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Bas C. van Fraassen
Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen is a distinguished Dutch-American philosopher who was born April 5, 1941 in the Netherlands. Van Fraassen earned is B.A. from the university of Alberta and his M.A and Ph.D from the University of Pittsburgh. He has previously taught at several recognized universities including Yale, Southern California and Toronto. He is the Emeritus (former) Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University and current Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University. -
Constructive Empiricism
The Scientific Image by Van Fraassen presents an empiricist alternative or constructive empiricism to both logical positivism and scientific realism. The Scientific Image singlehandedly changed the terms of the debate between scientific realism and empiricism. Van Fraassen states, "all we should ask of theories is that they accurately describe the observable parts of the world". Fraassen says a scientist can “live inside” a theory while remaining agnostic about whether the theory is true. -
Bas C. van Fraassen
Fraassen's book, The Scientific Image brought new life to the Philosophy of Science due to his abandonment of logical empiricism. Fraassen has published several books and articles some of these are; Laws and Symmetry (1989), Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist view (1991), The Empirical Stance (2002) and Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective (2008). He continues to teach and lecture on philosophy of science. See interesting interview. Link text -
Bas C. van Fraassen - Works Cited
Godfrey-Smith, Peter.; Theory and Reality : An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Chapter 12 http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/-why-science-should-stay-clear-of-metaphysics
https://www.closertotruth.com/contributor/bas-van-fraassen/profile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_van_Fraassen#Biography_and_career
