Robertson, K. and Wilson, A. orcid.org/0000-0003-3027-5016 (2023) Theoretical Relicts: Progress, Reduction, and Autonomy. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. ISSN 0007-0882
Abstract
When once-successful physical theories are abandoned, common wisdom has it that their characteristic theoretical entities are abandoned with them: examples include phlogiston, light rays, Newtonian forces, Euclidean space. But sometimes a theory sees ongoing use, despite being superseded. What should scientific realists say about the characteristic entities of the theories in such cases? The standard answer is that these ‘theoretical relicts’ are merely useful fictions. In this paper we offer a different answer. We start by distinguishing horizontal reduction (in which a superseded theory approximates the successor theory) from vertical reduction (in which a higher-level theory abstracts away from the lower-level theory, but nonetheless can be constructed from it); these are usually regarded as having different ontological consequences. We describe a ‘verticalization’ procedure that transforms horizontal reductions into vertical reductions. The resulting verticalized theories are abstractions rather than approximations, with restricted domains. We identify a sense in which the higher-level theory describes distinct subject matters from the lower-level theory, enabling in certain cases the higher-level theory to retain distinctive explanatory power even in the presence of reduction. We suggest that theoretical entities from superseded theories should be retained in a scientific realist worldview just when, reinterpreted as higher-level abstractions, those theories and their characteristic entities continue to perform distinctive explanatory work in providing the best explanation for less fundamental phenomena of interest. In slogan form: a good relict is an emergent relict.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This is an author produced version of an article published in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 09 Nov 2023 13:28 |
Last Modified: | 17 Mar 2024 01:13 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1086/724445 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:205104 |