On the epistemological foundations of the law of the lever
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 40 (3):315-318 (2009)
| Abstract | In this paper I challenge Paolo Palmieri’s reading of the Mach-Vailati debate on Archimedes’s proof of the law of the lever. I argue that the actual import of the debate concerns the possible epistemic (as opposed to merely pragmatic) role of mathematical arguments in empirical physics, and that construed in this light Vailati carries the upper hand. This claim is defended by showing that Archimedes’s proof of the law of the lever is not a way of appealing to a non-empirical source of information, but a way of explicating the mathematical structure that can represent the empirical information at our disposal in the most general way. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Law of the lever Mach Archimedes | |||||||||
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Similar books and articlesPaolo Palmieri (2008). The Empirical Basis of Equilibrium: Mach, Vailati, and the Lever. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 39 (1):42-53.
George Goe (1972). Archimedes' Theory of the Lever and Mach's Critique. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 2 (4):329-345.
Wilfrid Sellars (1981). Foundations for a Metaphysics of Pure Process, I: The Lever of Archimedes. The Monist 64 (1):3-36.
Wilfrid Sellars (2007). In the Space of Reasons: Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars. Harvard University Press.
Manuel Bächtold (forthcoming). Saving Mach's View on Atoms. Journal for General Philosophy of Science.
Ivor Bulmer Thomas (1958). Archimedes E. J. Dijksterhuis: Archimedes. Pp. 422; 173 Figs. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1956. Paper, Kr. 60. The Classical Review 8 (01):43-45.
J. Lever (1970). Where Are We Headed? Grand Rapids, Mich.,W. B. Eerdmans.
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