Collin Rice, "Leveraging Distortions: Explanation, Idealization, and Universality in Science" (MIT Press, 2021)
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi everyone, this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder of the New Books Network, and I'm also a historian. I used to be a history professor, and I love maps. So I'm especially happy to tell you that this episode is sponsored by What's Your Map, which was the winner of the best education podcast at the 2025 British Podcast Awards. What's Your Map is hosted by historian and prize-winning author, Professor Jerry Broughton. In each episode, he invites a guest to share. A map close to their heart and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it. I can tell you I've listened and it's fascinating. The podcast is in its sixth series and is enjoyed by audiences around the globe. You can explore all the maps in the podcast at occulehyphenmundi.com while you listen.
Jerry's guests include Zakya Suewell, who's an English broadcaster, and writer on Finding Albion, Josh Schmidt, who's the Head of maps at the Zurich Central Library, Pat Seed, a US historian on Ptolemy's World Map, John Romero, who's a legendary video game producer on the Doom Game Creator, Elif Sharak, a well known Turkish British novelist, and Chet Van Duzer, a historian who will tell you about Martin Valdsey Mueller's Carter Marina of sixteen forty five. I highly encourage you to subscribe to What's Your Map. It's available on Apple, Spotify, and all major Podcast platforms. Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello and welcome to New Books in Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdoor, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. I'm co host of the channel along with Robert Talise, Sarah Tyson, and Malcolm Keating. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Colin Rice, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brynmarr College. His new book Leveraging Distortions Explanation, Idealization and Universality. Science. just out from the MIT press. Most of us agree that science aims to tell us what is true about the world. But how do we get at the truth by using theories and models that deliberately, pervasively, and ineliminably distort what they are about?
How does a model that makes wholly unrealistic, even impossible, assumptions about reality? help to explain it and provide us with understanding. Colin Rice tackles this puzzle by examining how idealization figures in the development of models and theories. And how such distortions help provide otherwise inaccessible explanations? He takes issue with the dominant view of scientific explanation as primarily a matter of providing causal information. And he argues that providing information about what is irrelevant is often what does the explanatory work. His book presents a well structured challenge to many of the views of scientific explanation. and understanding that have dominated philosophy of science for decades.
Let's turn to the interview. Okay. Hello, Colin Rice. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy.
Hi Carrie, thanks so much for having.
Oh, it's I'm looking forward to talking about leveraging distortions, explanation, idealization, and universality. uh in science um So uh I always like to start with a question about you rather than the book, uh or indirectly about the book. Um tell us a bit about yourself and How you discovered or came to you know, become a philosopher and then um How you came to write this book?
Sure. Um So uh as an undergraduate at a small of arts college called Simpson College, which is just south of Des Moines in Iowa. Uhhuh. Um, I was a science major um when I started. I was in physics and chemistry and took a lot of math classes. Um and I did that for a couple of years and throughout those first two years of undergrad I sort of uh found myself asking a lot of questions about Um, even though I could what I used to call churn and burn all the mathematics they wanted me to do, uh how was I sure that the math was really tracking what was happening in the real world, um, and how was the ability to do all the mathematics really translating into me being able to explain or understand?
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–11:05
2
What is the central puzzle about using distorted models to explain reality?
11:05–20:43
3
How did Colin Rice’s early education and interdisciplinary background shape his view on scientific explanation?
20:43–44:41
4
What are the two main philosophical strategies for handling idealized, inaccurate scientific models?
44:41–58:46
5
Why does Rice argue that the ‘decompositional’ strategy fails for pervasively distorted models?
58:46–1:03:08
6
How does the concept of ‘holistic distortion’ redefine the role of idealizations in science?
1:03:08–1:04:53
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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