Review of van Fraassen's The Scientific Image

Bas Van Fraassen's The Scientific Image is a very important work in contemporary philosophy of Science. It is the definitive statement of non-realism in science. The central claim is that the central claims of science are 1) empirical adequacy and 2) that a theory must fit the observable phenomena. There are three main theses that are given that show how a workable non-realist philosophy of science can handle the important issues in the philosophy of science. The three things are 1) there is a relation between theories and the empirical world, 2) there is no absolute notion of explanation, and 3) there is an empirical account of probability. The book is quite difficult and only for the serious student of philosophy of science.

While I tend toward realism in science, it does present strong reasons to take the non-realist position seriously. It is a real serious work, and I strongly endorse it. You must keep in mind though that this is not a popular account, and is not for the faint of heart. It is a very serious work in the philosophy of science.

While a real elaboration of the book is too long to go in to here, I thought I would just give a quick outline of the part of the book which deals with scientific explanation. This is likely to be the most enduring part of the book, though I the whole thing is worth reading and preserving.

An explanation is an answer to a why-question. So a theory of explanations must be a theory of why-questions. The why-question Q expressed by an interrogative in a given context will be determined by three factors: 1) The topic, 2)the contrast class, and 3)the relevance relation.

Furthermore what we need to understand this theory is 1) the contextual factors involved in the background of why-questions. (Those will delineate the set of answers) And 2) A way to evaluate the answers we get.

To evaluate the answers we look to other theories of explanation. For example, we can look to see if the answer addresses the rise in the probabilities of events happening to explain why they happened. This of course has all the shortcomings of other theories of explanations.

The upshot is that there is no right account of explanation. Rather, it depends on what the context is. Sometimes the length of the shadow really does explain the height of the tower. Sometimes the laws of physics and trigonometry explain the length of the shadow, and sometimes the length of the shadow is explained with reference to who van Fraassen's father slept with. Presumably this all goes to counter van Fraassen's realism, in the sense that there cannot be one account of explanation because there is more than one account of reality.