Stathis Psillos

Counter Scientific Realism is the optimistic view that modern science is on the right track: that the world really is the way our best scientific theories describe it to be. In his book, Stathis Psillos gives us a detailed and comprehensive study, which restores the intuitive plausibility of scientific realism. We see that throughout the twentieth century, scientific realism has been challenged by philosophical positions from all angles: from reductive empiricism, to instrumentalism and modern skeptical empiricism. Scientific Realism explains that the history of science does not undermine the notion of scientific realism, and instead makes it reasonable to accept scientific as the best philosophical account of science, its empirical success, its progress and its practice. Anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the state of modern science and why scientific realism is plausible, should read this book.

In Knowing the Structure of Nature, Stathis Psillos develops the articulation and defence of scientific realism that started in his very influential, widely read and discussed Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth. Psillos argues in favour of the epistemic optimism associated with scientific realism. He criticises attempts to draw a sharp epistemic dichotomy between those aspects of nature that are knowable and those that will remain secret--attempts to set limits to the scientific knowledge of nature. The book focuses on recent arguments and views in the scientific realism debate and repositions this debate within broader metaphysical and epistemological perspectives. It takes issue with key elements of the structuralist turn in the philosophy of science and advances a new framework for inference to the best explanation. Professional philosophers of science, graduate students and anyone interested in scientific realism and inference to the best explanation will find this book rewarding, stimulating and provocative.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science is an indispensable reference source and guide to the major themes, debates, problems and topics in philosophy of science. It contains sixty-two specially commissioned entries by a leading team of international contributors. Organized into four parts it covers: historical and philosophical context debates concepts the individual sciences. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science addresses all of the essential topics that students of philosophy of science need to know - from empiricism, explanation and experiment to causation, observation, prediction and more - and contains many helpful features including chapters on individual sciences (such as biology, chemistry, physics and psychology), further reading and cross-referencing at the end of each chapter. Expanded and revised throughout, this second edition includes new chapters on Conventionalism, Social Epistemology, Computer Simulation, Thought Experiments, Pseudoscience, Species and Taxonomy, and Cosmology --