What is it about?
Scientific theories usually ascribe a rich nummer of entities and structures to the world in order to explain our sensory experience and observation. As a metaphysical standpoint realism claims that this shows that our knowledge goes far beyond ourcommon experience and that science is able to tell us how reallisy is in itself. The book claims that seeing from a evolutionary perspective our capacity of knowledge are adapted to what we can experience. Much of what we can observed by the naked eye or by instruments is real. However, based on scientific theories, realists also postulate the existence of abstract properties or structures. The aim is to show that on these matters realists reificate abstract concepts which have no empirical support.
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Why is it important?
Even though science is highly successful, it is important to understand science as a result of the biological limitation of human cognition and not as a description seen from God's perspective.
Perspectives
Such an analysis may help us to integrate Darwin's theory of evolution, the physical sciences, human cognition and philosophy into a coherent naturalistic perspective
Prof, Jan Faye
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen
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This page is a summary of: Experience and Beyond, January 2016, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-31077-0.
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