Abstract

The central current of ideas in modern philosophy - through Hume, Kant and Hegel, to the present - can be understood as a reaction to the percieved threat of disorder. Against this background, the author argues for acceptance of a metaphysics of disorder, and outlines a number of important philosophical consequences of such an acceptance. When appropriately constrained by empiricist concern, such a metaphysics allows us to make sense of ourselves as as knowers who must make do in a world of complexity and uncertainty. We make do by learning to export knowledge, gained where we can get it, to the many situations where knowledge eludes us. An account of causal and idealizational reasoning in science, which has much in common with the recent work of Nancy Cartwright, is developed to exemplify the main argument. The author's philosophical position is contrasted with that of recent post modernists, notably Richard Rorty.