This paper aims at understanding the concept of convention in mechanics as a notion transferred from the field of jurisprudence. This enables us to clarify it as a new epistemic category having a pertinent role in the transformation of mechanics in the nineteenth century. Such understanding permits a separation from linguistic and arbitrary conventions, thus highlighting its epistemic features and not transforming fundamental principles into mere arbitrary agreements. After addressing the main references in the literature discussing the role of convention (...) in mechanics, we analyze its classical use as a concept originating from law. Then we explain its use by Carl G. Jacobi, Ferdinand F. Reech, and J. Henri Poincaré. Here we also show how their uses conform to the features analyzed regarding conventions in jurisprudence. Finally, we try to explain how the use of this concept, among other factors, contributed to the transformation of mechanics. (shrink)

In his intervention to the ‘bankruptcy of science debate’, which raged in Paris in the turn of the twentieth century, Leo Tolstoy was one of the first to use the past record of science as a weapon against current science. It is not inductive. It does not conclude that all current scientific theories will be abandoned; nor that most of them will be abandoned; not even that it is more likely than not that all or most of them will be (...) abandoned. Its conclusion is modest: some of presently accepted theories will have the fate of those past theories that once dominated the scene but subsequently were abandoned. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest częściowe uzasadnienie negacji tezy, którą nazywam tezą o genezie realizmu strukturalnego. Dotyczy ona postulowanych w obrębie pewnej metafilozoficznej narracji związków między współczesnymi stanowiskami zwanymi epistemicznym realizmem strukturalnym i ontycznym realizmem strukturalnym a poglądami filozofów z początku XX wieku. W artykule rekonstruuję wymienione dwa stanowiska, postulowane związki, jakie mają one mieć z dwoma filozofami, Henri Poincarém oraz Ernstem Cassirerem, a następnie przedstawiam, dlaczego te postulowane związki są nietrafnie rozpoznane. Niesie to za sobą wnioski dotyczące swoistości wymienionych stanowisk oraz (...) pojęć obiektywności i rzeczywistości w ich kontekście. (shrink)

Duhem’s philosophy of science is difficult to classify according to more contemporary categories like instrumentalism and realism. On the one hand, he presents an account of scientific methodology which renders theories as mere instruments. On the other hand, he acknowledges that theories with particular theoretical virtues offer a classification of experimental laws that “corresponds to real affinities among the things themselves.” In this paper, we argue that Duhem’s philosophy of science was motivated by an anti-sceptical tendency, according to which we (...) can confidently assert that our theories reveal truths about nature while, at the same time, admitting that anti-scepticism should be moderated by epistemic humility. Understanding Duhem’s epistemological position, which was unique amongst French philosophers of science in the beginning of the 20th century, requires a careful examination of his accounts of representation, explanation, and of their interrelation. (shrink)

String dualities establish empirical equivalence between theories that often look entirely different with respect to their basic ontology and physical structure. Therefore, they represent a particularly interesting example of empirical equivalence in physics. However, the status of duality relations in string physics differs substantially from the traditional understanding of the role played by empirical equivalence. The paper specifies three important differences and argues that they are related to a substantially altered view on the underdetermination of theory building.

This chapter offers a narrative of the basic twists and turns of the realism debate after the realist turn. It starts with what preceded and initiated the turn, viz., instrumentalist construals of scientific theories. It then moves on to discuss the basic lines of development of the realist stance to science, focusing on one of its main challenges: the historical challenge.