-
Introduction
Nancy Cartwright is an American Philosopher who was born in 1944. She is currently a Philosophy Professor at Durham University and a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego. The first part of her career was spent at Stanford University where she specialized in Philosophy of Natural Sciences. After Stanford she relocated to the London School of Economics, then to Durham University and University of California. She research currently focuses on objectivity and evidence. -
Casual Laws and Effective Strategies
in 1979 Nancy Cartwright wrote an article titled "Casual Laws and Effective Strategies" In this article she argues that casual laws are can not be reduced to laws of association, but that they are still important parts of the process. Nancy also explains that laws of association are laws that explain how two qualities are associated, but do not explain what makes things happen, where as casual laws explain that the relationship between two phenomena is one of causation. -
How the Laws of Physics Lie
In Cartwrights 1983 publication "How the Laws of Physics Lie" she grouped three interrelated arguments:
"(1) The manifest explanatory power of fundamental laws does not argue for their truth
(2) In fact the way they are used in explanation argues for their falsehood.... In all of these cases the fundamental laws patently do not get the facts right.
(3)...The phenomenological laws are indeed true of objects in reality-or might be; but the fundamental laws are true only of objects in the model" -
Causation: One Word, Many Things
In Nancy Cartwrights' 2004 publication of "Causation: One Word, Many Things" she argues that the term causation is too broad of a word, and that there is many types of casual relationships when it comes to science and laws. In her introduction she states "If there is no universal account of causality to be given, what licenses the word 'cause' in a law?" Cartwright's publication started a broadening of the way scientists viewed how events could be explained from many different vantage points. -
When should we trust or criticise science? | Nancy Cartwright
Youtube link
In this video, Nancy Cartwright explains why rigorous science does not necessarily make credible/trustworthy science.