The new book ‘Scientific Representation’ by LSE Philosophy Professor Roman Frigg and CPNSS Research Associate James Nguyen has now been published.

Models are important in the scientific process because scientists can study a model to discover features of reality. But what does it mean for something to represent something else? This is the question discussed in this book. The authors begin by disentangling different aspects of the problem of representation and then discuss the dominant accounts in the philosophical literature: the resemblance view and inferentialism. They find them both wanting and submit that their own preferred option, the so-called DEKI account, not only eschews the problems that beset these conceptions, but further provides a comprehensive answer to the question of how scientific representation works.

The book is part of the series ‘Elements in the Philosophy’ of Cambridge University Press and was published online (open access).