{"title":"Jarrett Leplin","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"novel-defense-of-scientific-realism-book-jarrett-leplin-9780195113631","title":"A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism","description":"Vigorous and controversial, this book develops a sustained argument for a realist interpretation of science, based on a new analysis of the concept of predictive novelty. Identifying a form of success achieved in science--the successful prediction of novel empirical results--which can be explained only by attributing some measure of truth to the theories that yield it, Jarrett Leplin demonstrates the incapacity of nonrealist accounts to accommodate novel success and constructs a deft realist explanation of novelty. To test the applicability of novel success as a standard of warrant for theories, Leplin examines current directions in theoretical physics, fashioning a powerful critique of currently developing standards of evaluation. Arguing that explanatory uniqueness warrants inference, and exposing flaws in contending philosophical positions that sever explanatory power from epistemic justification, Leplin holds that abductive, or explanatory, inference is as fundamental as enumerative or eliminative inference, and contends that neither induction nor abduction can proceed without the other on pain of generating paradoxes. Leplin's conception of novelty has two basic components: an independence condition, ensuring that a result novel for a theory have no essential role, even indirectly, in the theory's provenance; and a uniqueness condition, ensuring that no competing theory provides a basis for predicting the same result. Showing that alternative approaches to novelty fall short in both respects, Leplin proceeds to a series of test cases, engaging prominent scientific theories from nineteenth-century accounts of light to modern cosmology in an effort to demonstrate the epistemological superiority of his view. Ambitious and tightly argued, A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism advances new positions on major topics in philosophy of science and offers a version of realism as original as it is compelling, making it essential reading for philosophers of science, epistemologists, and scholars in science studies.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49519263121681,"sku":"GOR013413444","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49657346720017,"sku":"GOR003570510","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52123551793425,"sku":"NLS9780195113631","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195113632.jpg?v=1751258721"},{"product_id":"scientific-realism-book-jarrett-leplin-9780520337435","title":"Scientific Realism","description":"Scientific Realism edited by Jarrett Leplin assembles a landmark debate over whether—and how—science tells us what the world is really like. Opening with Hilary Putnam’s “no-miracles” provocation, Leplin frames ten characteristic realist theses (about approximate truth, reference, success, progress, and literal construal) and then immediately problematizes consensus: realists disagree on which theses they can jointly endorse. The introduction spotlights two pressure points. First, the historical challenge: theory change in mature sciences looks discontinuous, threatening referential stability and suggesting that empirical success underdetermines belief about unobservables. Second, the explanatory challenge: even true (or “approximately true”) theories might fail empirically for auxiliary-assumption reasons, while false ones might succeed by luck or fit; thus abductive “inference to the best explanation” either begs the question for realism or renders realism explanatorily superfluous. Leplin sketches realist replies—causal theories of reference, nuanced accounts of approximation, and cumulativist readings of history—and also urges a methodological defense: certain scientific practices are unintelligible absent realist commitments.   Across the volume, contributors develop these lines with distinctive emphases. Putnam defends realism via method’s success and reference-preserving continuity; McMullin proposes progress through fertile metaphors that survive conceptual turnover; Leplin advances explanationist realism anchored in independent markers of progress. Method-first strategies include Levin (against instrumentalism’s content thinness), Glymour (comparative explanation and reference), Laymon (idealization and confirmation), Boyd (mature methodology’s reliability implying realism), and Hacking (experimentation’s autonomy underwriting entity realism). Powerful antirealist countermoves come from Laudan (historical rebuttal to theses on truth, reference, and success), van Fraassen (empirical adequacy over truth; underdetermination), and Fine, whose “natural ontological attitude” rejects metaphysical add-ons while preserving scientific inference. The result is a meticulous cartography of positions and problems, showing that realism’s fate hinges as much on philosophy of reference and confirmation as on sober readings of science’s past and present.   This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52323553706257,"sku":"NGR9780520337435","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53497879855377,"sku":"NLS9780520337435","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780520337435.jpg?v=1757977428"},{"product_id":"scientific-realism-book-jarrett-leplin-9780520366466","title":"Scientific Realism","description":"Scientific Realism edited by Jarrett Leplin assembles a landmark debate over whether—and how—science tells us what the world is really like. Opening with Hilary Putnam’s “no-miracles” provocation, Leplin frames ten characteristic realist theses (about approximate truth, reference, success, progress, and literal construal) and then immediately problematizes consensus: realists disagree on which theses they can jointly endorse. The introduction spotlights two pressure points. First, the historical challenge: theory change in mature sciences looks discontinuous, threatening referential stability and suggesting that empirical success underdetermines belief about unobservables. Second, the explanatory challenge: even true (or “approximately true”) theories might fail empirically for auxiliary-assumption reasons, while false ones might succeed by luck or fit; thus abductive “inference to the best explanation” either begs the question for realism or renders realism explanatorily superfluous. Leplin sketches realist replies—causal theories of reference, nuanced accounts of approximation, and cumulativist readings of history—and also urges a methodological defense: certain scientific practices are unintelligible absent realist commitments.   Across the volume, contributors develop these lines with distinctive emphases. Putnam defends realism via method’s success and reference-preserving continuity; McMullin proposes progress through fertile metaphors that survive conceptual turnover; Leplin advances explanationist realism anchored in independent markers of progress. Method-first strategies include Levin (against instrumentalism’s content thinness), Glymour (comparative explanation and reference), Laymon (idealization and confirmation), Boyd (mature methodology’s reliability implying realism), and Hacking (experimentation’s autonomy underwriting entity realism). Powerful antirealist countermoves come from Laudan (historical rebuttal to theses on truth, reference, and success), van Fraassen (empirical adequacy over truth; underdetermination), and Fine, whose “natural ontological attitude” rejects metaphysical add-ons while preserving scientific inference. The result is a meticulous cartography of positions and problems, showing that realism’s fate hinges as much on philosophy of reference and confirmation as on sober readings of science’s past and present.   This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53497947521297,"sku":"NLS9780520366466","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780520366466.jpg?v=1777935950"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-jarrett-leplin.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}