Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the Scientific Image

Description

Naturalism as a guiding philosophy for modern science both disavows any appeal to the supernatural or anything else transcendent to nature, and repudiates any philosophical or religious authority over the workings and conclusions of the sciences. A longstanding paradox within naturalism, however, has been the status of scientific knowledge itself, which seems, at first glance, to be something that transcends and is therefore impossible to conceptualize within scientific naturalism itself. In Articulating the World, Joseph Rouse argues that the most pressing challenge for advocates of naturalism today is precisely this: to understand how to make sense of a scientific conception of nature as itself part of nature, scientifically understood. Drawing upon recent developments in evolutionary biology and the philosophy of science, Rouse defends naturalism in response to this challenge by revising both how we understand our scientific conception of the world and how we situate ourselves within it. Contents......Page 6 Introduction......Page 8 1. Naturalism and the Scientific Image......Page 10 Part One. Conceptual Understanding as Discursive Niche Construction......Page 44 2. What Is Conceptual Understanding?......Page 46 3. Conceptual Understanding in Light of Evolution......Page 93 4. Language, Social Practice, and Conceptual Normativity......Page 138 5. Two Concepts of Objectivity......Page 177 Part Two. Conceptual Articulation in Scientific Practice......Page 206 6. Scientific Practice and the Scientific Image......Page 208 7. Experimental Practice and Conceptual Understanding......Page 229 8. Laws and Modalities in Scientific Practice......Page 255 9. Laboratory Fictions and the Opening of Scientific Domains......Page 294 10. Scientific Significance......Page 324 Conclusion......Page 350 11. Naturalism Articulated......Page 352 Epilogue. Naturalism and the Contingency of the Space of Reasons......Page 384 References......Page 394 Acknowledgments......Page 414 Index......Page 418