68 min listen
Hasok Chang, "Realism for Realistic People: A New Pragmatist Philosophy of Science (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Hasok Chang, "Realism for Realistic People: A New Pragmatist Philosophy of Science (Cambridge UP, 2022)
ratings:
Length:
65 minutes
Released:
May 10, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
For a certain kind of standard realist, science aims at getting the absolute truth about the universe. For Hasok Chang, this view is unrealistic because we have no way of judging whether we are getting at that truth. In his new book, Realism for Realistic People: A New Pragmatist Philosophy of Science (Cambridge UP, 2022), Chang argues that we should understand scientific inquiry and its epistemic fruits in terms of what we do to acquire, justify, and use scientific knowledge. Drawing on Dewey and other pragmatists, plus a neo-Kantian view of phenomena, Chang – who is Hans Rausing Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge – affirms the basic realist commitment to a mind-independent world, though only in the sense that the world is “mind-framed” by our concepts, not “mind-controlled”. The aim of science, however, is operationally coherent active knowledge, not description of some inaccessible reality.
Carrie Figdor is professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Carrie Figdor is professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
May 10, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Roger Hart, “The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011): Roger Hart‘s The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011) is the first book-length study of linear algebra in imperial China, and is based on an astounding combination of erudition and expertise in both Chinese history and... by New Books in the History of Science