Bas C. van Fraassen The project is to develop an account of measurement as at the same time a physical interaction and a meaningful information gathering process. Sources include Duhems view of measurement outcomes as theory-laden and Poincare's view of measurement as perspectival. These aspects of measurement are to be explored in the context of recent as well as classical physics. Envisaged is an account of measurement outcomes as perspectival representations that provide a bridge between pure and applied science. This project on measurement is the final stage of a larger project on the subject of scientific representation, overlapping with each of its parts. Part I, Representation, investigates the general concept, restricted to physical and mathematical representations (excluding concerns of psychology). Part II, Structure, addresses scientific modelling as representation of phenomena, with special reference to measurement instrumentation. Historical examples include the development of perspective in art and architecture; Copernicus explanation of retrograde planetary motion; the development of microscopy; the changes in spatio-temporal representation introduced by the theory of relativity, and the description in quantum mechanics of the experiments that support it. Part III, Perspective, engages paradoxes that threaten structuralist views concerning scientific representation, referring to arguments from Herman Weyl to Hilary Putnam. INTELLECTUAL MERIT: The PI will introduce original responses to the theoretical and philosophical problems encountered, both in the current project on measurement and in the larger project of which this is part. Measurement and modelling, structure and perspective are at the center of recent developments in philosophy of science. The project is envisaged to solve or dissolve outstanding problems concerning these, and involves the design of a distinctly empiricist structuralism offered in critical response to recent structural realism and to recently revived and extended neo-Kantian views. BROADER IMPACT: The PI proposes to present the theoretical results in a book under contract with Oxford University Press, Scientific Representation: Paradoxes Of Perspective. Begun in the Locke Lectures, Oxford 2001, the project is evolving in active scholarly consultation and cooperation through international conferences and journal exchanges. While the PIs most recent book, The Empirical Stance offered a broad view of empiricism today, this project continues the more technical investigations of his Laws and Symmetry and Quantum Mechanics: an Empiricist View -- while addressing some of the most lively topics in current philosophical debates. These debates have salient repercussions in our wider culture, and require for their response a combination of subtlety and rigor. Within this distinctively empiricist view to be developed, a specifically pragmatic turn makes it possible to dissolve a family of paradoxes that have been thought to support relativism and skepticism concerning the sciences. The PI continues here his critique of relativism and skepticism, as initially presented in his 1992 Presidential Address to the Philosophy of Science Association.
