REVIEWS
“Angela Potochnik’s ambitious book is an antidote to the view that the philosophy of science tries to pronounce grandly on what scientists ought to do."
— Philip Ball, New Scientist
"In sum, this is a rich, well-argued book that articulates a coherent view of science and explicates the essential role of idealization in a world of cognitively limited people."
— Notre Dame Philosophical Review
"This thought—that science makes the world’s complexity accessible to human understanding via idealization—is the central contention of Angela Potochnik’s ambitious, striking book."
— Biology & Philosophy
"Why do scientists deliberately maintain falsehoods in their theories and models? Given the complexity of natural phenomena, scientists must simplify and generalize to isolate details from which causal patterns may be identified. Consequently, researchers must make choices about what to study and how; in doing so, the author argues, social values become entrenched in science. Potochnik contends that science doesn’t pursue truth directly but aims to support “human cognitive and practical ends.” Following several case studies of recent research in such diverse topics as behavioral ecology and human aggression, and—to a lesser extent—fluid dynamics, quantum physics, and climate change, the author offers a detailed exploration of how social values are linked to science. Arguing that science should be regarded as a tool to facilitate human action, Potochnik concludes that scientists should pursue research that advances both action and understanding. She defines the most valuable subjects as those of ethical concern—for example global climate change or studies involving human physiological and psychological health. Written primarily for philosophers of science, this text has practical implications for science practice. It will be of greatest benefit to advanced academics and active research scientists. Recommended."
— Choice
"Idealization and the Aims of Science is a fantastic book. In it, Potochnik argues for a compelling, global picture of how science works – one that seeks to clarify how the practice of science relates both to human cognitive capacities and to the world we seek to understand. The book is ecumenical yet concise. It is broad but focuses on the details. It seeks to make generalizations about science, but it does so through diverse analyses of particular scientific practices. If one wanted a single book that summed up both the challenges and opportunities in current philosophy of science, one could hardly do better. . . . I expect that I will return to it frequently as I pursue my own projects for useful ideas, contrasting viewpoints, and helpful articulations of general principles. I can’t think of a better endorsement to give to a philosophical text."
— Philosophy of Science
"A wonderful book. It is well informed by contemporary research from various sciences, and the discussion throughout is thoughtful and engaging. . . . The book is rare in that it is accessible enough that novices will be able to follow the main ideas and benefit from reading it, and yet it is rich enough that experts will profit from closely studying it. Potochnik’s book is a must read for those interested in idealizations."
— Science & Education
"An impressive book that will not disappoint its readers in terms of its richness and ability to provoke new ideas on numerous topics in the philosophy of science."
— Metascience
"Potochnik's book comes as a breath of fresh air in general philosophy of science, both because of the variety of examples examined and because of its approach, aimed at drawing attention to the fact that science is not an ahistorical and impersonal enterprise but is fully founded on the ideas, aspirations, and activities of those that make science: the scientists. . . . This book will be valuable reading for anyone who wonders what science is and why it constitutes the most privileged form of knowledge in our world today."
— History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
"In her exceptional book, Idealization and the Aims of Science, Angela Potochnik explores the nature of idealizations while accounting for why they are so ubiquitous.
The picture of science that emerges from Potochnik’s work is that of a thoroughly human endeavor. Science is a tool that helps us navigate an extremely complex world. Potochnik’s picture of science is compelling and helps to ground an appreciation of how truly impressive the success of science is."
— Science & Education
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Doing Science in a Complex World - Angela Potochnik
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226507194.003.0001
[complexity;values in science;idealization]
Increasingly, philosophers of science have focused on accounting for scientific practice as it actually occurs: the often-messy and never-completed project of limited human beings, pursued for human ends. There is also greater attention paid to how complexity influences science. Many scientists and philosophers of science have been impressed by the complexity of the world we inhabit and investigate, and appreciation for this complexity increasingly shapes scientific approaches as well as philosophical accounts of science. This chapter develops these two points about science: how its human practitioners and the world’s complexity influence the nature of science. These widely acknowledged features of science are the basis for all the ideas developed in this book, and the chapter concludes with a survey of those ideas. (pages 1 - 22)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
2: Complex Causality and Simplified Representation - Angela Potochnik
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226507194.003.0002
[causation;manipulability;causal patterns;complexity;idealization;representation]
This chapter establishes the most basic consequence of science performed by humans in a complex world, namely, widespread idealization. The first step is the idea that much of science is profitably understood as the search for causal patterns, which hold over a limited range of circumstances and have exceptions even within that range. These patterns qualify as causal on a manipulability approach to causation. Manipulability relations may not be metaphysically basic, but the idea that they are epistemically basic in causal analysis is defended. This discussion grounds a more specific characterization of the relevant sense in which the world is complex: causal complexity. In the second half of the chapter, attention turns from the scientific significance of causal patterns and causal complexity to a prominent scientific strategy for discerning patterns in the face of complexity, namely, the use of idealizations. Idealization plays a more expansive role in science than is commonly appreciated by scientists or philosophers of science. Idealizations are widespread even outside model-based science, and there are many different, intertwined reasons to idealize. Moreover, this chapter is motivated by the idea that idealizations play a direct representational role. As a result, idealizations are both rampant and unchecked in science. (pages 23 - 61)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
3: The Diversity of Scientific Projects - Angela Potochnik
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226507194.003.0003
[idealization;causal patterns;pluralism;scientific aims;behavioral ecology;cooperation;human behavior;aggression;biology;physics]
Chapter 2 examines a unified description of science as employing idealizations to identify causal patterns in the face of causal complexity. That unified description conceals the full diversity of science’s projects. Attending to even a few contemporary scientific research programs reveals great variation in aims and methods. This chapter surveys investigations from across science: the investigation of cooperation in behavioral ecology; a variety of approaches to investigating human behavior and, in particular, aggression; and, more briefly, projects in fluid dynamics, quantum physics, and climate science. This survey demonstrates that any generalizations about science must accommodate great diversity. Differences among the scientific investigations examined include the aims of the research, the role played by data, and how the project connects to other scientific research. And yet, despite this diversity, all have something in common: they employ idealized representations. This further confirms the extent of idealization in science. Together, the great diversity of scientific projects and the extent of idealization begin to cast doubt on the idea that science uniformly proceeds toward truth, unified representation, or any other unitary aim. (pages 62 - 89)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
4: Science Isn't After the Truth - Angela Potochnik
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226507194.003.0004
[understanding;idealization;scientific aims;pluralism;causal patterns;knowledge]
The examples of scientific research in Chapter 2 resist interpretation as aiming for the truth, successive approximation, orincreasingly accurate representation of phenomena. This seems to be so for most scientific research. This chapter develops an account of the aims of science in light of these considerations. On this account, science is not in a lockstep pursuit of truth. Instead, there are a variety of scientific aims that are in tension with one another, and the ultimate epistemic aim of science is not truth but understanding. Understanding is achieved by revealing causal patterns, patterns that are imperfectly embodied by phenomena and that relate to only some elements of phenomena. Taking understanding to be a form of epistemic success, and yet suggesting that understanding can be obtained by means other than truth, is on its face an uncomfortable combination of commitments. This is addressed by further considering the nature of understanding and by discussing how the idea that the epistemic aim of science is understanding is compatible with the idea that science produces knowledge. (pages 90 - 121)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
5: Causal Pattern Explanations - Angela Potochnik
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226507194.003.0005
[explanation;understanding;idealization;causal patterns;causal explanation]
Chapter 4’s emphasis on understanding leads naturally to a discussion of scientific explanation, as explanations have classically been taken to be the means for creating understanding. The connection between explanation and understanding demonstrates the centrality of human cognitive requirements to scientific explanation. This chapter develops that idea. The resulting view situates explanations at the center of science, as the primary vehicles of scientific understanding. In light of that connection, the positions developed in Chapter 4 also provide insight into the nature of scientific explanation. This chapter develops an approach to explanation with three defining features on the basis of these insights. Causal patterns’ central role in securing scientific understanding makes them the currency of scientific explanations. Yet causal complexity, along with rampant and unchecked idealization, leads to an explanation producing, at best, understanding of only certain features of a phenomenon. This elevates contextual considerations to a central position in this account of explanation, for which features of any given phenomenon are to be understood depends on the audience’s immediate interests. And, finally, the resulting view creates the need for a minimal standard of adequacy that every explanation must satisfy but that still allows ample room for persistent idealization. (pages 122 - 160)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
6: Levels and Fields of Science - Angela Potochnik
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226507194.003.0006
[levels of organization;scientific fields;idealization;scientific aims;scale;realization;complexity;unity of science]
The preceding chapters have developed an account of the aims and practice of science that features, at its core, the idea that idealization is rampant and unchecked. This chapter outlines the implications of these ideas for philosophical views about levels of organization and field divisions in science. First, it is suggested that the phenomena under investigation in science are not organized into discrete levels. Relationships in composition, scale, metaphysical determination, and causal dependence have variously been linked to levels. But idealized representations in the service of diverse aims should lead us to question the idea that different targets of investigation are related in metaphysically significant ways. In turn, causal complexity should inspire caution about limitations placed on relationships of causal influence, like the expectation that they are limited by compositional relationships. These ideas also motivate an alternative view of scientific fields and subfields as reflecting different simplified strategies to pursuing understanding, prediction, and control of causally complex phenomena. Field divisions thus should not be taken to reflect facts about the metaphysical status of the entities under investigation, be it their levels of organization, realization relationships, or relations of causal influence. (pages 161 - 197)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
7: Scientific Pluralism and Its Limits - Angela Potochnik
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226507194.003.0007
[scientific aims;pluralism;naturalized metaphysics;values in science]
The account of the aims of science developed in this book explicitly links those aims to particularities of scientists and the audiences of science. This final chapter investigates some implications of these deep connections between science’s aims and human features. This begins with an exploration of how this human-centric conception of the aims of science expands the role of social values in science. Then, the view is developed that the human-centric nature of science greatly constrains the potential for drawing metaphysical conclusions from our scientific findings, which has implications for naturalized approaches to metaphysics. Finally, the concern is considered that the view of science presented in this bookis too unhinged from realistic depictions of the world to fulfill the epistemic and social functions of science. This is not so. The view of science developed in this book grounds a pluralistic view of science, but it also creates natural brakes on that pluralism. This discussion grounds some normative conclusions about scientific practice and the direction of scientific progress. Together, these ideas comprise a view of science as responsive to and reflective of human particularities—but in ways that contribute to, rather than undermine, science’s success. (pages 198 - 222)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
