Nancy Cartwright (philosopher)

Nancy Cartwright ( born 1943 ) is an American philosopher and one of the foremost philosophers of science of the present.

Biography

Cartwright studied mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh ( completion 1966) and received his doctorate in 1971 at the University of Illinois at Chicago with the work Philosophical Analysis of the Concept of Mixture in Quantum Mechanics.

She is Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy of Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at the University of California, San Diego. Cartwright research on science, philosophy of science, economics and physics. Her interests include the theory of causality and the question of the objectivity of science.

Cartwright is attributed with John Dupré, Ian Hacking and Patrick Suppes, Stanford school in the philosophy of science. This one of the critical approach to the reductionist ideal of unified science.

In the academic year 1987/1988 she was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin, 1993, she was MacArthur Fellow, and since 1999 she is a member of the Leopoldina.

How the Laws of Physics Lie

Statement vs. Description and truth

In her major work with the provocative title How the Laws of Physics Lie ( ≈ How the laws of physics lie ) distinguishes Cartwright between theoretical and fundamental and phenomenological (ie empirical ) laws. The former are explanatorily, the latter descriptive. Cartwright claims that fundamental laws only at the expense of their empirical adequacy can be explanatorily. Assuming that truth in science is equivalent to empirical adequacy is, it means by implication that laws do not explain much, if they are true.

"The laws of physics, I Concluded, to the extent thatthey are true, do not explain much. " (1983, 72)

In summary, phenomenological laws true, but explain nothing and indeed fundamental laws have explanatory function, but are not true.

Causality

Scientific explanation does not fall for Cartwright but with causality together. Explanatorily - fundamental laws do not provide reasons for the stated phenomena. With Pierre Duhem Cartwright assumes that fundamental laws only to summarize and organize the phenomena. Cartwright only issues of causality, when several different experiments suggest a specific reason. Cartwright cited in this context, the experimental evidence of the existence of atoms by Jean -Baptiste Perrin. So Cartwright believes in contrast to the present- empiricists Bas van Fraassen in the existence of unobservable entities. It is therefore just as Ian Hacking called Entitätsrealist. On the other hand Cartwright calls himself a " Antirealistin " because she does not believe that fundamental laws are true. It is directed against one of the favorite arguments of the realists, the conclusion to the best explanation, since it claims that there is no best explanations, but always more equal. There was just something like a " circuit on the best reason ."

Ceteris paribus laws

Theoretical laws of physics are, according to Cartwright, ceteris paribus laws, so always only under certain ideal conditions valid. As an example she cited Newton's law of gravitation, which describes the force of attraction between two bodies. After Cartwright is the ideal state in which only gravitational forces acting between two bodies, only in the rarest of cases met (another force acting, for example, the Coulomb force ). Therefore, the law can only under special - be true conditions - and not actual. Cartwright refuses to interpret the actual forces acting between two bodies as a combination of gravity and Coulomb force. She calls the laws of the respective forces a fiction, since they describe situations that never occur in their pure form in reality.

"Nature does not 'add' forces. For the ' component ' forces are not there, but in any metaphorical sense, to be added. " (59 )

Cartwright is another easily understood example:

Both laws apply only ceteris paribus: Act 1 shall apply only if the altitude is not changed and Law 2 shall apply only if the salinity of the water is not changed. Cartwright points now indicate that there is no law that would describe what happens when one embarks on a deeper altitude and additionally changes the salinity.

Simulacrum explanatory model

Cartwright rejects the classical deductive- nomological model of explanation and replaces it with its so-called Simulacrum explanatory model. It states that phenomena are explained by a model for it is constructed, the " adjust " the phenomena of the theory ( Cartwright speaks in the original of a "prepared description" ).

"To explain a phenomenon is to find a model did it fits into the basic framework of the theory and did Malthus Allows us to derive analogues for the messy and complicated phenomenological laws Which are true of it. " ( Cartwright 1983, 152)

"The appearance of truth comes from a bad model of explanation, a model did ties laws directly to reality. As to alternative to the Conventional picture I propose a simulacrum account of explanation. The route from theory to reality is from theory to model, and then from model to phenomenological law. The phenomenological laws are indeed true of the objects in reality - or might also be; but the fundamental laws are true only of objects in the model. "(4)

A " simulacrum " stands for something the same shape or appearance features such as a certain thing, but not the same substance or the correct properties. The theory of "Adjusted " phenomena are thus not the true, but falsified phenomena. In other words, the adjustment of the phenomena leads to a distortion of the true facts:

" I did claimsoft in general we will have to distort the true picture of what happens if we want to fit into the highly constrained structures of our mathematical theories. " ( Ibid., 139)

Publications

• How the laws of physics lie, Oxford University Press, 1983 (English original edition: ISBN 0-19-824704-4 )
• Nature's Capacities and Their measurement, Clarendon Paperbacks, 1989 (English original edition: ISBN 0-19-823507-0 )
• The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science, Cambridge University Press, 1999 (English original edition: ISBN 0-521-64411-9 )