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Comments on the Papers of Brush and Tisza

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Abner Shimony
Abner Shimony*
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Extract

Most of what I have to say concerns Tisza's conceptual analysis [12], but I should like to begin with an appreciation of Brush's historical essay [2], Accurate historical information about a science is usually illuminating not only about the process of discovery but also about the subject matter itself. I think that this statement is especially true for statistical mechanics, in which the problems that the founding fathers were concerned with are still not completely solved, and I certainly feel that this historical essay has helped me to understand the subject matter of statistical mechanics better than before.

There are several remarks in Brush's essay concerning epistemology and methodology, some of which seem to me correct but others not.

Type
Part X. Foundations of Statistical Mechanics
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1976 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1976 , 1976 , pp. 609 - 616
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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References

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