This paper provides a restatement and defense of the data/ phenomena distinction introduced by Jim Bogen and me several decades ago (e.g., Bogen and Woodward, The Philosophical Review, 303–352, 1988). Additional motivation for the distinction is introduced, ideas surrounding the distinction are clarified, and an attempt is made to respond to several criticisms.

In a recent paper James Bogen and James Woodward denounce a set of views on confirmation that they collectively brand 'IRS'. The supporters of these views cast confirmation in terms of Inferential Relations between observational and theoretical Sentences. Against 1RS accounts of confirmation, Bogen and Woodward unveil two main objections: (a) inferential relations are not necessary to model confirmation relations since many data are neither in sentential form nor can they be put in such a form and (b) inferential relations (...) are not sufficient to model confirmation relations because the former cannot capture evidentially relevant factors about the detection processes and instruments that generate the data. In this paper I have a two-fold aim: (i) to show that Bogen and Woodward fail to provide compelling grounds for the rejection of IRS models and (ii) to highlight some of the models' neglected merits. (shrink)

This paper examines contemporary attempts to explicate the explanatory role of mathematics in the physical sciences. Most such approaches involve developing so-called mapping accounts of the relationships between the physical world and mathematical structures. The paper argues that the use of idealizations in physical theorizing poses serious difficulties for such mapping accounts. A new approach to the applicability of mathematics is proposed.

This article argues that most of the approaches to the foundations of statistical mechanics have severed their link with the original foundational project, the project of demonstrating how real mechanical systems can behave thermodynamically.

The papers collected here are the result of an INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: Data · Phenomena · Theories: What’s the notion of a scientific phenomenon good for? held in Heidelberg in September 2008. The event was organized by the research group Causality, Cognition, and the Constitution of Scientific Phenomena in cooperation with Philosophy Department at the University of Heidelberg (Peter McLaughlin and Andreas Kemmerling) and the IWH Heidelberg. The symposium was supported by the Emmy-Noether-Programm der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft and by Stiftung Universitat Heidelebrg (...) . The workshop was held in honor of Daniela Bailer-Jones, who died on 13 November 2006 at the age of 37 (cf. my 2007 Daniela Bailer-Jones ). Bailer-Jones was an Emmy Noether fellow, and the symposium was arranged and run by those who were working in her research group at the time of her death: Monika Dullstein, Jochen Apel, and Pavel Radchencko. To them goes the credit for the conception, planning, and carrying out of the symposium. (shrink)

This thesis gives a philosophical assessment of a contemporary movement, influential amongst physicists, about the status of microscopic and macroscopic properties. The fountainhead for the movement was a short 1972 paper `More is Different', written by the condensed-matter physicist, Philip Anderson. Each of the chapters is concerned with themes mentioned in that paper, or subsequently expounded by Anderson and his followers. In Chapter 1, I aim to locate Anderson's existence claims for `emergent properties' within the metaphysical, epistemological and methodological doctrines (...) that identify themselves as `emergentist'. I argue, against the commentators' consensus, that the New Emergentists make claims about the metaphysical status of physical properties, and should not be read as concerned only with matters of research methodology for physics. In Chapter 2, I look at the physical examples that the New Emergentists appeal to, and propose a way of formulating their main claims within modern analytic metaphysics. I argue that it is possible to view their thesis as an updated version of `British Emergentism' a movement popular in the early years of the twentieth century. I support this contention by comparing examples of emergent properties put forward by the British and the New Emergentists. Chapter 3 is a discussion of the significance of renormalisation techniques. I attack a set of claims by Robert Batterman, who presents renormalisation as an explanatory strategy unrecognised by the philosophy of science. I separate several different methods of renormalisation analysis, and argue that he has conflated them. In Chapter 4, I discuss the theoretical representation of phase transitions in condensed matter physics; in particular, their appeal to the limit of an infinite system. I examine and refute various claims to the effect that the ineliminability of this limit in modelling phase transitions is of great metaphysical significance. I suggest a definition of phase transitions for finite systems that dissolves this illusion, and gives us reason to trust the results of the theories that only apply in the infinite limit. %I then comment on the significance of these results for a suggestion of Laura Ruetsche, that quantum statistical mechanics should be used as a guide to the interpretation of quantum field theory. Chapter 5 revisits the doctrines of the New Emergentists in order to place their views within some wider philosophical debates. I look at how their doctrines bear on issues in the interpretation of quantum mechanics, in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science. I close by returning to the context within physics, in which the New Emergentists originally made their presence felt: the controversy over whether elementary particle physics should enjoy greater status than other areas. (shrink)

This chapter discusses various senses in which mathematics is applied to the material world. It distinguishes between canonical and noncanonical applications of mathematics, the former being those for which the mathematics was developed to deal with in the first place. It also distinguishes between empirical and nonempirical applications, thus yielding four different kinds of applications. Examples of each are provided, and philosophical problems connected with each are treated.