Nancy Cartwright | |
|---|---|
 Cartwright in 2007 | |
| Born | (1944-06-24)June 24, 1944 (age 81) |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | University of Pittsburgh University of Illinois at Chicago |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic Stanford School |
| Main interests | Philosophy of science |
| Notable ideas | Entity realism |
| President of the DLMPST/IUHPST | |
| In office 2020–2023 | |
| Preceded by | Menachem Magidor |
| Succeeded by | Valentin Goranko |
Nancy Cartwright, Lady HampshireFBA, FAcSS (born 24 June 1944)[2] is an Americanphilosopher of science. She is a professor ofphilosophy at theUniversity of California at San Diego and theUniversity of Durham. Currently, she is the past president of theDivision for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology (DLMPST) of theInternational Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology under theInternational Science Council (ISC).
Cartwright earned her BSc from theUniversity of Pittsburgh in mathematics and her Ph.D. in philosophy at theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago (Congress Circle campus). Her thesis was on the concept of mixture in quantum mechanics. Before taking her current appointments, she taught at theUniversity of Maryland,Stanford University and theLondon School of Economics. She has held visiting appointments at theUniversity of Oslo,Princeton University,Caltech, the University of Pittsburgh, theUniversity of Cambridge andUCLA. She is currently Tsing Hua Honorary Distinguished Chair Professor at theNational Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and visiting research fellow atCa' Foscari University in Venice. She co-founded theCentre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS) at theLSE and the Centre for Humanities Engaging Science and Society (CHESS) at theUniversity of Durham.
Cartwright has mentored several students in England and the United States who have gone on to become professional philosophers of science, includingNaomi Oreskes,Mauricio Suarez,Roman Frigg,Jeremy Howick,Peter Menzies, andHasok Chang. She was also a supervisor ofSaif al-Islam Gaddafi, a subsequent source of controversy.[3]
Cartwright was married to the philosopherStuart Hampshire until his death in 2004. She was also previously married to the philosopherIan Hacking. She has two daughters, Emily and Sophie Hampshire Cartwright, and two granddaughters, Lucy Charlton and Tabitha Emily Cartwright Spray.[4]
Cartwright's approach to thephilosophy of science is associated with the "Stanford School" ofPatrick Suppes,John Dupré,Peter Galison andIan Hacking. It is characterized by an emphasis on scientific practice as opposed to abstract scientific theories. Cartwright has made important contributions to debates onlaws of nature,causation andcausal inference, scientific models in the natural and social sciences,objectivity and theunity of science. Her recent work focuses onevidence and its use in informing policy decisions.
Carl Hoefer describes Cartwright's philosophy in the following terms:[5]
Nancy Cartwright's philosophy of science is, in her view, a form of empiricism but empiricism in the style ofNeurath andMill, rather than ofHume orCarnap. Her concerns are not with the problems ofskepticism,induction, ordemarcation; she is concerned with how actual science achieves the successes it does, and what sort of metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions are needed to understand that success.
Cartwright, like many working scientists themselves, takes a rather pragmatic/realist stance toward observations and interventions made by scientists and engineers and particularly toward their connections to causality: Scientists see impurities causing signal loss in a cable, and they stimulate an inverted population, causing it to lase. Given these starting points, there can be no question of a skeptical attitude towardcausation, in either singular or generic form. The fundamental role (or better, roles) played by causation in scientific practice is undeniable; what Cartwright does, then, is reconfigureempiricism from the ground up based on this insight. In the reconfiguration process, many mainstays of the received view of science take a beating; especially [...] the fundamentality oflaws of nature.
Cartwright served as the president of thePhilosophy of Science Association (2009–10),[6] as vice-president (2007–8) and president (2008–9) of the Pacific Division of theAmerican Philosophical Association,[7] and was elected to be president of theDivision for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology from 2020 to 2023.[8] She is professor emeritus at theLondon School of Economics. She is also Fellow of theBritish Academy,[9] a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences,[9] a member of theGerman Academy of Sciences Leopoldina,[9] and aFellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.[10] She has received honorary degrees fromSouthern Methodist University and theUniversity of St Andrews as well as aMacArthur Fellowship.[11]
Cartwright was the recipient of the Martin R. Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement of the Phi Beta Kappa Society 2017 (alongside Elliott Sober)[12] and was awarded the Carl Gustav Hempel Award in 2018 by the Philosophy of Science Association.[13]
In 2017, Cartwright was selected by the American Philosophical Association to deliver the Carus Lectures. She delivered a series entitledNature, the Artful Modeler: She Reads the New Yorker, Trusts in God, and Takes Short Views.[14] The lectures were published in 2019 alongside additional essays under the titleNature, the Artful Modeler: Lectures on Laws, Science, How Nature Arranges the World and How We Can Arrange It Better.[15]
The Governing Board of the Philosophy of Science Association is pleased to announce that the recipient of the Carl Gustav Hempel Award for 2018 is Nancy Cartwright.
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | President of the Division for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the International Union for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (DLMPST/IUHPST) 2020-2023 | Succeeded by |
