Holism and the Understanding of Science

How can the complexities of understanding science be dealt with as a whole? Is philosophical realism still a defensible philosophical position? Exploring such fundamental questions, this work claims that science ought to be understood in terms of universal practices and that such an understanding supports an attractive version of scientific realism. Holism is attracting renewed scholarly attention but is still loosely used in a range of different contexts, from semantics to medicine. This book presents a detailed philosophical analysis of holism - cognitive and social - to investigate "holism"'s connectivity with science. Bridging the gap between analytical, historical and sociological accounts of science, Louis Caruana draws together results from research by Davidson, Dummett, Quine, Wright and others, on Wittgenstein's later philosophy.