On Theories: Logical Empiricism and the Methodology of Modern Physics, by William Demopoulos

Abstract

Everyone will find something interesting in this book, and many will find something or other that they completely disagree with. William Demopoulos was no fan of ‘isms’, and he was no builder of systems. As a result, this book — written during Demopoulos’s decade-long battle with terminal illness — does not provide a sustained defence of realism, antirealism, pragmatism, or whatever-ism. Similarly, one would be hard pressed to identify some key motive behind Demopoulos’s work, such as, for example, the naturalism that served as the polestar for the work of Quine and Lewis. Nonetheless, Demopoulos spent his entire career developing well-informed stances on most of the issues that occupy philosophers of science (especially philosophers of physics), and his considered opinions are unique, and sometimes in stark opposition to those of other philosophers in the field. So this book will, or at least should, provoke many new discussions and debates. In keeping with Demopoulos’s style, I will not attempt to put his diverse ideas into a simple nutshell. But I will take a few of the points he makes in this book, and explain why they are so interesting, important, and worthy of our attention.