Scientific Representation: Structure and Perspective

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1Project SummaryScientific Representation: Structure and PerspectiveBas C. van FraassenThe project is to develop an account of measurement as at the same time a physicalinteraction and a meaningful information gathering process. Sources include Duhemsview of measurement outcomes as theory-laden and Poincare's view of measurement asperspectival. These aspects of measurement are to be explored in the context of recent aswell as classical physics. Envisaged is an account of measurement outcomes asperspectival representations that provide a bridge between pure and applied science.This project on measurement is the final stage of a larger project on the subject ofscientific representation, overlapping with each of its parts. Part I, Representation,investigates the general concept, restricted to physical and mathematical representations(excluding concerns of psychology). Part II, Structure, addresses scientific modelling asrepresentation of phenomena, with special reference to measurement instrumentation.Historical examples include the development of perspective in art and architecture;Copernicus explanation of retrograde planetary motion; the development ofmicroscopy; the changes in spatio-temporal representation introduced by the theory ofrelativity, and the description in quantum mechanics of the experiments that support it.Part III, Perspective, engages paradoxes that threaten structuralist views concerningscientific representation, referring to arguments from Herman Weyl to Hilary Putnam.INTELLECTUAL MERIT: The PI will introduce original responses to the theoreticaland philosophical problems encountered, both in the current project on measurement andin the larger project of which this is part. Measurement and modelling, structure andperspective are at the center of recent developments in philosophy of science. Theproject is envisaged to solve or dissolve outstanding problems concerning these, andinvolves the design of a distinctly empiricist structuralism offered in critical response torecent structural realism and to recently revived and extended neo-Kantian views.BROADER IMPACT: The PI proposes to present the theoretical results in a book undercontract with Oxford University Press, Scientific Representation: Paradoxes OfPerspective. Begun in the Locke Lectures, Oxford 2001, the project is evolving in activescholarly consultation and cooperation through international conferences and journalexchanges. While the PIs most recent book, The Empirical Stance offered a broad viewof empiricism today, this project continues the more technical investigations of his Lawsand Symmetry and Quantum Mechanics: an Empiricist View -- while addressing some ofthe most lively topics in current philosophical debates.These debates have salient repercussions in our wider culture, and require fortheir response a combination of subtlety and rigor. Within this distinctively empiricistview to be developed, a specifically pragmatic turn makes it possible to dissolve a familyof paradoxes that have been thought to support relativism and skepticism concerning thesciences. The PI continues here his critique of relativism and skepticism, as initiallypresented in his 1992 Presidential Address to the Philosophy of Science Association.