Region Western Philosophy Influenced Nancy Cartwright | Role Philosopher Name Arthur Fine Books The shaky game | |
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Era 20th-century philosophy Main interests Philosophy of science
Pragmatism · Quantum mechanics Notable ideas Natural ontological attitude Education University of Chicago (1963), Shimer College Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada Similar People Bas van Fraassen, Nancy Cartwright, John Dewey, Aristotle, Hans Reichenbach | ||
Schools of thought Analytic philosophy | ||
Scientific Realism 9 - The Natural Ontological Attitude
Arthur Fine (born 1937) is an American philosopher of science teaching at the University of Washington (UW).
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Career
Before moving to UW, Fine taught for many years at Northwestern University and, before that, at Cornell University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association and the Philosophy of Science Association and has for many years been on the editorial board of the journal Philosophy of Science, one of the leading publications in the field.
Fine famously proposed the natural ontological attitude (NOA) as a resolution to the debates over scientific realism. This philosophy takes on a neutral stance of realist and antirealist attitudes of acceptance in the industry's best theories, and calls out mistakes across existing theories.
Fine also developed one of the possible interpretations of quantum mechanics yet to be decided between and has contributed to the probabilistic understanding of Bell's Theorem.
In 2001, Fine gave the following re-counting of the birth of NOA and its important relationship to Bas van Fraassen's anti-realism:
The Scientific Image arrived in 1980 like a breath of fresh air. Although in the introduction van Fraassen counts me among the realist foot soldiers, at just that time Micky Forbes and I were engaged in rethinking the whole realism/antirealism issue. The result was NOA. Van Fraassen’s powerful and enlightening monograph encouraged us in that project. If Micky and I are parents of NOA, then Bas is perhaps a godfather. Paul Teller too, since he was among the people then who helped us refine our ideas as they developed.
Awards and recognition
In 2014, Fine was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Additionally, he was recognized for his knowledge of Albert Einstein's theories as a guest lecturer Ohio University's 2014 Frontiers in Science Lecture Series.