Scientific representation: paradoxes of perspective

Preface

List of Figures

Introduction: the 'picture theory of science'

Part I. Representation

1. Representation of, Representation As

The value of distortion

How does a representation represent?

What's in a photo?

What is a representation then?

Appearance to the intellect: illumination as embedding

In conclusion

2. Imaging, Picturing, and Scaling

Modes of representation

What distinguishes a picture?

Mathematical imagery, distortion through abstraction

Scale models and virtuous distortion

Conclusion about imaging and scaling

3. Pictorial Perspective and the Indexical

Pictorial perspective and the Art of Measuring

Perspective versus Descartes's frames of reference

Mapping and perspectival self-location

What is in a map?

Visual perspective and the metaphor

Concluding empiricist postscript

Part II. Windows, Engines, and Measurement

4. A Window on the Invisible World (?)

Instrumentation's diversity of roles

Engines of creation: engendering new phenomena

The microscope's public hallucinations

Objections to this view of 'observation by instruments'

Experimentation's diversity of roles

5. The Problem of Coordination

Coordination: a historical context

The problem of coordination reconceived

Mach on the history of the thermometer

Poincare's analysis of time measurement

Observables coordinated: two morals

6. Measurement as Representation: 1. The Physical Correlate

Physical conditions of possibility for measurement

General theory of measurement

What is not measurement

7. Measurement as Representation: 2. Information

What is measurement-number-assigning?

The scale as logical space

Data models and surface models

The over-arching concept for measurement

What is a measurement outcome?

Relating the views 'from above' and 'from within'

Part III. Structure and Perspective

8. From the Bildtheorie of Science to Paradox

The Bildtheorie controversy

Representation: the problem for structuralism

9. The Longest Journey: Bertrand Russell

Prolegomena to Russell's conversion to structuralism

Russell's structuralist turn

Conclusion

10. Carnap's Lost World and Putnam's Paradox

Carnap: Der Logische Aufbau der Welt

Putnam's Paradox

Staying with Putnam: the Paradox dissolved

11. An Empiricist Structuralism

What could be an empiricist structuralism?

The fundamental remaining problem for a structuralist view of science

The two main dangers for an empiricist

The problem in concrete setting revisited and dissolved

Return to our epistemological question

Part IV. Appearance and Reality

12. Appearance vs. Reality in the Sciences

Appearance and reality: the real and unreal problem

Appearance versus reality at the birth of modern science

Three putative completeness criteria

Appearance vs. reality: A deeper Criterion

Phenomena versus appearances

Three-faceted representation

13. Rejecting the Appearance from Reality Criterion

The supervenience of mind challenge

The Great Leibnizian Escape move

The quantum mechanics challenge

Exploring the case of quantum mechanics

Supervenience?

An empiricist view

Appendices

Appendix to CH 1. Models and theories as representations

Appendix to CH 6. Quantum peculiarities: fuzzy observables

Appendix to CH 7. Surface models and their embeddings

Appendix to CH 13. Retreat (?) from The Scientific Image

Notes to Appendices

Bibliography

Notes

Index