Christian Wüthrich reports that the Lakatos Award "for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, will not be awarded in 2011." "The Award is for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, widely interpreted, in the form of a book published in English during the previous five years [that is 2006-2011]." The Committee claims, "While there is no doubt that all of the shortlisted books have their virtues, and that some make weighty contributions to the field, the overall view taken by the Management Committee on the basis of the Selectors’ reports is that none quite meets the level of impact and significance required to merit the Award; and consequently no Award will be made this year." I disagree with this claim. Here are a number of books that would have been worthy winners:
- William C. Wimsatt (2007) Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings: piecewise approximations to reality, Cambridge: Harvard
- Mark Wilson (2006) Wandering Significance An Essay on Conceptual Behaviour Oxford: OUP [not eligible in the future]
- Sandra Mitchell (2009) Unsimple Truths Science, Complexity, and Policy, Chicago: UCP
- Niccolò Guicciardini (2009) Isaac Newton on Mathematical Certainty and Method, Cambridge: MIT
- C.F. Craver (2007) Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience. Clarendon Press: Oxford.
- Laura J. Snyder (2006) Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and SocietyChicago: University of Chicago Press [not eligible anymore]
- Alisa Bokulich (2008) Reexamining the Quantum-Classical Relation: Beyond Reductionism and Pluralism, Cambridge UP
Update: Gabriele Contessa has compiled a slightly longer list of worthies here.
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