How the Laws of Physics LieIn this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, Nancy Cartwright argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe the regularities that exist in nature. Yet she is not `anti-realist'. Rather, she draws a novel distinction, arguing that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but that the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot. |
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User Review - smartalecvt - LibraryThingThis is one of the great originals in the philosophy of science. It's a treatise on how science abstracts away reality to get to its laws, and in so doing, loses its ability to truthfully describe reality. Read full review
Contents
| 1 | |
Essay 1 Causal Laws and Effective Strategies | 21 |
Essay 2 The Truth Doesnt Explain Much | 44 |
Essay 3 Do the Laws of Physics State the Facts? | 54 |
Essay 4 The Reality of Causes in a World of Instrumental Laws | 74 |
Essay 5 When Explanation Leads to Inference | 87 |
Essay 6 For Phenomenological Laws | 100 |
Essay 7 Fitting Facts to Equations | 128 |
Essay 8 The Simulacrum Account of Explanation | 143 |
Essay 9 How the Measurement Problem is an Artefact of the Mathematics | 163 |
Author Index | 217 |
| 219 | |
Common terms and phrases
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Bibliographic information
| Title | How the Laws of Physics Lie |
| Author | Nancy Cartwright |
| Publisher | OUP Oxford, 1983 |
| ISBN | 0191519901, 9780191519901 |
| Length | 230 pages |
| Subjects | › Science / Philosophy & Social Aspects |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |