The London School of Economics and Political Science announces that the 1996 Lakatos Award, of £10,000 for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, goes to:

Shimony

 

Abner Shimony (Boston University), for his book The Search for a Naturalistic World View (Cambridge University Press, 1993).

 

 

Abner Shimony is an eminent philosopher of science whose work has exerted a profound influence in both the philosophy and physics communities. This two-volume collection of his essays written over a period of forty years explores the interrelations between science and philosophy. Shimony regards the knowing subject as an entity in nature whose faculties must be studied from the points of view of evolutionary biology and empirical psychology. He maintains that the twentieth century is one of the great ages of metaphysics, given the deep implications of quantum mechanics, relativity theory, and molecular biology. The first volume, Scientific Method and Epistemology, deals with the dialectic of subject and object, epistemic probability, induction and scientific theories, perception and conception, and fact and values. The focus of the second volume, Natural Sciences and Metaphysics, is on quantum mechanical measurement and non-locality, parts and wholes, time, and mind and matter.