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Between the Fundamental and the Phenomenological: The Challenge of ‘Semi-Empirical’ Methods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jeffry L. Ramsey
Jeffry L. Ramsey*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Oregon State University
*
†Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-3902.
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , December 1997 , pp. 627 - 653
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

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Footnotes

‡

This is a much altered version of a chapter in my dissertation. Many thanks to Bill Wimsatt, Steve Berry, and Dan Garber for help on the original version. Earlier versions of this essay were delivered to the Joint Workshop of the Conceptual Foundations of Science and the Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Chicago, the Department of Philosophy at Rice University, and the History of Science Lunch Bunch at Oregon State University. Thanks to members of all these audiences for helpful and stimulating comments. Some revisions were completed while I was a post-doctoral fellow at the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science. Support for that fellowship was provided by a Research Training Grant from the National Science Foundation. I am indebted to Ron Giere, Paul Humphreys, Mary Jo Nye, and two anonymous referees for criticisms and comments.

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