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Materialist Categories

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Commenting on Hugh Lacey's paper, “Scientific Understanding and the Control of Nature”, I first develop the notion of structural explanation from which his argument begins, and then comment on his use of the term ‘materialist’ to describe the strategies followed in explanations of that sort. I examine then the grounds for supposing an affinity between these strategies and the growing subordination of human values to the attractions of technological transformations of nature.

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McMULLIN, E. Materialist Categories. Science & Education 8, 37–44 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008624904129

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