Laws and Symmetry.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (412 pages)
- Clarendon Paperbacks Series .
- Clarendon Paperbacks Series .
Intro -- Preface -- Summary Table of Contents -- Contents -- 1. Introduction -- 1. The need for global constraints -- 2. The secular, global, and axiomatic method -- 3. The end of metaphysics? -- 4. The birth of symmetry -- PART I. ARE THERE LAWS OF NATURE? -- 2. What Are Laws of Nature? -- 1. The importance of laws -- 2. Peirce on scholastic realism -- 3. A twentieth-century example: Davidson -- 4. Criteria of adequacy for accounts of laws -- 5. Philosophical accounts: the two main problems -- 3. Ideal Science: David Lewis's Account of Laws -- 1. The definition of law -- 2. The definition of necessity -- 3. Laws related to necessity -- 4. Do Lewis's laws explain? -- 5. Lewis's anti-nominalism -- 6. Laws related to the pursuit of science -- 7. A parable -- 8. Conclusion: deceptive success -- 4. Necessity, Worlds, and Chance -- 1. Are there other possible worlds? -- 2. Laws related to worlds -- 3. The identification problem -- 4. Time and the branching universe -- 5. Probability: laws and objective chance -- 6. The fundamental question about chance -- 7. Possible worlds and explanation -- 8. Relation to science: Pandora's box -- 9. The perils of a reified model -- 5. Universals: Laws Grounded in Nature -- 1. Laws as relations among universals -- 2. The lawgivers' regress -- 3. Does Armstrong avoid the regress? -- 4. Armstrong on probabilistic laws -- 5. A new answer to the fundamental question about chance? -- 6. What the Renaissance said to the Schoolmen -- PART II. BELIEF AS RATIONAL BUT LAWLESS -- 6. Inference to the Best Explanation: Salvation by Laws? -- 1. On the failures of induction -- 2. Dretske on the remarkable confirmation of laws -- 3. Armstrong's justification of induction -- 4. Why I do not believe in inference to the best explanation -- 5. What good is there in this rule? -- 7. Towards a New Epistemology. 1. Pascal: the value of a hope -- 2. The probabilistic turn -- 3. Logic of judgement -- 4. Inference to the best explanation is incoherent -- 5. Sketch for an epistemology -- 6. Between realism and sceptical despair -- 8. What If There Are No Laws? A Manifesto -- 1. Problems that laws purport to solve -- 2. The four tasks and the semantic approach to science -- 3. Realism and empiricism -- 4. Acceptance of a statistical theory -- 5. Probabilistic theories and decision-making -- 6. The languages(s) of science -- PART III. SYMMETRY AS GUIDE TO THEORY -- 9. Introduction to the Semantic Approach -- 1. Phenomena, data, and theories -- 2. From the axiomatic to the semantic approach -- 3. Theory structure: models and their logical space -- 4. What is interpretation? The three-tiered theory -- 5. Theorizing: data models and theoretical models -- 6. Experimentation: as test and as means of inquiry -- 10. Symmetry Arguments in Science and Metaphysics -- 1. Mirror images: symmetry as proof technique -- 2. The symmetry instinct: thirst for hidden variables -- 3. Symmetry and invariance -- 4. Symmetries of time: what is determinism? -- 5. True generality: symmetry arguments in perspective -- 11. Symmetries Guiding Modern Science -- 1. Symmetries of space -- 2. Relativity as symmetry -- 3. Conservation, invariance, and covariance -- 4. Case-study: conservation of momentum -- 5. True generality: Weyl on possible worlds -- PART IV. SYMMETRY AND THE ILLUSION OF LOGICAL PROBABILITY -- 12. Indifference: The Symmetries of Probability -- 1. Intuitive probability -- 2. Celestial prior probabilities -- 3. Indifference and sufficient reason -- 4. Buffon's needle: empirical import of indifference -- 5. The challenge: Bertrand's paradoxes -- 6. Symmetries to the rescue? -- 7. Pyrrhic victory and ultimate defeat -- 8. The ethics of ambiguity. 13. Symmetries of Probability Kinematics -- 1. A general approach to opinion change -- 2. Symmetry argument for conditionalization -- 3. Probability as measure: the history -- 4. Symmetry: an argument for Jeffrey conditionalization -- 5. Levi's objection: a simulated horse-race -- 6. General probability kinematics and entropy -- 7. Conclusion: normal rule-following -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.
This is a book in the philosophy of science, which examines the concept of laws of nature. The author analyses and rejects arguments for the existence of such laws, and argues that there is no point in us believing that they exist. This has important implications for scientists, since he rejects the idea of law as an inadequate clue to science. In the second part of the book he develops a philosophical approach to science which takes account of these objections.
9780191519994
Necessity (Philosophy). Philosophy and science. Philosophy of nature. Symmetry.