Ronald Giere (1938 – 2020) was an American
philosopher of science
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
who was an emeritus professor of philosophy at the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
. He was a Fellow of The
AAAS, a long-time member of the editorial board of the journal ''Philosophy of Science'', and a past president of the
Philosophy of Science Association
The Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) is an international academic organization founded in 1933 that promotes research, teaching, and free discussion of issues in the philosophy of science from diverse standpoints. The PSA engages in activit ...
. His research focused on agent-based accounts of models and scientific representation, and on connections between naturalism and secularism.
Work
In his book ''Scientific Perspectivism'' he developed a version of perspectival realism in which he argued that scientific descriptions are somewhat like colours, in that they capture only selected aspects of reality, and those aspects are not bits of the world seen as they are in themselves, but bits of the world seen from a distinctive human perspective. In addition to the color example, Giere articulates his perspectivism by appeal to maps and to his own earlier and influential work on scientific models. Maps represent the world, but the representations they provide are conventional, affected by interest, and never fully accurate or complete. Similarly, scientific models are idealized structures that represent the world from particular and limited points of view. According to Giere, what goes for colors, maps, and models goes generally: science is perspectival through and through.
[Review of ''Scientific Perspectivism'' in ]Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
11 May 2007: Vol. 316. no. 5826, p. 834
Publications
In addition to many papers in the philosophy of science, he was the author of the following books:
* ''Understanding Scientific Reasoning'' (1979; 5th edition, Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006)
* ''Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach'' (University of Chicago Press, 1988)
* ''Science Without Laws'' (University of Chicago Press, 1999)
* ''Scientific Perspectivism'' (University of Chicago Press, 2006)
He also edited several volumes of papers in the philosophy of science, including, most recently, ''Cognitive Models of Science'' (University of Minnesota Press, 1992) and ''Origins of Logical Empiricism'' (University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
See also
*
Scientific structuralism
Notes and references
External links
Subject's Homepage
1938 births
2020 deaths
20th-century American philosophers
21st-century American philosophers
Metaphysics of science
Philosophers of science
Philosophy teachers
Philosophy academics
University of Minnesota faculty
People from Ohio
{{US-philosopher-stub