Science is popularly understood as being an ideal of impartial algorithmic objectivity that provides us with a realistic description of the world down to the last detail. The essays collected in this book—written by some of the leading experts in the field—challenge this popular image right at its heart, taking as their starting point that science trades not only in truth, but in fiction, too. With case studies that range from physics to economics and to biology, Fictions in Science reveals that fictions are as ubiquitous in scientific narratives and practice as they are in any other human endeavor, including literature and art. Of course scientific activity, most prominently in the formal sciences, employs logically precise algorithmic thinking. However, the key to the predictive and technological success of the empirical sciences might well lie elsewhere—perhaps even in scientists’ extraordinary creative imagination instead. As these essays demonstrate, within the bounds of what is empirically possible, a scientist’s capacity for invention and creative thinking matches that of any writer or artist.
Author(s): Mauricio Suarez
Edition: 1
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 290
Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgments......Page 8
Part I: Introduction......Page 10
1 Fictions in Scientific Practice......Page 12
Part II: The Nature of Fictions in Science......Page 26
2 Fictionalism......Page 28
3 Laboratory Fictions......Page 46
4 Models as Fictions......Page 65
Part III: The Explanatory Power of Fictions......Page 84
5 Exemplification, Idealization, and Scientific Understanding......Page 86
6 Explanatory Fictions......Page 100
7 Fictions, Representations, and Reality......Page 119
Part IV: Fictions in the Physical Sciences......Page 146
8 When Does a Scientific Theory Describe Reality?......Page 148
9 Scientific Fictions as Rules of Inference......Page 167
10 A Function for Fictions: Expanding the Scope of Science......Page 188
Part V: Fictions in the Special Sciences......Page 200
11 Model Organisms as Fictions......Page 202
12 Representation, Idealization, and Fiction in Economics: From the Assumptions Issue to the Epistemology of Modeling......Page 214
Part VI: Fictions and Realism......Page 242
13 Fictions, Fictionalization, and Truth in Science......Page 244
14 Why Scientific Models Should Not Be Regarded as Works of Fiction......Page 257
References......Page 268
Contributors......Page 280
Index......Page 284
