It is often supposed that the spectacular successes of our modern mathematical sciences support a lofty vision of a world completely ordered by one single elegant theory. In this book Nancy Cartwright argues to the contrary. When we draw our image of the world from the way modern science works - as empiricism teaches us we should - we end up with a world where some features are precisely ordered, others are given to rough regularity and still others behave in their own diverse ways. This patchwork makes sense when we realise that laws are very special productions of nature, requiring very special arrangements for their generation. Combining classic and newly written essays on physics and economics, The Dappled World carries important philosophical consequences and offers serious lessons for both the natural and the social sciences.

In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, Nancy Cartwright argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe the regularities that exist in nature. Yet she is not 'anti-realist'. Rather, she draws a novel distinction, arguing that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but that the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.

在人们心目中，现代数理科学的巨大成功支持了世界完全由一个优美理论来安排的傲慢观点。在本书中，作者论证了相反的观点。我们通过现代科学的运作方式形成对世界的意象时——正如经验论教导我们做的——最终得出一个世界。在这个世界里，有些特征是精确有序的，其他只有大致的规则性，还有一些则按各自不同的方式运作。定律是自然界非常特殊的产物，它们的产生需要非常特殊的安排。“定律拼凑”是讲得通的。

《物理定律是如何撒谎的》用一种新的眼光看待物理学实际运作的方式，通过对一系列来自于科学家实践的说明性工作资料的分析。说明物理定律事实上并没有描述自然界的规律。并通过对基本解释力的质疑和对基本说明性定律的反驳，提出了一种说明的影像说法。阐明了“基本定律仅仅对于模型中的客体是正确的”观点。

Hunting Causes and Using Them argues that causation is not one thing, as commonly assumed, but many. There is a huge variety of causal relations, each with different characterizing features, different methods for discovery and different uses to which it can be put. In this collection of new and previously published essays, Nancy Cartwright provides a critical survey of philosophical and economic literature on causality, with a special focus on the currently fashionable Bayes-nets and invariance methods - and it exposes a huge gap in that literature. Almost every account treats either exclusively how to hunt causes or how to use them. But where is the bridge between? It's no good knowing how to warrant a causal claim if we don't know what we can do with that claim once we have it. This book will interest philosophers, economists and social scientists.