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9/1/2024 0 Comments New Books from Boston Studies
6/1/2024 1 Comment Vale Daniel BreazealeBy Lydia Patton A few days ago, a friend’s post on social media brought the news that Daniel Breazeale had passed away. I stared for a few seconds at the picture. There are some people for whom social media is inadequate – the flat bites of representation you get in a post are not enough to get at that person. Dan is one of them. Soon, people began writing tributes: former students, friends, colleagues, bloggers. There are many more people in real life who are remembering Dan through conversations, memories, and laughter. He dug deep into things and his presence dug deep into people. Dan was there for me at a very tricky time, just by being himself. When I was fifteen years old, I transferred from Chatham College to the University of Kentucky. My main goal was to be a dancer, and the director of the Lexington Ballet, Rosemary Miles, kindly allowed me to take daily company classes. I wanted to go into dance right away and not go to college, but my parents asked that I get a degree to have something to fall back on. At first I was a French major, but the required French classes conflicted with ballet classes. My mother and I looked through the catalog and found the major with the fewest course requirements: no surprise, it was philosophy. When I called the philosophy department, they set up an appointment with the advisor, one Don Howard. At the first of many meetings, he told me that I would find many intellectual friends in philosophy. As usual, Don was correct. Over the next few years, I started performing with the Lexington Ballet in the corps de ballet. It was exciting - until an old injury effectively ended my dancing career before it began. That was very hard. But in my final years at UK, two things happened that made it easier. Don Howard taught a course on the history of philosophy of science. Dan Breazeale offered a seminar on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. What I learned in those years was much more than the course material. Dan and Don were models of how to be a philosopher. They were fearless and fair in their approach to the material, they didn’t bend to trends in the discipline, and they lived what they studied. Listening to Dan Breazeale talk about Fichte or Nietzsche, you were brought into a living conversation. After twenty more years in the profession, I’m even more stunned at how he did it, because I know much more about how hard it is to assimilate, not only the work of such offbeat figures, but their creative reactions to the traditions to which they belonged. Dan Breazeale established an international center of Fichte studies in Kentucky, and he helped to establish the careers of so many people. He was a natural and talented mentor. Everyone knew that his courses were difficult and that he had high standards. But, as several of his students have observed, Dan was always supportive when it counted. I remember the first philosophy presentation I ever did, as an undergraduate taking his seminar on the first Critique. I thought I’d prepared for it, but I had no earthly idea how to prepare for such a thing. So it was absolutely terrible. I spent most of it staring at my notes and having a panic attack. Dan sat up alertly with a pen and a piece of paper ready to take notes, giving his full attention. You could see the exact moment when he resigned himself to it being awful. But he still sat up until the end, still respected the effort I’d put in, and never said anything to me about it. He taught me that high standards mean nothing if you can’t be kind and support someone as a person when it counts. I rarely live up to that but it is worth living up to. Ever since hearing the news, I’ve felt a stabbing regret for not keeping up more over the years. We did stay in touch from time to time, but it seems so little now compared to the influence he had. I suppose I’m just trying to understand the magnitude of the loss. He should have had so many more years, and we should have had many more years with him around. It’s some consolation that those of us who knew him can still learn more about him by reading his work. Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes from Fichte's Early Philosophy (2013, Oxford) "Philosophy and “the method of fictions”: Maimon's proposal and its critics." - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (2):702-716. "Fichte's Conception of Philosophy as a "Pragmatic History of the Human Mind" and the Contributions of Kant, Platner, and Maimon." - 2001 - Journal of the History of Ideas 62 (4):685-703. "Lange, Nietzsche, and Stack." - 1989 - International Studies in Philosophy 21 (2):91-103.
11/4/2023 0 Comments Working Toward Solutions in Fluid Dynamics and Astrophysics: What the Equations Don't SayLink to the book Introduction By Lydia Patton Systems of differential equations describe, model, explain, and predict states of physical systems. Experimental and theoretical branches of physics including general relativity, climate science, and particle physics have differential equations at their center. Newton’s law of gravitation, Hooke’s law, the Einstein field equations for the gravitational field in general relativity, Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetism, and the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid motion are all systems of differential equations. Philosophical questions arise from the use of differential equations in physical science and in mathematics, and a systematic, ground-level treatment would provide a crucial framework for this area of research. In particular, there is a need for sustained attention to the questions in the philosophy of science that arise from the use of differential equations in physical science. Wendy Parker (2017), Margaret Morrison (1999), Nicolas Fillion (2012), Erik Curiel (2010), Robert Batterman (2013), and James Mattingly and Walter Warwick (2009) are among those who have contributed philosophical studies of the use of differential equations in the analysis of physical systems. The papers in this volume analyze the use of differential equations in fluid dynamics and astronomy. The central problem at stake is the fact that direct solutions to differential equations are not available in many domains for which the systems of equations are constructed. Lack of a direct or immediate solution means that an equation or system of equations does not have a solution in a domain without employing a method that either restricts the domain, or extends the equations, or both. Mathematicians may refer to the lack of an 'analytic' solution, which often means that there is no unique function that is a solution to the equations. Or they may refer to the lack of an 'exact' solution. An equation's being without an exact solution can mean a number of things: that no closed form solution can be written, for instance, or that the available solution does not provide unique exact values for variables of interest, but provide approximate or perturbative solutions instead. (These are not the only definitions in common use. See Fillion and Bangu 2015 and McLarty 2023 for discussion of types of solutions.) The papers that follow focus on the Navier-Stokes equations in fluid dynamics and Einstein's field equations of general relativity as they are employed in astrophysics. The Navier-Stokes equations do not have immediate exact solutions for many physical fluid systems. Similarly, the Einstein field equations of general relativity do not have direct solutions in many domains of interest, including the merger of astronomical bodies, which emanates gravitational waves. And yet, scientists and engineers work with these equations every day. Ingenious methods have been devised, which may involve finding simulated solutions for artificial or idealized situations and then extending those solutions to actual cases; or finding 'weak' solutions which may not have derivatives (solutions) everywhere, but which nonetheless satisfy the equations in some restricted sense; or finding another strategy to extend the equations to the domain of interest. In many cases, solutions that initially apply only in restricted or idealized contexts are extended to a wider set of physically realistic situations. Equations may be used in scientific reasoning to yield predictions and explanations, to predict states of a system and uniquely specify the values of variables. Equations can play these roles directly when immediate solutions are available. This collection goes beyond that familiar case to explore what happens when direct solutions are absent, or when the task at hand is precisely to find a way to connect the equations to a specific physical situation. One of the most striking results learned early on in real analysis is the fact that there are many more irrationals than rational numbers. Early education often presents irrational numbers as exceptions, so it comes as a surprise to find that they are more common than the rational numbers. The application of differential equations to physical contexts reveals a similar situation. Physical reasoning using differential equations usually is presented as follows: scientists select an appropriate equation or system of equations, find a solution, and thereby determine the evolution and properties of a physical system. But cases in which a direct solution is not available and scientists must work out a solution, or work in the absence of a solution, are far from the exception. Working with equations can involve reasoning toward, from, and around equations, as well, in the absence of a solution in the domain of interest. The papers focus on how scientists reason with, around, and toward differential equations in fluid dynamics and astrophysics in the absence of immediate solutions. The process of reasoning may involve extending available solutions to differential equations to initially inaccessible domains. (A conversation with Hasok Chang put a clear focus on 'stretching' or 'extending' equations, which is a helpful way of describing one aspect of these situations.) Or, it may involve finding novel ways of simulating or modeling the domain so that it can make contact with the equations, or new methods for calculating, or new ways of measuring. McLarty (this volume) focuses serious attention on how methods of calculation can make a difference in methods for solving, but also for reasoning more broadly with, differential equations. McLarty draws an analogy between the Navier-Stokes equations and Emmy Noether's theorems on this score. A target physical phenomenon, say turbulent fluids or merging black holes, must be characterized in a certain way to be tractable using differential equations in the first place. One must choose a way to represent and measure physical variables. Beyond that, scientists must determine ways to represent a physical domain as a system, including how to determine initial conditions, boundary conditions, and constraints on system evolution. Curiel has argued that "it is satisfaction of the kinematical constraints — fixed, unchanging relations of constraint among the possible values of a system’s physical quantities — that ground the idea of the individual state of a system as represented by a given theory. If the individual quantities a theory attributes to a system do not stand in the minimal relations to each other required by the theory, then the idea of a state as representing that kind of system cannot be cogently formulated, and without the idea of an individual state of a system one can do nothing in the theory to try to represent the system" (Curiel 2016). In many cases, establishing initial and boundary conditions and kinematical constraints to characterize a given problem allows for differential equations to be applied to solve that problem. For this collection, Susan Sterrett builds on her earlier work on symbolic reasoning, physical analogy, dimensional analysis, and modeling. She argues here that there is a stronger and broader role for mathematics in characterizing physical systems than simply solving equations that are already known. Sterrett, McLarty, and Patton (this volume) urge that we evaluate the mathematics used in reasoning about physical systems in a more flexible, creative way - including the reasoning used to characterize and to measure those systems. Setting up a solution to differential equations in a specific physical domain requires finding precise ways to determine the conditions and constraints under which a solution is possible in that domain. Even in highly theoretical fields of physics, setting up a problem involves deep understanding of the physical situation at hand, as Elder's and Sterrett's papers for this collection show brilliantly. Abstract theoretical research may require increasingly precise understanding of a physical system, because counterfactual reasoning is based on knowing the exact parameters and constraints to alter when departing from the concrete properties of the system. Patton (this volume) argues that weak and simulated solutions to equations can allow for heuristic extension of structural, physical reasoning into situations where the equations lack direct solutions. On the other side, reasoning about the physical properties of a system may require significant theoretical or modelling resources. For instance, as Elder (this volume) explains, the data gathered by the new generation of gravitational wave detectors is not independently informative. Data is filtered through a bank of waveform templates generated using both empirical and theoretical reasoning, after which post-data analysis allows for estimates of the physical parameters of the target system. (Elder (this volume) and Patton (2020) provide details, including references to the scientific literature on this topic.) The numerical simulations and waveform templates used by the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra Scientific Collaboration are constructed and validated using vast theoretical and empirical resources including probabilistic methods, methods of approximation, dynamical equations and reasoning, and empirical input. Elder shows that the parameters, dynamical reasoning, and empirical information crystallized in the waveform templates supports their extraordinary flexibility in application. An essential tenet of this volume is that a great deal of creative mathematical reasoning can go on in physics without direct solutions to the equations in the field of interest. Our aim is to integrate this fact, known to the scientists themselves and to historians of mathematics for some time, into the philosophical analysis of physical reasoning. (A recent, much-anticipated history of differential equations is Gray (2021); this and much of Gray's earlier work, including his work on Poincaré, explores the development of equations in satisfying detail.) Lydia Patton Virginia Tech Link to the book References Batterman, Robert. 2013. "The Tyranny of Scales", pp. 255-86 in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Curiel, Erik. 2010 (preprint). "On the Formal Consistency of Theory and Experiment, with Applications to Problems in the Initial-Value Formulation of the Partial-Differential Equations of Mathematical Physics." Preprint, PhilSciArchive. Url = {http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/8660/}. Gray, Jeremy. 2021. Change and Variations: A History of Differential Equations to 1900. Dordrecht: Springer. Fillion, Nicolas. 2012. The Reasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. Dissertation, The University of Western Ontario. Mattingly, James and Walter Warwick. 2009. "Projectible Predicates in Analogue and Simulated Systems." Synthese 8 (3): 465-482. Morrison, Margaret. 1999. "Models as Autonomous Agents." In Mary Morgan and Margaret Morrison. Models as Mediators. Cambridge University Press. Parker, Wendy. 2017. "Computer Simulation, Measurement, and Data Assimilation." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (1): 273-304. 15/7/2022 0 Comments Mary Domski on Newton's Third LawThis new book is now available open access from Routledge. Click through and click on "Download" in the top right hand corner. Guest Post by Joshua Eisenthal (CalTech, The Einstein Papers Project) Models and Multiplicities Joshua Eisenthal. Journal of the History of Philosophy. Volume 60, Number 2, April 2022. Although Heinrich Hertz is best known for his groundbreaking experimental detection of electric waves, his most significant impact on philosophy stemmed from his theoretical treatise, Principles of Mechanics. This text had a far-reaching influence on Wittgenstein in particular, and in the Tractatus there are two explicit (but obscure) references to Hertz’s work. In my paper, “Models and Multiplicities”, I take up the task of interpreting Wittgenstein’s first reference to Principles: 4.04 There must be just as much as is distinguishable in a proposition as in the situation that it represents. The two must possess the same logical (mathematical) multiplicity. (Compare Hertz’s Mechanics on dynamical models.). My central claim in this paper is that a satisfactory interpretation of this remark has a direct impact on the debate between “ontologically oriented” and “logically oriented” interpretations of the Tractatus — a debate that has persisted for at least the last fifty years. The central question in this debate is whether Wittgenstein presents an account of the fundamental structure of reality in order to explain the meaningfulness of ordinary sentences. On an ontologically oriented view, it is because reality ultimately consists of simple objects (and sentences with sense can ultimately be analyzed into names of such objects) that language is able to describe the world. In contrast, on a logically oriented view, the Tractatus offers no such ontological underpinning of the meaningfulness of our language. Indeed, on a logically oriented view the Tractarian ‘ontology’ does not have any significance if considered in isolation from the logical analysis of ordinary sentences, an analysis that is carried out entirely for the sake of avoiding certain philosophical confusions. The overarching goal of my paper is to argue that Wittgenstein’s reference to Hertz’s dynamical models provides significant evidence in favor of a logically oriented interpretation. The crux of this argument draws on the parallels between Wittgenstein’s analysis of sentences and Hertz’s analysis of mechanical systems. Wittgenstein brings this parallel to our attention by prompting us to look to Hertz’s dynamical models in order to understand why a proposition and the situation it represents must have the same “multiplicity”. In Principles, a dynamical model does not capture the ontological constitution of the target system; rather, it captures that system’s degrees of freedom — the information that is necessary and sufficient for writing down appropriate equations of motion. This is the essential content of a mechanical description, what all descriptions of a given system have in common. In a similar vein, Tractarian analysis captures the essential content of a proposition, what all sentences which express the same sense have in common. According to the Tractatus, two sentences express the same sense just in case they have the same set of logical relationships with other propositions. (As Wittgenstein puts it at 5.141, “If p follows from q and q from p, then they are one and the same proposition.”) I argue that, on this point, the parallel with Hertz is especially illuminating. In particular, I argue that, for both Hertz and Wittgenstein, analysis does not lead to a specification of ultimate ontological constitution. I thus claim that a satisfactory interpretation of Wittgenstein’s reference to dynamical models provides clear evidence for a logically oriented interpretation of the Tractatus as a whole. I also suggest that this interpretation points to a way in which Hertz influenced Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy much more broadly. For Hertz, a major motivation to reformulate mechanics arose from the persistent questioning of the “essence” (Wesen) of force; he complains of “the statements which one hears with wearisome frequency, that the essence of force is still a mystery, that one of the chief problems of physics is the investigation of the nature of force, and son on” (Hertz 1899 p.7). On Hertz’s view, a question concerning something’s essence is intrinsically confused: “Can we by our conceptions, by our words, completely represent the essence of any thing? Certainly not.” (Ibid.) Hence one of the overarching goals of Principles is to clarify the structure of mechanics so that such confused questions no longer arise. Although it would be uncontentious to recognize a similar methodology in Wittgenstein’s later work, the presence of this Hertzian influence in Wittgenstein’s earlier work is much less widely appreciated. One question we are left with, then, is the extent to which Hertz’s influence informs Wittgenstein’s overarching approach to philosophy already in the Tractatus. Link to Joshua Eisenthal's website. 23/8/2021 0 Comments Welcoming New HPS ResearchThe 8th International Conference of Integrated History and Philosophy of Science, &HPS8, was scheduled to take place at Virginia Tech, July 15-17, 2020. After the conference was canceled, the organizers took the paper and poster presentations, and the Proceedings, online. The theme of the conference was "From Unification to Pluralism", in recognition of the changing landscape of research in HPS.
Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, two teams of researchers undertook parallel projects. A team from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Indiana University, led by Jutta Schickore, prepared an open access, online preprint repository for HPS work (history and philosophy of science). The repository features work presented at conferences hosted by the Committee for Integrated History and Philosophy of Science since its inception. One aim of the repository is to allow researchers entering the field to familiarize themselves with the norms and central themes of work in HPS. Another team from the Department of Philosophy at Virginia Tech, led by Lydia Patton, has prepared a website featuring the papers and posters accepted for the conference (&HPS8). Authors contributed online presentations of the papers and posters, which have been prepared with consistent editing and closed captions. In addition, graduate student researchers from the project hosted online interviews with authors, discussing their research in HPS, their views on interdisciplinary work, and their advice for researchers newly entering the field. Both series, the presentations and the author interviews, are featured on playlists on our new YouTube channel, and on the project website. The website and YouTube channel feature the conference presentations and author interviews. Work on this project has continued throughout the ongoing pandemic. It has been particularly rewarding to work on a project intended to welcome new researchers of the discipline of HPS. Our hope and plan for the project is to allow researchers entering the field to familiarize themselves with the breadth of the questions HPS investigates, to learn more about how others got into the field, and to gain a more concrete idea of how to make a contribution. For established researchers, the project offers an opportunity to reflect on the progress and trajectory of HPS, and on emerging research developments. 9/8/2021 0 Comments All Things ReichenbachClick here to read the papers appearing in a new Topical Collection in Synthese. Theme of the Topical Collection. From the Call for Papers by Erik Curiel and Flavia Padovani: "Hans Reichenbach is among the most important philosophers of science of the Twentieth Century and without doubt one of the most prominent philosophers of physics of the first half of the past century. His work has ramified in fundamental ways into virtually every major debate in the philosophy of science and physics. While Reichenbach's philosophical project is no longer seen as viable as a whole, his work continues to be influential often in unnoticed but deep ways. Although many of his ideas still retain their interest and are discussed in current philosophy of science, he remains, in fact, one of the least understood and least carefully studied philosophical thinkers of his time. Because his own work has not been well understood, his influence is not widely recognized. The primary aim of this collection is to fill this gap by illuminating Reichenbach's contributions to advances in many fields in philosophy, and his legacy in the context of current philosophical research across the discipline as a whole. The theme of the collection, therefore, will be an investigation of his work both in its own context and in its continuing contemporary influence in current philosophy. This collection aims, moreover, at reviving the tradition of inter-disciplinary collaboration that was at the heart of Reichenbach's vision for intellectual work, promoting the cross-pollination of ideas that discussion across traditional disciplinary boundaries can create and so exploring ways in which his insights can continue to be valuable in current scientific and formal approaches to philosophy. It is, in that spirit, a sequel to the conference "All Things Reichenbach" that took place at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (LMU Munich) in July 2019." If you are interested in doing more research on Hans Reichenbach, the resources below are recommended. Reichenbach's Experience and Prediction is well known for its analysis of the contexts of discovery and justification. See Revisiting Discovery and Justification, edited by Friedrich Steinle and Jutta Schickore. The Hans Reichenbach Papers (1884-1972) are held at the University of Pittsburgh. Guide to the Hans Reichenbach Papers. Sander Verhaegh, "Coming to America: Carnap, Reichenbach, and the Great Intellectual Migration. Part II: Hans Reichenbach." Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy. Flavia Padovani, "From Physical Possibility to Probability and Back: Reichenbach’s Account of Coordination." Ch. 14 in Logical Empiricism and the Physical Sciences, ed. Sebastian Lutz and Adam Tamas Tuboly. Routledge.
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