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Science as Representation: Flouting the Criteria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Bas C. van Fraassen
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Abstract

Criteria of adequacy for scientific representation of the phenomena pertain to accuracy and truth. But that representation is selective and may require distortion even in the selected parameters; this point is intimately connected with the fact that representation is intentional, and its adequacy relative to its particular purpose. Since observation and measurement are perspectival and the appearances to be saved are perspectival measurement outcomes, the question whether this “saving” is an explanatory relation provides a new focus for the realist/antirealist debate. The Born rule and von Neumann's “collapse” postulate in quantum mechanics provide a telling case for this question in recent physics.

Type
The Pragmatics of Scientific Representation
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 71 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2002 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers , December 2004 , pp. 794 - 804
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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