ABSTRACT
This volume collects thirteen essays by prominent contemporary philosophers of science on the role that fi ctions and fi ction-making play in the practice of theorizing and model-building in science. The topic itself is not new in philosophy of science, because fi ctionalism has a long history in the discipline that goes back at least to the writings of Hans Vaihinger in the early years of the 20th century. Although Vaihinger’s work was very popular in his own time, it fell into a kind of oblivion for years afterward, coinciding with the rise of logical positivism. The topic made a return to the philosophy of science agenda about 15 years ago, partly in the wake of debates about Bas Van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism, which can be construed as a kind of fi ctionalism about theoretical entities,1 and partly as a result of the increased attention paid by philosophers to models and modeling in the sciences. However, within philosophy of science the discussion over fi ctions has so far been rather fragmentary, with references to fi ctionalism typically playing some minor rhetorical role in the realism-antirealism debate, and appeals to fi ctions and fi ctive entities appearing occasionally in diverse case studies devoted to modeling. This might be contrasted with the very extensive treatment of fi ctions in the philosophy of language and aesthetics literature over at least the last two decades.2
