Idealization and the Aims of Science

Angela Potochnik is professor in the Department of Philosophy and director of the Center for Public Engagement with Science at the University of Cincinnati.

Preface

1 Introduction: Doing Science in a Complex World
1.1 Science by Humans
1.2 Science in a Complex World
1.3 The Payoff: Idealizations and Many Aims

2 Complex Causality and Simplified Representation
2.1 Causal Patterns in the Face of Complexity
2.1.1 Causal Patterns
2.1.2 Causal Complexity
2.2 Simplification by Idealization
2.2.1 Reasons to Idealize
2.2.2 Idealizations’ Representational Role
2.2.3 Rampant and Unchecked Idealization

3 The Diversity of Scientific Projects
3.1 Broad Patterns: Modeling Cooperation
3.2 A Specific Phenomenon: Variation in Human Aggression
3.3 Predictions and Idealizations in the Physical Sciences
3.4 Surveying the Diversity

4 Science Isn’t after the Truth
4.1 The Aims of Science
4.1.1 Understanding as Science’s Epistemic Aim
4.1.2 Separate Pursuit of Science’s Aims
4.2 Understanding, Truth, and Knowledge
4.2.1 The Nature of Scientific Understanding
4.2.2 The Role of Truth and Scientific Knowledge

5 Causal Pattern Explanations
5.1 Explanation, Communication, and Understanding
5.2 An Account of Scientific Explanation
5.2.1 The Scope of Causal Patterns
5.2.2 The Crucial Role of the Audience
5.2.3 Adequate Explanations

6 Levels and Fields of Science
6.1 Levels in Philosophy and Science
6.2 Going without Levels
6.2.1 Against Hierarchy
6.2.2 Prizing Apart Forms of Stratification
6.3 The Fields of Science and How They Relate

7 Scientific Pluralism and Its Limits
7.1 The Entrenchment of Social Values
7.2 How Science Doesn’t Inform Metaphysics
7.3 Scientific Progress

Acknowledgments
List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes
References
Index