Abstract

Michela Massimi has written a book broad in scope and ambition but full of wonderful details. It moves from technical philosophical discussions of conditionals to detailed case studies of work in child literacy. From perspectival art to dark matter. From Borges to blown glass – and much else in between. It is impossible not to be impressed. Massimi's book is a detailed elaboration and defence of a position, perspectival realism, she has been developing over several years. Perspectival realism offers a new twist on realism debates in science. Standard scientific realist views focus on the products of science. They are concerned with questions like whether our current scientific theories are approximately true or our best models accurate. Massimi's perspectival realism, in contrast, focuses on the process of scientific investigation. She is interested in the question of how scientific communities come to produce reliable knowledge. Massimi addresses that question by offering the reader several detailed case studies. The centrepiece of the book is a long and multi-part discussion in Chapter 4 in which she describes the development of models in nuclear physics, climate science, and developmental psychology. The central message of each case study is the same: scientific knowledge emerges through the interaction of diverse scientific communities. For example, crucial to the development of models explaining nuclear stability was prior work done by petrologists, vulcanologists, meteorologists, and others in establishing a consistent pattern of isotopic abundances through a variety of environments. It was this knowledge which in conjunction with other accepted physical constraints, like Pauli's exclusion principle, that led to the development of a series of nuclear models, culminating in Goeppert Mayer and Jensen's Nobel Prize-winning shell model.