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The Scientific Imagination Arnon Levy (Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

The Scientific Imagination By Arnon Levy (Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Summary

This book looks at the role of the imagination in science, from both philosophical and psychological perspectives. These contributions combine to provide a comprehensive and exciting picture of this under-explored subject.

The Scientific Imagination Summary

The Scientific Imagination by Arnon Levy (Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

The imagination, our capacity to entertain thoughts and ideas "in the mind's eye," is indispensable in science as elsewhere in human life. Indeed, common scientific practices such as modeling and idealization rely on the imagination to construct simplified, stylized scenarios essential for scientific understanding. Yet the philosophy of science has traditionally shied away from according an important role to the imagination, wary of psychologizing fundamental scientific concepts like explanation and justification. In recent years, however, advances in thinking about creativity and fiction, and their relation to theorizing and understanding, have prompted a move away from older philosophical perspectives and toward a greater acknowledgement of the place of the imagination in scientific practice. Meanwhile, psychologists have engaged in significant experimental work on the role of the imagination in causal thinking and probabilistic reasoning. The Scientific Imagination delves into this burgeoning area of debate at the intersection of the philosophy and practice of science, bringing together the work of leading researchers in philosophy and psychology. Philosophers discuss such topics as modeling, idealization, metaphor and explanation, examining their role within science as well as how they affect questions in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of language. Psychologists discuss how our imaginative capacities develop and how they work, their relationships with processes of reasoning, and how they compare to related capacities, such as categorization and counterfactual thinking. Together, these contributions combine to provide a comprehensive and exciting picture of the scientific imagination.

The Scientific Imagination Reviews

The book contains thirteen chapters, written by philosophers and psychologists, each exploring the role of imagination in scientific inquiry. Many (though not all) of the chapters focus on scientific modelling and, in particular, on the idea that models can be com- pared to works of fiction, a view defended by Levy and Godfrey-Smith themselves, along with me, Roman Frigg and others...I should stress, however, that the book contains a great deal else that is of interest too. * Adam Toon, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences *
All of the chapters present thought-provoking new ideas * Michael T Stuart, Journal for General Philosophy of Science *
This collection of thirteen new essays reflects growing agreement that imagination plays a key role in science, not just in thinking up hypotheses, but in testing them.... The sixteen authors include many of those who have already made significant contributions to meeting the challenge. The volume furthers the debate and will encourage others to get involved. It is greatly to be welcomed... anyone interested in the scientific imagination will have a lot to learn from this volume. * Timothy Williamson, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *

About Arnon Levy (Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Arnon Levy is a philosopher of science and biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on explanation and modeling in the life sciences. Peter Godfrey-Smith is a philosopher at the University of Sydney. His work focuses on philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind.

Table of Contents

About the Contributors Arnon Levy and Peter Godfrey-Smith: Introduction 1: Fiora Salis and Roman Frigg: Capturing the Scientific Imagination 2: Amie L. Thomasson: If Models Were Fictions, Then What Would They Be? 3: Martin Thomson-Jones: Realism About Missing Systems 4: Stacie Friend: The Fictional Character of Scientific Models 5: Stephen Yablo: Models and Reality 6: Peter Godfrey-Smith: Models, Fictions, and Conditionals 7: Benjamin Sheredos and William Bechtel: Imagining Mechanisms with Diagrams 8: Michael Weisberg: Abstraction and Representational Capacity in Computational Structures 9: Tania Lombrozo: aLearning by Thinkinga in Science and in Everyday Life 10: Deena Skolnick Weisberg: Is Imagination Constrained Enough for Science? 11: Igor Bascandziev and Paul M. Harris: Can Children Benefit from Thought Experiments? 12: Arnon Levy: Metaphor and Scientific Explanation 13: Elizabeth Camp: Imaginative Frames for Scientific Inquiry: Metaphors, Telling Facts, and Just-So Stories

Additional information

NPB9780190212308
9780190212308
0190212306
The Scientific Imagination by Arnon Levy (Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
New
Hardback
Oxford University Press Inc
2020-01-10
376
N/A
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