Reduction in Science: Structure, Examples, Philosophical Problems

by W. Balzer (Editor), D. Pearce (Editor), Heinz-Jürgen Schmidt (Editor)

Overview

The papers in this volume were presented at the colloquium "Reduktion in der Wissenschaft: Struktur, Beispiele, philos- ophische PrObleme", held in Bielefeld, West Germany, July 18- 21, 1983. Altogether eighteen talks were delivered at the symposium, and all appear here with the exception of Professor Ehlers' address. In addition, we are pleased to be able to include three papers by invited participants (Kamiah, Ludwig, Scheibe) who were unable to attend the meeting. The meeting itself brought together a sizeable group of logicians, philosophers and working scientists to discuss and debate the theme of reduction, one that occupies a central place in contemporary philosophy of science. The participants and contributors succeeded in opening up new directions in reduction studies and presenting fresh case studies of re- duction from many different areas of scientific practice. Their efforts will greatly enhance our understanding of reduction and, consequently, our grasp of the complex process of scien- tific change and the unity and growth of scientific knowledge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789400964563
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	02/12/2012
Series:	Synthese Library , #175
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1984
Pages:	446
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.04(d)

Table of Contents

May We Identify Reduction and Explanation of Theories—.- Restriction and Embedding.- Anomalies of Reduction.- Ontological Reduction in the Natural Sciences.- Explanation of Theories and the Problem of Progress in Physics.- Reduction, Interpretation and Invariance.- Reduction and Evolution — Arguments and Examples.- Limiting Case Correspondence between Physical Theories.- Contact Structures, Predifferentiability and Approximation.- Tangent Embedding — A Special Kind of Approximate Reduction.- A Logical Investigation of the Phlogiston Case.- Utilistic Reduction in Sociology: The Case of Collective Goods.- Intertheory Relations in Growth Economics: Sraffa and Wicksell.- Possible Approaches to Reduction in Economic Theory.- Why Language—.- On the Comparison of Classical and Special Relativistic Space-Time.- Space-Time Geometries for One-Dimensional Space.- Quantum Theory as a Factualization of Classical Theory.- Classical and Non Classical Limiting Cases of Quantum Logic.- Bell’s Inequalities and the Reduction of Statistical Theories.- Name Index.