Science and Partial Truth: A Unitary Approach to Models and Scientific Reasoning (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780195156515)

In the past thirty years, two fundamental issues have emerged in the philosophy of science. One concerns the appropriate attitude we should take towards scientific theories--whether we should regard them as true or merely empirically adequate, for example. The other concerns the nature of scientific theories and models and how these might best be represented.

In this ambitious book, da Costa and French bring these two issues together by arguing that theories and models should be regarded as partially rather than wholly true. They adopt a framework that sheds new light on issues to do with belief, theory acceptance, and the realism-antirealism debate. The new machinery of "partial structures" that they develop offers a new perspective from which to view the nature of scientific models and their heuristic development. Their conclusions will be of wide interest to philosophers and historians of science.

Author: Newton C. a. Da Costa, Steven French
ISBN-10: 019515651X
ISBN-13: 9780195156515
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 09/18/2003
Pages: 272
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.66h x 6.26w x 0.93d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2004 pg. 1901