The Scientific Image

by Bas C. Van Fraassen

In this book van Fraassen develops an alternative to scientific realism by constructing and evaluating three mutually reinforcing theories.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction, Physics

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 1980

About the author

Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen is a Dutch-American philosopher noted for his seminal contributions to philosophy of science. He is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University and the McCosh Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University.

Reviews

[Joshua Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

van Fraassen's Scientific Image is one of the most difficult and engaging pieces of philosophy I've read in recent memory. It provides, at once, a compelling argument for empiricism and, in its conclusion, an odd argument for scientific realism. The first part of the book, I think, is the most inspired, and was the most engaging for me. van Fraassen provides a thorough account of much of the literature in physics during the 19th and 20th century, expressing the problematization of its relation to mathematics and its position on hypothetical entities.

From a strict concern about literary accessibility, this really isn't something that is going to be of interest to those outside of professional philosophy. It is written with total disregard for laypeople; he just isn't really trying, and while that works for those graduate students who need to wrestle with some of the eminent philosophy of physics, it is just going to be frustrating and useless to those who are looking for an introduction. So, don't jump in if that's what you're hunting for.

That said, even for graduate students and beyond, this book is something of a riddle, and it doesn't really come together until the end. van Fraassen's account of empiricism through the first six chapters [the book has seven, total] leaves, for me, a compelling argument for a continued, and more aggressive, discussion of the role of mathematics in contemporary physics, especially with regard to realism about the mathematical representation of posited forces. It inspires, at least for me, a skeptical position about the role of mathematical representation when we start to talk about quantum mechanics and other areas where so much of the science is based on positing.

van Fraassen seems to want to offer a substantive contribution on behalf of a sort of qualified scientific realism in the concluding chapter of the book. Unfortunately, this is the one part of the book that I found fairly uncompelling. The conclusions regarding scientific realism, which van Fraassen supports [though the formulation of this is not totally clear; he says he is inheriting it from Smart, which is certainly true for large parts of it] are brought to bear through an analogy with Aquinas' Five Ways that I am, at best, skeptical about. Perhaps my skepticism is unfairly caused by the scholastic analogue Bas is using; perhaps he simply needed to give himself more time to unpack the argument so that the entirety of his position could be seen.

For those who are interested in the hardcore literature in philosophy of science, whether you end up agreeing more-or-less completely with Bas, or disagreeing completely, or are somewhere in the middle [as I am], the book is an engaging look at one of the areas that is more difficult for contemporary philosophy of science, because it requires a level of mathematical rigor that is difficult to attain. van Fraassen does a fairly good job at writing some serious philosophy of physics for those with some strength in logics and philosophy of mathematics, as well as providing some good angles on the history of philosophy. All-and-all, a very narrow, but very interesting read.

[Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bas van Fraassen is one of my favorite philosophers of science because he presents his stance as a constructive empiricist, as opposed to scientific realism. A very convincing argument that gets you thinking and questioning! One of my favorite classes (philosophy of science) and books I've read in my college career. A must-read if you like philosophy because philosophy about science applies to your everyday life.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it wasn't exactly well-written (I felt that the brilliant Bas Van Fraassen could be more concise), he makes such incredible points that it doesn't matter. Plod through this book at all costs. It is that good. It's not terribly written. It can just get a little wordy, confusing, and repetitive at points. But really, what philosopher doesn't fall into that trap? I think the content of this book more than makes up for any shortcomings in the writing style. And he does wax poetic in the last chapter, which I thought was nice.

[Kamili · Rating 4 out of 5]

He's a bit of a weirdy.

[Marcelo Lemes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Li os capítulos 1,2,3,e 5. Não li os capítulos 4,6 e 7. Estava mais interessado na questão da "explicação". O van Fraassen define sua linha de pensamento como "empirismo construtivo".

O livro é bom. Acho que o van Fraassen radicaliza no conceito de verdade o que leva quase a uma contradição com a sua visão empirista. Para ele o conceito de verdade é algo imutável, o que é verdade hoje sempre será verdade. A realidade da ciência mostra que algo aceito em um determinado momento, ou seja, aceito como verdade, acaba evoluindo com o tempo por agregação de novos conceitos ou substituição. Assim algo que é tido como verdadeiro hoje pode não o ser amanhã. A ideia de uma verdade imutável leva a uma visão metafísica do conceito o que é, em princípio, algo que não cabe na visão empirista.

[Michael Norwitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Van Fraassen is certainly erudite, knowledgeable about the history of science, but too many of his arguments against scientific realism hinge on thought experiments involving arbitrary changes to physical laws that seem to have no ramification outside the narrow confines of the discussion at hand; the tactic simply doesn't convince, like ill-thought out worldbuilding in a science fiction novel. And while his criticisms of Putnam playing rhetorical sleight-of-hand may have some merit, his solutions seem little better grounded.

There's not enough history of science presented in a clear way for this book to be read with that in mind, so unless you are simply needing to fulfill some anti-realist philosophical quota, I can't recommend.

[Jhc · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that I wish everyone with a philosophical background interested in science had to read.

[Fizzizist · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone interested in having a meaningful conversation about scientific realism, truth, and epistemology.

[(_____) (____) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This masterpiece should be required reading for everyone interested in the philosophy of science. (Incidentally, this is coming from someone who disagrees with it)
Although some of its descriptions are fairly detailed, the Goodreads description isn't. So here's what's actually in the book:
Some devastating refutations of many, many arguments for scientific realism.
An attempt at a clear definition of scientific realism.
The presentation of constructive empiricism, according to which acceptance of a scientific theory consists only in belief that it is empirically adequate (basically: agrees perfectly with all phenomena). This is a rather formidable kind of anti-realism, as it keeps a literal semantics for the language of science (the absence of which having killed logical positivism) but nonetheless suspends judgement on whether scientific theories are literally true.
A very in-depth analysis of empirical adequacy and empirical equivalence, using model theory.
A theory of explanation in which explanations are answers to why-questions (the concepts of questions and answers are analyzed quite rigorously). Along the way, there's a detailed discussion with refutations of many other theories of explanation.
A discussion of probability in quantum & classical physics.
Critiques of frequentist interpretations of probability, and a revised frequentist interpretation.
Speculations on a research program designed to make the analysis of modality in science a problem of language.

This is a brilliant book, and its many refutations of alternative theories and arguments seem quite accurate. However, I have some disagreements. Firstly, van Fraassen presents scientific realism as asserting that science aims for literally true theories. However, that makes the truth of scientific realism problematically relative to scientific practice. Consider a world in which all science is done by an incomprehensibly powerful supercomputer that automatically makes observations, does experiments, formulates and tests theories, etc. We will suppose that it gives an output of the theories that it finds to be accurate and the data supporting them, though without any definite conclusion drawn besides the results of its statistical analyses. Clearly, the computer is doing science. However, it isn't sentient and therefore cannot have any aims- so there is no aim of science in that world. However, that alone would not make it unreasonable to interpret its theories as true- in short, be a scientific realist. So scientific realism would not be refuted even if the aims of science were different, and it must not be a thesis about the aims of science.
Secondly, constructive empiricism isn't very well-supported. Van Fraassen attacks arguments for scientific realism, but generally not scientific realism itself. And while he provides some support for constructive empiricism (for example, it's more epistemically cautious, and thus more truth-conducive), it isn't very conclusive. However, the aim of the book does not seem to be rigorously demonstrating the truth of constructive empiricism, but rather providing a rigorous alternative to realism for empiricists. And it does so very well.



How much prior knowledge is necessary?
One needs a decent understanding of the history of analytic philosophy and a detailed understanding of analytic philosophy of science. This is a very academic, technical work that is firmly situated within the general analytic tradition.
A decent amount of mathematics is required. The reader must be somewhat familiar with the mathematical details of quantum mechanics for some examples the author gives to make sense. Either they must understand model theory and probability theory well, or they must be able to pick it up quickly (the author does explain the mathematics a bit, but the explanations are rather brief).
This isn't really one of those philosophy books with wide appeal that can be read without much background, like Plato's "Republic" or Descartes's "Meditations".

[Brian Beakley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd practically memorized this book by the end of grad school. A clever, influential anti-metaphysical account of science.