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Empiricism and Philosophy of PhysicsExplanation, Unification and Reduction

Empiricism and Philosophy of Physics: Explanation, Unification and Reduction [Two developments of Hempel’s theory of explanation are discussed in this chapter, unification in the vein of Friedman, and theoretical reduction in the vein of Nagel. The problems in Friedman’s theory of unification are traced to its purely syntactical analysis. By contrast, Nagel’s account of theory reduction contains from the very outset non-formal aspects, which gives room for an account of how theory relates to the world, i.e., for an account of non-formal semantics. So a successful reduction in Nagel’s sense may be viewed as ontological reduction; one kind of objects are conceived as a sub-category of a broader range of objects. This is one important aim of physics.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Empiricism and Philosophy of PhysicsExplanation, Unification and Reduction

Part of the Synthese Library Book Series (volume 434)
Johansson, Lars-Göran
Empiricism and Philosophy of Physics — Jan 14, 2021
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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
ISBN
978-3-030-64952-4
Pages
91 –99
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-64953-1_6
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Two developments of Hempel’s theory of explanation are discussed in this chapter, unification in the vein of Friedman, and theoretical reduction in the vein of Nagel. The problems in Friedman’s theory of unification are traced to its purely syntactical analysis. By contrast, Nagel’s account of theory reduction contains from the very outset non-formal aspects, which gives room for an account of how theory relates to the world, i.e., for an account of non-formal semantics. So a successful reduction in Nagel’s sense may be viewed as ontological reduction; one kind of objects are conceived as a sub-category of a broader range of objects. This is one important aim of physics.]

Published: Jan 14, 2021

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