Why there are no ready-made phenomena: What philosophers of science should learn from Kant

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 63:1-35 (2008)
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Abstract

The debate on scientific realism has raged among philosophers of science for decades. The scientific realist's claim that science aims to give us a literally true description of the way things are, has come under severe scrutiny and attack by Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism. All science aims at is to save the observable phenomena, according to van Fraassen. Scientific realists have faced since a main sceptical challenge: the burden is on them to prove that the entities postulated by our scientific theories are real and that science is still in the ‘truth’ business

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Michela Massimi
University of Edinburgh

Citations of this work

How do models give us knowledge? The case of Carnot’s ideal heat engine.Tarja Knuuttila & Mieke Boon - 2011 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 1 (3):309-334.
The inchworm episode: Reconstituting the phenomenon of kinesin motility.Andrew Bollhagen - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2):1-25.
Saving Unobservable Phenomena.Michela Massimi - 2007 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (2):235-262.
The role of disciplinary perspectives in an epistemology of scientific models.Mieke Boon - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (3):1-34.

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