منابع مشابه
Backwards Explanation and Unification
It is an open question whether we ever successfully explain earlier states by appealing to later ones, and, further, whether this is even possible. Typically, these two questions are answered in the same way: if we give and accept ‘backward explanations,’ they must be possible; if they are impossible, we are right to reject them. I argue that backwards explanations are brittle—they fail if the ...
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Electroweak unification is implied by the local structure theorem of distribution theory applied to the causal interval R = X − Z between two space-time points X and Z . Taking R as generating function, the potentials of the electromagnetic and weak interactions are obtained by applying the causal d’Alembertian operator onR, and both potentials can be given a proper physical interpretation prov...
متن کاملThe Causal and Unification Approaches to Explanation Unified—Causally
Two major modern accounts of explanation are the causal and the unification accounts. My aim in this paper is to provide a kind of unification of the two, by using the central technical apparatus of the unification account to solve a central problem faced by the causal account, namely, the problem of determining which parts of a causal network are explanatorily relevant to the occurrence of an ...
متن کاملUnification, Explanation, and the Composition of Causes in Newtonian Mechanics
William Whewells philosophy of scientific discovery is applied to the problem of understanding the nature of unification and explanation by the composition of causes in Newtonian mechanics. The essay attempts to demonstrate: (1) The sense in which approximate laws (e.g. Keplers laws of planetary motion) successfully refer to real physical systems rather than to (fictitious) idealizations o...
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ژورنال
عنوان ژورنال: Noûs
سال: 1994
ISSN: 0029-4624
DOI: 10.2307/2216050