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This volume assembles cutting-edge scholarship on scientific understanding, scientific representation, and their delicate interplay. Featuring several articles in an engaging 'critical conversation' format, the volume integrates discussions about understanding and representation with perennial issues in the philosophy of science, including the nature of scientific knowledge, idealizations, scientific realism, scientific inference, and scientific progress.
In the philosophy of science, questions of scientific understanding and scientific representation have only recently been put in dialogue with each other. The chapters advance these discussions from a variety of fresh perspectives. They range from case studies in physics, chemistry, and neuroscience to the representational challenges of machine learning models; from special forms of representation such as maps and topological models to the relation between understanding and explanation; and from the role of idealized representations to the role of representation and understanding in scientific progress.
Scientific Understanding and Representation will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, philosophy of mathematics, and epistemology.
About the author
Insa Lawler is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA.
Kareem Khalifa is Professor of Philosophy at Middlebury College, USA. He is the author of Understanding, Explanation, and Scientific Knowledge (2017).
Elay Shech is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University, USA.
Summary
This volume brings together leading scholars working on understanding and representation in philosophy of science. It features a critical conversation format between contributors that advances debates concerning scientific understanding, scientific representation, and their delicate interplay.
Report
"This collection not only brings together issues in scientific understanding, representation and explanation but allows the authors the rare opportunity to directly engage with each other's works and thereby advance the debate." - Steven French, University of Leeds, UK
