Smoke and Mirrors. How Science Reflects Reality

James Robert Brown0415091810, 9780415091817, 0415091802, 9780415091800, 9780203053041

Realism is an enlightening story, a tale which enriches our experience and makes it more intelligible. Yet this wonderful picture of humanity’s best efforts at knowledge has been badly bruised by numerous critics. James Robert Brown in Smoke and Mirrors fights back against figures such as Richard Rorty, Bruno Latour, Michael Ruse and Hilary Putnam who have attacked realist accounts of science. But this volume is not wholly devoted to combating Rorty and others who blow smoke in our eyes; the second half is concerned with arguing that there are some amazing ways in which science mirrors the world. The role of abstraction, abstract objects and a priori ways of getting at reality are all explored in showing how science reflects reality. Smoke and Mirrors is a defence of science and knowledge in general as well as a defence of a particular way of understanding science. It is of interest to all those who wish or need to know how science works.

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Table of contents :
Book Cover……Page 1
Title……Page 4
Contents……Page 5
Preface……Page 10
Acknowledgements……Page 11
Introduction……Page 12
Explaining the success of science……Page 14
Smoke……Page 38
Rorty’s Solidarity……Page 40
Latour’s prosaic science……Page 52
The naturalism of Ruse……Page 71
Putnam’s verification……Page 89
Mirrors……Page 100
Knowledge;in the abstract……Page 102
Phenomena……Page 128
What is the vector potential?……Page 153
Proof and truth in the abstract realm……Page 171
Afterword……Page 195
Notes……Page 196
Bibliography……Page 200
Index……Page 207