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Switch to: References
Citations of:
Similarity and dimensional analysis (preprint - entry in handbook of philosophy of science, elsevier)
In Anthonie W. M. Meijers (ed.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science (2009)
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This chapter concerns dimensions as the term is used in the physical sciences today. Some key points made are: Quantities of the same kind have the same dimension; but that two quantities have the same dimension does not necessarily mean they are of the same kind. The dimension of a quantity is not determined for a single quantity in isolation, but relative to a system of quantities and the relations that hold between them. Dimensions, units, and quantities are distinct notions. (...) |
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Arguments for the effectiveness, and even the indispensability, of mathematics in scientific explanation rely on the claim that mathematics is an effective or even a necessary component in successful scientific predictions and explanations. Well-known accounts of successful mathematical explanation in physical science appeals to scientists’ ability to solve equations directly in key domains. But there are spectacular physical theories, including general relativity and fluid dynamics, in which the equations of the theory cannot be solved directly in target domains, and yet (...) |
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I address questions about values in model-making in engineering, specifically: Might the role of values be attributable solely to interests involved in specifying and using the model? Selected examples illustrate the surprisingly wide variety of things one must take into account in the model-making itself. The notions of system , and physically similar systems are important and powerful in determining what is relevant to an engineering model. Another example illustrates how an idea to completely re-characterize, or reframe, an engineering problem (...) |
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I address questions about values in model-making in engineering, specifically: Might the role of values be attributable solely to interests involved in specifying and using the model? Selected examples illustrate the surprisingly wide variety of things one must take into account in the model-making itself. The notions of system, and physically similar systems are important and powerful in determining what is relevant to an engineering model. Another example illustrates how an idea to completely re-characterize, or reframe, an engineering problem arose (...) |
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According to Satosi Watanabe's "theorem of the ugly duckling", the number of predicates satisfied by any two different particulars is a constant, which does not depend on the choice of the two particulars. If the number of predicates satisfied by two particulars is their number of properties in common, and the degree of resemblance between two particulars is a function of their number of properties in common, then it follows that the degree of resemblance between any two different particulars is (...) |
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In this paper, I enrich the context of Wittgenstein's Tractatus given over a decade ago in my book Witttgenstein Flies A Kite (and related earlier works dating from 2000). I've since located a sketch reprinted from a 1914 Paris magazine showing a lawyer using a model bus and dolls to depict a traffic accident; I present it here along with a discussion of the modelmaker movement of that time. The modelmaker movement was a movement at the intersection of popular culture (...) |
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The proposed revision to the International System of Units contains two features that are bound to be of special interest to those concerned with foundational questions in philosophy of science. These are that the proposed system of international units can be defined without drawing a distinction between base units and derived units, and without restricting the means by which the value of the quantities associated with the units are to be established. In this paper, I address the question of the (...) |
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In this paper a symmetry argument against quantity absolutism is amended. Rather than arguing against the fundamentality of intrinsic quantities on the basis of transformations of basic quantities, a class of symmetries defined by the Π-theorem is used. This theorem is a fundamental result of dimensional analysis and shows that all unit-invariant equations which adequately represent physical systems can be put into the form of a function of dimensionless quantities. Quantity transformations that leave those dimensionless quantities invariant are empirical and (...) |
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This essay responds to a review of my book Wittgenstein Flies A Kite: A Story of Models of Wings and Models of the World by Peter Simons that appears in the March 2009 issue of the journal Metascience. |
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