The Stanford School (humorously also called the Stanford Disunity Mafia) is a group of philosophers of science, the members of which taught at various times at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, who share an intellectual tradition of arguing against the

unity of science The unity of science is a thesis in philosophy of science that says that all the sciences form a unified whole. Overview The unity of science thesis was proposed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in "General System Theory: A New Approach to Unity of Scie ...

. These criticisms draw heavily from research on science as a social and cultural process as well as arguments regarding ontological and methodological plurality found in different scientific fields. This group includes

Nancy Cartwright Nancy Cartwright (born October 25, 1957) is an American actress. She is the long-time voice of Bart Simpson on the animated television series ''The Simpsons'', for which she has received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Perform ...

John Dupré John A. Dupré (born 3 July 1952) is a British philosopher of science. He is the director of Egenis, the Centre for the Study of Life Sciences, and professor of philosophy at the University of Exeter. Dupré's chief work area lies in philosophy ...

Peter Galison Peter Louis Galison (born May 17, 1955, New York) is an American historian and philosopher of science. He is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor in history of science and physics at Harvard University. Biography Galison received his Ph. ...

Ian Hacking Ian MacDougall Hacking (born February 18, 1936) is a Canadian philosopher specializing in the philosophy of science. Throughout his career, he has won numerous awards, such as the Killam Prize for the Humanities and the Balzan Prize, and been ...

and

Patrick Suppes Patrick Colonel Suppes (; March 17, 1922 – November 17, 2014) was an American philosopher who made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology ...

. A notable position put forward by members of the Stanford School is

entity realism Entity realism (also selective realism), sometimes equated with referential realism, is a philosophical position within the debate about scientific realism. It is a variation of realism (independently proposed by Stanford School philosophers Nancy ...

. A major conference with all the original members (except Hacking) plus original scientific collaborators, parallel philosophers, and the next generation of philosophers in this vein took place on Stanford's Campus on October 25–26, 2013.''The "Stanford School" of Philosophy of Science'' conference, An anthology of this conference is being prepared, and will also include contributors not present at the conference.

References

Philosophers of science Philosophical schools and traditions Stanford University {{science-philo-stub

See also

References