Understanding Scientific Understanding.
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| Corporate Author: | |
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| Format: | Online Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford Univ Pr
2017
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| Series: | Oxford studies in philosophy of science. |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://ezproxy.villanova.edu/login?URL=https://academic.oup.com/book/36363 |
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Table of Contents:
- Cover; Half-Title; Series; Understanding Scientific Understanding; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction: The desire to understand; 1.1. Scientific understanding: diversity and disagreement; 1.2. Integrating history and philosophy of scientific understanding; 1.3. Overview; 2. Understanding and the aims of science; 2.1. The neglect of understanding; 2.2. Understanding as an epistemic skill; 2.3. Intelligibility, values, and objectivity; 2.4. Understanding: a means and an end; 3. Explanatory understanding: A plurality of models.
- 3.1. From covering law explanation to unificatory understanding3.2. Causal conceptions of explanatory understanding; 3.3. Are causal and unificatory understanding complementary?; 3.4. Unifying the plurality of modes of explanation; 4. A contextual theory of scientific understanding; 4.1. Understanding phenomena with intelligible theories; 4.2. Criteria for intelligibility; 4.3. Conceptual tools for understanding; 4.4. The context dependence of understanding; 4.4.1. Contextuality and historical dynamics; 4.4.2. Contextuality and the intuitions of philosophers
- 4.4.3. Contextuality and pragmatics4.5. Realism, reduction, and understanding; 4.5.1. Understanding and realism; 4.5.2. Understanding and reduction; 4.6. Contextualism: risky relativism?; 5. Intelligibility and metaphysics: Understanding gravitation; 5.1. The (un)intelligibility of Newton's theory of universal gravitation; 5.2. The seventeenth-century debate on gravitation; 5.2.1. Isaac Newton: reluctant revolutionary; 5.2.2. Christiaan Huygens: the conscience of corpuscularism; 5.3. Actio in distans and intelligibility after Newton
- 5.4. Metaphysics as a resource for scientific understanding6. Models and mechanisms: Physical understanding in the nineteenth century; 6.1. Mechanical modeling in nineteenth-century physics; 6.1.1. William Thomson: master modeler; 6.1.2. James Clerk Maxwell: advocate of analogies; 6.1.3. Ludwig Boltzmann: promoter of pictures; 6.2. Molecular models for understanding gas phenomena; 6.3. Boltzmann's Bildtheorie: a pragmatic view of understanding; 6.4. The uses and limitations of mechanical models; 7. Visualizability and intelligibility: Insight into the quantum world
- 7.1 Visualizability and intelligibility in classical physics7.2. Quantum theory and the waning of Anschaulichkeit; 7.3. The new quantum mechanics: a struggle for intelligibility; 7.4. Electron spin: the power of visualization; 7.5. Visualization in postwar quantum physics; 7.6. Visualization as a tool for scientific understanding; 8. Conclusion: The many faces of understanding; 8.1. Understanding across the sciences; 8.2. The relativity of understanding; 8.3. Norms for understanding; Bibliography; Index.