The Scientific Image (Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy)

The Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy brings together books, . Sellars's, who contrasts the scientific image of the world with the manifest image, the.
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It is written with total disregard for laypeople; he just isn't really trying, and while that works for those graduate students who need to wrestle with some of the eminent philosophy of physics, it is just going to be frustrating and useless to those who are looking for an introduction. So, don't jump in if that's what you're hunting for.

That said, even for graduate students and beyond, this book is something of a riddle, and it doesn't really come together until the end. It inspires, at least for me, a skeptical position about the role of mathematical representation when we start to talk about quantum mechanics and other areas where so much of the science is based on positing.

Unfortunately, this is the one part of the book that I found fairly uncompelling. The conclusions regarding scientific realism, which van Fraassen supports [though the formulation of this is not totally clear; he says he is inheriting it from Smart, which is certainly true for large parts of it] are brought to bear through an analogy with Aquinas' Five Ways that I am, at best, skeptical about. Perhaps my skepticism is unfairly caused by the scholastic analogue Bas is using; perhaps he simply needed to give himself more time to unpack the argument so that the entirety of his position could be seen.

For those who are interested in the hardcore literature in philosophy of science, whether you end up agreeing more-or-less completely with Bas, or disagreeing completely, or are somewhere in the middle [as I am], the book is an engaging look at one of the areas that is more difficult for contemporary philosophy of science, because it requires a level of mathematical rigor that is difficult to attain.

The scientific image

All-and-all, a very narrow, but very interesting read. Mar 15, Victoria rated it really liked it Shelves: While it wasn't exactly well-written I felt that the brilliant Bas Van Fraassen could be more concise , he makes such incredible points that it doesn't matter.


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Plod through this book at all costs. It is that good. It's not terribly written. It can just get a little wordy, confusing, and repetitive at points. But really, what philosopher doesn't fall into that trap? I think the content of this book more than makes up for any shortcomings in the writing style. And he does wax poetic in the last c While it wasn't exactly well-written I felt that the brilliant Bas Van Fraassen could be more concise , he makes such incredible points that it doesn't matter.

And he does wax poetic in the last chapter, which I thought was nice. Jun 22, Brian Beakley rated it it was amazing. I'd practically memorized this book by the end of grad school. A clever, influential anti-metaphysical account of science. Mar 18, Jhc rated it it was amazing. A book that I wish everyone with a philosophical background interested in science had to read. Sep 06, Cassie rated it really liked it. Bas van Fraassen is one of my favorite philosophers of science because he presents his stance as a constructive empiricist, as opposed to scientific realism.

A very convincing argument that gets you thinking and questioning! One of my favorite classes philosophy of science and books I've read in my college career. A must-read if you like philosophy because philosophy about science applies to your everyday life.

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Mar 08, Kamili rated it really liked it. He's a bit of a weirdy. View all 6 comments. Ali Reza Mansouri rated it it was amazing Sep 12, Maartin rated it liked it Oct 26, Folmer Ferment rated it liked it Sep 29, Steven rated it really liked it Sep 08, Joshua Filler rated it it was amazing Aug 09, Tyler Guillen rated it it was amazing Mar 02, William Harvard rated it really liked it Apr 21, Gianni Galbiati rated it really liked it Jun 11, CloudPleb rated it it was amazing Jun 09, Dean rated it liked it Dec 31, Rafael Suleiman rated it liked it Aug 14, Learn to scientifically engineer a disciplined life, become relentless, and never give up.

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    6. The Science of Being Lucky: 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. Clarendon Press; 1 edition October 2, Language: Related Video Shorts 0 Upload your video.

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    The Scientific Image - Bas. C. van Fraassen - Google Книги

    From van Frassen's perspective, science is concerned with the development of scientific models for understanding and controlling reality. The model does not have to be 'true', as the believers in scientific realism seem to believe, but it has to be testable against empirical evidence. The success of science should not and cannot be explained by refering to how current knowledge is closer to the truth, but by the fact that our models are better at explaining and predicting. When space probes report data about planets beyond our solar system, they are not explaining the 'truth', they are providing data that we can use for improving our models of the universe.

    Scientific theories contain statements about scientific models, not about the 'real world'. Truth is a concept that applies to logic and mathematics, and makes little sense for discussing the real world. What is important in science is the validity of the models being used, which van Fraasen describes as whether the models are empirically adequate or not.

    The Scientific Image

    As an empiricist or form of it he generously engages the dicourse that unobservable entities DO have meaning but that they cant exist because any such admission would be a saving of realist theory scientific realism posits the view that these objects have not only existence but meaning too. 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.

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    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. 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.

    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. See all 6 reviews. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers.

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