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The Apparent Inconsistency of Moulines' Treatment of Equilibrium Thermodynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

John H. Harris
John H. Harris*
Affiliation:
University of Otago
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Extract

One of the main advantages that has been claimed for the Sneedian “structuralist” approach is that with it one can actually represent real scientific theories. (I consider a “structuralist” approach to be one in which the objects of study are structures in the modeltheoretic sense, with at least some such structures thought of as representing physical situations or processes.) Using just Suppes’ structuralist approach, one can already give a reasonable representation of many features of scientific theories. Examples of such are the representations of classical particle mechanics (CPM) in McKinsey, Sugar & Suppes (1953), relativistic particle mechanics in Rubin & Suppes (1954), and rigid body mechanics in Adams (1959). Then with Sneed's (1971) modifications of Suppes’ approach, in particular with Sneed's introduction of the notion of a constraint between structures, the representational strength of a structuralist approach seems to increase dramatically.

Type
Part VII. Tachyons, Temporal Becoming, and Thermodynamics
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1982 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1982 , 1982 , pp. 304 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1982

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References

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