Philosophy of Science in Action

Abstract

The article reviews Christopher Hitchcock’s Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science, aims to present contemporary issues in philosophy of science through a series of eight debates between leading analytic philosophers in the given specialist field. Each contributor argues for or against a proposed motion of the debate, ranging from issues of metaphysics and epistemology of science to specific philosophical questions in physics, biology and psychology. In that they draw on a wealth of techniques from the practice of philosophy of science from conceptual clarifications to invocation of examples from scientific practice. Nonethless, against the background of philosophical work associated with contemporary scientific practice the topics selected for this volume seem limited in both depth (the fundamental metaphysical and epistemological questions are not backed up by the equally fundamental scientific research) and scope (the ‘contemporaneity’ of scientific questions presented is not always up to scratch). The volume’s great worth is in presenting ‘philosophy of science in action’ by exercising many tricks of the trade in several self-contained chapters.

Keywords

• Philosophy of science
• contemporary science
• epistemology
• metaphysics
• physics
• biology
• psychology.