosophy of science and beyond. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism is an outstanding reference source – the first collection of its kind – to the key issues, positions, and arguments in this important topic. Its thirty-four chapters, written by a team of international experts, are divided into five parts: Historical development of the realist stance Classic debate: core issues and positions Perspectives on contemporary debates The realism debate in disciplinary context Broader reflections In these sections, the core issues and debates presented, analysed, and set into broader historical and disciplinary contexts. The central issues covered include motivations and arguments for realism; challenges to realism from underdetermination and history of science; different variants of realism; the connection of realism to relativism and perspectivism; and the relationship between realism, metaphysics, and epistemology. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science. It will also be very useful for anyone interested in the nature and extent of scientific knowledge.
A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism
A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism write by Jarrett Leplin. This book was released on 1997-08-07. A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Vigorous and controversial, this book develops a sustained argument for a realist interpretation of science, based on a new analysis of the concept of predictive novelty. Identifying a form of success achieved in science--the successful prediction of novel empirical results--which can be explained only by attributing some measure of truth to the theories that yield it, Jarrett Leplin demonstrates the incapacity of nonrealist accounts to accommodate novel success and constructs a deft realist explanation of novelty. To test the applicability of novel success as a standard of warrant for theories, Leplin examines current directions in theoretical physics, fashioning a powerful critique of currently developing standards of evaluation. Arguing that explanatory uniqueness warrants inference, and exposing flaws in contending philosophical positions that sever explanatory power from epistemic justification, Leplin holds that abductive, or explanatory, inference is as fundamental as enumerative or eliminative inference, and contends that neither induction nor abduction can proceed without the other on pain of generating paradoxes. Leplin's conception of novelty has two basic components: an independence condition, ensuring that a result novel for a theory have no essential role, even indirectly, in the theory's provenance; and a uniqueness condition, ensuring that no competing theory provides a basis for predicting the same result. Showing that alternative approaches to novelty fall short in both respects, Leplin proceeds to a series of test cases, engaging prominent scientific theories from nineteenth-century accounts of light to modern cosmology in an effort to demonstrate the epistemological superiority of his view. Ambitious and tightly argued, A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism advances new positions on major topics in philosophy of science and offers a version of realism as original as it is compelling, making it essential reading for philosophers of science, epistemologists, and scholars in science studies.
Scientific Realism and the Quantum
Scientific Realism and the Quantum - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Scientific Realism and the Quantum write by Steven French. This book was released on 2020-02-13. Scientific Realism and the Quantum available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Quantum theory is widely regarded as one of the most successful theories in the history of science. It explains a hugely diverse array of phenomena and is a natural candidate for our best representation of the world at the level of 'fundamental' physics. But how can the world be the way quantum theory says it is? It is famously unclear what the world is like according to quantum physics, which presents a serious problem for the scientific realist who is committed to regarding our best theories as more or less true. The present volume canvasses a variety of responses to this problem, from restricting or revising realism in different ways to exploring entirely new directions in the lively debate surrounding realist interpretations of quantum physics. Some urge us to focus on new formulations of the theory itself, while others examine the status of scientific realism in the further context of quantum field theory. Each chapter is written by a renowned specialist in the field and is aimed at graduate students and researchers in both physics and the philosophy of science. Together they offer a range of illuminating new perspectives on this fundamental debate and exemplify the fruitful interaction between physics and philosophy.
