Bas van Fraassen

Bastian " Bas " Cornelis van Fraassen ( born April 5, 1941 in Goes ) is a Dutch philosopher of science and founder of Constructive Empiricism.

His family emigrated in 1956 to Canada.

In 1966 he received his doctorate in Adolf Grünbaum at the University of Pittsburgh with a thesis on the foundations of a causal theory of time.

Van Fraassen summarizes the main point of his philosophical position thus:

Science AIMS to give us theories are empirically adequate Which; and acceptance of a theory as Involves amounted only did it is empirically adequate. This is the statement of the anti- realist position I advocate; I shall call it constructive empiricism.

"Science aims to provide us with theories available that are empirically adequate; and the recognition of a theory involves only the belief in their empirical adequacy. This is the formulation of the anti -realist position for which I plead; I 'll call it constructive empiricism. "

Since van Fraassen holds the empiricism are the way of science, he sees it as necessary to criticize a naive empiricism, as he is represented in his opinion, especially in the current analytic philosophy. The naive empiricism therefore tend to get lost in useless metaphysical speculation about what the world is. This error does van Fraassen both in materialism ("Everything is matter. " ), As well as in physicalism ( "everything is physical. " ) And naturalism ( "Everything is physically or supervenes from the physical. " ) Such statements are by van Fraassen no scientific theses, but only the expression of an attitude ( " stance" ), one has to the world. Such attitudes should not be the subject of scientific debate.

Publications

  • An introduction to the philosophy of time and space, New York: Random House, 1970
  • Formal Semantics and Logic, London: Macmillan 1971
  • The Scientific Image, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1980, ISBN 0-19-824427-4
  • Images of science: essays on realism and empiricism. with a reply from Bas C. van Fraassen, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1985, ISBN 0-226-10653-5
  • Laws and Symmetry, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989, ISBN 0-19-824860-1
  • Quantum Mechanics, An Empiricist View, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991, ISBN 0-19-823980-7
  • The Empirical Stance, New Haven: Yale University Press 2002
  • Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008
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