Philosopher Nancy Cartwright (Durham/UC San Diego) comments (drawing on themes form her well-known work). An excerpt:
Instead of supposing that physics must be queen of all we survey, I recommend we construct our image of what an ultimate science might be like on the basis of what current science is like when it is most successful, from putting people on the moon to devising and carrying out a plan for the complete evacuation of the Royal Marsden Hospital (which took just 28 minutes when called into play by a gigantic fire, 2 January 2008). Physics does not act as queen in these cases. Rather, she does her bit as part of a motley assembly of scientific – and this means natural, biomedical and social science -- and engineering disciplines along with practical knowledge, all working together. This is the way science works in actual practice when it works so surprisingly well and there is little evidence indeed that practice will be any different in the future. This, I urge, should be our model for what science at its very best will look like.
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