Overview
- Advocates strict nominalism about properties and physical quantities
- Presents a novel view on laws
- Offers a new solution to the measurement problem
Part of the book series: Synthese Library (SYLI, volume 434)
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Table of contents (18 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Background
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Front Matter
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Philosophy of Physics
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Front Matter
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Keywords
- empiricism and nominalism
- induction in the naturalistic perspective
- interconnectedness of body, space and time
- concept formation and discovery of laws
- Direction of time
- The measurement problem
- Individuation of objects and entanglement
- Fields or particles but not both
- realism, underdetermination and theory equivalence
- antirealism about quantities
- Aristotle’s physics
- Empiricism during the 19th century
- Van Fraassen’s Constructive Empiricism
- Abstract objects and Nominalism
- Nominalism and abstract objects
- law of excluded middle
- Induction and Concept Formation
- Realism, theory-equivalence and underdetermination of theories
- Space, Time and Body; three fundamental concepts
- Fields and particles
About this book
This book presents a thoroughly empiricist account of physics. By providing an overview of the development of empiricism from Ockham to van Fraassen the book lays the foundation for its own version of empiricism. Empiricism for the author consists of three ideas: nominalism, i.e. dismissing second order quantification as unnecessary, epistemological naturalism, and viewing classification of things in natural kinds as a human habit not in need for any justification.
The book offers views on the realism-antirealism debate as well as on the individuation of theories as a thoroughly neglected aspect of underdetermination. The book next discusses a broad range of topics, including the predicates body, spatial distance and time interval, the ontology of electromagnetism, propensities, the measurement problem and other philosophical issues in quantum theory. Discussions about the direction of time and about string theory make up the final part of thebook.
Reviews
“A highly engaging reading … . the book has a wide scope, dealing with many interesting problems, appealing to many distinct sources, to finally bring in a unified naturalistic solution to those problems. It will certainly be useful for many different kinds of readers; even though it is not an introductory book, the presentation is quite friendly, and the themes dealt with are probably some of the most important in the area today.” (Jonas Rafael Becker Arenhart, Mathematical Reviews,June, 2022)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Empiricism and Philosophy of Physics
Authors: Lars-Göran Johansson
Series Title: Synthese Library
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64953-1
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-64952-4Published: 14 January 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-64955-5Published: 14 January 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-64953-1Published: 13 January 2021
Series ISSN: 0166-6991
Series E-ISSN: 2542-8292
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 291
Number of Illustrations: 11 b/w illustrations
Topics: Philosophy of Science, Epistemology, Physics, general