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The Metaphysics of the Disunified World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Nancy Cartwright
Nancy Cartwright*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics
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Extract

Pluralism is usually opposed to realism. That's why realists tend to affirm reductionism, even if only the lapsed reductionism of supervenience. It is no accident that postmoderns talk about the different worlds we live in. The realist is bent upon one world with one history, and that is the history for the sciences to tell about it, albeit with different degrees of precision, for different purposes and different points of view. The opposition between realism and pluralism is multiplied when the domains of different theories float about as in the balloon image of the relation of the sciences (Figure 1) and when no combination of fields can together supply a set of descriptions in terms of which at least one baseline history can be told. But the opposition is not necessary.

Type
Part XII. Unity and Disunity in Physics and Biology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 356 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

This paper is part of the “Research Project in Modelling in Physics and Economics” at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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