|
|
|
 |
 National Science
Foundation Award #0549002 |
 |
|
|
Scientific Representation: Structure and Perspective |
| |
| Investigator(s): |
Bas van Fraassen (PI)
|
| Sponsor: |
Princeton University, NJ 08544 6092583090
|
| Start Date/Expiration Date |
2006-07-01 to 2007-06-30 (amended 2006-01-27) |
| Awarded Amount to Date: |
$149,466 |
| Abstract: 1
Project Summary
Scientific Representation: Structure and Perspective
Bas C. van Fraassen
The project is to develop an account of measurement as at the same time a physical
interaction and a meaningful information gathering process. Sources include Duhems
view of measurement outcomes as theory-laden and Poincare's view of measurement as
perspectival. These aspects of measurement are to be explored in the context of recent as
well as classical physics. Envisaged is an account of measurement outcomes as
perspectival 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 of
scientific 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 as
representation 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 of
microscopy; the changes in spatio-temporal representation introduced by the theory of
relativity, and the description in quantum mechanics of the experiments that support it.
Part III, Perspective, engages paradoxes that threaten structuralist views concerning
scientific representation, referring to arguments from Herman Weyl to Hilary Putnam.
INTELLECTUAL MERIT: The PI will introduce original responses to the theoretical
and philosophical problems encountered, both in the current project on measurement and
in the larger project of which this is part. Measurement and modelling, structure and
perspective are at the center of recent developments in philosophy of science. The
project is envisaged to solve or dissolve outstanding problems concerning these, and
involves the design of a distinctly empiricist structuralism offered in critical response to
recent structural realism and to recently revived and extended neo-Kantian views.
BROADER IMPACT: The PI proposes to present the theoretical results in a book under
contract with Oxford University Press, Scientific Representation: Paradoxes Of
Perspective. Begun in the Locke Lectures, Oxford 2001, the project is evolving in active
scholarly consultation and cooperation through international conferences and journal
exchanges. While the PIs most recent book, The Empirical Stance offered a broad view
of empiricism today, this project continues the more technical investigations of his Laws
and Symmetry and Quantum Mechanics: an Empiricist View -- while addressing some of
the most lively topics in current philosophical debates.
These debates have salient repercussions in our wider culture, and require for
their response a combination of subtlety and rigor. Within this distinctively empiricist
view to be developed, a specifically pragmatic turn makes it possible to dissolve a family
of paradoxes that have been thought to support relativism and skepticism concerning the
sciences. The PI continues here his critique of relativism and skepticism, as initially
presented in his 1992 Presidential Address to the Philosophy of Science Association. |
|
| NSF Org: |
SES - Division of Social and Economic Sciences |
| Award Number: |
0549002 |
| Award Instrument: |
Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Ronald Rainger
SES Division of Social and Economic Sciences
SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences
|
| NSF Program(s): |
Hist & Philosophy of SET |
| Field Application(s): |
|
| Program Reference Code(s): |
UNASSIGNED, 0000 |
| Program Element Code(s): |
1353 |
|
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
