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On the Role of Bridge Laws in Intertheoretic Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Sorin Bangu
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Abstract

What is the role of bridge laws in intertheoretic relations? An assumption shared by many views about these relations is that bridge laws enable reductions. In this article, I acknowledge the naturalness of this assumption, but I question it by presenting a context within thermal physics (involving phase transitions) in which the bridge laws, puzzlingly, seem to contribute to blocking the reduction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 5 , December 2011 , pp. 1108 - 1119
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I benefited from conversations with Margaret Morrison, Robert Batterman, Jeremy Butterfield, Roman Frigg, Eleanor Knox, Anouk Barberousse, Cyrille Imbert, Sam Schindler, Alex Manafu, and Dragos Bagu. I am of course the only one responsible for any errors remaining.

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