Bas van Fraassen

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Bastian "Bas" Cornelis van Fraassen (born April 5, 1941 in Goes ) is a Dutch theorist of science and the founder of constructive empiricism .

His family emigrated to Canada in 1956 .

In 1966 he did his doctorate under Adolf Grünbaum at the University of Pittsburgh with a thesis on the foundations of a causal theory of time . In 1997 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . For 2018 he was awarded the Lauener Prize .

Van Fraassen sums up the main message of his philosophical position as follows:

“Science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate . This is the statement of the anti-realist position I advocate; I shall call it constructive empiricism. "

“The aim of science is to provide us with theories that are empirically adequate; and the acceptance of a theory involves only conviction of its empirical adequacy. This is the formulation of the anti-realistic position for which I advocate; I will call it constructive empiricism. "

- Bas van Fraassen 1980, 12

Since van Fraassen considers empiricism to be the appropriate way of science, he sees it as necessary to criticize a naive empiricism, as it is, in his opinion, mainly represented in contemporary, analytical philosophy . Naive empiricism therefore tends to get lost in senseless, metaphysical speculations about what the world is. Van Fraassen sees this error in materialism (“Everything is matter.”), As well as in physicalism (“Everything is physical.”) And naturalism (“Everything is physical or supervised from the physical.”) Such statements are according to van Fraassen no scientific theses, just the expression of an attitude (“stance”) that one has towards the world. Such attitudes should not be the subject of scientific debate.

Publications

  • An introduction to the philosophy of time and space , New York: Random House 1970
  • Formal Semantics and Logic , London: Macmillan 1971
  • The Scientific Image , Oxford: Oxford University Press 1980, ISBN 0-19-824427-4
  • Images of science: essays on realism and empiricism. with a reply from Bas C. van Fraassen , Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1985, ISBN 0-226-10653-5
  • Laws and Symmetry , Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989, ISBN 0-19-824860-1
  • Quantum Mechanics, An Empiricist View , Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991, ISBN 0-19-823980-7
  • The Empirical Stance , New Haven: Yale University Press 2002
  • Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective , Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bas van Fraassen: "The Empirical Stance." New Haven: Yale University Press 2002, p. 46.
  2. ^ Bas van Fraassen: "The Empirical Stance." New Haven: Yale University Press 2002, p. 49.
  3. ^ Bas van Fraassen: "The Empirical Stance." New Haven: Yale University Press 2002, pp. 48-49.
personal data
SURNAME Fraassen, Bas van
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fraassen, Bastian Cornelis van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch theorist of science and proponent of constructive empiricism
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Goes , Netherlands