Rules to infinity

• Verfasst von: Povich, Mark [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Rules to infinity
• Titelzusatz: the normative role of mathematics in scientific explanation
• Verf.angabe: Mark Povich
• Verlagsort: New York, NY
• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• E-Jahr: 2024
• Jahr: [2024]
• Umfang: 1 online resource
• Illustrationen: illustrations.
• Gesamttitel/Reihe: Oxford scholarship online
• Fussnoten: Includes bibliographical references and index. - Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on October 3, 2024)
• ISBN: 978-0-19-767903-6
• DOI: doi:10.1093/oso/9780197679005.001.0001
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• Bibliogr. Hinweis: Erscheint auch als : Druck-Ausgabe
• Sach-SW: Science
• Sach-SW: Science: general issues
• K10plus-PPN: 1916075096
• K10plus-PPN:
  Universitätsbibliothek
• Lokale URL UB: Zum Volltext

Abstract

One of the central aims of science is to provide explanations of natural phenomena. What role does mathematics play in achieving this aim? How does mathematics contribute to the explanatory power of science? Rules to Infinity defends the thesis that mathematics contributes to the explanatory power of science by expressing conceptual rules that allow for the transformation of empirical descriptions. It claims that mathematics should not be thought of as describing, in any substantive sense, an abstract realm of eternal mathematical objects, as traditional Platonists have thought.

Abstract

"A simplistic and Whiggish history of the philosophy of scientific explanation, modeled after a terribly stripped-down reading of Salmon's (1989) Four Decades, might go as follows: In the beginning was Hempel, with whose covering law (CL) model of explanation the main problems in the philosophy of explanation were thought, for the most part, to have been solved. There was peace in the land... for a while. Then came mumblings of discontent. For, most of the problems that faced the CL model resulted, many thought, from its inability to account for the central role of causation in scientific explanation. Mumblings magnified into roars and the CL model was burst asunder. A new account of scientific explanation - the causal-mechanical account (Salmon 1989) - gained hegemony, and peace and consensus returned. In the last couple of decades, mumblings of discontent have started again to arise: equilibrium explanations (Sober 1983, Rice 2015), optimality explanations (Rice 2012, 2015), renormalization group (RG) explanations (Batterman and Rice 2014), topological explanations (Huneman 2010, Kostić 2020, Kostić and Khalifa 2021) . How can the causal hegemony in the philosophy of explanation account for all these? The causal hegemony must give way to a new one, one that is either a more inclusive theory that covers both causal and non-causal explanation, or a principled explanatory pluralism"--