Böcker av Andreas Huttemann

Provides a minimal metaphysics for scientific practice, yielding new accounts of lawhood, causation and reduction.

What are the metaphysical commitments which best 'make sense' of our scientific practice (rather than our scientific theories)? In this book, Andreas Huttemann provides a minimal metaphysics for scientific practice, i.e. a metaphysics that refrains from postulating any structure that is explanatorily irrelevant. Huttemann closely analyses paradigmatic aspects of scientific practice, such as prediction, explanation and manipulation, to consider the questions whether and (if so) what metaphysical presuppositions best account for these practices. He looks at the role which scientific generalisation (laws of nature) play in predicting, testing, and explaining the behaviour of systems. He also develops a theory of causation in terms of quasi-inertial processes and interfering factors, and he proposes an account of reductive practices that makes minimal metaphysical assumptions. His book will be valuable for scholars and advanced students working in both philosophy of science and metaphysics.

Der Begriff der Ursache spielt eine zentrale Rolle, wenn es um Verantwortung, Erklarungen oder Kontrolle von Ereignissen geht. Dabei ist aber auch trotz der langen Tradition des Begriffs in der Philosophienicht klar, ob es uberhaupt zwingende Kausalverhaltnisse gibt. In diesem neuen Grundthemen-Band folgt der Autor dem bewahrten Prinzip der Reihe: Nach einem historischen Abschnitt uber den Ursachenbegriff entwickelt er mit Bezug auf gegenwartige Debatten einen eigenen Ansatz. Dabei verbindet er aktuelle philosophische mit naturwissenschaftlichen Theorien.

'Microphysicalism', the view that whole objects behave the way they do in virtue of the behaviour of their constituent parts, is an influential contemporary view with a long philosophical and scientific heritage. In "What's Wrong With Microphysicalism?", Andreas Huttemann offers a fresh challenge to this view.