Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A Philosophical Overview

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Interpreting Physics

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science ((BSPS,volume 289))

  • 1167 Accesses

Abstract

Earlier philosophers who analyzed the role of fundamental theories in physics generally assigned linguistic analysis a preliminary role. Quine and Sellars each developed methodologies for proceeding from an ordinary language framework to a final unifying framework based on anticipations of the structure ultimate theories should have. The assumption was that only the final framework supplies the true ontology. Reactions against their syntactic conception of theories led to a semantic conception of theories. The emphasis on individual theories led to interpretation through models with no role for linguistic analysis. However, linguistic considerations are indispensable when one analyzes the normal functioning of experimental and theoretical physics. Ordinary language implicitly contains various inference-supporting structures that were gradually modified in the protracted development of the language of physics. Here we consider two such structures, categorization and the metaphorical extension of terms to new contexts. We also draw on Davidson’s semantics.

If it is true that there are but two kinds of people in the world—the logical positivists and the god-damned English professors—then I suppose that I am a logical positivist.

Clark Glymour, Theory and Evidence

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Salmon’s (1979), survey article forcefully presents the reasons why such informal semantic analyses are needed prior to any formal reconstruction. Even Patrick Suppes (1979), dean of formal reconstructionists, cautions against excessive reliance on formalistic approaches to the interpretation of science (Ibid., pp. 16–27).

  2. 2.

    Sellars developed this in (1963b, pp. 1–40).

  3. 3.

    Sellars basic treatments of material rules of inference are in his “Some Reflections on Language Games”, Sellars (1963c, pp. 321–358, 1958, 1962); “Counterfactuals, Dispositions, and the Causal Modalities”; and “Time and the World Order” which treats the relation between ‘thing frameworks’ and ‘event frameworks’ and argues the conceptual priority of the former. Brown (2006, chap. 5) presents a systematic revision of the types of inferences treated.

  4. 4.

    See Hesse (1974, 1980). A more detailed summary of her position is given in my (1979, pp. 504–510). The somewhat negative appraisal given there will be revised in the course of the present work.

  5. 5.

    See Norris (2002) for discussions of the objectivity of conceptually structured properties and Giere (2006, chap. 2) for a perspectival reinterpretation of the problem.

  6. 6.

    This is a summary of material treated in White (1984, chap. 6).

  7. 7.

    I have been chiefly influenced by the linguistic accounts of Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Pinker (2007) and the philosophical account of Davidson (1985). A survey of other accounts may be found in Engstrom (1951).

References

  • Achinstein, Peter. 1963. The Nature of Explanation. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Achinstein, Peter. 1968. Concepts of Science. Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Atkinson, Nancy. 1984. Dissertation: Sentience and Stuff. Pasadena, CA: Claremont College.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Harold I. 2006. Conceptual Systems. London; New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carnap, Rudolf. 1950. Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology. Revue International de Philosophie, 4, 20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cartwright, Nancy. 1983. How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Coffa, J. Alberto. 1976. Carnap’s Sprachanschauung Circa 1932. In Fred Suppe, and Peter Asquith (eds.), PSA, 1976 (pp. 205–241). East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, Donald. 1985. Inquiries into Truth & Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, Donald. 1986. A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge. In Ernest LePore (ed.), Truth and Interpretation: Persxpectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (pp. 307–319). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, Donald. 1990. The Structure and Content of Truth. Journal of Philosophy, 87, 279–328.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, Donald. 2001. Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, Donald, and Jaako Hintikka. 1969. Words and Objections: Essays on the Work of W. V. Quine. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Queiroz, Kevin. 1988. Semantics and the Darwinian Revolution Philosophy of Science, 55, 238–259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Engstrom, Anders. 1951. Hintikka and Sandu on Metaphor. Philosophia, 28, 391–410.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Franck, J., and G. Hertz. 1967. On the Excitation of the 2536 A Merc. reson. Line by Elec. Collis. In D. Ter Haar (ed.), The Old Quantum Theory (pp. 160–166). London: Pergamon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, Michael. 1991. The Re-evaluation of Logical Empiricism. Journal of Philosophy, 88, 505–519.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, Michael. 2008. Carnap on Theoretical Terms: Structuralism Without Metaphysics. Address to the Bay Area Philosophy of Science Colloquium.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giere, Ronald N. (ed.) 2006. Scientific Perspectivism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hesse, Mary. 1974. The Structure of Scientific Inference. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hesse, Mary. 1980. Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackendoff, Ray. 1983. Semantics and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Körner, S. 1970. Categorical Frameworks. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakatos, Imre. 1978. The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laudan, Larry. 1977. Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth. Berkeley, CA: University of California.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacKinnon, Edward. 1979. Scientific Realism: The New Debates. Philosophy of Science, 46, 501–532.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacKinnon, Edward. 1982. Scientific Explanation and Atomic Physics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norris, Christopher. 2002. Ambiguities of the Third Way: Realism, Anti-realism, and Response-dependence. The Philosophical Forum, 33, 1–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinker, Steven. 2007. The Stuff of Thought Language as a Window into Human Nature. New York, NY: Viking.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quine, Willard van Orman. 1960. Word & Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quine, Willard van Orman. 1961. On What There Is. In Willard van Orman Quine (ed.), From a Logical Point of View (pp. 1–19). New York, NY: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quine, Willard Van Orman. (ed.) 1966. The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays. New York, NY: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quine, Willard van Orman. 1969. Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quine, Willard van Orman. 1973. The Roots of Reference: The Paul Carus Lectures. La Salle, IL: Open Court.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quine, Willard van Orman. 1976. Whither Physical Objects. In R. S. Cohen (ed.), Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos (pp. 497–504). Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Quine, Willard van Orman, Lewis Edwin Hahn, and Paul Arthur Schilpp. 1986. The Philosophy of W.V. Quine. La Salle, IL: Open Court.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reichenbach, Hans. 1956. The Direction of Time. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosch, Eleanor. 1999. Principls of Categorization. In Eric Margolis and Stephan Laurence (eds.), Concepts: Core Readings. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salmon, Wesley. 1979. Informal Analytic Approaches to the Philosophy of Science. In P. Asquith, and H. Kyburg (eds.), Current Research in the Philosophy of Science (pp. 3–15). East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schilpp, P. A. 1963. The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. La Salle, IL: Open Court.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, Wilfrid. 1958. Counterfactuals, Dispositions, and the Causal Modalities. In Herbert Feigl, Michael Scriven, and Grover Maxwell (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. II. Concepts, Theories and the Mind-Body Problem. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, Wilfrid. 1962. Time and the World Order. In Herbert Feigl, and Grover Maxwell (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Vol. III. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, Wilfrid. 1963a. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. In Wilfrid Sellars (ed.), Science, Perception and Reality (pp. 127–196). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, Wilfrid. 1963b. Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man. In Willfrid Sellars (ed.), Science Perception and Reality (pp. 1–40).

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, Wilfrid. 1963c. Some Reflections on Language Games. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shapere, Dudley. 1983. Reason and the Search for Knowledge. Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Strawson, Peter. 1959. Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London: Methuen.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Strawson, Peter. 1992. Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suppes, Patrick. 1979. The Role of Formal Methods in the Philosophy of Science. In Peter D. Asquith, and Henry E. Kyburg (eds.), Current Research in the Philosophy of Science (pp. 16–27). East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Fraassen, Bas. 1991. Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist View. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • White, Alan. 1984. Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zadeh, L. 1965. Fuzzy Sets. Information and Control, 8, 338–353.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. California State University East Bay, Manzanita Drive 2045, 94611, Oakland, USA

    Edward Mackinnon

Authors
  1. Edward Mackinnon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Edward Mackinnon .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Mackinnon, E. (2012). A Philosophical Overview. In: Interpreting Physics. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 289. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2369-6_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation