Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:51:51.339Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Modeling and Measurement: The Criterion of Empirical Grounding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Bas C. van Fraassen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A scientific theory offers models for the phenomena in its domain; these models involve theoretical quantities, and a model's structure is the set of relations it imposes on these quantities. A fundamental demand in scientific practice is for those quantities to be clearly and feasibly related to measurement. This demand for empirical grounding can be articulated by displaying the theory-dependent criteria for a procedure to count as a measurement and for identifying the quantity it measures.

Type
Fictions, Models and Representation
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 2012 , pp. 773 - 784
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Research for this article was supported by National Science Foundation grant SES-1026183. An expanded version will appear in a volume edited by Wenceslao Gonzalez. The author wishes to acknowledge helpful discussion and correspondence with Martin Thomson-Jones, Isabelle Peschard, and Michael Weisberg.

References

Atwood, George. 1784. “A Treatise on the Rectilinear Motion and Rotation of Bodies, with a Description of Original Experiments Relative to the Subject.” University of Cambridge. http://gdc.gale.com/products/eighteenth-century-collections-online/.Google Scholar
Bohr, Niels. 1963. The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, Vol. 1, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature. Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow.Google Scholar
Chalmers, Alan. 2003. “The Theory-Dependence of the Use of Instruments in Science.” Philosophy of Science 70:493–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dyson, Freeman. 2004. “Thought Experiments in Honor of John Archibald Wheeler.” In Science and Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology, and Complexity, ed. Barrow, John D. et al., 72–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feynman, Richard P. 1965. Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Galilei, Galileo. 1914. Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Glymour, Clark. 1975. “Relevant Evidence.” Journal of Philosophy 72:403–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glymour, Clark. 1980. Theory and Evidence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Grünbaum, Adolf. 1957. “Complementarity in Quantum Physics and Its Philosophical Generalization.” Journal of Philosophy 54:713–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanson, Norwood Russell. 1958. Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner. 1930. The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kosso, Peter. 1989. “Science and Objectivity.” Journal of Philosophy 86:245–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1961. “The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science.” Isis 52:161–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mach, Ernst. 1960. The Science of Mechanics. Trans. McCormack, T. J.. LaSalle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Margenau, Henry. 1958. “Philosophical Problems Concerning the Meaning of Measurement in Physics.” Philosophy of Science 25:23–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, James, and Margenau, Henry. 1968. “Simultaneous Measurability in Quantum Theory.” International Journal of Theoretical Physics 1:211–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poincaré, Henri. 1905/1952. Science and Hypothesis. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas C. 2009. “The Perils of Perrin, at the Hands of Philosophers.” Philosophical Studies 143:5–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wcirnar, R., Romberg, R., Frigo, S., Kasshike, B., and Feulner, P.. 2000. “Time-of-Flight Techniques for the Investigation of Kinetic Energy Distributions of Ions and Neutrals Desorbed by Core Excitations.” Surface Science 451:124–29.Google Scholar
Weyl, Hermann. 1927/1963. Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science. New York: Atheneum.Google Scholar