It is often supposed that the spectacular successes of our modern mathematical sciences support a lofty vision of a world completely ordered by one single elegant theory. In this book Nancy Cartwright argues to the contrary. When we draw our image of the world from the way modern science works - as empiricism teaches us we should - we end up with a world where some features are precisely ordered, others are given to rough regularity and still others behave in their own diverse ways. This patchwork makes sense when we realise that laws are very special productions of nature, requiring very special arrangements for their generation. Combining classic and newly written essays on physics and economics, The Dappled World carries important philosophical consequences and offers serious lessons for both the natural and the social sciences.

This book presents a radical new picture of natural order. The Newtonian idea of a cosmos ruled by universal and exceptionless laws has been superseded; replaced by a conception of nature as a realm of diverse powers, potencies, and dispositions, a 'dappled world'. There is order in nature, but it is more local, diverse, piecemeal, open, and emergent than Newton imagined. In each chapter expert authors expound the historical context of the idea of laws of nature, and explore the diverse sorts of order actually presupposed by work in physics, biology, and the social sciences. They consider how human freedom might be understood, and explore how Newton's idea of a 'universal designer' might be revised, in this new context. They argue that there is not one unified totalizing program of science, aiming at the completion of one closed causal system. We live in an ordered universe, but we need to rethink the classical idea of the 'laws of nature' in a more dynamic and creatively diverse way.

How fixed are the happenings in Nature and how are they fixed? These lectures address what our scientific successes at predicting and manipulating the world around us suggest in answer. One—very orthodox—account teaches that the sciences offer general truths that we combine with local facts to derive our expectations about what will happen, either naturally or when we build a device to design, be it a laser, a washing machine, an anti-malarial bed net, or an auction for the airwaves. In these three 2017 Carus Lectures Nancy Cartwright offers a different picture, one in which neither we, nor Nature, have such nice rules to go by. Getting real predictions about real happenings is an engineering enterprise that makes clever use of a great variety of different kinds of knowledge, with few real derivations in sight anywhere. It takes artful modeling. Orthodoxy would have it that how we do it is not reflective of how Nature does it. It is, rather, a consequence of human epistemic limitations. That, Cartwright argues, is to put our reasoning just back to front. We should read our image of what Nature is like from the way our sciences work when they work best in getting us around in it, non plump for a pre-set image of how Nature must work to derive what an ideal science, freed of human failings, would be like. Putting the order of inference right way around implies that like us, Nature too is an artful modeler. Lecture 1 is an exercise in description. It is a study of the practices of science when the sciences intersect with the world and, then, of what that world is most likely like given the successes of these practices. Millikan's famous oil drop experiment, and the range of knowledge pieced together to make it work, are used to illustrate that events in the world do not occur in patterns that can be properly described in so-called "laws of nature." Nevertheless, they yield to artful modeling. Without a huge leap of faith, that, it seems, is the most we can assume about the happenings in Nature. Lecture 2 is an exercise in metaphysics. How could the arrangements of happenings come to be that way? In answer, Cartwright urges an ontology in which powers act together in different ways depending on the arrangements they find themselves in to produce what happens. It is a metaphysics in which possibilia are real because powers and arrangement are permissive—they constrain but often do not dictate outcomes (as we see in contemporary quantum theory). Lecture 3, based on Cartwright's work on evidence-based policy and randomized controlled trials, is an exercise in the philosophy of social technology: How we can put our knowledge of powers and our skills at artful modeling to work to build more decent societies and how we can use our knowledge and skills to evaluate when our attempts are working. The lectures are important because: They offer an original view on the age-old question of scientific realism in which our knowledge is genuine, yet our scientific principles are neither true nor false but are, rather, templates for building good models. Powers are center-stage in metaphysics right now. Back-reading them from the successes of scientific practice, as Lecture 2 does, provides a new perspective on what they are and how they function. There is a loud call nowadays to make philosophy relevant to "real life." That's just what happens in Lecture 3, where Cartwright applies the lesson of Lectures 1 and 2 to argue for a serious rethink of the way that we are urged—and in some places mandated—to use evidence to predict the outcomes of our social policies.

In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, Nancy Cartwright argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe the regularities that exist in nature. Yet she is not `anti-realist'. Rather, she draws a novel distinction, arguing that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but that the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.

This book argues for the place of capacities within an grounds of meaning, not method. Yet it is questions of method that should concern the modern empiricist: can capacities be measured? Cartwright argues that they are measured if anything is. Stanford University's Gravity-Probe-B will measure capacities in a cryogenic dewar deep in space. More mundanely, we use probabilities to measure capacities, and the assumptions required to ensure that probabilities are a reliable instrument are investigated in the opening chapters of this book, where the early methods of econometrics set a model. The last chapter applies lessons about probabilities and capacities to quantum mechanics and the Bell inequalities. The central thesis throughout is that capacities not only can be admitted by empiricists, but indeed must be - otherwise the empirical methods of modern science will make no sense.

Theory of ferroelectric behaviour of barium titanate. Use of stochastic methods in line broadening problems. Theory of dirty superconductors.

A psychological thriller by the Japanese author of the highly acclaimed The Aosawa Murders, selected by NYT as one of the most notable books of 2020. A desolate apartment, a man and a woman about to spend their last night together. Each believes the other to be a killer, and is determined to extract a confession. Two people desperate to unlock the truth. The pair’s relationship and chain of events leading up to this night are revealed in chapters that alternate between the two voices, giving different versions of the same events.

Two strangers--generations and oceans apart--have a chance to save each other in this moving and suspenseful novel about family secrets and the ineffable connections that attach us. In a small Northern Italian village, nine-year-old Luca Taviano catches a stubborn cold and is subsequently diagnosed with leukemia. His only hope for survival is a bone marrow transplant. After an exhaustive search, a match turns up three thousand miles away in the form of a most unlikely donor: Joseph Neiman, a rabbi in Brooklyn, New York, who is suffering from a debilitating crisis of faith. As Luca's young nurse, Nina Vocelli, risks her career and races against time to help save the spirited redheaded boy, she uncovers terrible secrets from World War II--secrets that reveal how a Catholic child could have Jewish genes. Can inheritance be transcended by accidents of love? That is the question at the heart of This Magnificent Dappled Sea, a novel that challenges the idea of identity and celebrates the ties that bind us together.

I. Personal reminiscences. Introduction. "BCS" and me. A mile of dirty lead wire: a fable for the scientifically literate. Scientific and personal reminiscences of Ryogo Kubo -- II. History. Introduction. Physics at Bell Labs, 1949-1984: young Turks and younger Turks. It's not over till the fat lady sings. Reflections on twentieth century physics: historical overview of the 20t century in Physics. 21st century Physics. Y. Nambu and broken symmetry. Nevill Mott, John Slater, and the "magnetic state": winning the prize and losing the PR battle -- III. Philosophy and sociology. Introduction. Emergence vs. reductionism. Is the theory of everything the theory of anything? Is measurement itself an emergent property? Good news and bad news. The future lies ahead. Could modern America have invented wave mechanics?. Loose ends and Gordian knots of the string cult. Imaginary friend, who art in heaven -- IV. Science tactics and strategy. Introduction. Solid state experimentalists: theory should be on tap, not on top. Shadows of doubt. The Reverend Thomas Bayes, needles in haystacks, and the fifth force. Emerging physics. On the nature of physical laws. On the "unreasonable efficacy of mathematics"--A proposition by Wigner. When scientists go astray. Further investigations -- V. Genius. Introduction. What mad pursuit. Complexities of Feynman coffee-table complexities. Search for polymath's elementary particles. Giant who started the silicon age. The quiet man of physics. A theoretical physicist. Some thoughtful words (not mine) on research strategy for theorists -- VI. Science wars. Introduction. They think it's all over. Science: a 'dappled world' or a 'seamless web'? Reply to Cartwright. Postmodernism, politics and religion -- VII. Politics and science. Introduction. Politics and science. The case against Star Wars. A dialogue about Star Wars. No facts, just the right answers -- VIII. Futurology. Introduction. Futurology. Dizzy with future Schlock. Einstein and the p-branes. Forecaster fails to detect any clouds -- IX. Complexity. Introduction. Physics: the opening to complexity. Is complexity physics? Is it science? What is it? Complexity II: the Santa Fe Institute. Whole truths false in part -- X. Popularization attempts. Introduction. Who or what is RVB? More on RVB. Brainwashed by Feynman? Just exactly what do you do, Dr. Anderson? What is a condensed matter theorist? Global economy II: or, how do you follow a great act?

This volume reflects the ‘philosophy of science in practice’ approach and takes a fresh look at traditional philosophical problems in the context of natural, social, and health research. Inspired by the work of Nancy Cartwright that shows how the practices and apparatuses of science help us to understand science and to build theories in the philosophy of science, this volume critically examines the philosophical concepts of evidence, laws, causation, and models and their roles in the process of scientific reasoning. Each chapter is an important one in the philosophy of science, while the volume as a whole deals with these philosophical concepts in a unified way in the context of actual scientific practice. This volume thus aims to contribute to this new direction in the philosophy of science.​