Abstract
John Bigelow’ s paper ‘Scientific Ellisianism’ is a more or less sympathetic critique of my development of the metaphysics of scientific essentialism — a programme on which I have been working for some years (much of the time with Caroline Lierse). The critique is focussed mainly on my paper ‘Causal Powers and Laws of Nature’, but many apparent references are made to other papers, both published and unpublished, in which aspects of the programme are discussed.1 Bigelow’s critique has made me unhappy with my original presentation, but rather than revise the paper and present a shifting target, I have chosen to leave it as it was, and try to explain my position more adequately and clearly in this reply. I think I have learnt quite a lot from this exchange, and I wish to thank John Bigelow for helping me to improve my understanding of the issues.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Armstrong, D.M. (1978), Universals and Scientific Realism, 2 Vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Armstrong, D.M. (1983), What is a Law of Nature?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bhaskar, R. (1975), A Realist Theory of Science, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press
Bigelow, J.C. (this volume), ‘Scientific Ellisianism’, 45–59
Bigelow, J.C., Ellis, B.D. and Lierse, C.E. (1992), ‘The World as One of a Kind: Natural Necessities and Laws of Nature’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43, 371–88
Bigelow, J.C. and Pargetter, R.J. (1991), Science and Necessity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Ellis, B.D. (1979), Rational Belief Systems, Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Ellis, B.D. (1984), ‘Two Theories of Indicative Conditionals’, Part 1 of a symposium on indicative conditionals, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62, 50–66
Ellis, B.D. (1992ra), ‘Idealisation in Science’, in Intelligibility in Science, edited by Craig Dilworth, Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 26, Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA, 265–82
Ellis, B.D. (1992b), ‘Scientific Platonism’, an essay review of Science and Necessity by John Bigelow and Robert Pargetter, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 23, 665–79
Ellis, B.D. (1992c), ‘Scientific Essentialism’, La Trobe University: Victorian Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science Preprint Series 3/92. Paper read at the 1988 Annual Conference of the Australasian Association of History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science, Perth, Western Australia
Ellis, B.D. (1996), ‘Natural Kinds and Natural Kind Reasoning’, in P.J. Riggs (ed.) Natural Kinds, Laws of Nature and Scientific Methodology, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 11–28
Ellis, B.D. and Lierse, C.E. (1994a), ‘Dispositional Essentialism’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72, 27–45
Ellis, B.D. and Lierse, C.E. (1994b), ‘Three Problems about Laws of Nature’, Unpublished manuscript
Ellis, B.D. and Lierse, C.E. (1994rc), ‘The Fundamental Importance of Natural Kinds’, La Trobe University: Victorian Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science Preprint Series 3/94
Harré, R. and Madden, E.H. (1975), Causal Powers: A Theory of Natural Necessity, Oxford: Blackwell
Iltis, C. (1973), ‘The Leibnizian-Newtonian Debates: Natural Philosophy and Social Psychology’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 6, No. 24, 343–77
Jackson, F.C. (1979), ‘On Assertion and Indicative Conditionals’, Philosophical Review 88, 565–79
Jackson, F.C. (1984), ‘Two Theories of Indicative Conditionals: A Reply to Brian Ellis’, Part 2 of a symposium on indicative conditionals, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61, 67–76
Kim, J. (1982), ‘Psychophysical Supervenience’, Philosophical Studies 41, 51–70
Laudan, L.L. (1968), ‘The Vis viva Controversy, a Post-Mortem’, Isis 59, 131–43
Lewis, D.K. (1979), ‘Counterfactual Dependence and Time’s Arrow’, Nous 13, 455–76
Lierse, C.E. (1996), ‘The Jerrybuilt House of Humeanism’, in P.J. Riggs (ed.) Natural Kinds, Laws of Nature and Scientific Methodology, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 29–48
Prior, E.B., Pargetter, R.J. and Jackson, F.C. (1982), ‘Three Theses about Dispositions’, American Philosophical Quarterly 19, 251–7
Smart, J.J.C. (1993), ‘Laws of Nature as a Species of Regularities’, in J. Bacon, K.K. Campbell and L. Reinhardt (eds.), Ontology, Causality and Mind: Essays in Honour of D.M. Armstrong, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 152–69. Reply by D.M. Armstrong, op. cit., 169–74
van Fraassen, B.C. (1989), Laws and Symmetry, Oxford: Clarendon Press
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ellis, B. (1999). Bigelow’s Worries About Scientific Essentialism. In: Sankey, H. (eds) Causation and Laws of Nature. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9229-1_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9229-1_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5303-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-9229-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive