First Published in 1970. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

To most scientists, and to those interested in the sciences, understanding is the ultimate aim of scientific endeavor. In spite of this, understanding, and how it is achieved, has received little attention in recent philosophy of science. Scientific Understanding seeks to reverse this trend by providing original and in-depth accounts of the concept of understanding and its essential role in the scientific process. To this end, the chapters in this volume explore and develop three key topics: understanding and explanation, understanding and models, and understanding in scientific practice. Earlier philosophers, such as Carl Hempel, dismissed understanding as subjective and pragmatic. They believed that the essence of science was to be found in scientific theories and explanations. In Scientific Understanding, the contributors maintain that we must also consider the relation between explanations and the scientists who construct and use them. They focus on understanding as the cognitive state that is a goal of explanation and on the understanding of theories and models as a means to this end. The chapters in this book highlight the multifaceted nature of the process of scientific research. The contributors examine current uses of theory, models, simulations, and experiments to evaluate the degree to which these elements contribute to understanding. Their analyses pay due attention to the roles of intelligibility, tacit knowledge, and feelings of understanding. Furthermore, they investigate how understanding is obtained within diverse scientific disciplines and examine how the acquisition of understanding depends on specific contexts, the objects of study, and the stated aims of research.

This collection addresses metaphysical issues at the intersection between philosophy and science. A unique feature is the way in which it is guided both by history of philosophy, by interaction between philosophy and science, and by methodological awareness. In asking how metaphysics is possible in an age of science, the contributors draw on philosophical tools provided by three great thinkers who were fully conversant with and actively engaged with the sciences of their day: Kant, Husserl, and Frege. Part I sets out frameworks for scientifically informed metaphysics in accordance with the meta-metaphysics outlined by these three self-reflective philosophers. Part II explores the domain for co-existent metaphysics and science. Constraints on ambitious critical metaphysics are laid down in close consideration of logic, meta-theory, and specific conditions for science. Part III exemplifies the role of language and science in contemporary metaphysics. Quine’s pursuit of truth is analysed; Cantor’s absolute infinitude is reconstrued in modal terms; and sense is made of Weyl’s take on the relationship between mathematics and empirical aspects of physics. With chapters by leading scholars, Metametaphysics and the Sciences is an in-depth resource for researchers and advanced students working within metaphysics, philosophy of science, and the history of philosophy.

This edited volume explores the interplay between philosophies in a wide-ranging analysis of how technological applications in science inform our systems of thought. Beginning with a historical background, the volume moves on to explore a host of topics, such as the uses of technology in scientific observations and experiments, the salient relationship between technology and mechanistic notions in science and the ways in which today’s vast and increasing computing power helps scientists achieve results that were previously unattainable. Technology allows today’s researchers to gather, in a matter of hours, data that would previously have taken weeks or months to assemble. It also acts as a kind of metaphor bank, providing biologists in particular with analogies (the heart as a ‘pump’, the nervous system as a ‘computer network’) that have become common linguistic currency. This book also examines the fundamental epistemological distinctions between technology and science and assesses their continued relevance. Given the increasing amalgamation of the philosophies of science and technology, this fresh addition to the literature features pioneering work in a promising new field that will appeal both to philosophers and scientific historiographers.

Though the publication of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions seemed to herald the advent of a unified study of the history and philosophy of science, it is a hard fact that history of science and philosophy of science have increasingly grown apart. Recently, however, there has been a series of workshops on both sides of the Atlantic (called '&HPS') intended to bring historians and philosophers of science together to discuss new integrative approaches. This is therefore an especially appropriate time to explore the problems with and prospects for integrating history and philosophy of science. The original essays in this volume, all from specialists in the history of science or philosophy of science, offer such an exploration from a wide variety of perspectives. The volume combines general reflections on the current state of history and philosophy of science with studies of the relation between the two disciplines in specific historical and scientific cases.

The distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification has left a turbulent wake in the philosophy of science. This book recognizes the need to re-open the debate about the nature, development, and significance of the context distinction, about its merits and flaws. The discussion clears the ground for the productive and fruitful integration of these new developments into philosophy of science.