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Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen (born Goes, the Netherlands, 5 April 1941) is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University, teaching courses in philosophy of science, the role of models in scientific practice and philosophical logic. He previously taught at Yale University, the University of Southern California (USC), the University of Toronto, and Princeton University. He coined the term "constructive empiricism" in his 1980 book The Scientific Image. Van Fraassen earned his B.A. (1963) from the University of Alberta and his M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1966, under the direction of Adolf Grünbaum) from the University of Pittsburgh.

A philosopher of science, van Fraassen's 1989 book Laws and Symmetry attempted to lay the ground-work for explaining physical phenomena without using the assumption that such phenomena are caused by rules or laws which can be said to cause or govern their behavior. Van Fraassen has also done work on the philosophy of quantum mechanics, philosophical logic, and epistemology.

Paul M. Churchland is a vocal critic of van Fraassen, who in his essay "The Anti-Realist Epistemology of Bas van Fraassen's The Scientific Image", contrasted van Fraassen's idea of unobservable phenomena with the idea of merely unobserved phenomena, among other theories.

Van Fraassen is also known for his pioneering work in philosophical logic.

He is the laureate of the 1986 Lakatos Award for his contributions to the philosophy of science.

Van Fraassen is an adult convert to the Roman Catholic Church.

He has been active as editor of the Journal of Philosophical Logic and co-editor of the Journal of Symbolic Logic, as well as in the American Philosophical Association, the Philosophy of Science Association, Society for Exact Philosophy, Evert Willem Beth Stichting, Association for Symbolic Logic, and the International Union for History and Philosophy of Science, and as McCosh Professor of Philosophy (Princeton University); D. Lett (hon), (University of Lethbridge); LL. D.(hon),(University of Notre Dame), Ph. D. (hon), (Kath. Univ. Leuven), Foreign Member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences); Titular Member of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences; Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bas van Fraassen", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0