Nancy Cartwright's Homepage

PSA Presidential Address November 2010 Montreal Canada

Nancy Cartwright is Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She is past President of the Philosophy of Science Association and was President of the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division) in 2008.

Her research interests include philosophy and history of science (especially physics and economics), causal inference and objectivity and evidence, especially on evidence-based policy. She is currently involved in a number of interrelated research projects at LSE: 'Evidence for Use' (funded by the British Academy) and 'Choices of Evidence: tacit philosophical assumptions in debates on evidence-based practice in children's welfare services', with Eleonora Montuschi and Eileen Munro (funded by the AHRC), both at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, and a project on Modelling Mitigation, at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

Her other major research topic is 'God's Order, Man's Order and the Order of Nature' , sponsored by the Templeton Foundation. This is a joint project between UCSD and LSE, headed by Nancy Cartwright, Eleonora Montuschi and Eric Watkins, and involves a large team of researchers from both the UK and the USA.

Her publications include How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983), Nature's Capacities and their Measurement (1989), Otto Neurath: Philosophy between Science and Politics [co-author] (1995), The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science (1999), and Hunting Causes and Using Them (2007). Scroll down for more details.

Nancy Cartwright is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) and a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

She was married to Sir Stuart Hampshire, who died in June 2004. In the latter part of his life Sir Stuart served as Warden of Wadham College, Oxford and as Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. They have two daughters, Emily and Sophie, and a granddaughter, Lucy.

Books by and on Nancy Cartwright:

Nancy Cartwright's Philosophy of Science

By Stephan Hartmann, Carl Hoefer and Luc Bovens (eds)

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2008

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Causal Powers: What Are They? Why Do We Need Them What Can Be Done With Them and What Cannot?

Contingency and Dissent in Science, Technical Report 04/07

Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, LSE, 2007

Click here to have access to this book on line via the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, LSE.

Hunting Causes and Using Them: Approaches in Philosophy and Economics.

Cambridge University Press 2007

For a preview of this book click here.

Click here for a review of this book by Judea Pearl, 2008. Click here for a reply to this review by Nancy Cartwright, 2009.

Two reviews of this book, by Francis Longworth and Eric Weber, and Nancy Cartwright's reply to these are forthcoming in ANALYSIS REVIEWS edited for Oxford University Press by Anthony Ellis.

Idealization XII: Correcting the Model. Idealization and Abstraction in the Sciences.
Edited by Nancy Cartwright and Martin Jones. Poznan Studies in Philosophy of Science and the Humanities Vol 86.

Rodopi 2005

Measuring Causes: Invariance, Modularity and the Causal Markov Condition.

Measurement in Physics and Economics Discussion Paper Series. Monograph DP MEAS 10/00. Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, LSE, 2000

Click here to have access to this book on line via the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, LSE.

The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science.
Cambridge University Press, 1999; Represented as a Fathom Internet Story.

Also translated to Chinese by Shanghai Scientific & Technological Education Publishing House.

For a preview of this book click here

Click here for access to several reviews of this book.

Otto Neurath: Philosophy between Science and Politics, with Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck and Thomas E Uebel,
Cambridge University Press, Ideas in Context Series No. 38, 1996.

Click here for a review of this book by George A. Reisch 1997.

Nature' s Capacities and their Measurement.
Oxford University Press, 1989.

Click here to have access to this book on line via Oxford Scholarship on Line.

Click here for a review of this book by Frederick M. Kronz, 1990.

How the Laws of Physics Lie
Oxford University Press, 1983.

Also translated to Chinese by Shanghai Scientific & Technological Education Publishing House.

Click here to have access to this book on line via Oxford Scholarship on Line.

Click here for a review of this book by Henry E. Kyburg, 1990.

Last updated 17.11.11