Understanding is a central aim of science and highly important in present-day society. But what precisely is scientific understanding and how can it be achieved? This book answers these questions, through philosophical analysis and historical case studies, and presents a philosophical theory of scientific understanding that highlights its contextual nature.

• 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

Henk W. de Regt is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Department of Philosophy, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His main research interest is scientific understanding and explanation. He has published on these topics in journals such as Philosophy of Science, Synthese, and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Together with Sabina Leonelli and Kai Eigner, he edited the volume Scientific Understanding: Philosophical Perspectives, which was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2009.