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Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality
Analytic philosophers once pantomimed they tried to understand the world by breaking it down into the smallest possible bits. Thinkers from the Darwinian sciences now pose alternatives to this simplistic reductionism.
In this intellectual tour--essays spanning thirty years--William Wimsatt argues that scientists seek to atomize phenomena only when necessary in the search to understand how entities, events, and processes articulate at different levels. Evolution forms the natural world not as Laplace's all-seeing demon but as a backwoods mechanic fixing and re-fashioning machines out of whatever is at hand. W. V. Quine's lost search for a "desert ontology" leads instead to Wimsatt's walk through a tropical rain forest.
This book offers a philosophy for error-prone humans trying to understand messy systems in the real world. Against eliminative reductionism, Wimsatt pits new perspectives to deal with emerging natural and social complexities. He argues that our philosophy should be rooted in heuristics and models that work in practice, not only in principle. He demonstrates how to do this with an analysis of the strengths, the limits, and a recalibration of our reductionistic and analytic methodologies. Our aims are changed and our philosophy is transfigured in the process.
In this intellectual tour--essays spanning thirty years--William Wimsatt argues that scientists seek to atomize phenomena only when necessary in the search to understand how entities, events, and processes articulate at different levels. Evolution forms the natural world not as Laplace's all-seeing demon but as a backwoods mechanic fixing and re-fashioning machines out of whatever is at hand. W. V. Quine's lost search for a "desert ontology" leads instead to Wimsatt's walk through a tropical rain forest.
This book offers a philosophy for error-prone humans trying to understand messy systems in the real world. Against eliminative reductionism, Wimsatt pits new perspectives to deal with emerging natural and social complexities. He argues that our philosophy should be rooted in heuristics and models that work in practice, not only in principle. He demonstrates how to do this with an analysis of the strengths, the limits, and a recalibration of our reductionistic and analytic methodologies. Our aims are changed and our philosophy is transfigured in the process.
472 pages, Hardcover
First published June 30, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 16, 2015
I really liked Wimsatt's project here - arguing that philosophy of science should reflect a science that is compatible with human abilities and current practices. There is a lot of interesting material in this book, about the role of different 'imperfect' methods, such as use of models and heuristics, and why they should be considered best practice rather than unavoidable approximation. Unfortunately, these ideas are not presented in a particularly readable or organised way. I had to work quite hard to extract the point out of most of the sections, and in a book of this size, it was just exhausting.
November 24, 2021
Very useful.
September 9, 2008
Most important philosophy book I've read all year. Biology and Philosophy that is.
August 21, 2023
It is difficult but I can't decide if it has something interesting to say.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews