In this book van Fraassen develops an alternative to scientific realism by constructing and evaluating three mutually reinforcing theories.

Naturalism as a guiding philosophy for modern science both disavows any appeal to the supernatural or anything else transcendent to nature, and repudiates any p

Vitalism is understood as impacting the history of the life sciences, medicine and philosophy, representing an epistemological challenge to the dominance of mec

Nineteenth-century chemists were faced with a particular problem: how to depict the atoms and molecules that are beyond the direct reach of our bodily senses. I

This book addresses themes in the newly emerging discipline of philosophy of chemistry, in particular issues in connection with discussions in general philosoph