A Minimal Metaphysics for Scientific Practice

Provides a minimal metaphysics for scientific practice, yielding new accounts of lawhood, causation and reduction.

Andreas Hüttemann (Author)

9781009010436, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 August 2023

240 pages
27 x 18 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

'A Minimal Metaphysics for Scientific Practice constitutes a highly original contribution to the burgeoning field of the metaphysics of science. Clear, well-argued and ambitious in scope, it will be required reading for those seeking cutting-edge work on such issues as laws, causation, reductionism and fundamentality.' Travis Dumsday, Concordia University of Edmonton

What are the metaphysical commitments which best 'make sense' of our scientific practice (rather than our scientific theories)? In this book, Andreas Hüttemann provides a minimal metaphysics for scientific practice, i.e. a metaphysics that refrains from postulating any structure that is explanatorily irrelevant. Hüttemann closely analyses paradigmatic aspects of scientific practice, such as prediction, explanation and manipulation, to consider the questions whether and (if so) what metaphysical presuppositions best account for these practices. He looks at the role which scientific generalisation (laws of nature) play in predicting, testing, and explaining the behaviour of systems. He also develops a theory of causation in terms of quasi-inertial processes and interfering factors, and he proposes an account of reductive practices that makes minimal metaphysical assumptions. His book will be valuable for scholars and advanced students working in both philosophy of science and metaphysics.

Introduction
1. Laws of nature and their modal surface structure
2. The problem of ceteris paribus clauses
3. Causation – conceptual groundwork
4. Causation – application and augmentation
5. Reductive practices
6. Reduction and physical foundationalism
7. Reduction and ontological monism
8. Concluding remarks: methods and epistemic sources in metaphysics.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of science [PDA], Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK], Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology [HPJ]