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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter 2020

Is Physics Biased Against Alternative Possibilities?

From the book New Approaches to Scientific Realism

  • Tomasz Placek
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664737-014

Abstract

The paper poses the question of whether physics contains some rules or interpretational principles that result in it being biased with regard to indeterminism (understood modally) and in favor of determinism. It identifies one rule of that sort with Hadamard-inspired principles of theory construction. It then describes four strategies that are used to guard determinism in the presence of non-unique solutions to a theory’s basic equations.

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston
From the book
New Approaches to Scientific Realism
New Approaches to Scientific Realism

Chapters in this book (23)

Frontmatter
Contents
Novelty in Scientific Realism: New Approaches to an Ongoing Debate
I New Framework for the Realism and Anti-realism Debate
Scientific Realism: What’s All the Fuss?
Scientific Realism and Three Problems for Inference to the Best Explanation
Scientific Realism and the Conflict with Common Sense
II Approaches based on History and Scientific Realism
Evolving Realities: Scientific Prediction and Objectivity from the Perspective of Historical Epistemology
Do Cognitive Illusions Make Scientific Realism Deceptively Attractive?
III Logical Approaches in Realist Terms
Against Paraconsistentism
Stratified Nomic Realism
IV Logico-Epistemological Structural Realism and Instrumental Realism
Structural Realism: The Only Defensible Realist Game in Town?
Mathematical Language and the Changing Concept of Physical Reality
V New Developments on Critical Scientific Realism and Pragmatic Realism
Interdisciplinarity from the Perspective of Critical Scientific Realism
Pragmatic Realism and Scientific Prediction: The Role of Complexity
VI Realism on Causality and Representation
Realism and AIM (Action, Intervention, Manipulation) Theories of Causality
Is Physics Biased Against Alternative Possibilities?
VII Realist Accounts on Objectivity and Facts
Realistic Components in the Conception of Pragmatic Idealism: The Role of Objectivity and the Notion of “Fact”
“Heard Enough from the Experts”? A Popperian Enquiry
Realism in Archaeology – A Philosophical Perspective
VIII Realism and the Social World: From Social Sciences to the Sciences of the Artificial
A Structural Realist Approach to International Relations Theory
Objectivity and Truth in Sciences of Communication and the Case of the Internet
Index of Names
Subject Index
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