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Bas C. Van Fraassen was born in Goes, the Netherlands, on 5 April 1941.
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Van Fraassen emigrated to Canada with his family the summer of 1956.
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Van Fraassen is awarded a Bachelor of Arts with honors in Philosophy from the University of Alberta.
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Van Fraassen is awarded a Master of Arts from University of Pittsburgh.
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van Fraassen is awarded a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. His dissertation was on the causal theory of time.
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Van Fraassen created the term “constructive empiricism” in his book The Scientific Image. He argued for agnosticism about the reality of unobservable entities.
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Van Fraassen received the Lakatos Award for his contributions to the philosophy of science.
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Van Fraassen wrote Laws and Symmetry. He laid the groundwork for explaining physical phenomena without assuming that such phenomena are caused by rules or laws which can be said to cause or govern their behavior.
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Van Fraassen helps create the Kira Institute. Their aim was to investigate the limits of scientific knowledge, and their fundamental question was "Starting from a scientific worldview, what else is true?".
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Van Fraassen received the Philosophy of Science Association's inaugural Hempel Award for lifetime achievement in philosophy of science.