Cartwright, Nancy Associate Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University, California
How the Laws of Physics Lie How the Laws of Physics Lie
Print ISBN 0198247044, 1983
doi:10.1093/0198247044.001.0001
 
Abstract: Nancy Cartwright argues for a novel conception of the role of fundamental scientific laws in modern natural science. If we attend closely to the manner in which theoretical laws figure in the practice of science, we see that despite their great explanatory power these laws do not describe reality. Instead, fundamental laws describe highly idealized objects in models. Thus, the correct account of explanation in science is not the traditional covering law view, but the 'simulacrum' account. On this view, explanation is a matter of constructing a model that may employ, but need not be consistent with, a theoretical framework, in which phenomenological laws that are true of the empirical case in question can be derived. Anti-realism about theoretical laws does not, however, commit one to anti-realism about theoretical entities. Belief in theoretical entities can be grounded in well-tested localized causal claims about concrete physical processes, sometimes now called 'entity realism'. Such causal claims provide the basis for partial realism and they are ineliminable from the practice of explanation and intervention in nature.

Keywords: covering law, models, realism, scientific laws, simulacrum, entity realism, explanation in science
 
How the Laws of Physics Lie
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How the Laws of Physics Lie
CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS • NEW YORK
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To Marie and Claude
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Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges permission to use previously published material in this volume. The provenance of the essays is as follows:
Essay 1.  
In part, from 'Causal Laws and Effective Strategies', Noûs, vol. 13 (1979). © Noûs 1979; reproduced by permission of Noûs.
In part, new.
Essay 2.  
From 'Truth Doesn't Explain Much', American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 17 (1980).
Essay 3.  
In part, from 'Do the Laws of Physics State the Facts', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 1 (1980).
In part, from 'How do We Apply Science', PSA 1974 Proceedings, ed. Robert Cohen et al. (Reidel, 1974).
In part, new.
Essay 4.  
From 'The Reality of Causes in a World of Instrumental Laws', PSA 1980 Proceedings, ed. P. Asquith and R. Giere (Philosophy of Science Association, 1980).
Essay 5.  
From 'When Explanation Leads to Inference', Philosophical Topics, special issue on Realism (forthcoming).
Essay 6.  
In part, from 'How Approximation Takes Us Away from Theory and Towards the Truth' by Nancy Cartwright and Jon J. Nordby, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming).
Essay 7.  
From 'Fitting Facts to Equations', Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, and Ends (essays dedicated to Paul Grice), ed. Richard Grandy and Richard Warner (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Essay 8.  
New.
Essay 9.  
In part, from 'How the Measurement Problem is an Artefact of Mathematics', Space, Time, and Causality, ed. Richard Swinburne (Reidel, forthcoming).
In part, from Studies in the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, ed. P. Suppes (Philosophy of Science Association, 1980).
In part, new.
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Contents
 
Introduction 1
Essay 1  
Causal Laws and Effective Strategies 21
Essay 2  
The Truth Doesn't Explain Much 44
Essay 3  
Do the Laws of Physics State the Facts? 54
Essay 4  
The Reality of Causes in a World of Instrumental Laws 74
Essay 5  
When Explanation Leads to Inference 87
Essay 6  
For Phenomenological Laws 100
Essay 7  
Fitting Facts to Equations 128
Essay 8  
The Simulacrum Account of Explanation 143
Essay 9  
How the Measurement Problem is an Artefact of the Mathematics 163
 
Author Index 217
 
Subject Index 219
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