Imitation of Rigor

Mark Wilson aims to reconnect analytic philosophy with the evolving practicalities within science from which many of its grander concerns originally sprang. He offers an alternative history of how the subject might have developed had the insights of its philosopher/scientist forebears not been cast aside in the vain pursuit of "ersatz rigor".

Mark Wilson is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, and the author of Physics Avoidance (OUP 2017) and Wandering Significance (OUP 2006). He has written widely on how our categories for describing the large-scale world around us have progressively evolved, within both science and our ordinary ways of speaking. He also supervises The North American Traditions Collection of Folk Music.

1: Ersatz Rigor
2: Prospectus
3: Inductive Warrant
Appendix: Historical Complexities
4: The Mystery of Physics 101
Appendix: Hertz' Critique of the Third Law
5: Multiscalar Architectures
Appendix: Further Comments on Homogenization
6: Diversity in "Cause"
7: Dreams of a Final Theory T
8: Linguistic Scaffolding and Scientific Realism
9: Truth in a Multiscalar Landscape