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24Steven Weinberg, facing up: Science and its cultural adversaries. Cambridge, ma and London: Harvard university press, 2001. Pp. XI+283. Isbn 0-674-00647-X. £17.95, $26.00 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 37 (4): 491-492. 2004.
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23A Peircean Response to the Realist-Empiricist DebateTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 25 (3). 1989.
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22There Are No Such Things as TheoriesOxford University Press. 2020.What is a scientific theory? This book considers this fundamental question by presenting a range of options and the issues they raise. It draws comparisons between theories and artworks and proposes that we should stop thinking of theories as things altogether.
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20Resistance is futile!: K. Brad Wray: Resisting scientific realism, Cambridge University Press, 2018, 224 pp, $105 HB (review)Metascience 29 (1): 5-10. 2020.
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19Vi*-Structure as a Weapon of the Realist1Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106 (2): 167-185. 2006.Although much of its history has been neglected or misunderstood, a structuralist ‘tendency’ has re-emerged within the philosophy of science. Broadly speaking, it consists of two fundamental strands: on the one hand, there is the identification of structural commonalities between theories; on the other, there is the metaphysical decomposition of objects in structural terms. Both have been pressed into service for the realist cause: the former has been identified primarily with Worrall's ‘epistem…Read more
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19Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics: Essays in Honour of Heinz Post (edited book)Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1993.This volume is presented in honour of Heinz Post, who founded a distinc tive and distinguished school of philosophy of science at Chelsea College, University of London. The 'Chelsea tradition' in philosophy of science takes the content of science seriously, as exemplified by the papers presented here. The unifying theme of this work is that of 'Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics', after the title of a classic and seminal paper by Heinz Post, published in 1971, which is reproduced in this …Read more
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17Belief, contradiction and the logic of self-deceptionAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 27 (3): 179-197. 1990.
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15Mary Hesse was one of the most significant figures in 20th Century history and philosophy of science, not only because of her academic research, but also for the role she played in further developing and enhancing the field at the institutional level. She was instrumental in the formation of the Division of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds, where she was a lecturer in mathematics, before she moved to University College, London and from there to the Dept. of History an…Read more
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15A Semantic Perspective on Idealisation in Quantum MechanicsIn Shanks N. (ed.), Idealization IX: Idealization in Contemporary Physics, . 1998.
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15Journals Under Threat: A Joint Response From HSTM Editors (review)Metascience 18 (1): 1-4. 2009.
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15Travelling in New DirectionsIn Steven French & Juha Saatsi (eds.), Continuum Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Continuum. pp. 337. 2011.This chapter discusses some emerging trends, new directions, and outstanding issues in philosophy of science. The first section places contemporary philosophy of science in context by considering its relationship to analytic philosophy at large, to the history of science, and to science itself. The subsequent sections will then take a look at a selection of interesting trends emerging from current research, and some important issues calling for further work. The presentation is inevitably colour…Read more
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15Does the Claim that there are no Theories Imply that there is no History of Theories to be Written?(!)Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 1-20. forthcoming.InThere Are No Such Things As Theories(French 2020), the reification of theories is critically analysed and rejected. My aim here is to tease out some of the implications of this approach first of all, for how we, philosophers of science, should view the history of science; secondly, for how we should understand the devices that we use in our own philosophical practices; and thirdly, for how we might think about the relationship between the history of science and the philosophy of science.
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |