Product Description
Bas C. van Fraassen presents an original exploration of how we represent the world. Science represents natural phenomena by means of theories, as well as in many concrete ways by such means as pictures, graphs, table-top models, and computer simulations. Scientific Representation begins with an inquiry into the nature of representation in general, drawing on such diverse sources as Plato's dialogues, the development of perspectival drawing in the Renaissance, and the geometric styles of modelling in modern physics. Starting with Mach's and Poincare's analyses of measurement and the 'problem of coordination', van Fraassen then presents a view of measurement outcomes as representations. With respect to the theories of contemporary science he defends an empiricist structuralist version of the 'picture theory' of science, through an inquiry into the paradoxes that came to light in twentieth-century philosophies of science. Van Fraassen concludes with an analysis of the complex relationship between appearance and reality in the scientific world-picture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a very good read about a difficult subject
I am a philosopher, but not a philosopher of science, and much of this book was not of general interest to someone like myself.However, I looked at this book because of an interest in scientific (and other) models, and it did not disappoint.The explanations were quite fulsome and clear, and nicely illustrated.It satisfied completely the purpose for which I read it.

Moreover, the writing has the feel of someone actively thinking -- almost thinking out loud and talking to the reader.I enjoyed it so much that I read a second book by van Frassen, on empiricism, which I enjoyed even more.He is a robust and honest thinker, and that is a delight. ... Read more

Product Description
In this book van Fraassen develops an alternative to scientific realism by constructing and evaluating three mutually reinforcing theories. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Wonderfully important book
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.

A book on very contemporary philosophy of science
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.

van fraassen's endorsement of unobservable entities
bas van fraassen in claiming to offer a viable alternativve to scientific realism has indirectly acknowledgedthe existence of unobservable entities in saying that we will nnot know eveything there is to know or everything thaat can be known in the universe/life.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).scientific realism is optimistic in that it belives that everything can be known or discovered by advocating this view of science,but vF rejcts this but by doing so he has created an entity that will remain forever unknowable to the mind,an unobsevable entity technically if nothing else he creates their existence and this is contrary to his position. paul neilan an NUIG student.

An attack on then and still fashionable scientific realism.
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. ... Read more

Product Description
What is empiricism and what could it be? Bas C. van Fraassen, one of the world's foremost contributors to philosophical logic and the philosophy of science, here undertakes a fresh consideration of these questions and offers a program for renewal of the empiricist tradition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a robust, honest, interesting philosopher
Van Fraasen rejects both the old empiricism (sense data, Hume's impressions and ideas, etc.) and all forms of metaphysics (he singles out materialism particularly).For him, empirical objects are things like tables and people and stars.Science, not metaphysics, gives the best explanation of them, but it is a science that is not closed (ala materialism) with regard to what kinds of experience count.Although he does not elaborate, he seemed to include religious experience and is known to be a theist.

But it is not his particular set of philosophical views that makes this book excellent.It is the author's honest, robust, smart, open-minded thinking that makes it so good a read.He is simply good philosophical company and, for this, I recommend it highly. ... Read more

Product Description
Extensively classroom-tested, this text provides an accessible and carefully structured introduction to modal and many-valued logic. The authors cover the basic formal frameworks and also consider a variety of philosophical issues surrounding ""possibilities and paradox."" Each chapter features exercises that provide hands-on experience, examples that demonstrate the application of concepts, and a list of further readings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not for the faint of heart, but a valuable resource nonetheless.
In Possibilities and Paradox, J.C. Beall and Bas Van Fraassen team up to present a rigorous introduction to modal and many-valued logic.After presenting a brief motivation for the development of modal logic (chapter 1), the authors provide a discussion of set theory (chapter 2), logical semantics (chapter 3), the tableau or "tree" method of proof (chapter 4), normal modal logics (chapter 5), and intuitionistic and non-normal modal logics (chapter 6).These chapters prepare the reader for future topics, including many-valued logics (chapter 7), the Sorites and Liar paradoxes (chapter 8), and supervaluations and continuum-valued logics (chapter 9).The final section is devoted to metatheory and includes further tools for understanding and working with, among other things, functions, sentences, and soundness and completeness proofs.

For the student with only a basic logic course or two under his or her belt, Possibilities and Paradox is going to be a tough read.Despite its brevity (233 total pages), the book is extremely information dense--the philosophical equivalent of Grape Nuts cereal, if you will.Virtually every sentence of every chapter contains an essential point or concept that merits a careful reading, re-reading, re-re-reading, and perhaps two or three readings on top of that before an exam if it is a required text, as it was in my case.While this makes the book exemplary when it comes to an efficient presentation of the material, since it is an introductory text it would have benefited from at least three additional features.First, I would have liked to see the authors provide more of a "big picture" framework for approaching the mechanics of logic- what a good logical language should do, why we'd want a syntax to work a certain way, etc.The authors do a fairly good job of this in the later chapters, but bit more attention to this in the first three or four would make the book even more accessible to students.Second, a chapter or two on proofs would be especially helpful to students without a strong background in this aspect of logic; something like a brief, modal and many-valued version of Daniel Velleman's, How to Prove It.Finally, a chapter or two on quantification would be a nice addition to future editions of the book.

One last thing (note well): as of the writing of this review, a helpful list of corrections to various errata is available on professor Van Fraassen's website. ... Read more

Product Description
After introducing the empiricist point of view in philosophy of science, and the concepts and methods of the semantic approach to scientific theories, van Fraassen discusses quantum theory in three stages.He first examines the question of whether and how empirical phenomena require a non-classical theory, and what sort of theory they require.He then discusses the mathematical foundations of quantum theory with special reference to developments in the modelling of interaction, composite systems, and measurement.Finally, the author broaches the main questions of interpretation. After offering a critique of earlier interpretations, he develops a new one--the modal interpretation--which attempts to stay close to the original Copenhagen ideas without implying a radical incompleteness in quantum theory.He again gives special attention to the character of composite, many-body systems and especially to the peculiar character of assemblies of identical particles in quantum statistics. ... Read more

Product Description
Thirteen specially written essays discuss topics from the work of Bas van Fraassen, one of the most important contemporary philosophers of science. The central and unifying theme of the volume is empiricism, an approach which van Fraassen developed most fully in The Scientific Image and The Empirical Stance. Thirteen of the world's leading experts in the field examine van Fraassen's defence of scientific anti-realism (which he sees as a core tenet of empiricism), as well as his claim that adopting a philosophical position like empiricism does not consist in holding a particular set of beliefs, but is rather a matter of taking a stance. Images of Empiricism concludes with an extensive and intriguing reply by van Fraassen, in which he develops and corrects his old views, and offers new insights into the nature of science, empiricism, and philosophy itself. ... Read more

Product Description
Without doubt Bas C. van Fraassen is among the most distinguished and celebrated philosophers of science of our days. His fields of expertise range from logic and semantics to epistemology and philosophy of physics. Several of his monographs belong to the standard literature of these disciplines. It was already in 1980 when his "The Scientific Image" brilliantly entered the philosophical scene. Especially the exposition of constructive empiricism, van Fraassen's favoured philosophy of science as well as his alternative to scientific realism, launched an intensive and highly controversial debate on the aim and status of science which has not at all been settled up to now.In his Terry Lectures at Yale University (published as "The Empirical Stance" in 2002), Bas van Fraassen gave a comprehensive account of what he deems to be cogent answers to the questions of what empiricism is and what it could be. In due distance to the self-defeating fundamentalist projects of logical empiricism he envisaged empiricism as a stance, as opposed to a factual thesis.From his point of view, it is the recurrent rebellion against metaphysics and the admiration for science that characterises the empiricists' stance and buttresses their philosophical arguments. It is beyond doubt that the prospects of empiricism today are intimately related to Bas van Fraassen and his work. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Philosophy Education Society, Inc. on June 1, 2004. The length of the article is 896 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Van Fraassen, Bas C. The Empirical Stance.(Book Review)
Author: Paul O'Grady
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 2004
Publisher: Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
Volume: 57Issue: 4Page: 870(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
Metaphysicians speak of laws of nature in terms of necessity and universality; scientists, in terms of symmetry and invariance.In this book van Fraassen argues that no metaphysical account of laws can succeed.He analyzes and rejects the arguments that there are laws of nature, or that we must believe there are, and argues that we should disregard the idea of law as an adequate clue to science. After exploring what this means for general epistemology, the author develops the empiricist view of science as a construction of models to represent the phenomena. ... Read more

Product Description
Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Charles Taylor, Marshall Mcluhan, John Ralston Saul, Jacques Lavigne, Christian Poirel, Bas Van Fraassen, Gilbert Boss, Louis Even, Ian Hacking, Harold Innis, Will Kymlicka, Kai Nielsen, Gregory Baum, Georges E. Sioui, Charles de Koninck, Brian Massumi, Paul Churchland, Hermas Bastien, Benoît Lacroix, Paul Thagard, Patricia Churchland, Louis-Marie Régis, Allen Carlson. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Charles Margrave Taylor, C.C., Ph.D., M.A., B.A., FRSC (5 novembre 1931, Montréal), est un philosophe québécois d'expression anglaise. Il est professeur émérite de science politique et de philosophie à l'Université McGill (Montréal) où il a enseigné de 1961 à 1997. Sa réflexion se situe au carrefour de nombreux courants de pensée et disciplines : la philosophie analytique, la phénoménologie, l'herméneutique, la philosophie morale, l'anthropologie, la sociologie, la politique et l'histoire. Cette variété de thèmes est abordée selon une constante continuité d'inspiration et de style. Ses écrits sont traduits aujourd'hui en plus de 20 langues. En 2007, il est nommé coprésident de la Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d'accommodements reliées aux différences culturelles (CCPARDC, dite « Commission Bouchard-Taylor ») avec le sociologue et historien Gérard Bouchard par le gouvernement Charest. Né d'un père anglophone et d'une mère francophone, Charles Taylor a étudié à l'Université McGill (baccalauréat en histoire en 1952) et à l'Université d'Oxford (baccalauréat en sciences politiques, philosophie et économie en 1955). Il obtient une maîtrise en 1960 et un doctorat en 1961. Sa soeur est Gretta Chambers, journaliste et ex-chancelière de l'Université McGill. À Oxford, bastion de la philosophie a...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

Product Description
Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Baruch Spinoza, Érasme, Henricus Regius, Hugo Grotius, Isaac Beeckman, Jacob Moleschott, Bas Van Fraassen, Gerardus Johannes Petrus Josephus Bolland, Evert Willem Beth, François Hemsterhuis, Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert, Corneille de Pauw, Wiebe Bijker, Frits Staal, Annemarie Mol, Gerard de Vries, Rudolph Agricola, Balthazar Bekker. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Baruch Spinoza, également connu sous les noms de Bento de Espinosa ou Benedictus de Spinoza (né le 24 novembre 1632, Amsterdam, Pays-Bas - mort le 21 février 1677, La Haye) était un philosophe néerlandais dont la pensée eut une influence considérable sur ses contemporains et nombre de penseurs postérieurs. Issu d'une famille marrane, Spinoza fut un héritier critique du cartésianisme. Il prit ses distances vis-à-vis de toute pratique religieuse, mais non de la réflexion théologique, grâce à ses nombreux contacts interreligieux. Après sa mort, le spinozisme, condamné en tant que doctrine athée, eut une influence durable. Gilles Deleuze le surnommait le « Prince des philosophes », tandis que Nietzsche le qualifiait de , notamment en raison de son refus de la téléologie. Baruch Spinoza est né à Amsterdam le 24 novembre 1632 dans une famille juive d'origine portugaise. Son prénom « Baruch » (qu'il latinisera en Benedictus - Benoît), signifie « béni » en hébreu. À cette époque, la communauté juive portugaise d'Amsterdam est essentiellement composée de Marranes (juifs de la péninsule Ibérique convertis au christianisme, ayant pour la plupart secrètement maintenu une pratique partielle du judaïsme) ayant fui l'Inquisition et le climat d'intolérance envers les convertis. Loin de l'Espagne, la plupart d'entre eux reviennent au judaïsme. Ils sont...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of Philosophy, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1053 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Explores major marketing and advertising campaigns from 1999-2006. Entries profile recent print, radio, television, billboard and Internet campaigns. Each essay discusses the historical context of the campaign, the target market, the competition, marketing strategy, and the outcome. ... Read more