The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science

by Nancy Cartwright

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.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Physics, Nonfiction

260 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 1999

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite part of this book was learning about Herr Lessing, who points out that a fable is not the same as an allegory, because it is not symbolic, merely demonstrative. This seems like the best advice ever for a creative writer as well as a philosopher of science thinking about models.

[Scott Would · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had to give the book five stars for its brilliance, despite it reading a bit too much like an adapted collection of papers. Which, to be fair, it is.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to rate (though not nearly as difficult as it was to read!). On the one hand, the theses expounded here should be absolutely required study for anyone who wants to do philosophy of science (especially foundations of physics or any work on the conceptual undergirding of economic theory). On the other hand, not only the exacting specificity of the examples given (thank God I had some basic grounding in the mathematics of classical and quantum mechanics; but I was still sent back to references and Google searches to try and keep up, especially in the later chapters!), but also the manner in which the author writes, make this an almost impenetrable book. Her way of structuring sentences is almost as confusing and jarring as her way of structuring her ideas and their connections to each other. I re-read so many sentences in this book....

That being said, I think Cartwright is quite right about much of this, and I think her insights can go far beyond even the applications she's given here (for example, into the fields of philosophy of mind, voluntary action, post-neo-Darwinian-synthesis evolutionary theory, etc.).

Bottom line: This book is a must-read and an almost-can't-read at the same time. And I have no substitute at present to offer, except to listen to her lectures (which are much more approachable) and then maybe read other people who think similarly to her (like John Dupré).

[Micah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it's cute when authors include simple illustrations in their books that are supposed to convey subtle concepts, like representing different scientific fields as balloons or the abstract concept of "weakness" as a grouse. unfortunately it's also MISLEADING

[Michal Paszkiewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, thought provoking read. It is by no means simple, but a must-read for anyone seriously interested in the Philosophy of Science.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Edit: A few months after I read this, I'm upping my original rating because I think of this book often. Very thought-provoking as a student and practitioner of physics.*

Cartwright begins this book by rejecting F=ma as a universal principle, which, as a student of physics, brought my hackles up immediately.

Cartwright argues against the universality of scientific laws, focusing on physics and economics, the two fields that claim the broadest domains of descriptive power (“imperialistic tendencies” LOL). I confess I skimmed or skipped many of the economics sections, and I can only speak to physics here. She says that theories of physics only apply to particular arrangements of the objects they describe. In some cases, I agree wholeheartedly, e.g., Coulomb’s law does not apply to two point charges when there’s an insulator between those charges. She does admit the existence of what she calls “covering laws,” like Maxwell’s equations and Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, that can better claim universality, but she did not discuss these in detail. The laws of physics, she says, do not describe what DOES happen but what CAN happen (capacities given the natures of the objects in question), and what DOES happen further depends on the particular arrangement and any additional factors at play. This, with her clarification of how natures and capacities in her thinking differs from Aristotelian natures, is a very helpful point.

Cartwright also claimed that much of our “laws” of physics are cases of overextended induction from our experiments. I take issue with this as well. It seems rather difficult to argue for or against using induction, because it’s induction, so I will leave this point. On a related front, she has an unfavorable view of what she calls “shielding”—the fact that physics experiments are conducted in heavily controlled circumstances that best allow us to make inferences about natures and capacities, and that we routinely ignore terms within our own laws when they are negligible in a circumstance. Imprecise and idealized as these may be, they are perhaps the most powerful tools in our scientific toolbox, and I don’t think it’s helpful to discount them in a philosophical treatise of science.