Seminar Spring 2007 PHI 539

Bas C. van Fraassen
Scientific Representation: structure, perspective

Modeling, picturing, and forms of structural representation. Issues pertaining to both theory construction and measurement, as well as paradoxes that beset attempts to formulate structuralist views of science.
FEB 5, 12, 19
REPRESENTATION: VARIETIES THEREOF, USES IN SCIENCE
Representation of, Representation as
Imaging, Picturing, Scaling, Measuring
Mapping and Perspectival Self-Location
FEB 26- MAR 26 WINDOWS, ENGINES, AND MEASUREMENT
Do instruments give us a window into the humanly unobservable world?
Measuring as locating in a logical space
Reichenbach’s Problem of Coordination
What is a measurement outcome?
APRIL 2, 9 APPEARANCE VS. REALITY IN THE SCIENCES
Rejecting the Appearance from Reality Criterion
Illustration: Appearances in the Quantum World
APRIL 16-APRL 30 STRUCTURE AND PERSPECTIVE
From the Bildtheorie of Science to Paradox
Russell’s Structuralism, Carnap’s Lost World, and Putnam’s Paradox
Structural Realism versus Empiricist Structuralism
SOME READINGS to be taken up along the way:
  • Boltzmann, Ludwig 1904 Encyclopedia article “Model”
  • D’Agostino, Salvo “The Bild Conception of Physical Theory: Helmholtz, Hertz, and Schrödinger“. Physics in Perspective 6 (2004), 372–389.
  • Giere, Ronald Scientific Perspectivism, Chapters 3 and 4
  • Ladyman, James ‘Structural realism: epistemology or metaphysics?’, Studies in the Hist. and Philos.of Science, 29A (1998), 409-24.
  • Newman, M. H. A. "Mr. Russell's causal theory of perception", Mind n. s. 37 (1928), 137-148.
  • Reichenbach, Hans Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge, Ch. 4
  • Mach, Ernst selection, on the history of thermometry and time measurement.
  • Sterrett Susan G. “Models of machines and models of phenomena” Internat. Studies in the Philos. of Science 20 (2006), 69-80
  • Stevens and Luce, seminal articles on measurement
  • Suarez, Mauricio “An Inferential Conception of Scientific Representation”, Philosophy of Science 71 (2004), 767-779.
  • Suarez, Mauricio “Scientific representation: Against similarity and isomorphism”, Internat. Studies in the Philos. of Science, 17 (2003), 225-244.