Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:40:37.457Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cognitive Scientific Realism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Fritz Rohrlich
Fritz Rohrlich*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Syracuse University
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244–1130; email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Our cognitive capabilities force us into a description of the world by levels. But theories on different levels result in descriptions that differ qualitatively. Therefore, the resulting incommensurability requires ontological bridges between such theories. These are obtained uniquely when the equations of the reduced theory are compared with a suitable limit of the equations of the reducing theory. Four case studies from theoretical physics and astronomy support this claim, two for theories of composites and two for non-composites (field theories). There results a coherent view of a single real world despite its ontological pluralism. The cumulativity of scientific knowledge is thus ensured and realism is supported.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , June 2001 , pp. 185 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

If this paper is better than its previous versions, it is due to the helpful comments by Abner Shimony and by two anonymous referees. I am very grateful to all of them.

References

Aerts, Diederik and Rohrlich, Fritz (1998), “Reduction”, Foundations of Science 3: 27–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aerts, Diederik and Rohrlich, Fritz (1999), “Reduction”, Foundations of Science 4: 225Google Scholar
Batterman, Robert W. (1995), “Theories between theories: asymptotic limiting intertheory relations”, Synthese 103: 171–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Born, Max and Wolf, Emil (1975), Principles of Optics, 5th edition. London: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, Richard (1992), “Constructivism, Realism, and the Philosophical Method”, in Earman, John, (ed.), Inference. Explanation, and Other Frustrations: Essays in the Philosophy of Science. Berkeley: University of California Press, 131–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dresden, M. (1998), “Fundamentality and Numerical Scales—Diversity and the Structure of Physics”, American Journal of Physics 66: 468–482.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feyerabend, Paul (1975), Against Method. London: NLBGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Michael (1974), “Explanation and Scientific Understanding”, Jounal of Philosophy 71: 5–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fröhlich, H. (1973), “The Connection between Macro- and Microphysics”, Revista Nuovo Cimento 3: 490–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooker, Clifford A. (1981), “Towards a General Theory of Reduction”, Dialogue 20: I 38–59, II 201–236, III 496–529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huang, Kerson (1987), Statistical Mechanics. 2nd edition. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Humphreys, Paul (1989), The Chances of Explanation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (1976), “Explanation, Conjunction, and Unification”, Journal of Philosophy 73: 207–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas (1962): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Leplin, Jarrett (1984), Scientific Realism. Berkeley: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Ernest (1961), The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohrlich, Fritz (1988), “Pluralistic Ontology and Theory Reduction in the Physical Sciences”, British Journal for Philosophy of Science 39: 295–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohrlich, Fritz (1989), “The logic of reduction: the case of gravitation”, Foundations of Physics 19: 1151–1170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohrlich, Fritz (1997), “Cognitive Emergence”, Philosophy of Science 64: S346–S358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohrlich, Fritz and Hardin, L. (1983) “Established Theories”, Philosophy of Science 50: 603–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, Wesley (1984), Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schaffner, Kenneth F. (1967), “Approaches to Reduction”, Philosophy of Science 34: 137–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shimony, Abner (1976), “Comments on two epistemological theses by Thomas Kuhn”, in R.S. Cohen et al. (eds.), Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos. D. Reidel Publishing Co., 569–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shimony, Abner (1993a), “Reality, causality, and closing the circle”, in Search for a Naturalistic World View I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shimony, Abner (1993b), “The methodology of synthesis: parts and wholes in low-energy physics”, in Search for a naturalistic world view. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993, vol.II, pp. 191–217. Reprinted from Robert Kargon and Peter Achinstein (eds.), Kelvin's Baltimore Lectures and Modern Theoretical Physics, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklar, Lawrence (1993), Physics and chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suppe, Frederick (1977), The Structure of Scientific Theories, 2nd edition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Tisza, Laszlo (1961), “The thermodynamics of phase equilibrium”, Annals of Physics 13: 1–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tisza, Laszlo (1963), “The Conceptual Structure of Physics”, Reviews of Modern Physics 35: 151–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar