Saving the appearances
A.J. Ayer, 19 March 1981
The Scientific Image
by Bas C. Van Fraassen.
Oxford, 233 pp., £15, December 1980,9780198244240 Show More
by Bas C. Van Fraassen.
Oxford, 233 pp., £15, December 1980,
“... Professor Van Fraassen’s book is a recent addition to the Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy which Mr Jonathan Cohen is editing for the Oxford University Press. Its aim, as expressed in the blurb, is ‘to develop an empiricist alternative to both logical positivism and scientific realism’. In fact, Van Fraassen has very little to say about logical positivism, which he regards as philosophically outmoded, and devotes nearly all his energy to confronting scientific realism with what he calls a constructive alternative ... ”