The Scientific Imagination (eBook, PDF)

Redaktion: Levy, Arnon; Godfrey-Smith, Peter

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

The imagination, our capacity to entertain thoughts and ideas "in the mind's eye," is indispensable in science as elsewhere in human life. Indeed, common scientific practices such as modeling and idealization rely on the imagination to construct simplified, stylized scenarios essential for scientific understanding. Yet the philosophy of science has traditionally shied away from according an important role to the imagination, wary of psychologizing fundamental scientific concepts like explanation and justification. In recent years, however, advances in thinking about creativity and fiction, and their relation to theorizing and understanding, have prompted a move away from older philosophical perspectives and toward a greater acknowledgement of the place of the imagination in scientific practice. Meanwhile, psychologists have engaged in significant experimental work on the role of the imagination in causal thinking and probabilistic reasoning. The Scientific Imagination delves into this burgeoning area of debate at the intersection of the philosophy and practice of science, bringing together the work of leading researchers in philosophy and psychology. Philosophers discuss such topics as modeling, idealization, metaphor and explanation, examining their role within science as well as how they affect questions in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of language. Psychologists discuss how our imaginative capacities develop and how they work, their relationships with processes of reasoning, and how they compare to related capacities, such as categorization and counterfactual thinking. Together, these contributions combine to provide a comprehensive and exciting picture of the scientific imagination.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 304
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. November 2019
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780190212315
• Artikelnr.: 58254595

Autorenporträt

Arnon Levy is a philosopher of science and biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on explanation and modeling in the life sciences. Peter Godfrey-Smith is a philosopher at the University of Sydney. His work focuses on philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind.

Inhaltsangabe

* About the Contributors
* Introduction
* 1: Fiora Salis and Roman Frigg: Capturing the Scientific Imagination
* 2: Amie L. Thomasson: If Models Were Fictions, Then What Would They
Be?
* 3: Martin Thomson-Jones: Realism About Missing Systems
* 4: Stacie Friend: The Fictional Character of Scientific Models
* 5: Stephen Yablo: Models and Reality
* 6: Peter Godfrey-Smith: Models, Fictions, and Conditionals
* 7: Benjamin Sheredos and William Bechtel: Imagining Mechanisms with
Diagrams
* 8: Michael Weisberg: Abstraction and Representational Capacity in
Computational Structures
* 9: Tania Lombrozo: "Learning by Thinking" in Science and in Everyday
Life
* 10: Deena Skolnick Weisberg: Is Imagination Constrained Enough for
Science?
* 11: Igor Bascandziev and Paul M. Harris: Can Children Benefit from
Thought Experiments?
* 12: Arnon Levy: Metaphor and Scientific Explanation
* 13: Elizabeth Camp: Imaginative Frames for Scientific Inquiry:
Metaphors, Telling Facts, and Just-So Stories