ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the topic of idealization in its historical context. It examines Nowak's account of idealization and considers some of the more important objections that might be raised against it. The chapter refines Nowak's account of idealization in such a way as to integrate it with the treatment of causation. It outlines a treatment of scientific progress which is sensitive to the idealizational character of scientific explanation. The processes of concretization and idealization are reflections of one another. The terms 'idealization' and 'abstraction' are closely related, but are usually intended to refer to different processes. A difficulty for the idealization approach to the methodology of science is that the practice of scientists simply does not reflect the rigour that idealizational accounts of scientific methodology suggest. Leszek Nowak follows Karl Marx in holding that rigorous idealizational thinking is a substitute for experimentation. To be able to provide powerful explanatory and predictive fundamental laws, scientific reasoning needs to become idealizational.
