Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Evidence and analogy in Archaeoastronomy.Francesco Nappo, Giulio Magli & Giovanni Valente - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-25.
    This paper addresses the role of analogical reasoning in archaeoastronomy - the discipline which studies the connections between the ancient monuments and the heavens. Archaeoastronomy is a highly interdisciplinary science, placed at the border between the humanities – especially archaeology – and the scientific approach to cultural heritage. As a consequence, its scientific foundations are a delicate matter. We plan to investigate here the question of what constitutes the evidence for analogical inferences in archaeoastronomy and to what extent one can (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • On the Universality of Hawking Radiation.Sean Gryb, Patricia Palacios & Karim Thebault - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:axz025.
    A physically consistent semi-classical treatment of black holes requires universality arguments to deal with the `trans-Planckian' problem where quantum spacetime effects appear to be amplified such that they undermine the entire semi-classical modelling framework. We evaluate three families of such arguments in comparison with Wilsonian renormalization group universality arguments found in the context of condensed matter physics. Our analysis is framed by the crucial distinction between robustness and universality. Particular emphasis is placed on the quality whereby the various arguments are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Of Water Drops and Atomic Nuclei: Analogies and Pursuit Worthiness in Science.Rune Nyrup - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (3):881-903.
    This article highlights a use of analogies in science that so far has received relatively little systematic discussion: providing reasons for pursuing a model or theory. Using the development of the liquid drop model as a test case, I critically assess two extant pursuit worthiness accounts: that analogies justify pursuit by supporting plausibility arguments and that analogies can serve as a guide to potential theoretical unification. Neither of these fit the liquid drop model case. Instead, I develop an alternative account, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Phase transitions and the birth of early universe particle physics.Adam Koberinski - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 105 (C):59-73.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • How to infer explanations from computer simulations.Florian J. Boge - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 82:25-33.
    Computer simulations are involved in numerous branches of modern science, and science would not be the same without them. Yet the question of how they can explain real-world processes remains an issue of considerable debate. In this context, a range of authors have highlighted the inferences back to the world that computer simulations allow us to draw. I will first characterize the precise relation between computer and target of a simulation that allows us to draw such inferences. I then argue (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The multiple realizability of general relativity in quantum gravity.Rasmus Jaksland - 2019 - Synthese 199 (S2):441-467.
    Must a theory of quantum gravity have some truth to it if it can recover general relativity in some limit of the theory? This paper answers this question in the negative by indicating that general relativity is multiply realizable in quantum gravity. The argument is inspired by spacetime functionalism—multiple realizability being a central tenet of functionalism—and proceeds via three case studies: induced gravity, thermodynamic gravity, and entanglement gravity. In these, general relativity in the form of the Einstein field equations can (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Models on the move: Migration and imperialism.Seamus Bradley & Karim P. Y. Thébault - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 77:81-92.
    We introduce ‘model migration’ as a species of cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer whereby the representational function of a model is radically changed to allow application to a new disciplinary context. Controversies and confusions that often derive from this phenomenon will be illustrated in the context of econophysics and phylogeographic linguistics. Migration can be usefully contrasted with concept of ‘imperialism’, that has been influentially discussed in the context of geographical economics. In particular, imperialism, unlike migration, relies upon extension of the original model (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • What can bouncing oil droplets tell us about quantum mechanics?Peter W. Evans & Karim P. Y. Thébault - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (3):1-32.
    A recent series of experiments have demonstrated that a classical fluid mechanical system, constituted by an oil droplet bouncing on a vibrating fluid surface, can be induced to display a number of behaviours previously considered to be distinctly quantum. To explain this correspondence it has been suggested that the fluid mechanical system provides a single-particle classical model of de Broglie’s idiosyncratic ‘double solution’ pilot wave theory of quantum mechanics. In this paper we assess the epistemic function of the bouncing oil (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • The case for black hole thermodynamics part II: Statistical mechanics.David Wallace - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 66 (C):103-117.
    I present in detail the case for regarding black hole thermodynamics as having a statistical-mechanical explanation in exact parallel with the statistical-mechanical explanation believed to underly the thermodynamics of other systems. I focus on three lines of argument: zero-loop and one-loop calculations in quantum general relativity understood as a quantum field theory, using the path-integral formalism; calculations in string theory of the leading-order terms, higher-derivative corrections, and quantum corrections, in the black hole entropy formula for extremal and near-extremal black holes; (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • The case for black hole thermodynamics part I: Phenomenological thermodynamics.David Wallace - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 64:52-67.
    I give a fairly systematic and thorough presentation of the case for regarding black holes as thermodynamic systems in the fullest sense, aimed at students and non-specialists and not presuming advanced knowledge of quantum gravity. I pay particular attention to the availability in classical black hole thermodynamics of a well-defined notion of adiabatic intervention; the power of the membrane paradigm to make black hole thermodynamics precise and to extend it to local-equilibrium contexts; the central role of Hawking radiation in permitting (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Model Organisms as Simulators: The Context of Cross-Species Research and Emergence.Sim-Hui Tee - 2019 - Axiomathes 29 (4):363-382.
    Model organisms are a living form of scientific models. Despite the widespread use of model organisms in scientific research, the actual representational relationship between model organisms and their target species is often poorly characterized in the context of cross-species research. Many model organisms do not represent the target species adequately, let alone accurately. This is partly due to the complex and emergent life phenomena in the organism, and partly due to the fact that a model organism is always taken to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • What can we learn (and not learn) from thought experiments in black hole thermodynamics?Patricia Palacios & Rawad El Skaf - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-27.
    Scientists investigating the thermal properties of black holes rely heavily on theoretical and non-empirical tools, such as mathematical derivations, analogue experiments and thought experiments. Although the use of mathematical derivations and analogue experiments in the context of black hole physics has recently received a great deal of attention among philosophers of science, the use of thought experiments (TEs) in that context has been almost completely neglected. In this paper, we will start filling this gap by systematically analyzing the epistemic role (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • The Value of Surprise in Science.Steven French & Alice Murphy - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (4):1447-1466.
    Scientific results are often presented as ‘surprising’ as if that is a good thing. Is it? And if so, why? What is the value of surprise in science? Discussions of surprise in science have been limited, but surprise has been used as a way of defending the epistemic privilege of experiments over simulations. The argument is that while experiments can ‘confound’, simulations can merely surprise (Morgan, 2005). Our aim in this paper is to show that the discussion of surprise can (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • The turn of the valve: representing with material models.Roman Frigg & James Nguyen - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (2):205-224.
    Many scientific models are representations. Building on Goodman and Elgin’s notion of representation-as we analyse what this claim involves by providing a general definition of what makes something a scientific model, and formulating a novel account of how they represent. We call the result the DEKI account of representation, which offers a complex kind of representation involving an interplay of, denotation, exemplification, keying up of properties, and imputation. Throughout we focus on material models, and we illustrate our claims with the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • Epistemology of causal inference in pharmacology: Towards a framework for the assessment of harms.Juergen Landes, Barbara Osimani & Roland Poellinger - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (1):3-49.
    Philosophical discussions on causal inference in medicine are stuck in dyadic camps, each defending one kind of evidence or method rather than another as best support for causal hypotheses. Whereas Evidence Based Medicine advocates the use of Randomised Controlled Trials and systematic reviews of RCTs as gold standard, philosophers of science emphasise the importance of mechanisms and their distinctive informational contribution to causal inference and assessment. Some have suggested the adoption of a pluralistic approach to causal inference, and an inductive (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  • Analogy and Composition in Early Nineteenth-Century Chemistry The Case of Aluminium.Sarah N. Hijmans - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (1):1-17.
    Around fifteen years before the chemical substance alumina could be decomposed in the laboratory, it was identified as a compound and predicted to contain a new element called ‘aluminium’. Using this episode from early nineteenth-century chemistry as a case study for the use of analogical reasoning in science, this paper examines how chemists relied on chemical classifications for the prediction of aluminium. I argue that chemists supplemented direct evidence of chemical decomposition with analogical inferences in order to evaluate the composition (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • How to think about analogical inferences: A reply to Norton.Benjamin S. Genta - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 82:17-24.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Confirmation based on analogical inference: Bayes meets Jeffrey.Christian J. Feldbacher-Escamilla & Alexander Gebharter - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (2):174-194.
    Certain hypotheses cannot be directly confirmed for theoretical, practical, or moral reasons. For some of these hypotheses, however, there might be a workaround: confirmation based on analogical reasoning. In this paper we take up Dardashti, Hartmann, Thébault, and Winsberg’s (in press) idea of analyzing confirmation based on analogical inference Baysian style. We identify three types of confirmation by analogy and show that Dardashti et al.’s approach can cover two of them. We then highlight possible problems with their model as a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Reasoning in Physics (ed.).Benjamin Eva & Stephan Hartmann - 2020 - Synthese (Suppl 16):1-5.
    The way in which philosophers have thought about the scientific method and the nature of good scientific reasoning over the last few centuries has been consistently and heavily influenced by the examples set by physics. The astounding achievements of 19th and 20th century physics demonstrated that physicists had successfully identified methodologies and reasoning patterns that were uniquely well suited to discovering fundamental truths about the natural world. Inspired by this success, generations of philosophers set themselves the goal of taxonomising, codifying, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (2 other versions)Against ‘functional gravitational energy’: a critical note on functionalism, selective realism, and geometric objects and gravitational energy.Patrick M. Duerr - 2019 - Synthese 199 (S2):299-333.
    The present paper revisits the debate between realists about gravitational energy in GR and anti-realists/eliminativists. I re-assess the arguments underpinning Hoefer’s seminal eliminativist stance, and those of their realist detractors’ responses. A more circumspect reading of the former is proffered that discloses where the so far not fully appreciated, real challenges lie for realism about gravitational energy. I subsequently turn to Lam and Read’s recent proposals for such a realism. Their arguments are critically examined. Special attention is devoted to the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • (1 other version)A precipice below which lies absurdity? Theories without a spacetime and scientific understanding.Henk W. de Regt & Sebastian De Haro - 2020 - Synthese 197 (7):3121-3149.
    While the relation between visualization and scientific understanding has been a topic of long-standing discussion, recent developments in physics have pushed the boundaries of this debate to new and still unexplored realms. For it is claimed that, in certain theories of quantum gravity, spacetime ‘disappears’: and this suggests that one may have sensible physical theories in which spacetime is completely absent. This makes the philosophical question whether such theories are intelligible, even more pressing. And if such theories are intelligible, the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • (1 other version)A precipice below which lies absurdity? Theories without a spacetime and scientific understanding.Sebastian De Haro & Henk W. de Regt - 2018 - Synthese:1-29.
    While the relation between visualization and scientific understanding has been a topic of long-standing discussion, recent developments in physics have pushed the boundaries of this debate to new and still unexplored realms. For it is claimed that, in certain theories of quantum gravity, spacetime ‘disappears’: and this suggests that one may have sensible physical theories in which spacetime is completely absent. This makes the philosophical question whether such theories are intelligible, even more pressing. And if such theories are intelligible, the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • What we cannot learn from analogue experiments.Karen Crowther, Niels S. Linnemann & Christian Wüthrich - 2019 - Synthese (Suppl 16):1-26.
    Analogue experiments have attracted interest for their potential to shed light on inaccessible domains. For instance, ‘dumb holes’ in fluids and Bose–Einstein condensates, as analogues of black holes, have been promoted as means of confirming the existence of Hawking radiation in real black holes. We compare analogue experiments with other cases of experiment and simulation in physics. We argue—contra recent claims in the philosophical literature—that analogue experiments are not capable of confirming the existence of particular phenomena in inaccessible target systems. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Why Not a Sound Postulate?Bryan Cheng & James Read - 2021 - Foundations of Physics 51 (3):1-20.
    What, if anything, would be wrong with replacing the light postulate in Einstein’s 1905 formulation of special relativity with a ‘sound postulate’, stating that the speed of sound is independent of the speed of the source? After reviewing the historical reasons underlying the particular focus on light in the special theory, we consider the circumstances under which such a theory of ‘sonic relativity’ would be justified on empirical grounds. We then consider the philosophical upshots of ‘sonic relativity’ for four contemporary (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Why computer simulations are not inferences, and in what sense they are experiments.Florian J. Boge - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (1):1-30.
    The question of where, between theory and experiment, computer simulations (CSs) locate on the methodological map is one of the central questions in the epistemology of simulation (cf. Saam Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 48, 293–309, 2017). The two extremes on the map have them either be a kind of experiment in their own right (e.g. Barberousse et al. Synthese, 169, 557–574, 2009; Morgan 2002, 2003, Journal of Economic Methodology, 12(2), 317–329, 2005; Morrison Philosophical Studies, 143, 33–57, 2009; Morrison (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Norton's material theory of analogy.Paul Bartha - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 82:104-113.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • (1 other version)Singularities and Black holes.Erik Curiel - 2010 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  • Are black holes about information?Christian Wuthrich - unknown
    Information theory presupposes the notion of an epistemic agent, such as a scientist or an idealized human. Despite that, information theory is increasingly invoked by physicists concerned with fundamental physics, physics at very high energies, or generally with the physics of situations in which even idealized epistemic agents cannot exist. In this paper, I shall try to determine the extent to which the application of information theory in those contexts is legitimate. I will illustrate my considerations using the case of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Analogue Quantum Simulation: A Philosophical Prospectus.Dominik Hangleiter, Jacques Carolan & Karim P. Y. Thebault - unknown
    This paper provides the first systematic philosophical analysis of an increasingly important part of modern scientific practice: analogue quantum simulation. We introduce the distinction between `simulation' and `emulation' as applied in the context of two case studies. Based upon this distinction, and building upon ideas from the recent philosophical literature on scientific understanding, we provide a normative framework to isolate and support the goals of scientists undertaking analogue quantum simulation and emulation. We expect our framework to be useful to both (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation