Understanding Scientific Understanding - De Regt, Henk W.

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Résumé :

• Preface
• Acknowledgement
• Chapter 1. Introduction: The desire to understand
• Chapter 2. Understanding and the aims of science
• 2.1. The neglect of understanding
• 2.2. Understanding as an epistemic skill
• 2.3. Intelligibility, values, and objectivity
• 2.4. Understanding: a means and an end
• Chapter 3. Explanatory understanding: A plurality of models
• 3.1. From covering law explanation to unificatory understanding
• 3.2. Causal conceptions of explanatory understanding
• 3.3. Is causal and unificatory understanding complementary?
• 3.4. Unifying the plurality of modes of explanation
• Chapter 4. A contextual theory of scientific understanding
• 4.1. Understanding phenomena with intelligible theories
• 4.2. Criteria for intelligibility
• 4.3. Conceptual tools for understanding
• 4.4. The context-dependence of understanding
• 4.4.1. Contextuality and historical dynamics
• 4.4.2. Contextuality and the intuitions of philosophers
• 4.4.3. Contextuality and pragmatics
• 4.5. Reduction, realism and understanding
• 4.5.1. Understanding and realism
• 4.5.2. Understanding and reduction
• 4.6. Contextualism: risky relativism?
• Chapter 5. Metaphysics and intelligibility: Understanding gravitation
• 5.1. The (un)intelligibility of Newton's theory of universal gravitation
• 5.2. The seventeenth-century debate on gravitation
• 5.2.1. Isaac Newton: reluctant revolutionary
• 5.2.2. Christiaan Huygens: the conscience of corpuscularism
• 5.3. Actio in distans and intelligibility after Newton
• 5.4. Metaphysics as a resource for scientific understanding
• Chapter 6. Models and mechanisms: Physical understanding in the nineteenth century
• 6.1. Mechanical modeling in nineteenth-century physics
• 6.1.1. William Thomson: master modeler
• 6.1.2. James Clerk Maxwell: advocate of analogies
• 6.1.3. Ludwig Boltzmann: promoter of pictures
• 6.2. Molecular models for understanding gas phenomena
• 6.3. Boltzmann' Bildtheorie: a pragmatic view of understanding
• 6.4. The uses and limitations of mechanical models
• Chapter 7. Visualizability and intelligibility: Insight into the quantum world
• 7.1. Visualizability and intelligibility in classical physics
• 7.2. Quantum theory and the waning of Anschaulichkeit
• 7.3. The new quantum mechanics: a struggle for intelligibility
• 7.4. Electron spin: the power of visualization
• 7.5. Visualization in post-war quantum physics
• 7.6. Visualization as a tool for understanding
• Chapter 8. Conclusion: the many faces of understanding
• Bibliography
• Index