Bas van Fraassen b. 1941
Bas van Fraassen (born 1941) is a Dutch-American philosopher of the Contemporary era, associated with Analytic Philosophy.
Bas C. van Fraassen is a Dutch-born American philosopher of science, distinguished professor emeritus at Princeton University and former professor at San Francisco State University, and the principal contemporary defender of constructive empiricism in the philosophy of science. The Scientific Image, his 1980 manifesto, defended a version of empiricism in which the aim of science is empirical adequacy rather than truth about unobservable entities, and so allowed the working scientist a sober agnosticism about the deeper metaphysical claims often associated with realism. His later books on quantum mechanics, on representation, and on empirical stance have shaped the philosophy of science in the twenty-first century.
Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen was born at Goes in the Netherlands in April 1941; his family emigrated to Edmonton, Canada, in 1956. He took his bachelor's at the University of Alberta in 1963 and his master's and doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh in 1966 under Adolf Grünbaum. After teaching at Yale, the University of Southern California, and the University of Toronto he joined Princeton in 1982, where he was the McCosh Professor of Philosophy until his retirement in 2008; since then he has been Distinguished Professor at San Francisco State University.
His books are An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time and Space (1970), the central The Scientific Image (1980), Laws and Symmetry (1989), Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist View (1991), The Empirical Stance (the 2000 Terry Lectures), and Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective (2008). He received the Hempel Award of the Philosophy of Science Association in 2012.
Van Fraassen is the architect of constructive empiricism, the leading antirealist account of science: the proper aim of science is empirical adequacy, not literal truth about unobservables, and acceptance of a theory commits one only to its empirical claims. He has applied this stance to the foundations of probability, the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the structure of scientific representation, and has defended the 'empirical stance' itself as an attitude rather than a metaphysical doctrine.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Dutch-American
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic Philosophy
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Bas van Fraassen:
“The aim of science is to give us theories that are empirically adequate; truth about the unobservable is a bonus we cannot guarantee.”
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Attributed to Bas van Fraassen:
“Constructive empiricism is realism's twin, distinguished only by the question of what is to be believed.”
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Attributed to Bas van Fraassen:
“To accept a theory is not to believe it true; it is to commit to using it for empirical inquiry.”
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Attributed to Bas van Fraassen:
“Empiricism is a stance, not a doctrine; it is the discipline of asking what experience can support.”
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Attributed to Bas van Fraassen:
“The image of science is what philosophy of science properly studies; the science is for the scientists.”
Bas van Fraassen by topic
Frequently asked about Bas van Fraassen
- When was Bas van Fraassen born?
- Bas van Fraassen was born in 1941.
- Where was Bas van Fraassen from?
- Bas van Fraassen is a Dutch-American philosopher of the Contemporary era.
- What philosophical movements is Bas van Fraassen associated with?
- Bas van Fraassen is associated with Analytic Philosophy.
- What is Bas van Fraassen known for?
- Bas C.
- How many quotes are attributed to Bas van Fraassen?
- There are 6 attributed quotations from Bas van Fraassen in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.