-
The birth of Bas van Fraassen
Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen was born in the German-occupied Netherlands on the fifth of April in 1941. It is important to note that his father, he was a steam fitter, was forced by the Nazis to work in a factory in Hamburg. This was a tragedy and caused the family to be separated. The happy part of this story is that after the war the family reunited and emigrated to Edmonton, in Western Canada. -
Constructive Empiricism video
Follow this link to learn about Bas Van Fraassen's Constructive Empiricism. The video is short and defines this very well. https://youtu.be/rlejBkg8DAU -
Bas Van Fraassen major contribution
The major contribution from Bas Van Fraassen is from his famous book realeased in 1980, The Scientific Image. In this book he released Constructive empiricism which is his version of scientific anti-realism. The following is defined by Fraassen, "Science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate." (1980, 12) Also, his book was widely credited with rehabilitating scientific anti-realism. -
Bas van Fraassen today
Luckily for the world of Science Bas Van Fraassen is currently still alive. He is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University and the McCosh Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University. The amount of accomplishments that he has are quite admirable and he continues to attempt to answer philosophical questions today at the age of seventy-seven.
