Books in the Elements in the Philosophy of Science series

Scientific Knowledge and the Deep Past: History Matters is an accessible tour of the philosophy of the historical sciences. Examining how dinosaurs grew and the emergence of flowering plants in the mid-Cretaceous, it analyses the relationship between knowledge and the past, explaining why narratives play a prominent role in history.

What kind of reductionism does multiple realisability challenge? What does it take to reduce one phenomenon to another? How do we determine which kinds are natural? What is the ontological basis of unity? In this Element, Tuomas Tahko examines these questions from a contemporary perspective, after a historical overview.

This Element introduces the reader to the concept of grounding and some of the key issues that animate contemporary debates around it, such as the question of whether grounding is 'unified' or 'plural' and whether there exists a fundamental level of reality.