Science and Reality: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Science: Essays in Honor of Ernan McMullin by Ernan McMullin (PDF)

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⭐Good product at a good price!

⭐An Unvendable ImponderableI found these essays in honor of the Reverend Ernan McMullin a curious collection. The Reverend received his Ph.D. in the 1950’s from the Roman Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. The three editors are or were Notre Dame University faculty members, and as I recall, two of them had been hired while the Reverend was philosophy department chairman. The contributors are described in the book as the Reverend’s good friends; they are Cartwright, Fine, MacKinnon, Grunbaum, Giere, Laudan, Mendell, Quinn and van Frassen.While a graduate student in his “Philosophy of Physics” class, I encountered the Reverend’s positivist thesis that quantum theory is interpreted by operationalist definitions. I was a realist and a doubting Thomas. Later in a book titled Scientific Realism (1984) I read the Reverend’s “Case for Scientific Realism” – that quantum theory is metaphorical rather than descriptive – which I see as nothing but a case of stealth positivism cloaked in vague verbiage. I am still a doubting Thomas: A metaphor is a linguistic novelty, and quantum theory is no longer novel. And if it ever was a metaphor, it has long since become a dead metaphor, which is to say no longer a metaphor, because it is now literal and descriptive for physicists.Furthermore the Reverend’s nondescriptive-realism thesis is self-contradictory; to be realist is to claim to describe reality. I view the Reverend’s rejection of descriptive quantum theory as a latter day variation on the Pope’s rejection of Galileo’s descriptive heliocentric theory. I am amazed that a Roman Catholic priest who accepts the oxymoronic phrase “virgin birth” as literally descriptive, rejects quantum theory as literally descriptive. Quantum theory is one of the most successful theories in the history of physics! The Reverend’s attempt to square the circle with his nondescriptive realism reminds me of Veblen’s “vendible imponderables”, although I doubt that this imponderable is vendible to professional academic philosophers.The ascendant philosophy of science today is the contemporary pragmatism, which emerged by reflection on quantum theory. This new pragmatism enables scientific realism by a new philosophy of language that relativizes both semantics and ontology to what Quine called our “web of beliefs”.The essays in this McMullin book are not of uniform quality, but I could find no more appreciation for contemporary pragmatism in any of these essays than in the Reverend’s own views, which may be why these authors were selected. I see this as a book of marginalized and anachronistic thinking.For a more contemporary philosophy of science Google my book titled

⭐at my web site philsci for free downloads by chapter, and my

⭐.Thomas J. Hickey

⭐

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