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Michela Massimi, Perspectival Realism, Oxford University Press, 2022, 432pp., $99.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780197555620.
Reviewed by Maria Panagiotatou and Stathis Psillos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Reviewed by Maria Panagiotatou and Stathis Psillos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Michela Massimi’s much anticipated book, Perspectival Realism, (henceforth, PR) reveals already from the first chapter the enormous range of research, both scientific and philosophical, which preceded its publication. As it is the result of an impressive ERC-funded project that was directed at combining the history and philosophy of science with scientific practice and achievements from different disciplines, we expected nothing less.
The key aim of PR is to offer an epistemology for scientific realism, which brings together the point-of-viewish nature of representation in science and the realist optimism that, at the end of the day, science succeeds in opening up windows to a perspective-independent reality. Like many attempts to bring together two prima facie competing views, PR’s project, though invariably interesting and novel, fails to…
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