Tag: Bas C van Fraassen

  • Bad Theory as a Bad Tragedy

    A quote from Bas C Van Fraassen, Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective: p. 266 ‘Aristotle himself seems to see the parallelism very well. When in the Physics he comes to what he considers a bad theory (the theory of evolution by natural selection and chance variation, as it happens!) he make fun of it. It…

  • Does the World exist?

    From The Empirical Stance (The Terry Lectures Series) by van Fraassen: Lecture 1. Against Analytic Metaphysics 3. Does the World Exist? p. 5 “Doesn’t the answer seem obvious to us? We are all part of this earthly ecosystem, which is part of the solar system, and that is part of the Milky Way galaxy, and…

  • God is Dead

    From The Empirical Stance (The Terry Lectures Series) by van Fraassen: “Let us begin with a statement that I am sure you must have heard before: God is dead. You are right if you take it that I am serious about this. But what do I mean? When Pascal died, a scrap of paper was…

  • Empirical Stance vs. Absolute Rationalism

    My comments: http://www.facebook.com/groups/321291954641287/permalink/321519644618518/ ————————- Craig, thanks for the invitation. Well, I have recently read The Empirical Stance (The Terry Lectures Series) by van Fraassen: http://www.princeton.edu/~fraassen/CatalogueCopy.htm I guess, that I prefer the empirical stance right now. Remember that the other name for rationalism is dogmatism. ————————- Frank, dogmatism concerns rationalism vs. empiricism. That is, the question…

  • DNA to represent proteins

    Recently I have read Bas C van Fraassen Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective where a representation is defined as  p. 21 “Z uses X to depict Y as F” Does it make sense to say “Z uses” when Z is not a human being? For example, what is a meaning of a sentence “a robot…

  • Weyl on mathematics vs. reality

    From Bas C van Fraassen Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective p. 208 “Herman Weyl expressed the fundamental insight as follows in 1934: ‘A science can never determine its subject-matter expect up to isomorphic representation. The idea of isomorphism indicates the self-understood, insurmountable barrier of knowledge. […T]oward the “nature” of its objects science maintains complete indifference.’…

  • Rainbow as Public Hallucinations

    From Bas C van Fraassen Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective p. 102-103 “Consider the rainbow. We realize pretty soon that there is no real material shining arch standing above the earth, although at first it looks that way. As a second guess we might think that certain parts of the clouds or haze are colored. But…

  • Self-ascription and “Perfect Model Model”

    From Bas C van Fraassen Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective p. 45 “Agreed, we cannot demonstrate that in principle, as a matter of logic, mathematical modeling must inevitably be a distortion of what is modeled, although models actually constructed cannot have perfection reachable in principle. But on the other hand, the conviction that perfect modeling…