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A Minimal Metaphysics for Scientific Practice
Provides a minimal metaphysics for scientific practice, yielding new accounts of lawhood, causation and reduction.
What's Wrong With Microphysicalism?
A fresh challenge to 'microphysicalism', the influential contemporary view in philosophy and science that whole objects behave the way they do in virtue of the behaviour of their constituent parts.
Time, Chance, and Reduction
Statistical mechanics attempts to explain the behaviour of macroscopic physical systems in terms of the mechanical properties of their constituents. Although it is one of the fundamental theories of physics, it has received little attention from philosophers of science. Nevertheless, it raises philosophical questions of fundamental importance on the nature of time, chance and reduction. Most philosophical issues in this domain relate to the question of the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics. This book addresses issues inherent in this reduction: the time-asymmetry of thermodynamics and its absence in statistical mechanics; the role and essential nature of chance and probability in this reduction when thermodynamics is non-probabilistic; and how, if at all, the reduction is possible. Compiling contributions on current research by experts in the field, this is an invaluable survey of the philosophy of statistical mechanics for academic researchers and graduate students interested in the foundations of physics.
Explanation in the Special Sciences
Biology and history are often viewed as closely related disciplines, with biology informed by history, especially in its task of charting our evolutionary past. Maximizing the opportunities for cross-fertilization in these two fields requires an accurate reckoning of their commonalities and differences—precisely what this volume sets out to achieve. Specially commissioned essays by a team of recognized international researchers cover the full panoply of topics in these fields and include notable contributions on the correlativity of evolutionary and historical explanations, applying to history the latest causal-mechanical approach in the philosophy of biology, and the question of generaliz...
Reconsidering Causal Powers
Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science to fill explanatory gaps seen to be left by reductivist and eliminativist accounts of previous generations. This volume revisits the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles across history to foster deeper discussions about their metaphysical natures
Determinism in Physics and Biology
This collection of essays intends to give an overview over new work on determinism in physics and biology. What is controversial in this area is not much the concept of determinism but rather the question whether certain theories ought to be qualified as deterministic or indeterministic. Thus most of the contributors focus on particular theories in physics or biology. Thomas Breuer concerns himself with recent developments in quantum mechanics. Claus Kiefer discusses the implications of various theories of gravitation for the concept of determinism. Bruno Eckhardt's paper deals with classical and quantum chaos. Andreas Bartels investigates to what extent the determination relation between parts and wholes in physics supports materialism. The papers by Bruce Glymour, Roberta Millstein, Frédéric Bouchard and Alex Rosenberg concern the interpretation of the statistical aspects of evolutionary theory. Finally Ansgar Beckermann deals with the issue of free will. He argues that a biological determinism would not rule out the possibility of human freedom.
Ursachen
Ursachen spielen im Alltag und in der Wissenschaft eine zentrale Rolle. Wir stützen uns auf Ursachenwissen wenn wir Vorhersagen machen, wenn wir Phänomene erklären, wenn wir in die Natur eingreifen und wenn wir Verantwortung zuschreiben. Aber was heißt es, dass etwas die Ursache eines Ereignisses ist? Dieses Buch gibt einen kurzen Überblick über historische Positionen, die auch für heutige Debatten noch relevant sind. Im Hauptteil wird ein systematischer Überblick über die wesentlichen Theorien von Ursachen gegeben: die Regularitätstheorie, die kontrafaktische Theorie, die Prozesstheorie und neuere Formen des Interventionismus. Zwei Fragestellungen spielen bei der Bewertung der ver...
Suárez on Aristotelian Causality
Suárez on Aristotelian Causality offers the first comprehensive account of Francisco Suárez’s position with respect to the four Aristotelian causes in his Metaphysical Disputations.
Symbol and Physical Knowledge
Introduces the problem of the symbolic structure of physics, surveys the modern history of symbols, proceeds to an epistemological discussion of the role of symbols in our knowledge of nature, and addresses key issues related to the methodology of physics and the character of its symbolic structures.
Reconsidering Causal Powers
Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science. Once central features of philosophical thinking about the natures of substances and causes, they were banished during the early modern era and the Scientific Revolution. In this volume, distinguished scholars revisit the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles within the theories of substance and cause across history. Each chapter focuses on the philosophical roles causal powers were thought to play at the time, and the reasons offered in support, or against, their coherence and ability to perform these roles. By placing rigorous philosophical analyses of thinking about causal powers within their historical contexts, features of their natures which might remain hidden to contemporary practitioners can be more readily identified and more carefully analyzed. The thoughts of such prominent philosophers as Aristotle, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan are explored, then on through Suarez, Descartes, and Malebranche, to Locke and Hume, and ultimately to contemporary figures like the logical positivists Goodman and Lewis.
