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This book presents a philosophy of science, based on panenmentalism: an original modal metaphysics, which is realist about individual pure (non-actual) possibilities and rejects the notion of possible worlds. The book systematically constructs a new and novel way of understanding and explaining scientific progress, discoveries, and creativity. It demonstrates that a metaphysics of individual pure possibilities is indispensable for explaining and understanding mathematics and natural sciences. It examines the nature of individual pure possibilities, actualities, mind-dependent and mind-independent possibilities, as well as mathematical entities. It discusses in detail the singularity of each human being as a psychical possibility. It analyses striking scientific discoveries, and illustrates by means of examples of the usefulness and vitality of individual pure possibilities in the sciences.

The Panenmentalist Philosophy of Science: From the Recognition of Individual Pure Possibilities to Actual Discoveries

Acknowledgments1. Introduction2. How Many Pure Possibilities Are There? Or Contra Actualism3. A Panenmentalist Consideration of the Identity of Indiscernibles4. Two Kinds of Discovery: An Ontological Account5. Mathematical Possibilities and their Discovery6. A Panenmentalist Approach to Molyneux's Problem and Some Empirical Findings7. Pure Possibilities and Some Striking Scientific Discoveries8. The Philosophical Significance of Alan Mackay's Theoretical Discovery of Quasicrystals9. Shechtman's Three Question Marks: Possibility, Impossibility, and Quasicrystals10. Eka-Elements as Chemical Pure Possibilities11. Quantum Pure Possibility and Macroscopic Physics12. Brain-images and the Human Mind13. Neoteny and the Playground of Pure Possibilities14. Milgram's Experience and Saving Possibilities15. Singularity and Uniqueness: Why Is Our Immune System Subject to Psychological and Cognitive Traits?ReferencesIndex