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Born in Nazi controlled Netherlands, Bas Van Fraassen is a Dutch-American philosopher who is a founder of the Kira institute. Throughout his life, Van Fraassen has come to be known as a leading philosopher who created the idea of constructive empiricism which believes that theories must be empirically adequate. (Note: the timeline ends at 2018 however, Dr. Van Fraassen is still alive
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Bas Van Fraassen was born April 5, 1941 in Nazi controlled Goes, Netherlands where his father was forced to work in a factory by the Nazis. When the war ended, that family moved to Edmonton in Western Canada.
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In 1963 van Fraassen earned his BA in Philosophy from the University of Alberta, Canada. After which he attended the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he earned is M.A. in 1964 and his Ph. D. in Philosophy in 1966. Fraassen, Bas C. van. “CV of Bas C. Van Fraassen.” Princeton University, The Trustees of Princeton University, www.princeton.edu/~fraassen/cv/index.htm.
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In 1980, Van Fraassen published his signature work, "The Scientific Image," In this book he lays his "constructive empiricism," which believes that scientific theories are literal and that they always attempt to be empirically sound. That a theory is only empirically adequate if and only if everything they say about observable entities is true.
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In 1989, Van Fraassen published his second notable work, "Laws and Symmetry," in which he continues his argument of constructive empiricism and defines it further. In it, he claims that science exists not to create an account of the physical world, but instead to create empirically correct theories.
