Reading Group: What Is Structuralism?
Meeting 3: Worrall – “Structural Realism: The Best of Both Worlds?”
Saturday July 6th
3:30-5:30pm
Or Gallery
555 Hamilton Street, Vancouver
What Is Structuralism? is a monthly reading group on the history and philosophy of structuralism, from foundations to contemporary developments. Meetings will be held on the first Saturday of each month.
For our third meeting we are discussing John Worrall’s 1989 paper “Structural Realism: The Best of Both Worlds?” This paper introduced Epistemic Structural Realism into the philosophy of science. Worrall uses the notion of structure to account for scientific theory change, using the shift from Newtonian to relativistic theories of gravitation, and the shift from Fresnel’s wave theory of light to Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory, to illustrate the preservation of truth content between physical theories. He traces this sense of “structure” back to the early 20th century work of Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem on the philosophy of science.
Contact Alex at universalmathesis (at) gmail (dot) com for further details. A pdf of the text is available at http://joelvelasco.net/teaching/3330/Worrall%201989%20Structural%20Realism%20.pdf – please read the full text prior to the session.