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Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy of Science
The Reasonable Effectiveness Of Mathematics In The Natural Sciences, Nicolas Fillion
The Reasonable Effectiveness Of Mathematics In The Natural Sciences, Nicolas Fillion
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
One of the most unsettling problems in the history of philosophy examines how mathematics can be used to adequately represent the world. An influential thesis, stated by Eugene Wigner in his paper entitled "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," claims that "the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." Contrary to this view, this thesis delineates and implements a strategy to show that the applicability of mathematics is very reasonable indeed.
I distinguish three forms of the …
From Mirror To Mirage: The Idea Of Logical Space In Kant, Wittgenstein, And Van Fraassen, Lucien R. Lamoureux
From Mirror To Mirage: The Idea Of Logical Space In Kant, Wittgenstein, And Van Fraassen, Lucien R. Lamoureux
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
This dissertation investigates the origin, intellectual development and use of a semantic variant of the idea of logical space found implicitly in Kant and explicitly in early Wittgenstein and van Fraassen. It elucidates the idea of logical space as the idea of images or pictures representative of reality organized into a logico-mathematical structure circumscribing a form of all possible worlds. Its main claim is that application of these images or pictures to reality is through a certain conception of self.
The first chapter presents a novel interpretation of Kant’s semantic theory of schemata in the Critique of Pure Reason, …
Explanation In Science, James A. Overton
Explanation In Science, James A. Overton
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Scientific explanation is an important goal of scientific practise. Philosophers have proposed a striking diversity of seemingly incompatible accounts of explanation, from deductive-nomological to statistical relevance, unification, pragmatic, causal-mechanical, mechanistic, causal intervention, asymptotic, and model-based accounts. In this dissertation I apply two novel methods to reexamine our evidence about scientific explanation in practise and thereby address the fragmentation of philosophical accounts.
I start by collecting a data set of 781 articles from one year of the journal Science. Using automated text mining techniques I measure the frequency and distribution of several groups of philosophically interesting words, such as "explain", …