Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 258 pages
- Published by: Cambridge University Press October 13, 1999
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0521644119
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0521644112
-
Book Dimensions:
8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
- Weighs: 15.5 ounces
Product Review
"Cartwright's book provides an account of science that does well to bring matters related to scientific practice into the philosophy of science." Review of Metaphysics
"The Dappled World is Nancy Cartwright's latest andbest exposition of an approach to philosophy of science she has been developing for two decades." Ronald N. Giere, Philosophy of Science
"The Dappled World offers an inspiring picture of the nature of reality, and stimulating advice on how to interpret scientific theories.Fans of Cartwright's earlier books will find some of theri major themes further elucidated here." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Book Description
In this book Nancy Cartwright argues against a vision of a uniform world completely ordered under a single elegant theory, and proposes instead a patchwork of laws of nature. Combining classic and newly written essays, The Dappled World offers important methodological lessons for both the natural and the social sciences, and will interest anyone who wants to understand how modern science works.
Reader Reviews
First of all, the congenial title belies it's in-depth content. As another reviewer noted, this book requires a pretty thorough understanding of both philosophical method and matters of science, including a grasp of quantum mechanics(not math-heavy, but having an idea of what a Hamiltonian is, for example). Having said that, I find the book well-written, referenced, and closely argued. The author is up-front and explicitly lays out the three main theses she wishes to convey in the Introduction. These theses, very briefly, are: 1) Empirical success of physics theories argues for their truth but not necessarily their universality. 2) Laws, where they do apply, hold only ceteris paribus. 3) Our most wide-ranging scientific knowledge is the knowledge of the nature of things, not our knowledge of laws. The former being far more generative. Continuing from her previous book, "How the Laws of Physics Lie", the author argues that the 'laws' comprising science are not pieces of a grand unitary hierarchical schema of laws (towards the completion of which science is usually presumed to be headed), but rather that the relationship between laws is tenuous at best (hence, "Dappled" in the title). That the laws of nature are true ceteris paribus, and that their validity relies on "successful repeated operations of a nomological machine" (p. 50). A nomological machine being the selected components, capacities and situations that will repeatedly display the same behavior (the behavior that the resultant laws encode - typically with an implicit universal quantifier in front of them). This is not anti-science or anti-realism or social constructivism. It is, however, explicitly anti-scientific-fundamentalism. The laws of science are not absolute and final, and an ideological belief in that absolutist view is misplaced. Science is a more complicated act than that and it is possible that "reality may well be just a patchwork of laws" (p. 34)
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