Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-dk7s8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-30T19:09:14.988Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Productive Anarchy of Scientific Imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Michael T. Stuart
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Imagination is important for many things in science: solving problems, interpreting data, designing studies, and much else. Philosophers of imagination typically account for the productive role played by imagination in science by focusing on how imagination is constrained, for example, by self-imposed rules to infer logically or model events accurately. But the constraints offered by these philosophers constrain either too much or not enough, and they can never account for uses of imagination that are needed to break today’s constraints in order to make progress tomorrow. Thus, epistemology of imagination needs to make room for an element of epistemological anarchy.

Information

Type
Understanding and Imagination
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 87 , Issue 5: PSA 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II Symposia Papers , December 2020 , pp. 968 - 978
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

†

I would like to thank the audience of our PSA symposium on scientific imagination for helpful feedback and my fellow symposiasts Steven French, Alice Murphy, and Fiora Salis for their ongoing support, friendship, and detailed comments on the article. I would also like to thank the Swiss National Science Foundation for funding (grant PZ00P1_179986).

References

Bacon, Francis. 1605/1898. The Dignity and Advancement of Learning. Repr. in The Physical and Mathematical Works of Lord Bacon, ed. J. Devey. London: Bell.Google Scholar
Berto, Francesco. 2017. “Impossible Worlds and the Logic of Imagination.” Erkenntnis 82:1277–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berto, Francesco. 2018. “Taming the Runabout Imagination Ticket.” Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1751-6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, James R. 1986. “Thought Experiments since the Scientific Revolution.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1:1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrne, Ruth. 2005. The Rational Imagination. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/5756.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalmers, David. 2002. “Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?” In Conceivability and Possibility, ed. Gendler, T. S. and Hawthorne, J., 145–99. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Crapanzano, Vincent. 2004. Imaginative Horizons. Chicago: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Currie, Gregory. 2016. “Imagination and Learning.” In Kind 2016b, 407–19.Google Scholar
Currie, Gregory, and Ravenscroft, Ian. 2002. Recreative Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. 2001. “Fear and Loathing of the Imagination in Science.” In Science and Culture, ed. Galison, Peter, Graubard, Stephen R., and Mendelsohn, Everett, 73–96. London: Transaction.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine, and Galison, Peter. 1992. “The Image of Objectivity.” Representations 40:81–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daston, Lorraine, and Galison, Peter. 2007. Objectivity. New York: Zone.Google Scholar
Feyerabend, Paul. 1991. “Concluding Unphilosophical Conversation.” In Beyond Reason, ed. Munévar, Gonzalo, 487–572. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feyerabend, Paul. 1993. Against Method. 3rd ed. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Feyerabend, Paul. 2011. The Tyranny of Science, ed. Oberheim, Eric. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Funkhouser, Eric, and Spaulding, Shannon. 2009. “Imagination and Other Scripts.” Philosophical Studies 143:291–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaut, Berys. 2003. “Creativity and Imagination.” In The Creation of Art, ed. Gaut, Berys and Livingston, Paisley, 148–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gendler, Tamar S. 1998. “Galileo and the Indispensability of Scientific Thought Experiment.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49:397–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giordani, Alessandro. 2019. “Axiomatizing the Logic of Imagination.” Studia Logica 107:639–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregory, Dominic. 2010. “Conceivability and Apparent Possibility.” In Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, ed. Hale, Bob and Hoffmann, Aviv, 319–41. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kind, Amy. 2016a. “Introduction: Exploring Imagination.” In Kind 2016b, 1–11.Google Scholar
Kind, Amy. 2016b. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kind, Amy. 2018. “How Imagination Gives Rise to Knowledge.” In Perceptual Memory and Perceptual Imagination, ed. Macpherson, Fiona and Dorsch, Fabian, 227–46. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kind, Amy, and Kung, Peter, eds. 2016. Knowledge through imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kung, Peter. 2010. “Imagining as a Guide to Possibility.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81:620–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kung, Peter. 2016. “Imagination and Modal Knowledge.” In Kind 2016b, 437–50.Google Scholar
Lam, Derek. 2018. “Is Imagination Too Liberal for Modal Epistemology?” Synthese 195:2155–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, Larry. 1989. “For Method; or, Against Feyerabend.” In An Intimate Relation: Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Presented to Robert E. Butts on His 60th Birthday, ed. Brown, James Robert and Mittelstrass, Jürgen, 299–317. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. 1973. Counterfactuals. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Miščević, Nenad. 1992. “Mental Models and Thought Experiments.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 6:215–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miščević, Nenad. 2007. “Modelling Intuitions and Thought Experiments.” Croatian Journal of Philosophy 7:181–214.Google Scholar
Nersessian, Nancy. 1993. “In the Theoretician’s Laboratory: Thought Experimenting as Mental Modeling.” In PSA 1992: Proceedings of the 1992 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, vol. 2, 291–301. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association.Google Scholar
Nersessian, Nancy. 2007. “Thought Experiments as Mental Modelling: Empiricism without Logic.” Croatian Journal of Philosophy 7:125–61.Google Scholar
Nichols, Shaun. 2006. Architecture of the Imagination. Oxford: Clarendon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, Shaun, and Stich, Stephen. 2003. Mindreading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton, John D. 2004. “On Thought Experiments: Is There More to the Argument?” Philosophy of Science 71:1139–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton, John D.. 2013. “Chasing the Light: Einstein’s Most Famous Thought Experiment.” In Thought Experiments in Philosophy, Science and the Arts, ed. Frappier, Mélanie, Meynell, Letitia, and Brown, James Robert, 123–40. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Norton, John D.. 2018. “The Material Theory of Induction.” Unpublished manuscript, University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert. 1986. “Possible Worlds and Situations.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 15:109–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Inwagen, Peter. 1998. “Modal Epistemology.” Philosophical Studies 92:67–84.Google Scholar
Walton, Kendal. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wansing, Heinrich. 2017. “Remarks on the Logic of Imagination: A Step towards Understanding Doxastic Control through Imagination.” Synthese 194:2843–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, Timothy. 2016. “Knowing by Imagining.” In Kind and Kung 2016, 113–23.Google Scholar
Yablo, Stephen. 1993. “Is Conceivability a Guide to Possibility?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53:1–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar