Introduction to the topical collection “True enough? Themes from Elgin”

Abstract

This topical collection of Synthese is in honor of Catherine Z. Elgin. The idea for it arose in the context of an international book symposium dedicated to Elgin's latest book (True enough, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2017), organized by Katherine Dormandy, Christoph Jäger, and myself, which took place at the University of Innsbruck in March 2018. The topical collection comprises fourteen papers addressing a broad array of issues related to True Enough and to Elgin's work more generally, plus a contribution by Elgin with detailed comments and replies. True Enough is an extraordinarily rich, wide-ranging book; it reflects both the breadth and sharpness of Elgin's philosophical gaze and exemplifies the impressive variety of her philosophical interests. In this introduction, I give an overview of the topical collection's content, zooming in on the aspects of Elgin's work which captured the contributors' attention. My discussion will not remotely do justice to the complexity of Elgin's system, but I hope that it will help the reader navigate the topical collection and appreciate how the fourteen papers relate to Elgin's overall project. Keywords Catherine Z. Elgin • True enough • Understanding A change of perspectiveMature science is one of humanity's most stunning epistemic achievements. But what makes mature science epistemically excellent? Why is mature science a successful epistemic enterprise? In multiple papers over the last 3 decades (e.g.