Scientists employ a variety of procedures to eliminate degrees of freedom from computationally and/or analytically intractable equations. In the process, they often construct new models and discover new concepts, laws and functional relations. I argue these procedures embody a central notion of reduction, namely, the containment of one structure within another. However, their inclusion in the philosophical concept of reduction necessitates a reevaluation of many standard assumptions about the ontological, epistemological and functional features of a reduction. On the basis of (...) the reevaluation, I advocate a continuum of reduction which proceeds from the eliminative to the constructive. The metaphysical aspects of theory use in constructive reductions are sketched. (shrink)

Chemists take mechanisms to be an important way of explaining chemical change. I examine the usefulness of the mechanism approach in the recent philosophical literature in explicating the explanatory use of mechanisms by organic chemists. I argue that chemists consider a mechanism to be explanatory because it accounts for the “dynamic process of bringing about” (Tabery 2004 , 10) chemical change. For chemists, mechanisms are causal explanations based on interventions that show “how some possibilities depend on others” (Woodward 2003 , (...) 375). Only possibilities are achievable because chemists face a number of challenges when they explain by means of a mechanism. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

By stressing the act rather than the relation of approximation, I argue that the magnitude of the error introduced should not be used as the sole criterion for judging the worth of the approximation. Magnitude is a necessary but not sufficient condition for such a judgement. Controllability, the absence of cancelling errors, and the approximation's justification are also important criteria to consider when praising or blaming an approximation. Boltzmann's discussion of the types of approximations used in the kinetic theory of (...) gases at the turn of the century illustrates the use of these criteria. (shrink)

Prediction is more than testing established theory by examining whether the prediction matches the data. To show this, I examine the practices of a community of scientists, known as threaders, who are attempting to predict the final, folded structure of a protein from its primary structure, i.e., its amino acid sequence. These scientists employ a careful and deliberate methodology of prediction. A key feature of the methodology is calibration. They calibrate in order to construct better models. The construction leads to (...) knowledge of how to construct or build an object. Thus, prediction serves a cognitive goal of model construction and not just model or theory testing. The kind of knowledge that results is relevantly different than theoretical knowledge. (shrink)

Philosophers disagree how abstract, theoretical principles can be applied to instances. This paper generates a puzzle for law theorists, causal theorists and inductivists alike. Intractability can force scientists to use a "semi-empirical" method, in which some of an equation's theoretically-determinable parameters are replaced with values taken directly from the data. This is not a purely deductive or inductive process, nor does it involve causes and capacities in any simple way (Humphreys 1995). I argue the predictive successes of such methods require (...) us to reanalyze our views about the nature of prediction, the status of models, and the goal(s) of science. When laws and experimental evidence are neither individually nor jointly sufficient for prediction, models become the locus of understanding. I analyze an historically important debate about the use of semi-empirical methods to construct potential energy surfaces. (shrink)

I argue that numerical and causal accuracy arguments can be successful only if: (1) the theories in use are known to be true, (2) computational difficulties do not exist, and (3) the experimental data are stable and resolved. When any one or more of these assumptions are not satisfied, additional justificational considerations must be invoked. I illustrate the need for range of validity and intelligibility claims with examples drawn from chemical kinetics. My arguments suggest that the realist and anti-realist accounts (...) of justification are incomplete. Finally, I sketch some reasons why additional justificatory criteria are needed. (shrink)

Abstract Philosophers have paid little attention to the kind of reduction involved in transforming an analytically intractable equation into solvable form. I argue that this practice is important because it involves the design of a basic level theory for use in a specific domain. The design process can lead to the construction of a new theory. As a result of my analysis, theory design emerges as an important category of analysis for scientific methodology. Similarities between design in technology and science (...) are explored to illuminate the heuristic function of such reductions. (shrink)

Definitions of sustainability—and criticisms of the definitions—abound. I argue that there are problems with the definitional approach itself and not just with any specific definition. Wittgenstein. Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1958) argued that definitions are not sufficient to determine meaning or to legislate correct usage of words. For both singular terms and general concepts, meaning is meaning-as-use, proceeding via examples that instruct within an already existing normative structure. Once we are clear on the ways in which use presupposes a (...) normative structure, I believe we will understand better the meaning of sustainability and its normative basis. On this view, sustainability will be vague and contested but not meaningless. And we will not have to be worried about the plethora of definitions. (shrink)

Heather M. Farley and Zachary A. Smith, Sustainability: If It’s Everything, Is It Nothing? xiv + 176 pp., index. New York: Routledge, 2014. $39.95 Leslie Paul Thiele, Sustainability. viii + 234 p., bibl., index. New York: Polity Press, 2013. $22.95 The authors of both of these books offer new definitions of sustainability. They do so in order to battle “faux interpretations” or “hypocritical” or “unsupported endorsements” of sustainability. While I think many people, including I expect many readers of this journal, (...) would agree that sustainability is a rather imprecise concept that sometimes gets misused, I am not convinced the definitions in these books offer a way forward. Partly this is due to the specific ways the authors develop their discussions, and partly it is due to issues connected to their shared methodological approach, viz. the search for a new, univocal, strong definition. After discussing each book, I examine briefly that shared .. (shrink)

Research on the oxidation of alloys supports the claim that natural scientists can and do use ideal type concepts when confronted with analytical or computational intractability. In opposition to those who collapse ideal types into 'standard' theoretical concepts, I argue ideal types possess a unique structure, function and axiology. In phenomenologically complex situations, scientists use these features to articulate experiment with theory generally and in particular to discover new boundary conditions. This conceptual articulation is achieved using models rather than objective (...) perceptual attributes alone. The analysis supports a claim of local rather than global identities of methodology. (shrink)

Until recently, realists and anti-realists alike have assumed that any approximations which appear in explanations and confirmations in the mathematically oriented physical and biological sciences are “mere distractions” (Laymon 1989, p. 353). When approximation techniques must be used, they are typically justified by appeals to their numerical accuracy. However, recent interest in computational complexity in the sciences has revealed that numerical accuracy is not always the only criterion which should be invoked to justify the use of approximations. Cartwright (1983), Franklin (...) (1988) and others have suggested that causal accuracy should be added as a criterion.Numerical and causal accuracy are important. However, they form a sufficient set of justificational criteria only when certain—often unstated—conditions obtain. These conditions are actually assumptions which are often not satisfied, especially in the computationally complex situations which characterize discovery and exploratory contexts. In these contexts, we need to concentrate on “delineating a justificatory set which is relevant to [the] given epistemic situation” (Duran 1988, p. 273). (shrink)