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This book looks at the role of the imagination in science, from both philosophical and psychological perspectives. These contributions combine to provide a comprehensive and exciting picture of this under-explored subject.
List of contents
- 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
About the author
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.
Summary
This book looks at the role of the imagination in science, from both philosophical and psychological perspectives. These contributions combine to provide a comprehensive and exciting picture of this under-explored subject.
Additional text
This collection of thirteen new essays reflects growing agreement that imagination plays a key role in science, not just in thinking up hypotheses, but in testing them.... The sixteen authors include many of those who have already made significant contributions to meeting the challenge. The volume furthers the debate and will encourage others to get involved. It is greatly to be welcomed... anyone interested in the scientific imagination will have a lot to learn from this volume.
