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Born
Bas van Fraassen was born in the Netherlands. -
Journal Paper "Singular Terms, Truth-Value Gaps, and Free Logic."
Van Fraassen, Bas C. “Singular Terms, Truth-Value Gaps, and Free Logic.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 63, no. 17, Journal of Philosophy, Inc., Sept. 1966, pp. 481–95. -
The Scientific Image (1980)
Bas van Fraassen published his book The Scientific Image which outlines van Fraassen's most profound contribution to the philosophy of science, constructive empiricism. -
Constructive Empiricism (1)
Bas van Fraassen coined the term Constructive Empiricism, which was an offshoot of logical positivism. Constructive empiricism states that science should look to the observable in order to determine truth, and not at the unobservable. Although this is similar to what logical positivism said, constructive empiricism differs from by saying that ideas that rely heavily on theories and the unobservable should not be removed entirely from science. -
Constructive Empiricism (2)
Van Fraassen said that in order for a theory to be accepted, the underlying claim of that theory must be observable. That being said, he feels theories based on the unobservable can, and should be, accepted as long as we believe the theory to be empirically adequate (Monton and Mohler). -
Conditions for a Theory to be Literal (3)
In his book “The Scientific Image”, 2 conditions that must be met for a theory to be understood literally (Monton and Mohler):
1. The theory’s claims are genuine statements capable of truth or falsity.
2. Any literal construal of a theory cannot change the logical relationships among the entities claimed by the theory—“most specifically, if a theory says that something exists, then a literal construal may elaborate on what that something is, but will not remove the implication of existence” -
Constructive Empiricism (4)
Constructive Empiricism says that a theory does not have to be literal in order to accept, or use, that theory. You can look at data and say the data is only consistent with the theory, not that the theory itself is true. So if a theory commits itself to the unobservable, that is ok. However, it does not mean that the scientist has to commit themselves to the unobservable. -
Published his book Laws and Symmetry in 1989
This book is where Van Fraassen argues that theories that are based on unobservable phenomena can't be accepted as "true", but are instead empirically adequate. -
Video: Bas van Fraassen - What are the Scope and Limits of Science?
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Video: Van Fraaseen's "Constructive Empiricism"
