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What does it mean to be a realist about science if one takes seriously the view that scientific knowledge is always perspectival, namely historically and culturally situated? In
Perspectival Realism, Michela Massimi explores how scientific knowledge grows and evolves thanks to a plurality of epistemic communities occupying a number of scientific perspectives. The result is a philosophical view that goes under the name of "perspectival realism", and it offers a new lens for thinking about scientific knowledge, realism and pluralism in science.
List of contents
- Part I. PERSPECTIVAL MODELLING
- Chapter 1. The short tale of a long journey
- Chapter 2. The perspectival nature of scientific representation
- Chapter 3. Pluralism and perspectivism
- Chapter 4. Perspectival modelling as modelling possibilities
- Chapter 4.a: A tale from the atomic nucleus ca. 1930s-1950s
- Chapter 4.b: A tale from the ice, the sea and the land: climate modelling
- Chapter 4.c: A tale from the development of language in children
- Chapter 5. Inferential blueprints and windows on reality
- Part II. THE WORLD AS WE PERSPECTIVALLY MODEL IT
- Chapter 6. From data to phenomena
- Chapter 7. Natural Kinds with a Human Face
- Chapter 8. The inferentialist view of natural kinds
- Chapter 9. Sorting phenomena into kinds
- Chapter 10. Evolving natural kinds
- Chapter 11. Multiculturalism and Cosmopolitanism in science
About the author
Michela Massimi is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Edinburgh. Massimi works on general philosophy of science, history and philosophy of modern physics, Kant's philosophy of nature and Kantianism in philosophy of science. She is Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and Member of the Academia Europaea. She served as Vice-President of the European Philosophy of Science Association (2015-2019) and she is currently President-Elect of the Philosophy of Science Association. From 2016 to 2021 she was the Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator Grant "Perspectival Realism".
