Can discrete time make continuous space look discrete?European Journal for Philosophy of Science - Tập 4 - Trang 19-30 - 2013
Claudio Mazzola
Van Bendegem has recently offered an argument to the effect that, if time is discrete, then there should exist a correspondence between the motions of massive bodies and a discrete geometry. On this basis, he concludes that, even if space is continuous, it should nonetheless appear discrete. This paper examines the two possible ways of making sense of that correspondence, and shows that in neither...... hiện toàn bộ
Editors’ letterEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science - Tập 7 - Trang 391-392 - 2017
Phyllis Illari, Federica Russo
The modal status of the laws of nature. Tahko’s hybrid view and the kinematical/dynamical distinctionEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science - Tập 11 - Trang 1-15 - 2021
Salim Hirèche, Niels Linnemann, Robert Michels, Lisa Vogt
In a recent paper, Tuomas Tahko has argued for a hybrid view of the laws of nature, according to which some physical laws are metaphysically necessary, while others are metaphysically contingent. In this paper, we show that his criterion for distinguishing between these two kinds of laws — which crucially relies on the essences of natural kinds — is on its own unsatisfactory. We then propose an al...... hiện toàn bộ
Philosophy of interdisciplinarity. What? Why? How?European Journal for Philosophy of Science - Tập 6 - Trang 327-342 - 2016
Uskali Mäki
Compared to the massive literature from other disciplinary perspectives on interdisciplinarity (such as those from sociology, education, management, scientometrics), philosophy of science is only slowly beginning to pay systematic attention to this powerful trend in contemporary science. The paper provides some metaphilosophical reflections on the emerging “Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity” (PhID...... hiện toàn bộ
Fitness: static or dynamic?European Journal for Philosophy of Science - Tập 11 - Trang 1-20 - 2021
Peter Takacs, Pierrick Bourrat
The most consistent definition of fitness makes it a static property of organisms. However, this is not how fitness is used in many evolutionary models. In those models, fitness is permitted to vary with an organism’s circumstances. According to this second conception, fitness is dynamic. There is consequently tension between these two conceptions of fitness. One recently proposed solution suggest...... hiện toàn bộ
Adding causality to the information-theoretic perspective on individualityEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science - Tập 14 - Trang 1-16 - 2024
Pierrick Bourrat
I extend work from Krakauer et al. (2020), who propose a conception of individuality as the capacity to propagate information through time. From this conception, they develop information-theoretic measures. I identify several shortcomings with these measures—in particular, that they are associative rather than causal. I rectify this shortcoming by deriving a causal information-theoretic measure of...... hiện toàn bộ
Generalized frameworks: Structuring searches for new physicsEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science - Tập 13 - Trang 1-23 - 2023
Adam Koberinski
Many areas of frontier physics are confronted with the crisis of a lack of accessible, direct evidence. As a result, direct model building has failed to lead to any new empirical discoveries. In this paper I argue that these areas of frontier physics have developed common methods for turning precision measurements of known quantities into potential evidence for anomalies hinting at new physics. Th...... hiện toàn bộ
The Big Data razorEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science - Tập 10 - Trang 1-20 - 2020
Ezequiel López-Rubio
Classic conceptions of model simplicity for machine learning are mainly based on the analysis of the structure of the model. Bayesian, Frequentist, information theoretic and expressive power concepts are the best known of them, which are reviewed in this work, along with their underlying assumptions and weaknesses. These approaches were developed before the advent of the Big Data deluge, which has...... hiện toàn bộ
Testability and viability: is inflationary cosmology “Scientific”?European Journal for Philosophy of Science - Tập 13 - Trang 1-33 - 2023
Richard Dawid, Casey McCoy
We provide a philosophical reconstruction and analysis of the debate on the scientific status of cosmic inflation that has played out in recent years. In a series of critical papers, Ijjas, Steinhardt, and Loeb have questioned the scientificality of current views on cosmic inflation. Proponents of cosmic inflation, such as Guth and Linde, have in turn defended the scientific credentials of their a...... hiện toàn bộ