View source for Bas van Fraassen

'''Bas van Fraassen''' (born 1941) is a Dutch-American philosopher of science and the foremost contemporary defender of '''constructive empiricism''', a position that occupies the precise middle ground between [[scientific realism]] and [[anti-realism]]. Van Fraassen argues that we should believe what our best scientific theories say about observable phenomena, but remain agnostic about the unobservable entities they postulate. Electrons are useful; we need not believe they are real.

His 1980 book ''The Scientific Image'' redefined the philosophy of science by shifting the debate from what