ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the topic of fundamentalism, through a discussion of the development of Cartwright's ideas. The reader should bear in mind that Cartwright has only recently seen herself as being opposed to fundamentalism, and her earlier work is overtly directed at different targets. Cartwright accepts that science has given us immense numbers of highly confirmed phenomenological laws. Such phenomenological laws are laws directly describing the behaviour of concrete worldly objects. She emphasises the extent to which ordinary, common or garden phenomenological laws stand up to our scrutiny without requiring the backing of abstract fundamental laws to make them true. According to Cartwright it is important for our explanatory purposes that we do tolerate falsehood in fundamental laws. This is because, as far as we can tell, true laws are scarce in nature, and in order to endow our scientific explanations with generality we often have to settle for approximate explanations.
