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Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement
Abstract
This book on the philosophy of science argues for an empiricism, opposed to the tradition of David Hume, in which singular rather than general causal claims are primary; causal laws express facts about singular causes whereas the general causal claims of science are ascriptions of capacities or causal powers, capacities to make things happen. Taking science as measurement, Cartwright argues that capacities are necessary for science and that these can be measured, provided suitable conditions are met. There are case studies from both econometrics and quantum mechanics.
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Citations
Cited by
Machamer, P., Darden, L., & Craver, C. F. (2000) · Philosophy of Science · doi:10.1086/392759 · Cited by 3,179
Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation
Woodward, J. (2004) · doi:10.1093/0195155270.001.0001 · Cited by 1,302
From covariation to causation: A causal power theory.
Cheng, P. W. (1997) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037//0033-295x.104.2.367 · Cited by 1,206
The Mangle of Practice: Agency and Emergence in the Sociology of Science
Pickering, A. (1993) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/230316 · Cited by 759
Independence, Invariance and the Causal Markov Condition
Hausman, D. M., & Woodward, J. (1999) · The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science · doi:10.1093/bjps/50.4.521 · Cited by 375
Metadata
- Authors
- Cartwright, N.
- Publisher
- Oxford University PressOxford
- Published
- 1994-04-07
- OpenAlex
- W1607940017
- Cited by
- 1,072
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 133.53
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/0198235070.001.0001
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- Cartwright, N. (1994). Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement. https://doi.org/10.1093/0198235070.001.0001
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
