Understanding Scientific Understanding

Henk W. de Regt is Professor of Philosophy of Natural Sciences at the Instititute for Science in Society, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

• PrefaceAcknowledgementChapter 1. Introduction: The desire to understandChapter 2. Understanding and the aims of science2.1. The neglect of understanding2.2. Understanding as an epistemic skill2.3. Intelligibility, values, and objectivity2.4. Understanding: a means and an endChapter 3. Explanatory understanding: A plurality of models3.1. From covering law explanation to unificatory understanding3.2. Causal conceptions of explanatory understanding3.3. Is causal and unificatory understanding complementary?3.4. Unifying the plurality of modes of explanationChapter 4. A contextual theory of scientific understanding4.1. Understanding phenomena with intelligible theories4.2. Criteria for intelligibility4.3. Conceptual tools for understanding4.4. The context-dependence of understanding4.4.1. Contextuality and historical dynamics4.4.2. Contextuality and the intuitions of philosophers4.4.3. Contextuality and pragmatics4.5. Reduction, realism and understanding4.5.1. Understanding and realism4.5.2. Understanding and reduction4.6. Contextualism: risky relativism?Chapter 5. Metaphysics and intelligibility: Understanding gravitation5.1. The (un)intelligibility of Newton's theory of universal gravitation5.2. The seventeenth-century debate on gravitation5.2.1. Isaac Newton: reluctant revolutionary5.2.2. Christiaan Huygens: the conscience of corpuscularism5.3. Actio in distans and intelligibility after Newton5.4. Metaphysics as a resource for scientific understandingChapter 6. Models and mechanisms: Physical understanding in the nineteenth century6.1. Mechanical modeling in nineteenth-century physics6.1.1. William Thomson: master modeler6.1.2. James Clerk Maxwell: advocate of analogies6.1.3. Ludwig Boltzmann: promoter of pictures6.2. Molecular models for understanding gas phenomena6.3. Boltzmann' Bildtheorie: a pragmatic view of understanding6.4. The uses and limitations of mechanical modelsChapter 7. Visualizability and intelligibility: Insight into the quantum world7.1. Visualizability and intelligibility in classical physics7.2. Quantum theory and the waning of Anschaulichkeit7.3. The new quantum mechanics: a struggle for intelligibility7.4. Electron spin: the power of visualization7.5. Visualization in post-war quantum physics7.6. Visualization as a tool for understandingChapter 8. Conclusion: the many faces of understandingBibliographyIndex

A remarkable book... a magnificent example of how history and philosophy of science can be productively integrated.