| | | 1 | (5) |
| 2. ARGUMENTS CONCERNING SCIENTIFIC REALISM | | | 6 | (35) |
| 1. Scientific Realism and Constructive Empiricism | | | 6 | (7) |
| 1.1 Statement of Scientific Realism | | | 6 | (3) |
| 1.2 Alternatives to Realism | | | 9 | (2) |
| 1.3 Constructive Empiricism | | | 11 | (2) |
| 2. The Theory/Observation 'Dichotomy' | | | 13 | (6) |
| 3. Inference to the Best Explanation | | | 19 | (4) |
| 4. Limits of the Demand for Explanation | | | 23 | (2) |
| 5. The Principle of the Common Cause | | | 25 | (6) |
| 6. Limits to Explanation: a Thought Experiment | | | 31 | (3) |
| 7. Demons and the Ultimate Argument | | | 34 | (7) |
| | | 41 | (29) |
| | | 41 | (3) |
| 2. Apparent Motion and Absolute Space | | | 44 | (2) |
| 3. Empirical Content of Newton's Theory | | | 46 | (1) |
| 4. Theories and their Extensions | | | 47 | (3) |
| 5. Extensions: Victory and Qualified Defeat | | | 50 | (3) |
| 6. Failure of the Syntactic Approach | | | 53 | (3) |
| 7. The Hermeneutic Circle | | | 56 | (3) |
| 8. Limits to Empirical Description | | | 59 | (5) |
| 9. A New Picture of Theories | | | 64 | (6) |
| 4. EMPIRICISM AND SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY | | | 70 | (27) |
| 1. Empiricist Epistemology and Scepticism | | | 71 | (2) |
| 2. Methodology and Experimental Design | | | 73 | (10) |
| | | 73 | (1) |
| 2.2 Measuring the Charge of the Electron | | | 74 | (3) |
| 2.3 Boyd on the Philosophical Explanation of Methodology | | | 77 | (3) |
| 2.4 Phenomenology of Scientific Activity | | | 80 | (3) |
| 3. The Conjunction Objection | | | 83 | (4) |
| 4. Pragmatic Virtues and Explanation | | | 87 | (10) |
| | | 87 | (2) |
| 4.2 The Incursion of Pragmatics | | | 89 | (3) |
| 4.3 Pursuit of Explanation | | | 92 | (5) |
| 5. THE PRAGMATICS OF EXPLANATION | | | 97 | (61) |
| 1. The Language of Explanation | | | 97 | (6) |
| | | 97 | (4) |
| | | 101 | (2) |
| | | 103 | (27) |
| 2.1 Hempel: Grounds for Belief | | | 103 | (3) |
| 2.2 Salmon: Statistically Relevant Factors | | | 106 | (3) |
| 2.3 Global Properties of Theories | | | 109 | (2) |
| 2.4 The Difficulties: Asymmetries and Rejections | | | 111 | (1) |
| 2.5 Causality: the Conditio Sine Qua Non | | | 112 | (6) |
| 2.6 Causality: Salmon's Theory | | | 118 | (5) |
| 2.7 The Clues of Causality | | | 123 | (3) |
| | | 126 | (3) |
| | | 129 | (1) |
| 3. Asymmetries of Explanation: A Short Story | | | 130 | (4) |
| 3.1 Asymmetry and Context: the Aristotelian Sieve | | | 130 | (2) |
| 3.2 'The Tower and the Shadow' | | | 132 | (2) |
| 4. A Model for Explanation | | | 134 | (19) |
| 4.1 Contexts and Propositions | | | 134 | (3) |
| | | 137 | (4) |
| 4.3 A Theory of Why-questions | | | 141 | (5) |
| 4.4 Evaluation of Answers | | | 146 | (5) |
| 4.5 Presupposition and Relevance Elaborated | | | 151 | (2) |
| | | 153 | (5) |
| 6. PROBABILITY: THE NEW MODALITY OF SCIENCE | | | 158 | (46) |
| 1. Statistics in General Science | | | 159 | (2) |
| 2. Classical Statistical Mechanics | | | 161 | (8) |
| 2.1 The Measure of Ignorance | | | 161 | (3) |
| 2.2 Objective and Epistemic Probability Disentangled | | | 164 | (3) |
| 2.3 The Intrusion of Infinity | | | 167 | (2) |
| 3. Probability in Quantum Mechanics | | | 169 | (9) |
| 3.1 The Disanalogies with the Classical Case | | | 170 | (5) |
| 3.2 Quantum Probabilities as Conditional | | | 175 | (2) |
| 3.3 Virtual Ensembles of Measurements | | | 177 | (1) |
| 4. Towards an Empiricist Interpretation of Probability | | | 178 | (18) |
| 4.1 Probability Spaces as Models of Experiments | | | 178 | (3) |
| 4.2 The Strict Frequency Interpretation | | | 181 | (6) |
| 4.3 Propensity and Virtual Sequences | | | 187 | (3) |
| 4.4 A Modal Frequency Interpretation | | | 190 | (4) |
| 4.5 Empirical Adequacy of Statistical Theories | | | 194 | (2) |
| 5. Modality: Philosophical Retrenchment | | | 196 | (8) |
| 5.1 Empiricism and Modality | | | 196 | (2) |
| 5.2 The Language of Science | | | 198 | (3) |
| 5.3 Modality without Metaphysics | | | 201 | (3) |
| | | 204 | (12) |
| NOTES | | 216 | (15) |
| INDEX | | 231 | |
