Representation and Explanation in the Sciences

A cura di: Evandro Agazzi

Representation and Explanation in the Sciences

Representation and explanation are distinct notions in the philosophy of science, since the first can be defined as an answer to a how-question, and the second as an answer to a why-question. In particular, the task of providing explanations has been traditionally attributed to scientific theories. These notions, however, are also strictly interrelated, like shown by the variety of the approaches offered by the papers included in this volume.

Printed Edition

32.00

Pages: 248

ISBN: 9788820420130

Edition: 1a edizione 2013

Publisher code: 490.103

Availability: Buona

Pages: 248

ISBN: 9788856866469

Edizione:1a edizione 2013

Publisher code: 490.103

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Representation and explanation are distinct notions in the philosophy of science, since the first can be defined as an answer to a how-question, and the second as an answer to a why-question. In particular, the task of providing explanations has been traditionally attributed to scientific theories.
These notions, however, are also strictly interrelated, especially because in more recent times the role of theories has been sometimes downgraded to that of simply offering representations or images of physical phenomena and, correspodingly, the role of representations was upgraded to the capability of offering explanations. Several philosophically interesting issues are implicit in these relationships, going from the permanent dispute on scientific realism, to other methodological and even metaphysical, ontological and semantic questions. In order to investigate this topic certain historical reconstructions are very useful, and, in addition, the consideration of different contexts is almost indispensable.
These reasons explain the variety of the approaches offered by the papers included in this volume. They can be put in some organic order (as it has been attempted in giving them a particular disposition in the volume), but the greater interest probably resides in the articulated difference of their optics. Becoming acquainted with this variety can constitute a real intellectual enrichment for the reader interested in the philosophy of science.

Evandro Agazzi is the president of the International Academy of Philosophy of Science. After having been professor at the Universities of Fribourg (Switzerland) and Genoa (Italy) he is now professor at the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico. His main contributions concern logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, general philosophy of science, and in the last years also ethics of science and technology. He is the author or editor of more than 70 volumes and about 1000 papers, and has received several honorary degrees and special distinctions.



Evandro Agazzi, Introduction: Meaning of Representing and Explaining
First Section: General Epistemological Issues
Bas van Fraassen, Explanation Through Representation, and its Limits
Jan Faye, Embodied Understanding, Representation, and Explanation
Michel Ghins, Representation and the Loss of Reality Objection
Evandro Agazzi, Representation and Scientific Realism
Alberto Cordero, Explanatory Elucidation and Scientific Realism
Jesús Zamora, Xavier de Donato, Scientific Explanation and Representation: An Inferentialist Viewpoint
Ruggero Ferro, Reality, Knowledge of Reality, Representation of the Knowledge of Reality
Valentin Bazhanov, Abstractions and Scientific Knowledge Representation
Paul Weingartner, Is there Teleological Order in Nature? Is there Teleological Explanation in Science?
Hans Lenk, Methodological Remarks on Dynamic Functional Representation
Second Section: Particular Scientific Contexts
Marco Buzzoni, Causality, Experiment and Anthropomorphism
Giuliano Di Bernardo, Explanation in the Social Sciences
Peter Mittelstaedt, Explanation of Physical Phenomena by Laws of Nature
Hervé Barreau, L'explication par des lois et la représentation par des théories
Claudio Calosi, Vincenzo Fano, Gino Tarozzi,
Holism as an Empirically Meaningful Metaphysical Hypothesis
Fabio Minazzi, Representation and Explanation in Science in the Opinion of Galileo and Einstein
Jean-Guy Meunier, Cognitive Representation: Computable or non Computable?
Itala D'Ottaviano, Translations as Representations between Logics.

Contributors: Hervé Barreau, Valentin A. Bazhanov, Marco Buzzoni, Claudio Calosi, Alberto Cordero, Giuliano Di Bernardo, Xavier Donato, Itala D'Ottaviano, Vincenzo Fano, Jan Faye, Ruggero Ferro, Michel Ghins, Hans Lenk, Jean-Guy Meunier, Fabio Minazzi, Peter Mittelstaedt, Gino Tarozzi, Bas van Fraassen, Paul Weingartner, Jesus Zamora

Serie: Epistemologia

Subjects: Epistemology - Science Philosophy

Level: Scholarly Research

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