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Philosophy of Astrophysics
This is an open access book. This book, the first edited collection of its kind, explores the recent emergence of philosophical research in astrophysics. It assembles a variety of original essays from scholars who are currently shaping this field, and it combines insightful overviews of the current state of play with novel, significant contributions. It therefore provides an ideal source for understanding the current debates in philosophy of astrophysics, and it offers new ideas for future cutting-edge research. The selection of essays offered in this book addresses methodological and metaphysical questions that target a wide range of topics, including dark matter, black holes, astrophysical observations and modelling. The book serves as the first standard resource in philosophy of astrophysics for all scholars who work in the field and want to expand or deepen their knowledge, but it also provides an accessible guide for all those philosophers and scientists who are interested in getting a first, basic understanding of the main issues in philosophy of astrophysics.
Philosophy of Physical Magnitudes
Dimensional quantities such as length, mass and charge, i.e., numbers combined with a conventional unit, are essential components of theories in the sciences. This Element illustrates questions about them by imagining how one would convey the meaning of a kilogram to aliens if one were only allowed to communicate via Morse code.
Philosophy of Particle Physics
This Element offers an introduction to selected philosophical issues that arise in contemporary particle physics, aimed at philosophers who have limited prior exposure to quantum field theory. One the one hand, it critically surveys philosophical work on the representation of particles in quantum field theory, the formal machinery and conceptual implications of renormalization and renormalization group methods, and ontological and methodological questions raised by the use of effective field theory techniques in particle physics. On the other, it identifies topics in particle physics that have not yet received philosophical attention and sketches avenues for philosophical analysis of those topics. The primary aim of the Element is to provide philosophers of physics with an entry point into the literature on the philosophy of particle physics and identify interesting directions for future research for students and researchers alike.
The Human Right to Science
The Human Right to Science offers a thorough and systematic analysis of the right to science in all of its critical aspects. Authored by experts in international law and science policy, the book meticulously explores the right's origins, development, and normative content. In doing so, it uncovers previously unarticulated entitlements and obligations, offering new insights on human rights interconnections.
The Temporal Asymmetry of Causation
Causes always seem to come prior to their effects. What might explain this asymmetry? Causation's temporal asymmetry isn't straightforwardly due to a temporal asymmetry in the laws of nature—the laws are, by and large, temporally symmetric. Nor does the asymmetry appear due to an asymmetry in time itself. This Element examines recent empirical attempts to explain the temporal asymmetry of causation: statistical mechanical accounts, agency accounts and fork asymmetry accounts. None of these accounts are complete yet and a full explanation of the temporal asymmetry of causation will likely require contributions from all three programs.
The Philosophy of Symmetry
This Element is a concise, high-level introduction to the philosophy of physical symmetry. It begins with the notion of 'physical representation' (the kind of empirical representation of nature that we effect in doing physics), and then lays out the historically and conceptually central case of physical symmetry that frequently falls under the rubric of 'the Relativity Principle,' or 'Galileo's Ship.' This material is then used as a point of departure to explore the key hermeneutic challenge concerning physical symmetry in the past century, namely understanding the physical significance of the notion of 'local' gauge symmetry. The approach taken stresses both the continuity with historically important themes such as the Relativity Principle, as well as novel insights earned by working with contemporary representational media such as the covariant phase space formalism.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
Project Description: Theories are part and parcel of every human activity that involves knowing about the world and our place in it. In all areas of inquiry from the most commonplace to the most scholarly and esoteric, theorizing plays a fundamental role. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics focuses on the ways that various STEM disciplines theorize about their subject matter. How is thinking about the subject organized? What methods are used in moving a novice in given field into the position of a competent student of that subject? Within the pages of this landmark work, readers will learn about the complex decisions that are made when framing...
Epistemology of Experimental Physics
This Element introduces major issues in the epistemology of experimental physics through discussion of canonical physics experiments and some that have not yet received much philosophical attention. The primary challenge is to make sense of how physicists justify crucial decisions made in the course of empirical research. Judging a result as epistemically significant or as calling for further technical scrutiny of the equipment is one important context of such decisions. Judging whether the instrument has been calibrated, and which data should be included in the analysis are others. To what extent is it possible to offer philosophical analysis, systematization, and prescriptions regarding such decisions? To what extent can there be explicit epistemic justification for them? The primary aim of this Element is to show how a nuanced understanding of science in practice informs an epistemology of experimental physics that avoids strong social constructivism.
Foundations of Statistical Mechanics
Statistical mechanics is the third pillar of modern physics, next to quantum theory and relativity theory. It aims to account for the behaviour of macroscopic systems in terms of the dynamical laws that govern their microscopic constituents and probabilistic assumptions about them. In this Element, the authors investigate the philosophical and foundational issues that arise in SM. The authors introduce the two main theoretical approaches in SM, Boltzmannian SM and Gibbsian SM, and discuss how they conceptualise equilibrium and explain the approach to it. In doing so, the authors examine how probabilities are introduced into the theories, how they deal with irreversibility, how they understand the relation between the micro and the macro level, and how the two approaches relate to each other. Throughout, the authors also pinpoint open problems that can be subject of future research. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Idealizations in Physics
This Element offers an opinionated and selective introduction to philosophical issues concerning idealizations in physics, including the concept of and reasons for introducing idealization, abstraction, and approximation, possible taxonomy and justification, and application to issues of mathematical Platonism, scientific realism, and scientific understanding.
